A multidisciplinary team of experts has developed a ground-breaking 'smart needle' probe that uses light to pinpoint cancerous tissues or cells almost instantaneously.

Scientists have developed a pioneering new technique that can detect and diagnose one of the most common types of cancer within seconds—using light.

Pioneering new 'smart needle' could revolutionize cancer diagnosis

Biometrics are used to identify and authenticate a person using a set of recognizable and verifiable data unique and specific to that person. For more on biometrics definition, visit our web dossier on biometrics. Identification answers the question: "Who are you?" Authentication answers the question: "Are you really who you say you are?"

Facial recognition is the process of identifying or verifying the identity of a person using their face. It captures, analyzes, and compares patterns based on the person's facial details.

Equally, its arrival has prompted profound concerns and surprising reactions in 2019 and early 2020. 

Few biometric technologies are sparking our imagination quite like face recognition. 

n

By keeping the price of ebooks high, publishers keep paperbacks as a valid option for readers. That way, the world of physical books isn't under threat of becoming extinct due to ebooks.

If you're an avid reader, you may know the pain of losing or damaging your books. Ebooks, however, don't share this problem.

On top of this, ebooks are very convenient for the readers buying them. Buying a physical book involves going to a bookstore and hoping they have it in stock, or ordering it online and waiting for it to arrive. For ebooks, you go to a website, click the "Buy" button, and download the book to your PC or reader.

This constraint is the reason ebooks sometimes cost more than paperbacks. For example, a publisher can list the price of their physical book at $27.95 and the ebook at $20, which is a reasonable 30 percent markdown.

Unlike with physical books, Amazon has no control over the price of ebooks. If someone has performed the steps required to publish an ebook via Kindle Direct Publishing, they set the price as they please, with no exceptions.

However, ebooks utilize the agency model when sold. Instead of letting the retailer choose the price, the publisher states what they're selling for. The publisher gets 70 percent of each transaction, and the retailer gets the remaining 30 percent.

Everything makes sense when you imagine all of the people who helped make the book who need paying. For one, the author has to get their agreed royalty cut from every sale. From there, the editors, proofreaders, cover artists, and marketers all need to be paid. These obligations don't leave the publisher with a lot of money for themselves.

a physical book takes around $1-2 to produce. If this is true, however, then why are they priced a lot more than that?

other innovation is the AI-Pathway Companion5. This tool integrates insights from pathology, imaging, lab and genetics for each patient to provide status and suggest the next steps based on the data.

AI augments the review of medical imaging to help alleviate some of the workloads for over-taxed radiologists.

AI is the engine that pushes "fake news" out to the masses, but Google, Microsoft, and grassroots effort Fake News Challenge are using AI (machine learning and natural language processing) to assess the truth of articles automatically. Due to the trillions of posts, Facebook must monitor and the impossibility of manually doing it, the company also uses artificial intelligence to find words and patterns that could indicate fake news.

Smart text editor Textio, that makes job descriptions more inclusive, helped one publisher grow its percentage of women recruits to 57 percent, from just 10% previously.

Nutrition Early Warning System (NEWS) that uses machine learning and big data to identify regions that are at increased risk of food shortages due to crop failure, rising food prices and drought.

One of the most viable tools in the fight to end the world hunger crisis is artificial intelligence. It can analyze millions of data points to help determine the perfect crop, develop seeds, maximize current output, and control herbicide application precisely.

the University of Southern California Center for Artificial Intelligence in Society uses an unmanned aerial vehicle to spot poachers and locate animals.

A team from the University of Hawaii’s Kauai Endangered Seabird Recovery Project used AI to analyze 600 hours of audio to detect the number of collisions between birds and power lines.

Artificial intelligence can also help educate and predict the impacts of climate change on different regions.

ompany also created Track.Ai, an easy-to-use, affordable device that can identify visual disorders in children so treatment can begin before the disorders cause blindness.

Huawei used AI and augmented reality to create StorySign, a free mobile app that helps deaf children learn to read by translating the text into sign language.

a partnership with Oracle, The World Bee Project hopes to learn how to help bees survive and thrive by gathering data through internet-of-things sensors, microphones, and cameras on hives. The data is then uploaded to the cloud and analyzed by artificial intelligence to identify patterns or trends that could direct early interventions to help bees survive.

Did you know The World Bee Project is using artificial intelligence to save the bees? The global bee population is in decline, and that's bad news for our planet and our food supply.

Artificial intelligence is also used to predict the development of diseases across a healthcare network. A group at Mount Sinai used deep learning-based AI algorithms to predict the development of diseases with 94% accuracy, including cancers of liver, rectum, and prostate.

vexing problems.

While there's been much hubbub about how AI might be misused, we must not overlook the many ways AI can be used for good.

10 Wonderful Examples Of Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) For Good

"As we have stated, given the ongoing uncertainties of this pandemic, including limits on capacity to promote social distancing, and the State of California's refusal to permit a safe reopening any time soon, it unfortunately is not feasible to pay non-working employees indefinitely."

In his letter, Chapek noted Disney closed its domestic parks in March but continued to pay employees for "well over a month."

Chapek agreed earlier this year to take a 50% pay cut, and executive chairman Bob Iger agreed to forgo the remainder of his salary. Thousands of Disney vice presidents and above also took temporary pay cuts of lower percentages earlier this year -- but in August, Deadline reported, those cuts ended.

Warren added on Wednesday: "Disney spent its emergency fund by handing out billions of dollars to its top wealthy executives and shareholders in stock buybacks and dividends," but once the pandemic hit its business, it "left thousands of workers holding the bag."

Warren also noted in her letter earlier this month that base salaries represent a small portion of Disney executives' overall compensation.

Disney won't answer my questions because it has no good answers. The company said it was simply unfeasible to keep paying workers yet had no explanation for how it was feasible to restore senior executive pay."

while "showering its top executives with over-the-top compensation packages and salaries."

Last month Disney said it was laying off 28,000 people in the US as the pandemic decimated its parks and resorts business.

Senator Elizabeth Warren slammed Disney earlier this month over layoffs and other decisions that she says prioritized shareholders over employees. Now Disney has responded — and Warren is not satisfied with the company's reply.

1133 South Charles St., Baltimore, Md.What it is: A fashion boutique and tattoo art studio.Why it's cool: Passersby recognize Brightside by its sunny, yellow shopfront. Named Baltimore's best boutique in Baltimore Magazine, Brightside sells edgy, fashion-forward clothing, shoes, and accessories. Partners Christie Griffiths and Kike (Kee-Kay) Castillo run the operation together, with Griffiths focusing on the fashion and Castillo on the tats.

205 Frederick St., San Francisco, Calif.What it is: Bacon-centric food truck.Why it's cool: Bacon Bacon comes in the form of a food truck and a brick-and-mortar restaurant. And both serve, yep—you guessed it—all things bacon. The Bacon Bacon Truck rolls around San Francisco distributing six bacon-friendly sandwiches, including a pork meatball banh mi and grilled cheese, as well as french fries and root beer. Bacon Bacon also sells a bacon bouquet and chocolate-covered bacon.

There is heartbreak almost everywhere you look, our columnist says, but the stock market usually rises anyway.

For Long-Term Investors, Small Things Like Presidential Elections Don’t Matter

Russian scientist Sergey Zimov hopes to recreate a 12,000-year-old environment in a wildlife park for herbivores like wild horse and bison, with extinct megafauna like mammoths replaced by modern hybrids. Zimov will study the impact of the animals on environment and climate.

But how would they work? A new design by architect Javier Ponce of Forward Thinking Architecture shows a 24m-tall, three-tiered structure with solar panels on top to provide energy. The middle tier grows a variety of veg over an area of 51,000m2, using not soil but nutrients in liquid. These nutrients and plant matter would drop into the bottom layer to feed fish, which are farmed in an enclosed space.

We’ve almost got used to the idea of driverless cars before we’ve even seen one on the roads. The truth is, you might well see a lot more driverless trucks – after all, logistics make the world go round. They’ll be cheaper to run than regular rigs, driving more smoothly and so using less fuel. Computers never get tired or need comfort breaks, so they’ll run longer routes. And they could drive in convoys, nose-to-tail, to minimise wind resistance.

Dubai, for instance, imports 11,000 tonnes of fruit and veg every day.

“Our work is paradigm-changing because it provides a robust method to reproduce the electrical properties of real neurons in minute detail.

Scientists have found a way to attach artificial neurons onto silicon chips, mimicking the neurons in our nervous system and copying their electrical properties.

Got a tattoo that you now regret? There may soon be a gentler, cheaper alternative to laser removal.

many companies have said the trucks will still need a human passenger to ensure their cargo is safe.

UK homes throw away 30 to 50 per cent of what we buy from supermarkets, says a 2013 report by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. The report claimed we’re guided by ‘use by’ and ‘best before’ dates on food packaging, which are kept conservative because they are driven by shops’ desire to avoid legal action. An invention called ‘Bump Mark’ could change all that.

However, they have now found that if the batteries could heat to 60°C for just 10 minutes and then rapidly cool again to ambient temperatures, lithium spikes would not form and heat damage would be avoided.

But rapid charging of lithium-ion batteries can degrade the batteries, researchers at Penn State University in the US say. 

“The Raman smart needle can measure the molecular changes associated with disease in tissues and cells at the end of the needle,” said professor Nick Stone, project lead, from the University of Exeter. “Provided we can reach a lump or bump of interest with the needle tip, we should be able to assess if it is healthy or not.”

Researchers believe the technology could be particularly helpful in diagnosing lymphoma, reducing patient anxiety as they await their results. At present, people with suspected lymphoma often have to provide a sample of cells, followed by a biopsy of the node to be carried out for a full diagnosis, a process which can be time consuming.

A “smart needle” has been developed by scientists in the UK which could speed up cancer detection and diagnosis times.

If you want to take a trip into space, your quickest bet might be to take a balloon. The company World View Enterprises wants to send tourists into the stratosphere, 32km above Earth, on hot air balloons.

Although humans still need to feed the AI with information, the machine in this experiment was able to create a new, abstract theory independently – a huge step towards the development of a conscious computer, and potentially a landmark step in the way we carry out research. 12

Cut off a flatworm’s head, and it’ll grow a new one. Cut it in half, and you’ll have two new worms. Fire some radiation at it, and it’ll repair itself. Scientists have wanted to work out the mechanisms involved for some time, but the secret has eluded them. Enter an AI coded at Tufts University, Massachusetts. By analysing and simulating countless scenarios, the computer was able to solve the mystery of the flatworm’s regeneration in just 42 hours. In the end it produced a comprehensive model of how the flatworm’s genes allow it to regenerate.

Forest fires could one day be dealt with by drones that would direct loud noises at the trees below. Since sound is made up of pressure waves, it can be used to disrupt the air surrounding a fire, essentially cutting off the supply of oxygen to the fuel. At the right frequency, the fire simply dies out, as researchers at George Mason University in Virginia recently demonstrated with their sonic extinguisher. Apparently, bass frequencies work best.

London’s coffee industry creates over 200,000 tonnes of waste every year, so what do we do with it? Entrepreneur Arthur Kay’s big idea is to use his company, bio-bean, to turn 85 per cent of coffee waste into biofuels for heating buildings and powering transport.

Wearable sports bands that measure your heart rate are nothing new, but as numerous studies have shown, the accuracy can vary wildly (especially if you rely on them to count calories).

Google is slowly trying to solve the problem using helium balloons to beam the internet to inaccessible areas, while Facebook has abandoned plans to do the same using drones,

In gaming, it could alert players when a strike occurs on the corresponding body part of the game character.

Tiny hybrid robots made using stem cells from frog embryos could one day be used to swim around human bodies to specific areas requiring medicine, or to gather microplastic in the oceans.

The team from the University of Colorado Boulder believe their work paves the way for future building structures that could “heal their own cracks, suck up dangerous toxins from the air or even glow on command”. 5

As the cloth absorbs its wearer’s sweat, the positive and negative ions in the sweat interact with the polymer’s surface, creating an electrochemical reaction which generates energy.

A student at Loughborough University has designed a “robotic guide dog” that will help support visually impaired people who are unable to house a real animal.

Although the research is still in the proof-of-concept stage, the scientists claim that walls made of these bricks “could store a substantial amount of energy” and can “be recharged hundreds of thousands of times within an hour”.

Tsunami’ of hotel closures is coming, experts warn

New York has over the last few years experienced a surge in new hotel construction to serve a boom in international visitors and many of the hotels that close due to the pandemic will likely convert to residential properties or offices because of the glut of hotels

A number of owners are starting to see light at the end of the tunnel.”

hotels located in popular car-accessible vacation destinations, such as Santa Monica, Santa Barbara and San Diego, seem more likely to survive the crisis thanks to a slow increase in leisure travel.

Hotels that primarily cater to conventions and business travelers are more at risk of closing because such travel has all but disappeared,

“The clock is ticking on loans for hotels and restaurants, and there is going to be a sharp uptick in delinquencies,”

An executive with the management company that operates the Embassy Suites in Palmdale and 52 other hotels said some of the hotels in its portfolio are struggling to stay in business while others are overcoming the pandemic, with occupancy rates as high as 80%.

More hotels have not yet closed permanently because they were able to take advantage of the funding provided by the federal Paycheck Protection Program or because banks have been forgiving of loan delinquencies for the last few months, said Wise, the commercial real estate expert.

Fitch Ratings

The lawsuit asks the court to appoint a receiver for hotel operations, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Ashford Hospitality recently turned over the keys to its newly purchased Embassy Suites in Midtown Manhattan to its lender after the real estate investment trust fell behind on debt payments, according to CNBC. Advertisement

High-end hotels have also closed in other parts of the country, including the 44-story Hilton Times Square hotel in New York City, which went out of business this month.

Aron Harkham, president of Luxe Hotels and son of Efrem Harkham, said in an email that the Rodeo Drive location “got caught up with the bad timing of the global travel market” by launching a full remodel just before the pandemic struck.

“Industry data shows 1 in 4 properties already are struggling to pay mortgages, risking foreclosure.”

The steep decline in tourism and business travel has devastated the hotel industry.

“We know there is a tsunami outside. We know it’s going to hit the beach. We just don’t know when,” said Donald Wise, a commercial real estate expert

industry experts point to an unusually high loan delinquency rate among hotel borrowers as a sign that more closures are likely to follow.

The Luxe Rodeo Drive is the first high-end hotel in the Los Angeles area to go out of business because of the pandemic

Located on one of the world’s most expensive strips of commercial real estate, the upscale Luxe Rodeo Drive hotel has closed, a casualty of a pandemic that is likely to put more hotels out of business.

Genome editing technologies enable scientists to make changes to DNA

The scooter explosion is a huge story in urban transportation.

Our pay-as-you-use pricing delivers a cost-effective connectivity solution that keeps your expenses low, allowing you to invest in other parts of your business. Plus, we can support IoT operations in virtually any country, helping you power a global IoT system with powerful cellular connectivity. Request a demo today to learn more about how Soracom cellular connectivity can power your IoT project.

Soracom provides over 10,000 businesses around the world with cellular connectivity, enabling them to power their IoT projects with little to no downtime.

The e-scooter industry, along with other ride sharing services, are here to stay. The demand for a low cost and short-distance transportation method will continue to rise as cities become more and more congested with traffic.

At the same time, the ride data produced by shared scooter services will be fed into large Smart City initiatives, supporting the “big data” projects that help to improve transportation across metropolitan areas, even for people who may never use a scooter themselves.

Even lesser-known players like Zagster, which operates scooter services on behalf of local municipalities, already operate fleets numbering in the thousands. As fleets grow, sensor systems designed to report maintenance needs, power consumption, hazardous operation, or service incidents will play a larger role in ensuring safety and efficient operation.

That’s where cellular comes in. As we know from working with customers in industries ranging from heavy construction to livestock management, there’s no more effective or affordable solution for reliably tracking location over distance.

To continuously signal its location, each shared scooter needs to be able to maintain a steady data connection across a range of miles. Pairing with a phone over Bluetooth won’t work, since scooters would not be trackable between rides. And even the most capable Wi-Fi networks have a range of only a few hundred feet, and are easily interrupted by physical obstructions or even human bodies.

And scooters are easier for riders too. Less intimidating than shared bicycles and significantly more convenient, since in most cases a scooter can simply be rented where it’s found and left on the street on arrival rather than locked to a specific docking station.

As city planners turn to transit-based solutions, scooters offer a convenient and environmentally friendly option for the “last mile” between transit points and an individual commuter’s intended destination. Thanks to their relatively light weight, low complexity, and compact form factor, it also costs a lot less to deploy and maintain a fleet of electric scooters in comparison with the larger and more cumbersome shared bicycles that rolled out in earlier urban pilot programs.

Why Scooters is pretty easy to understand. Urban populations are growing faster than cities can rebuild decades-old infrastructure. According to transportation analyst INRIX, traffic congestion cost drivers in the U.S. over $300 billion in 2017, and those numbers are only expected to increase.

It’s also a huge story in the Internet of Things: without reliable wireless connectivity, this entire industry would vanish as quickly as it appeared.

By the end of the year, industry front-runner Bird had expanded to over 100 cities across North America, Europe, and Asia, becoming the fastest startup to achieve a $2 billion valuation and setting the pace for an entirely new industry now made up of dozens of venture-backed competitors.

from Santa Monica to San Francisco, seemingly overnight.

The collected data will help in personalized analysis of an individual’s health and provide tailor made strategies to combat illness.

Research shows IoT in healthcare will be massive in coming years. IoT in healthcare is aimed at empowering people to live healthier life by wearing connected devices.

Smart Home

IoT in Poultry and Farming

IOT in Healthcare

The basic idea behind the smart grids is to collect data in an automated fashion and analyze the behavior or electricity consumers and suppliers for improving efficiency as well as economics of electricity use.

Power grids of the future will not only be smart enough but also highly reliable. Smart grid concept is becoming very popular all over world.

Energy Engagement

They can also track consumers path through a store and improve store layout and place premium products in high traffic areas.

The potential of IoT in the retail sector is enormous. IoT provides an opportunity to retailers to connect with the customers to enhance the in-store experience.

Smart Retail

Sensing for soil moisture and nutrients, controlling water usage for plant growth and determining custom fertilizer are some simple uses of IoT.

IoT in agriculture

Applications for tracking goods, real time information exchange about inventory among suppliers and retailers and automated delivery will increase the supply chain efficiency.

Smart surveillance, automated transportation, smarter energy management systems, water distribution, urban security and environmental monitoring all are examples of internet of things applications for smart cities.

IoT will solve major problems faced by the people living in cities like pollution, traffic congestion and shortage of energy supplies etc. Products like cellular communication enabled Smart Belly trash will send alerts to municipal services when a bin needs to be emptied.

Smart Cities

The driving philosophy behind IIoT is that, smart machines are more accurate and consistent than humans in communicating through data. And, this data can help companies pick  inefficiencies and problems sooner.

Industrial Internet

Connected Cars

A connected car is a vehicle which is able to optimize it’s own operation, maintenance as well as comfort of passengers using onboard sensors and internet connectivity.

Wearables

How Big is IoT?

The cost of owning a house is the biggest expense in a homeowner’s life. Smart Home products are promised to save time, energy and money.

Wouldn’t you love if you could switch on air conditioning before reaching home or switch off lights even after you have left home?

a pipe dream.

it's hard to imagine any other CEO at a major auto company that can drive technical effort in the manner that Elon Musk has accomplished to date.

Tesla is not resting on its laurels. It appears that they’re working to jettison existing methods and approaches to EV design and production, replacing them with new and better ideas.

Batteries are the pivotal element for long range, high performance and low cost EVs. From what we've seen, there's no other company that's even close to the battery tech that was previewed during battery day.

a transition away from fossil fuels for most, if not all, energy needs is no longer a pipe dream. I

The new paradigm that Tesla uses for building the “machine that builds the machine” is groundbreaking, representing substantial improvement that will increase production capacity and lower production costs. 

The holy grail

 That means a significant reduction in vehicle cost and the real likelihood that a mass-market, $25,000 Tesla will be available in three years.

 The holy grail of battery tech—a cost of less than $100 per kWh will be achieved and production-ready in less three years. 

$100 per kWh

pull it off

chock full

“Many of us say he’s a work in progress. However, his policies, nevertheless, have probably been more Christian than the policies of any president in my lifetime.”

“They are critical.”

What remains to be seen is how the evangelical vote will play out at a time when the coronavirus pandemic is limiting the informal Sunday political talk at churches.

Evangelicals often cite Trump’s vice presidential selection of Mike Pence, who championed evangelical issues while an Indiana congressman and governor, as a turning point in getting behind Trump. They’ve noticed when Trump and Pence have brought up faith and made other religious references in public remarks.

“I feel that most white evangelicals who support Trump are often sacrificing the integrity of the office of the president,” Fea said. “They’re supporting a person — the list goes on — a liar, someone who has constantly played with racist language.”

Trump is “using white evangelicals, he’s playing on their anti-intellectualism,”

“Throughout the scriptures, God has done most of his work through the most unlikely people,” said Denver, a retired veteran from the Philadelphia suburbs. “The people he picks are not normally the ones you’d think would be involved.”

Trump was raised as a Presbyterian, a mainline Protestant denomination, and Biden is a practicing Catholic.

The Biden campaign frames “the real religious issue” at stake as systemic racism, while evangelical Trump voters point to his support for anti-abortion efforts, including like-minded judicial appointees, along with school choice, religious freedom and the movement of the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

But Biden’s campaign hopes to make some inroads, with plans to launch an “evangelicals for Biden” effort next week, according to Josh Dickson, the campaign’s national faith engagement director.

Trump’s policies have helped keep in the fold evangelicals who otherwise might have been discomforted by his style. Their opinions on a range of political issues make them among the least likely voters to jump to former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democrat.

It’s a group that has often made the difference for Republicans on the Pennsylvania ballot. And while some born-again voters had misgivings about Trump in 2016, they helped him eke out a 44,000-vote margin of victory in the pivotal swing state. This time around, they sound eager to repay him for supporting their agenda.

President Donald Trump’s homestretch push to repeat his razor thin victory in Pennsylvania four years ago won’t happen without white evangelicals, and there are signs that critical component of his coalition hasn’t lost the faith.

They’ve stuck by him for years, never letting the hypocrisy, lies, economic collapse, global pandemic, or scandal deter their devotion.

After the Woodward interviews revealed that Trump downplaying the virus’ severity wasn’t so much incompetence as it was almost criminal negligence, a media debate ensued concerning whether Woodward should have revealed the tapes sooner in order to save lives.

When titrating his message of panic, Black Lives Matter protesters are rioters, looters, and thugs, but the armed white vigilantes terrorizing them are simply patriotic Americans. Trump’s 2020 messaging is loud and clear: Don’t worry about white supremacists with guns or the pandemic.

Instilling fear in his white base about completely empty theories while also lying about the very real virus that could actually kill them requires shameless hypocrisy—again, an essential item in the Trump tool kit.

some Oregon residents were ignoring mandatory evacuations because they felt they needed to defend their homes from antifa. They were taking their lead from a calm and collected president who inspired his supporters to do something so incredibly dangerous and dumb.

But Trump demonizes the Democrats as he explains the reasons for school closures to his base: 

This all comes even as the United States has done a uniquely bad job handling the pandemic response

“There’s a difference,” Cortes claimed. “With Biden, there’s a legitimate fear.”

Trump campaign sent out a text message to its supporters: Give us money, or antifa will attack your home. 

his second campaign is in its final weeks, and the president continues to trail Biden in the polls, he’s ramping up that fear-based message to an almost deafening degree.

he spent his first term fear mongering about immigrants in caravans and Muslims on planes.

his campaign has released several ads recently that show America burning, claiming that this is Joe Biden’s vision of the future.

Despite his reassurance that he’s been lying about the virus because he wanted to keep the American public calm, white panic has been the theme of Trump’s presidency from the moment he descended that golden escalator and announced his candidacy.

“They wanted me to come out and scream: People are dying,” the president said without a hint of irony to his adoring crowd. “No, I did it just the right way.”

So, why did the president spend the previous six months downplaying the virus’ severity, urging reopening, and ridiculing the wearing of masks?

“We see a lot more week stays versus just a two-day stay because they have more money,”

On July 30, the couple married at the Farmhouse Inn in front of an iPad so their loved ones could watch the elopement ceremony via Zoom.

the American Hotel & Lodging Association, U.S. hotels have lost more than $46 billion in room revenue. Nearly 3.9 million hotel-supported jobs have been lost since mid-February.

Although smaller weddings don’t bring in as much revenue as large ones, hotels need all the business they can get.

“Inquiries are through the roof,”

Not only have Google searches for micro-weddings doubled since March,

Current Texas law allows the Four Seasons to host weddings of about 200 people. But with coronavirus cases still on the rise and large gatherings still risky, Rodriguez is getting more requests than ever for micro-weddings (with a guest list of as many as 50 people) and elopements (just the bride and groom).

Since April, Rodriguez has been doing roughly two virtual site tours a week to prospective wedding clients.

a micro-wedding business boom

London buses stopped accepting cash in 2014, but do accept MasterCard and Visa contactless payment cards.

You'd have no choice but to conform to the intermediaries' automated bureaucracy, giving them a lot of power, and a lot of data about the microtexture of your economic life.

'Cashless society' is a euphemism for the "ask-your-banks-for-permission-to-pay society".

“The more cashless our society becomes, the more our moral compass slips.”

“A move to a cashless society will not benefit all groups equally. The groups that are most likely to be excluded will be women, rural communities, and the elderly. In some countries, like the U.S. where a large part of the low-income segment does not have a bank account, pushing out these payments has been a challenge,” she said.

Going totally digital means 100% traceable, digital and fully controlled and there are lots of forces out there that don’t want that world.

(lower crime rates, less money laundering, time/resources saved from making money and easier currency exchange when travelling)

Adolf Hitler was nominated once in 1939. As unlikely as it may seem today, Adolf Hitler was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1939 by a member of the Swedish parliament.

But his biggest No Prize of all might be how Trump has so mishandled the relationship with China that he’s generated what’s being described as Cold War II.

Or Trump could be up for getting that big lump of gold in exchange for his sterling work in selling the bombs that are blowing up civilians in Yemen. Trump’s first out-of-the-U.S. visit was a stop with Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, where Trump talked up the big heap o’ arms that he was selling the kingdom.

Speaking of NATO, Trump’s really outstanding achievement award might be in how much he’s weakened the military and economic relationship with Europe that has prevented World War III since World War II. Every member of the NATO alliance provided forces to assist the United States when it went into Afghanistan, and many of them suffered substantial losses. Trump has made sure that will never happen again by constantly attacking allies and turning the United States into a laughingstock. No Prize for that. 

Trump can have an auxiliary No Prize for how he’s damaged the relationships between the United States and South Korea, and the United States and Japan.

Of course, it’s hard to consider Trump’s achievements in international peace without looking at the one that has already earned him a major award: extorting the leader of Ukraine with threats to withhold U.S. military assistance unless Trump was provided with lies he could use against Joe Biden. That one earned Trump an impeachment.

Or perhaps Donald Trump was nominated for one of his truly outstanding international moments: The abandoning of America’s Kurdish allies. Trump pulled out the small number of U.S. forces helping to maintain order along the border between Syria and Turkey, not only allowing Kurdish fighters who had long sided with the U.S. to be trampled on by a one-two-three dictator punch of Bashar al-Assad, Recep Erdoğan, and Vladimir Putin—he also paved the way for a resurgence of ISIS, created a chaotic power vacuum ripe for creating new terrorist groups, and permanently damaged both the reputation and power of the United States. A big No Prize for that one.

n addition to setting Iran up to be the next nuclear power, Trump could collect a prize for his handling of nuclear weapons in North Korea. Because after exchanges of cake and birthday cards, receiving beautiful notes, stamping out thousands of genuinely hideous commemorative coins, and falling into mutual authoritarian love, the number of nuclear weapons controlled by Kim Jong-un is up to somewhere between 30 and 40; the isolated dictatorship has conducted a expanded program of missile launches; and Kim maintains large stockpiles of both chemical and biological weapons. Trump’s entire outreach to North Korea appears to have resulted in an expanded travel schedule for Kim and excuses for other countries to ignore international sanctions. That’s certainly worth a No Prize.

For example: Since Trump broke the nuclear treaty with Iran and did everything possible to make it impossible for anyone else to follow the extensive regime of inspections and limitations that assured Iran could not build a nuclear weapon, Iran’s stockpile of enhanced uranium has now grown to 10 times the limit allowed under that treaty. And that’s just one of several reasons why Trump really has had an enormous impact on world peace.

Yes, that’s a real thing. Trump was totally nominated for the prize by a single far-right member of the Norwegian parliament

Fox News has decided to spend the morning giving extensive coverage to a much more vital, serious story. Donald Trump … has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.