Facebook's Biggest Problem? A Crisis of Words.

The [executive] either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not.”

The quote is from Politics and the English Language and while George Orwell never made Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg his object of scorn—the original reads “writer” in place of “executive”—he would have been right to do so. More than any other company today, Facebook has a freakish inability to use words.

Facebook’s penchant for verbal nonsense is neither new nor particularly unique in a corporate world that loves self-interested spin. But today, that habit is driving a crisis of trust engulfing the Silicon Valley company. The failure of its executives, particularly co-founder Zuckerberg, to speak in plain, candid language during earnings calls and other appearances is a big reason that Facebook can’t escape the moral quagmire that led to an overnight plunge in its lofty stock price.

Want an example of Facebook’s failure with words? Begin with Zuckerberg’s bizarre insistence that he doesn’t run a media company. Facebook has long operated a global broadcast channel with more viewers than any television station on the planet, and has gobbled much of the advertising revenue once enjoyed by traditional media outlets. Yet in testifying before Congress in April, Zuckerberg again would not concede the obvious proposition that Facebook is a media company.

“I consider us to be a technology company,” he told lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Many observers interpreted the response as an attempt to shirk responsibility for Facebook’s role as a purveyor of news, video, and other media in the wake of Russian interference in U.S. elections.

Such prevarications are akin to the CEO of a large energy company declaring, when confronted with a massive spill: “We’re not an oil company.” In Facebook’s case, the company pumps its own pollution in the form of fake news, troll armies, and conspiracy theories. At Facebook’s scale, it amounts to a massive sludge of toxic media. If Zuckerberg truly hopes to clean it up, he can start by admitting he’s in the media business.

Another example of what Orwell called “debased language” is Facebook’s invocation of “the community” to justify behavior that is abhorrent and wrong. Most recently, executives muttered about “community standards” in a limp defense of why Facebook allows Holocaust deniers or the noxious conspiracy site InfoWars to flourish on its platform.

Zuckerberg himself has invoked “the community” over and over to explain Facebook’s foot-dragging. But as sociologist Zeynep Tufekci pointed out, Zuckerberg has failed to explain how the 2 billion people who use Facebook can possibly be defined as a community.

I called Facebook to learn more about what “community” means to the company, to little avail. A spokesperson said Facebook develops guidelines “with the community in mind” and on the basis of “safety, equity, and voice.” I asked the spokesperson to explain how a billion people can be “a community” and she simply referred me back to the guidelines.
The exchange underscored why New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo has concluded that Facebook’s stated policies make no sense. “All of this fails a basic test: It’s not even coherent. It is a hodgepodge of declarations and exceptions and exceptions to the exceptions,” Manjoo wrote while describing Zuckerberg’s verbal contortions about Holocaust deniers using the service.

The incoherence is frustrating but, worse, it’s disempowering. When Zuckerberg defends Facebook’s latest outrage in the name of the community, it puts all of us in that community—you and me and the trolls and the hate-mongers and yes, the Holocaust deniers. No decent person wants to be part of such a community. Most see a community as a group of people who share similar values and with whom they choose to identify. To Zuckerberg, the word app

Platforms like Facebook, which exist for the express purpose of ‘creating community,’ turn out to be in the business of exploiting the communities they’ve created for the benefit of those outside (the business community, the strategic communications community, the Moldovan hacker community),”explains writer Carina Chocanoa. “They invite members to ‘participate,’ but not, in the end, to make decisions together; the largest rewards, and the greatest powers, stay private.”

If Zuckerberg wants to cling to the word “community,” he will have to make some hard decisions about who is part of that community and who is not. Such a decision should be informed by law and ethics and philosophy—not a slapdash jumble of words compiled by his public relations team.

In a remarkable farewell letter this month, a longtime Facebook executive, Alex Stamos, made this very point. Using blunt and very understandable language, Stamos attributed the company’s current predicament to thousands of small decisions and called for a change. “We need to be willing to pick sides when there are clear moral or humanitarian issues,” Stamos wrote in the letter, first published by BuzzFeed. (Stamos served as chief information security officer at Facebook.)

That clarity—of words and thoughts and deeds—is what’s needed from Zuckerberg if he wants to lift his company out of the moral muck. One way to start would be for him to jettison what Orwell called “lump[s] of verbal refuse” and speak to Facebook users in clear English.

The White House Banned a CNN Reporter and Even Fox News Is Crying Foul

It’s no secret that President Trump and his administration are not fans of CNN.

But on Wednesday the distaste for the news channel reached new heights when a CNN reporter was barred from an event open to all press in the Rose Garden.

According to reports, after CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins asked about the tapes between Trump and former attorney Michael Cohen and Russian president Putin’s postponed visit to the U.S., she was told by White House communications staff that she would not be welcome to attend a subsequent joint event between Trump and European commission president Jean-Claude Juncker.

While Collins was for obvious reasons supported by her own network, she received an outpouring of support from others as well, including CNN rival Fox News

Fox News President Jay Wallace said in a statement that the network stands in “strong solidarity with CNN for the right to full access for our journalists as part of a free and unfettered press.” Fox News chief political anchor Bret Baier echoed this on his show Special Report, noting that the network is aligned with CNN on “this issue of access.”

While the solidarity between two adversaries is undoubtedly notable, Trump’s increasing hostility toward the press has increasingly brought the White House press corps together. AsCNN points out, Collins was the pool reporter on Wednesday, meaning that she was representing all of the major TV networks—a role that rotates from network to network each day. By barring the pool reporter, the White House’s action can be seen as an attack on all journalists, not just those perceived to be directly threatening to the administration.

This is not the first time that one network’s marginalization has drawn solidarity from the press corps at large. Under the Obama administration, the Treasury Department was criticized by journalists for attempting to exclude Fox News from a round of interviews. The network’s competitors refused to participate until Fox was permitted to join.

manny-pacquiao challenges floyd mayweather to boxing rematch

Will Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. subject the sports world to another “Fight of the Century?” Pacquiao called out Mayweather on Saturday night during an interview with reporters, challenging the retired boxer to a rematch. Pacquiao and Mayweather in May 2015 fought a much-hyped but ultimately underwhelming bout, which Mayweather won by unanimous decision. Three-plus years later, Pacquiao publicly floated the idea of another mega-fight between boxing legends. “Mayweather? If he decides to go back to boxing then that is the time we are going to call the shots,” Pacquiao said following his knockout win over Lucas Matthysse in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. “I have the belt, so it’s up to him. If he wants to come back in boxing let’s do a second one.” Mayweather and Pacquiao further enriched themselves in their first fight, with the former making over $220 million and the latter receiving over $100 million

New Charges Confirm That 'Infiltration' Was An Aspect Of Russian 2016 Attack

New charges against a woman who tried to build bridges between the Russian government and American political leaders via the National Rifle Association delivered a breakthrough in understanding one aspect of the attack on the 2016 election: "infiltration."

After months of questions and speculation as to how or whether the NRA connection might have worked, prosecutors have proffered an answer: the Russian woman, Maria Butina, was the intermediary between Russian government officials and Americans, both in the NRA and elsewhere in politics, according to court documents

The government charges that she was acting as a foreign agent without registering. Her attorney called the charges overblown, as NPR's Carrie Johnson reported.

Butina serves or served as the deputy to someone identified in court papers only as a "Russian official," who is probably Alexander Torshin, a now-sanctioned Kremlin official who also cultivated relationships with American political leaders and the NRA over several years

Woman Survives For 7 Days After Plunging Over 250-Foot Cliff In California

An Oregon woman survived for seven days after plunging over a cliff in central California.

Angela Hernandez, 23, suffered a brain hemorrhage and fractured ribs after a violent crash on July 6.

She says she swerved to avoid an animal and plunged to the bottom of a rocky 250-foot cliff.

New Drexel Program Helped Man Lose 140 Pounds 

She managed to get out of her car and swam to a beach where she waited for help.

She says she used a hose from her car’s engine to drink water dripping off rocks.

She was found by some hikers who called for help.

#PADUPAFRICA distributed 1000 sanitary pads and informative materials to female students of #Government secondary school Nyanya Abuja Nigeria.

#PADUPAFRICA distributed 1000 sanitary pads and informative materials  to female students of  #Government secondary school Nyanya Abuja Nigeria. last week, the pad up africa campaign to help young teenagers, it is intrestine to know that Menstruation and menstrual            practices are still clouded by taboos and socio-cultural restrictions resulting in adolescent girls remaining ignorant of the scientific facts and hygienic health practices, which sometimes result into adverse health outcomes like reproductive tract infections .
Teenagers having better knowledge regarding menstrual hygiene and safe practices are less vulnerable to RTI and its consequences. Therefore PADUPAFRICA has focused on distribution of informative materials to , increase knowledge about       menstruation right from childhood may escalate safe practices and may help in mitigating the suffering of millions

Parasite-borne illness spurs McDonald's to pull salads from 3,000 restaurants

McDonald’s halted sales of its salads at 3,000 franchises in the Midwest on Friday, after authorities in Illinois and Iowa reported an outbreak of a parasite-borne illnesslinked to greens served by the fast-food chain.

More than 100 people have fallen ill in the two states since May, and many of them reported having eaten salad items at the chain, according to health authorities in Illinois and Iowa.
Tests of those who have fallen ill revealed the presence of the fecal-borne parasite Cyclospora cayetanensis, which can cause severe diarrhea, cramps and fever, those health departments reported.

McDonald’s said in a statement it has halted sales of salads at the franchises “out of an abundance of caution” until the company can switch to another supplier, which the company did not identify.

In addition to Illinois and Iowa, states affected by the salad ban include Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, Montana, North Dakota, Kentucky, West Virginia and Missouri, the McDonald’s statement said.

“McDonald’s is committed to the highest standards of food safety and quality control,” the statement said. “We are closely monitoring this situation and cooperating with state and federal public health authorities as they further investigate.”

The illness caused by infestation with the parasite, called cyclosporiasis, is marked by severe and frequent bouts of diarrhea, cramps, bloating, nausea, fever, and loss of appetite and weight, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Illinois health authorities said about a quarter of the 90 cyclosporiasis cases reported since May had a connection to a McDonald’s franchise. Iowa authorities confirmed 15 cases linked to McDonald’s since June. Neither state reported any hospitalizations or deaths.

In addition to Illinois and Iowa, states affected by the salad ban include Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, Montana, North Dakota, Kentucky, West Virginia and Missouri, the McDonald’s statement said.

“McDonald’s is committed to the highest standards of food safety and quality control,” the statement said. “We are closely monitoring this situation and cooperating with state and federal public health authorities as they further investigate.”

The illness caused by infestation with the parasite, called cyclosporiasis, is marked by severe and frequent bouts of diarrhea, cramps, bloating, nausea, fever, and loss of appetite and weight, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Illinois health authorities said about a quarter of the 90 cyclosporiasis cases reported since May had a connection to a McDonald’s franchise. Iowa authorities confirmed 15 cases linked to McDonald’s since June. Neither state reported any hospitalizations or deaths.
The outbreak follows the recall last month of salad trays sold by Del Monte Fresh Produce after 227 people fell ill with cyclosporiasis after eating vegetable-and-dip trays bought in convenience stores in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Michigan, according to the CDC.

The agency last year reported a sharp increase in cyclosporiasis — more than 1,065 reported cases in 40 states. There were 384 cases reported during a similar period in 2016, compared with 546 in 2015 and 304 in 2014, according to the CDC.

“We are seeing more of these outbreaks popping up,” said Erin DiCaprio, a cooperative extension assistant specialist at the UC Davis’ Department of Food Science and Technology.

The parasites are specific to humans and tend to spread through poorly processed sewage that may find its way into irrigation sources, DiCaprio said. “It’s usually associated with produce that’s from outside the United States,” she said.
There is no routine testing for presence of the parasite in the U.S. produce industry, in part because it has been difficult to develop a test in the laboratory, DiCaprio said. Many physicians also overlook testing ill patients for the parasite, according to the CDC.

The outbreak comes as the produce industry is recovering from a 36-state outbreak of illnesses linked to E. coli bacteria in romaine lettuce, which killed five people and sickened more than 200 others, about half of whom had to be hospitalized, according to the CDC.

The E. coli strain was traced to an irrigation canal in the lettuce growing region around Yuma, Arizona. The outbreak, which began in April, was declared over on June 28.

'Do Not Eat' Kellogg's Honey Smacks Cereal, CDC Warns

Bad news for your breakfast: Kellogg's cereal contaminated with salmonella is still being sold in some stores despite being recalled a month ago, according to a new report from the FDA.

Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a report warning consumers that Kellogg's Honey Smacks cereal had been linked to a salmonella outbreak across the U.S. According to their investigation, the contaminated cereal has resulted in 100 cases of salmonella infections (30 of which have resulted in hospitalizations) in 33 states so far.

Based on the CDC's findings, Kellogg's voluntarily recalled Honey Smacks on June 14 and shut down the facility responsible. But according to a new report from the Food and Drug Administration, the contaminated cereal is still on shelves a month later. This is totally illegal, as the FDA points out in their warning.

Salmonella causes diarrhea, fever, and stomach cramps, according to the CDC. While most cases go away on their own (there are over a 1.2 million reported cases in the U.S. every year, the CDC says), it can be deadly. The CDC estimates 450 people die from salmonella infections every year.

So what does this all mean for your grocery list? The FDA is doing their part to go after retailers who are still selling Honey Smacks. If you see the cereal on shelves, that doesn't mean it's safe or a new, non-contaminated batch. You can report the cereal to your localFDA consumer complaint coordinator. And if you have any boxes of Honey Smacks at home, trash them ASAP. Regardless of when or where you bought your box, the CDC advises throwing it out or taking it back to your grocery store for a refund. (Already had Honey Smacks for breakfast? Read what to do when you've eaten something from a food recall.)

Neutrino From Supermassive Black Hole in Another Galaxy Detected in Antarctica

In the time it takes you to read this sentence, uncountable trillions of neutrinos have passed through your body. These ghostly particles rain down on us from the sun, but also from sources outside our solar system. Just a tiny fraction of neutrinos will run into anything on Earth, but scientists just detected one from outside our galaxy for the first time ever. It came from a supermassive black hole some 3.7 billion light years away, and then it collided with some ice in Antarctica.

Neutrinos are created by radioactive decay in stars, during supernovae, or as matter spirals into a black hole. They have the lowest known mass of any elementary particle, are electrically neutral, and only interact weakly with other matter. That means neutrinos fly right through planets, stars, and even you at nearly the speed of light. Scientists on Earth have managed to devise methods to detect the few neutrinos that do smack into atoms, and the National Science Foundation’s IceCube Neutrino Observatory spotted a very special Neutrino last year.
On Sept. 22, 2017, scientists using the IceCube observatory detected a high-energy neutrino striking the Antarctic ice. It had an energy of 300 trillion electron volts. That’s 45 times more energy than the Large Hadron Collider can produce in a collision. That provided good evidence that the neutrino came from outside our solar system. The team was able to calculate.
The IceCube observatory operates out of the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station, so the team had to look at the possible neutrino sources in the sky over that location. Data from the Fermi Large Area Telescope Collaboration pointed to an object known as a blazar. These are active galaxies with supermassive black holes at the center. That also describes quasars, but the difference is a blazar is spewing a jet of particles and radiation in the direction of Earth. Around the time IceCube detected the impact, Fermi noted that the blazar TXS 0506+056 was brighter (in gamma rays) than it had been in more than a decade, and it was in just the right place to match the trajectory of the neutrino.

This is the first time we’ve detected a neutrino from such a distant source. The study of these particles can help unravel the mysteries lurking in the most extreme environments of the universe. Imagine what secrets are hidden in all the neutrinos that passed through your body while reading this.

British authorities investigating the poisoning of two people have found a bottle believed to have contained Novichok, a nerve agent

British authorities investigating the poisoning of two people have found a bottle believed to have contained Novichok, a nerve agent that was also used against a former Russian spy and his daughter, the Metropolitan Police said Friday.

Dawn Sturgess, a 44-year-old woman who was exposed to the poison, died in a hospital on Sunday. Charlie Rowley, her 45-year-old partner, was said to be in critical condition before he regained consciousness. He is in serious condition but is stable, police said Friday.

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British authorities investigating the poisoning of two people have found a bottle believed to have contained Novichok, a nerve agent that was also used against a former Russian spy and his daughter, the Metropolitan Police said Friday.

Dawn Sturgess, a 44-year-old woman who was exposed to the poison, died in a hospital on Sunday. Charlie Rowley, her 45-year-old partner, was said to be in critical condition before he regained consciousness. He is in serious condition but is stable, police said Friday.

The small bottle was found during searches of Rowley's house in Amesbury on Wednesday, police said in a statement. It was tested, and scientists confirmed the substance inside was Novichok, a military-grade, Soviet-produced nerve agent that was used in an attack on the ex-spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, Yulia. Sturgess and Rowley were hospitalized in late June, authorities have said.

Authorities said they were investigating where the bottle came from, how it turned up in Rowley's house, and whether the substance came from the same batch that poisoned the Skripals, who survived the March attack. They have been released from a hospital, but are in a secret protected location, according to the Associated Press.

"This is clearly a significant and positive development," Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu said in a statement. "However, we cannot guarantee that there isn't any more of the substance left and cordons will remain in place for some considerable time."

Investigators have spoken with Rowley and will continue to talk with him to "further establish how he and Dawn came to be contaminated," police said. In a previous statement, police said there was no evidence that Sturgess or Rowley visited any of the sites that were decontaminated after the poisoning of the Skripals

he Skripals were found unconscious on a park bench on March 4 in Salisbury, around 7 miles from Amesbury.

British Prime Minister Theresa May has blamed the Russian government for the attack on the Skripals. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied any involvement.

Emerging sex disease 'could be superbug'

A little known sexually transmitted infection could become the next superbug unless people become more vigilant, experts are warning.

Mycoplasma genitalium (MG) often has no symptoms but can cause pelvic inflammatory disease, which can leave some women infertile.

MG can be missed - and if it is not treated correctly, it can develop resistance to antibiotics.

The British Association of Sexual Health and HIV is launching new advice.

Its draft guidelines detail how best to spot and treat MG.

What is MG?
Mycoplasma genitalium is a bacterium that can cause inflammation of the urethra in men, causing discharge from the penis and making it painful to urinate.

In women, it can cause inflammation of the reproductive organs (womb and fallopian tubes) too, causing pain and possibly a fever and some bleeding.

Michael Jackson was 'chemically castrated' by his late dad, claims singer's ex doctor

Michael Jackson was chemically castrated as a child by his recently deceased father Joe Jackson, according to the King of Pop’s former doctor, Conrad Murray.

The former cardiologist added that when Jackson was his patient, the singer told him about the “many sufferings” he experienced “at the hands of his father” as a child.
“The fact that he was chemically castrated to maintain his high-pitched voice is beyond words,” Murray continued, echoing a claim he made in his 2016 book, This Is It! The Secret Lives of Dr. Conrad Murray and Michael Jackson, in which he accused Joe of forcing Michael to get hormone injections at age 12 to cure his acne and prevent his voice from changing.

Joe filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Murray in 2010, but ultimately dropped the case.
In October 2013, Murray was released from jail two years into a four-year sentence after his 2011 conviction. His license to practice medicine was suspended in three states.

Jidenna: There are millions of Nouras across the world

Jidenna is a Grammy-nominated recording artist and producer. The views expressed in this commentary are his own.

Noura Hussein's story is a disturbingly familiar one. It affects more than Sudan, more than Africa.
While I may initially be perceived as an outsider because I am not Sudanese, I am not an outsider when it comes to the issue of child brides and child sexual assault.
I was born in the United States, but I spent much of my childhood in Nigeria — another country in which child marriage and sexual assault against young girls is all too common. In the course of my life, I've heard countless stories from my friends, family and partners who have been deeply traumatized by child marriage and sexual assault.
Sadly, child brides and child sexual assault are pandemic. According to the United Nations Population Fund, one in five girls is married or in a union before age 18.
Noura's courageous story has the potential to change the lives of girls around the world who are enduring legalized pedophilia and legalized rape.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, 38% of girls are married before they're 18. Right here in my backyard, child marriages persist in the US because about half of the states have no legal minimum age for girls to be married. It's 2018, and 15 million girls become child brides every year. That's one girl every 2 seconds.

SpaceX and Boeing are racing to put a man in space, and they’re both losing

NASA would love to stop having to rely on Russia to send its astronauts into space, but realizing that dream means that someone needs to step up to the plate with a safe, reliable crew transportation system. Right now, both SpaceX and Boeing are working independently to meet that demand, but a new report from the Government Accountability Office reveals that neither of them are as far along as they should be, and that’s not great news to U.S. astronauts.

The two companies — SpaceX with its Dragon capsule and Boeing with its Starliner spacecraft — are both under contract with NASA to develop, build, and launch commercial crew missions to the International Space Station, but assessments of the two companies’ systems reveal shortcomings that will likely delay the deployment of both.

The government report doesn’t mince words regarding how the delays could affect NASA’s science efforts as they relate to work aboard the International Space Station:

Rapper accused of luring fans into credit card scheme

Ashley Bautista aka Young Ash

Prosecutors say a rising rapper with a major social media following used her fame to dupe her own fan base into a credit card scheme.

Ashley Bautista, aka Young Ash, was hauled into Manhattan Supreme Court in cuffs Wednesday and pleaded not guilty to grand larceny.

The flamboyant hip-hop artist was known as a recruiter, who flashed wads of cash in snaps on social media, promising her followers fast money in exchange for their bank account information, according to ADA Alona Katz.

She was indicted with five co-defendants for allegedly using victims’ personal information, forged checks and ATM cards to withdraw cash from bank accounts in a scheme known as “card cracking,” according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.