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A peep into the power dynamics at educational conferences

These dynamics manifest in various ways, influencing interactions, decision-making and overall outcomes.




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Sarah Ferguson takes a pledge as Princess Beatrice prepares for childbirth

Sarah Ferguson he reportedly working on a new cause before Princess Beatrice gives birth the second time.

The Duchess of York is working to eliminate plastic diapers under a new initiative called The Greater Good.

Writing about it in a special piece for...




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Jamie Foxx embraces powerful daily mantra following life threatening health crisis

Jamie Foxx embraces powerful daily mantra following health crisis

Jamie Foxx revealed the daily mantra he lives by after surviving a health scare back in April 2023.

The Oscar winner took to his official Instagram account on Tuesday, November 12, to share his powerful...




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Princess Diana method to bring William, Harry together laid bare

Princess Diana would have ensured her sons would have a back to fall on during times of rift.

The former Princess of Wales wanted Prince William and Prince Harry to make amends amid their disagreements.

The BBC's former royal correspondent, Jennie Bond, told OK! Magazine: "I...




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Greece introduces cash incentives, tax breaks to address declining birthrate

Greece has one of Europe's lowest fertility rates, a dire demographic state driven by a decade-long economic crisis




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Russia places six foreign journalists on wanted list for illegal border entry

Journalists looked to report inside the Kursk region after a Ukrainian cross-border incursion




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Piracy Shield Crisis Erupts as AGCOM Board Member Slams Huge Toll on Resources

Critics of Italy's Piracy Shield are not difficult to find but, with its powerful and influential proponents rarely far away, getting heard is a considerable challenge. Not to mention getting anything done. After calling for the platform's suspension and meeting resistance in the wake of the recent Google Drive blocking blunder, AGCOM board member Elisa Giomi has gone public with a laundry list of concerns. It pulls zero punches.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.




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Pirate IPTV-Selling ‘Law Enforcement Officer’ Faces Wiretapping Claim

A lawsuit filed in the U.S. claims that a pirate IPTV seller adopted a novel marketing strategy to support a business with 450,000 subscribers . According to the plaintiffs, the owner of the service "held himself out as a Chicago-area law enforcement officer" to "mitigate potential concerns" over the unlawfulness of his business. A theoretical damages claim of more than a billion dollars, plus an allegation of wiretapping, makes this case a little more spicy than most.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.




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PCB announces Rs 30 million prize for Champions One-Day Cup winners

The opening clash between Rizwan’s Markhors and Shadab’s Panthers adds anticipation to the tournament’s start.




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Petroleum products prices expected to 'rise by Rs5.50 per litre'

A large number of motorists gathered in a queue to fill petrol in Karachi on Friday, July 5, 2024. — PPI Govt to announce fresh rates on Nov 15.New prices to come into effect on Nov 16.Federal govt hiked prices in previous review.

KARACHI: The price of petroleum...




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Pakistan sees Rs47.54 per litre drop in fuel prices since May, reports petroleum minister

Musadik Masood Malik says rate of petroleum levy to also decrease with increase in tax-to-GDP ratio




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Another case of police excesses surfaces

The report further showed that the additional SHO had been previously found guilty of framing a man in a fake case




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Poor internet access for students echoes in K-P assembly

Debate on Rs55.42b supplementary budget completed




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Analog Equivalent Rights (8/21): Using Third-Party Services Should Not Void Expectation of Privacy

Privacy: Ross Ulbricht handed in his appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court last week, highlighting an important Analog Equivalent Privacy Right in the process: Just because you’re using equipment that makes a third party aware of your circumstances, does that really nullify any expectation of privacy?

In most constitutions, there’s a protection of privacy of some kind. In the European Charter of Human Rights, this is specified as having the right to private and family life, home, and correspondence. In the U.S. Constitution, it’s framed slightly differently, but with the same outcome: it’s a ban for the government to invade privacy without good cause (“unreasonable search and seizure”).

U.S. Courts have long held, that if you have voluntarily given up some part of your digitally-stored privacy to a third party, then you can no longer expect to have privacy in that area. When looking at analog equivalence for privacy rights, this doctrine is atrocious, and in order to understand just how atrocious, we need to go back to the dawn of the manual telephone switchboards.

At the beginning of the telephone age, switchboards were fully manual. When you requested a telephone call, a manual switchboard operator would manually connect the wire from your telephone to the wire of the receiver’s telephone, and crank a mechanism that would make that telephone ring. The operators could hear every call if they wanted and knew who had been talking to whom and when.

Did you give up your privacy to a third party when using this manual telephone service? Yes, arguably, you did. Under the digital doctrine applied now, phonecalls would have no privacy at all, under any circumstance. But as we know, phonecalls are private. In fact, the phonecall operators were oathsworn to never utter the smallest part of what they learned on the job about people’s private dealings — so seriously was privacy considered, even by the companies running the switchboards.

Interestingly enough, this “third-party surrender of privacy” doctrine seems to have appeared the moment the last switchboard operator left their job for today’s automated phone-circuit switches. This was as late as 1983, just at the dawn of digital consumer-level technology such as the Commodore 64.

This false equivalence alone should be sufficient to scuttle the doctrine of “voluntarily” surrendering privacy to a third party in the digital world, and therefore giving up expectation of privacy: the equivalence in the analog world was the direct opposite.

But there’s more to the analog equivalent of third-party-service privacy. Somewhere in this concept is the notion that you’re voluntarily choosing to give up your privacy, as an active informed act — in particular, an act that stands out of the ordinary, since the Constitutions of the world are very clear that the ordinary default case is that you have an expectation of privacy.

In other words, since people’s everyday lives are covered by expectations of privacy, there must be something outside of the ordinary that a government can claim gives it the right to take away somebody’s privacy. And this “outside the ordinary” has been that the people in question were carrying a cellphone, and so “voluntarily” gave up their right to privacy, as the cellphone gives away their location to the network operator by contacting cellphone towers.

But carrying a cellphone is expected behavior today. It is completely within the boundaries of “ordinary”. In terms of expectations, this doesn’t differ much from wearing jeans or a jacket. This leads us to the question; in the thought experiment that yesterday’s jeans manufacturers had been able to pinpoint your location, had it been reasonable for the government to argue that you give up any expectation of privacy when you’re wearing jeans?

No. No, of course it hadn’t.

It’s not like you’re carrying a wilderness tracking device for the express purpose of rescue services to find you during a dangerous hike. In such a circumstance, it could be argued that you’re voluntarily carrying a locator device. But not when carrying something that everybody is expected to carry — indeed, something that everybody must carry in order to even function in today’s society.

When the only alternative to having your Constitutionally-guaranteed privacy is exile from modern society, a government should have a really thin case. Especially when the analog equivalent — analog phone switchboards — was never fair game in any case.

People deserve Analog Equivalent Privacy Rights.

Until a government recognizes this and voluntarily surrenders a power it has taken itself, which isn’t something people should hold their breath over, privacy remains your own responsibility.




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Analog Equivalent Rights (14/21): Our analog parents’ dating preferences weren’t tracked, recorded, and cataloged

Privacy: Our analog parents’ dating preferences were considered a most private of matters. For our digital children, their dating preferences is a wholesale harvesting opportunity for marketing purposes. How did this terrifying shift come to be?

I believe the first big harvester of dating preferences was the innocent-looking site hotornot.com 18 years ago, a site that more seemed like the after-hours side work of a frustrated highschooler than a clever marketing ploy. It simply allowed people to rate their subjective perceived attractiveness of a photograph, and to upload photographs for such rating. (The two founders of this alleged highschool side project netted $10 million each for it when the site was sold.)

Then the scene exploded, with both user-funded and advertising-funded dating sites, all of which cataloged people’s dating preferences to the smallest detail.

Large-scale pornography sites, like PornHub, also started cataloging people’s porn preferences, and contiously make interesting infographics about geographical differences in preferences. (The link is safe for work, it’s data and maps in the form of a news story on Inverse, not on Pornhub directly.) It’s particularly interesting, as Pornhub is able to break down preferences quite specifically by age, location, gender, income brackets, and so on.

Do you know anyone who told Pornhub any of that data? No, I don’t either. And still, they are able to pinpoint who likes what with quite some precision, precision that comes from somewhere.

And then, of course, we have the social networks (which may or may not be responsible for that tracking, by the way).

It’s been reported that Facebook can tell if you’re gay or not with as little as three likes. Three. And they don’t have to be related to dating preferences or lifestyle preferences — they can be any random selections that just map up well with bigger patterns.

This is bad enough in itself, on the basis that it’s private data. At a very minimum, our digital childrens’ preferences should be their own, just like their favorite ice cream.

But a dating preferences are not just a preference like choosing your flavor of ice cream, is it? It should be, but it isn’t at this moment in time. It could also be something you’re born with. Something that people even get killed for if they’re born with the wrong preference.

It is still illegal to be born homosexual in 73 out of 192 countries, and out of these 73, eleven prescribe the death penalty for being born this way. A mere 23 out of 192 countries have full marriage equality.

Further, although the policy direction is quite one-way toward more tolerance, acceptance, and inclusion at this point in time, that doesn’t mean the policy trend can’t reverse for a number of reasons, most of them very bad. People who felt comfortable in expressing themselves can again become persecuted.

Genocide is almost always based on public data collected with benevolent intent.

This is why privacy is the last line of defense, not the first. And this last line of defense, which held fast for our analog parents, has been breached for our digital children. That matter isn’t taken nearly seriously enough.

Privacy remains your own responsibility.




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Health Circumstances Demand a Longer, Deeper Timeout

Personal: I ran headfirst into a bit of a classic burnout two years ago. I’m still recovering from it. I’ve been trying to maintain a presence and not make this condition show too much, but I need to scale down the rest of my presence too for a while in order to reset and recharge.

I’ve been starting and re-starting writing this post way too many times now. I’ve decided to just post it as a stream of consciousness, readable or not as it may be, rather than my usual bar of having some sort of clear red thread with step-by-step logical coherence.

Two years ago, while moving from Stockholm to Berlin, I hit the infamous brick wall. I became incapable of most work that required any form of vehicular travel — I was literally limited to walking distance. Yes, it felt as ridiculous as it sounds, but it was just a matter of accepting the lay of the land and working with it. At the time, I was able to maintain some illusion of normality while starting to wind down and recover behind the scenes, thanks to being able to work remotely. I’ve since stopped working altogether — or so I thought, at least — and focusing on recharging.

When you drive a solar-powered rover too aggressively in Kerbal Space Program and the sun goes down, the batteries deplete quickly. You can’t start driving the rover again when the sun goes up from its state of depleted batteries, not even at its rated speed; you have to wait until the batteries have recharged, even if the circumstances (i.e. shining sun) should otherwise make you able to operate nominally. This is a little bit the state I’m in: I should nominally be fine, with most of the everyday load reduced significantly, but my batteries are still not recharging at the rate I had expected them to. (Yes, I’m impatient, which is admittedly part of the problem in the first place.)

So to all people who have written to me over this past time that I haven’t responded to: Please accept my apologies. It’s not out of malice or disinterest I haven’t responded, I’m simply getting done in a month what I used to get done in a day, and even that is a marked improvement. The “need to respond” queue is silly long by now, and includes conference invites and whatnot, that I would normally have responded to within minutes. It includes pings from near friends, that I had hoped to spend a lot more time with here in Berlin, as well as distant friends.

A close friend of mine pointed at a recent study about stress, a study looking at burnout symptoms in places with very good work-to-life balance, and the study concluded that the body doesn’t make a difference between obligations for work or obligations that are felt outside of work for any other reason than money. And she’s right: I’ve been feeling a pressure to shoot video, to code open-source projects, to participate in the community. I need to, bluntly speaking, drop all of these expectations for the foreseeable future. “Go off-grid” is a little too harsh, but I’ll need to turn off the expectation heartbeat on literally everything. I’ll do random things from time to time when I have the energy and desire for it, which unfortunately won’t be most of the time.

These recoveries basically take whatever damn time they please. I could have recharged batteries in six months, in a year, in ten years. I have honestly no idea and therefore I’m not setting any expectations, in either direction.

Time for a deeper and longer break.

I’d like to say “I’ll be back”, but I don’t think the person on the other side of this recovery is going to be the same person I am today. I am sure I will still want to change the world for the better, somehow. I just can’t tell today how I’ll be wanting to change the world tomorrow. So even though I’ll very likely be back doing something, it’ll very likely not be the exact same things I’ve done up until this point.




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Vans BMX Pro Cup Series Announces 2018 World Tour - Schedule







The Vans BMX Pro Cup Series, the world’s leading platform for elite BMX park terrain competition, announces the official 2018 World Tour dates and locations for the upcoming season. The celebrated BMX competition series will take place in Australia, California, Mexico and Spain, welcoming a top-ranking competitive field of invited pro BMX riders and Wildcards for their chance to compete on the world stage for a piece of the grand $155,000USD prize.



The Vans BMX Pro Cup Series is also proud to expand the 2018 World Tour with the addition of two new Regional Qualifier events in the United States and Chile, encouraging more talented BMX riders from around the world to earn their way to the Vans BMX Pro Cup World Championships. The five confirmed Regional Qualifier events are open to registration by all professional men and women BMX riders beginning in Santiago, Chile on March 23. The top three podium winners from each Regional Qualifier will advance to the Vans BMX Pro Cup Pro Tour, and secure their invite to the Vans BMX Pro Cup World Championships.



2018 VANS BMX PRO CUP SERIES WORLD TOUR ZEITPLAN



Regional Qualifiers

Santiago, Chile
March 23 & 25

Sydney, Australia
April 27

Woodward East, Pennsylvania
June 28

Guadalajara, Mexico
August 24

Málaga, Spain
September 21



*registration information is available on vansbmxprocup.com



Pro Tour

Sydney, Australia
April 29

Huntington Beach, CA
August 3 & 5

Guadalajara, Mexico
August 25 - 26



World Championship

Málaga, Spain
September 22 - 23



@vansbmxprocup on Instagram
#vansbmxprocup



All the best

Your kunstform BMX Shop Team




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India's top court denounces BJP's demolition drive mainly targeting minority Muslims

Police officers throw stones towards the demonstrators during a protest against a government demolition drive, in Haldwani in the northern state of Uttarakhand, India, February 8, 2024. — Reuters Pleas were filed after demolitions in BJP-ruled states. Rights groups,...




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Diocese of Oakland Says It Will Pay Up to $200 Million for Hundreds of Abuse Claims

cna




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A Better Translation of the St. Michael Prayer, Is the God of Natural Law an Idol, On Keeping Up Appearances, and More Great Links!

blog




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‘Luckiest Priest in America’ Leads His Last Eucharistic Procession on Campus

blog




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'CNIC fee to increase if more Nadra offices opened'

Outside view of the Nadra's mega center in Peshawar. — APP/FileNadra says its funding relies on issuance and renewals.Concerns raised over fake CNICs for Afghan nationals. Nadra assures committee it monitors data leaks closely.

ISLAMABAD: The National Database and...




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Pakistanis make 20m daily attempts to 'access explicit websites' via VPNs

The picture shows a person using VPN on mobile phone. — Canva/FilePTA blocks over 844,000 websites, more than 100,000 URLs for explicit content.Unregistered VPNs cited as security risks; PTA accelerates VPN registration.Complaints of slow VPN speeds rise as PTA restricts unauthorised...




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TomTom & Nuon Solar Team join forces to create intelligent solar car

TomTom & Nuon Solar Team join forces to create intelligent solar car




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Christian Finances-1...God, On Money

The Christian Finances pages offer Biblical principles for employment, budget, credit, debt, savings, investment and giving. The true meaning of stewardship-employment, debt, investment, budget, giving.




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Massive security walls and fences transform Washington streets ahead of Election Day

Federal and local authorities ramped up security measures across downtown Washington, D.C. this weekend, with businesses installing protective barriers and federal buildings receiving additional fortification ahead of Tuesday's presidential election.




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Georgetown upsets No. 21 Creighton, faces No. 9 UConn for Big East women's title

Kelsey Ransom scored 14 points to lead sixth-seeded Georgetown to a 55-46 upset of No. 21 Creighton in the Big East Tournament semifinals.




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Belmont with Kentucky Derby and Preakness winners could be the best of these Triple Crown races

Horse racing history of all kinds is being made Saturday in the final Triple Crown race of the year.




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Hachette-employee group denounces addition of conservative imprint

Ideological disagreements have expanded into the publishing realm. A group of employees at Hachette Book Group have sent a letter to the management of their company condemning the forthcoming launch of Basic Liberty, a new imprint meant for conservative readers.




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China's military forces are rapidly building up space warfare capabilities

China's military forces are rapidly building up space warfare capabilities for use in a future conflict, two top American generals said on Wednesday.




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Chinese security services are blocking America's diplomatic efforts

American diplomatic efforts to conduct people-to-people contacts and exchanges in China are being blocked by Chinese intelligence and security services.




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China's cognitive warfare advances include sound weapons, according to intel report

China's military is advancing the development of high-technology arms, including sound weapons to wage cognitive warfare -- the use of unconventional tools and capabilities to alter enemy thinking and decision-making, according to a new open-source intelligence report.




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Honda faces investigation over engine failure

U.S. regulators are investigating over 1.4 million Honda and Acura vehicles after receiving numerous engine failure reports.




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Katie Boulter advances to the Pan Pacific Open semifinals and will face Sofia Kenin

Katie Boulter has overcome a series of mediocre results on the WTA Tour's Asian swing to advance to the Pan Pacific Open semifinals with a 6-2, 6-1 win over Bianca Andreescu on Friday.




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Sofia Kenin, former Australian Open champion, advances to the WTA tournament final in Tokyo

Former Australian Open champion Sofia Kenin has advanced to the final of the Pan Pacific Open with a 6-4, 6-4 win over ninth-seeded Katie Boulter on Saturday.




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Medvedev loses to Popyrin in second round at Paris Masters, Dimitrov advances

Alexei Popyrin upset fourth-seeded Daniil Medvedev 6-4, 2-6, 7-6 (4) in the second round of the Paris Masters on Wednesday in a tense match with many ups and downs.




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Competitive Virginia races could play a critical role in the battle for Congress

Virginia's marquee matchups for U.S. House races in Tuesday's election feature tight contests in a district being vacated by three-term Democratic U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger and a district known to flip between Democratic and Republican control.




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Faith And Science-An Unnecessary Battle

Faith And Science discusses the unnecessary battle we seem to be fighting and how to cross the battle lines and work together. Theories on Evolution, Intelligent Design and Global Warming are used as examples.




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Music Academy Success System-SIX Payments of $198.00 USD

Music Academy Success System-SIX Payments of $198.00 USD

Price: $198.00




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After bye, Maryland faces needed win against Northwestern on path to another bowl

With thinner margins in a strengthened and expanded conference along with Maryland's struggle to limit penalties, Friday night's home game with Northwestern is now a keystone to get to bowl eligibility.




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F1 braces for more Verstappen-Norris drama and Hamilton to drive revered Senna's car

Max Verstappen suggests he won't change his aggressive driving this weekend at the Brazilian Grand Prix as he bids for a fourth successive Formula 1 title.




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F1 race director Wittich to be replaced in a surprise move with 3 races to go

Formula 1 race director Niels Wittich will be replaced in a surprise move with three races to go and the title yet to be decided.




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Expect less drama, more success in Trump 2.0

Most election postmortems highlight the issues that played badly for Vice President Kamala Harris and were advantageous to President-elect Donald Trump: inflation, chaos on the world stage and uncontrolled immigration.




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Harris campaign steered donations to Hollywood; star appearances soaked up $20 million

Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign spent at least $20 million on celebrity appearances during her failed presidential bid, federal election records revealed.




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U.S. launches strikes against Iran-backed militant forces in Syria

U.S. forces launched strikes against nine Iran-linked targets in Syria, a response to several attacks on American troops in the region over the last 24 hours, U.S. Central Command officials said Monday.




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New age of tyranny: American system of checks and balances has failed

When one party dominates all three branches of government -- the executive, the legislative, and the judicial -- there is even more reason to worry.




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Canada forces TikTok to close its offices, claiming company poses threat to national security

TikTok has been forced to close its offices in Vancouver and Toronto because Canadian security and intelligence officials said activity at the offices threatened the national security of Canada, a charge that TikTok plans to fight in court.




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California air regulators approve changes to climate program that could raise gas prices

California air regulators voted to approve changes to a key climate program aimed at reducing planet-warming emissions that has a wide swath of critics and could increase gas prices statewide.




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Waymo robotaxi opens access to all in Los Angeles

Los Angeles residents can now order robotaxis from their phones after Google's autonomous vehicle company Waymo ended its waitlist Tuesday.




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Virtual Christian Weekly Worship Services

Online Christian virtual worship services, with streaming music, Bible teaching, searchable Bible...even an offering. Visit this weekly worship service any time, 24/7.