Top News Stories –

(Nasty) Thought for the day –
Professor Stephen Hawking, the British scientist who suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) has said that efforts to create thinking machines pose a threat to our very existence. The BBC quotes him as saying “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate but humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded.”
Stephen Hawling

Scarlett gets secretly married –
Scarlett Johansson has revealed that she and her partner Romain Dauriac got married in secret on October 1st 2015 in Philipsburg, western Montana.
Scarlett Johansson

Strike that off the list –
The UK Government has introduced legislation banning sex acts like spanking and caning from online porn videos filmed in the UK. A list of sex acts are now on a list of ‘harmful’ content that has been prohibited and paid-for online porn videos must now stick to the same rules as content produced for sex shop-type videos. (See List of the Day)

Video of the Day –

Scarlett Johansson banned commercial

List of the day –

Sex acts now banned from being depicted by British pornography producers –
Spanking

Caning

Aggressive whipping

Penetration by any object “associated with violence”

Physical or verbal abuse (regardless of  if consensual)

Urolagnia (known as “water sports”)

Role-playing as non-adults

Physical restraint

Humiliation

Female ejaculation

Strangulation

Facesitting

Fisting

Top Twitter Trends –

Other News Stories –

Armed conflict and attacks

• War in Somalia
  • The Red Cross says that at least 36 people may be dead following an attack in Mandera County in northeastern Kenya. Al-Shabaab militants are believed to be responsible. (Bloomberg via Business Week), (Reuters via New York Times)
• Syrian Civil War spillover in Lebanon
  • Unidentified gunmen kill 6 Lebanese soldiers near the eastern town of Ras Baalbek. (Al Jazeera)
• Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant
  • The Lebanese government arrests a wife and daughter of ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. (NBC News)
• Sony Pictures Entertainment hack
  • The FBI launches a probe into a massive hacking attack on Sony Pictures, believing the leadership of North Korea to be responsible. (FOX News)

Business and economy

• A major Switzerland based commodities firm, Trafigura, played a “pivotal” role in the ability of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq to export oil, exports that the central government in Baghdad has prohibited. (Reuters)

Health

• Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa
  • Sierra Leone quarantines the Tonkolili district with more than half the country under lockdown and the official death toll in the country reaching 1,530 and roughly 7,109 infected. (Daily Mail)

International relations

• South Korea approves a plan by the Christian Council of Korea to set up a large Christmas tree near the border with North Korea despite ongoing tensions. (AP via Daily Mail)

Law and crime

• Greek anarchists burn a public transport bus and several cars during clashes with police in central Athens. (AP)
• An Egyptian court sentences 185 people to death over their alleged involvement in a lethal attack on a police station on the outskirts of Cairo.(Reuters via Egyptian Independent)

Politics and elections

• Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu fires Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Finance Minister Yair Lapid amid the imminent breakup of the government coalition and dissolution of the Knesset ahead of new elections. (Times of Israel)
• The Sweden Democrats decide to vote for the opposition’s budget proposal, likely forcing the collapse of Prime Minister Stefan Löfven‘s new government that came to power in the September elections. (ABC News)
• 2014 Hong Kong protests
  • C. Y. Leung, the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, warns pro-democracy activists not to return to the streets after yesterday’s clashes. (BBC)
• The Parliament of Ukraine approves the formation of a new government that includes three foreigners who have received Ukrainian citizenshipjust hours before the vote: Georgian-born Alexander Kvitashvili, US-national Natalie Jaresko and Lithuanian Aivaras Abromavičius. (Al Jazeera)(AP via ABC News)

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