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Human Rights Watch Calls For Ban On Killer Robots As Gaza Attack Enters Seventh Day

It’s the first time a non-governmental body has called for automated weapons such as drones and machine guns to be outlawed.

As Bill Clinton flies to the Middle East in the hope of effecting a truce between Israel and the Palestinians, an NGO has called for a worldwide ban on automated weapons. Human Rights Watch yesterday released a 50-page report that outlines the case against Killer Robots. Although the sharp end of defense is still at the semi-automated stage, the research arms of the various weaponry firms are looking at systems which need no human input whatsoever. This is great news for governments, who can go to war without worrying so much about their own soldiers’ loss of life, not so good for civilians caught up in the conflict.

As well as using drones, the Israelis rely on a semi-automated border patrol system, which replaces guards in situ with a weapon and camera. HRW fears that the technology is already in place to make these machines automated, meaning they can make their own decisions as to whether to take out the target or not. And how, adds the non-profit organisation, can it differentiate between an assailant holding a gun and a kid holding an ice cream?

Read Full Story

via Fast Company http://www.fastcompany.com/3003300/human-rights-watch-calls-ban-killer-robots-gaza-attack-enters-seventh-day?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+fastcompany%2Fheadlines+%28Fast+Company%29

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AG Holder Will Stay Into Obama’s Second Term

Attorney General Eric Holder will remain in his post going into President Obama’s second term, but only for about a year, Fox News reports.

Honoring the president’s request to stay with the administration, and preventing a mass exodus of political appointees, Holder will stay in the position, which has often come under fire by conservatives for cases such as the botched gun running program known as Fast and Furious.

Some names that have surfaced to replace Holder include Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Fox News reported.

via Homepage http://www.nationaljournal.com/whitehouse/ag-holder-will-stay-into-obama-s-second-term-20121120

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The Big Machine Behind ‘Nashville’


Despite shaky ratings that have marked the end of countless primetime dramas in the past, ABC’s fall entry “Nashville” was recently picked up for another season. Whom might it have have to thank?

His name is Scott Borchetta.

As Big Machine Label Group president-CEO, Mr. Borchetta has the reputation of a betting man in the country-music industry. A race-car-driver-turned-record-executive at Dreamworks, Mr. Borchetta is known for discovering and betting big on the musical talents of many of country music’s biggest stars, including those of a curly haired blonde girl now known by the world as Taylor Swift.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

via Advertising Age – Homepage http://adage.com/article/media/big-machine-abc-tv-show-nashville-music/238368/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+adage%2Fhomepage+%28Advertising+Age+-+Homepage%29

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H’wood buzz on Wylie firm

Hollywood was buzzing last week that one of the literary world’s powerful firms, the Wylie Agency—which reps powerhouse authors from Martin Amis to…

via NY Post: Page Six http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/wood_buzz_on_wylie_firm_aC3XgGJak1YLFGJxtg0DiM?utm_medium=rss&utm_content=Page%20Six

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Lots of Crazy Things Are Happening on Rihanna’s Airplane Tour

In case you missed it, Rihanna is playing seven shows in seven cities in seven days, traveling on a Boeing 777 with 777 with something like 150 journalists on board. And yeah, it’s turning into a hellmouth in the sky a little bit. Julieanne Smolinski at Popdust writes that Rihanna’s concerts are starting increasingly later than scheduled, setting the whole convoy behind, and that Rih-Rih is making herself completely scarce, enough so that “‘where the hell is Rihanna?’ has replaced any of her earwormy hooks.” Maud Deitch and Mary H.K. Choi paint the madness in a back-and-forth post at MTV Style, with Choi writing, “The Australian with the harmonica is STREAKING ON THE PLANE as we scream ‘save our jobs’ and ‘access’ and ‘interviews’ and ‘just one headline’ at the abject lack of Rihanna time.” As you could expect with all those rabid writers experiencing the ruckus in real time, there’s lots more out there. And the tour still has two days left.

Read more posts by Zach Dionne

Filed Under:
rihanna
,777 tour
,music

via Vulture http://www.vulture.com/2012/11/crazy-rihanna-airplane.html

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Mutiny, Streaking and German Meat Chips: The Rihanna Plane Has Officially Descended Into Madness

Mutiny, Streaking and German Meat Chips: The Rihanna Plane Has Officially Descended Into Madness

The Rihanna plane, which earlier today was on the verge of anarchy, officially descended into total chaos somewhere between Berlin and London. Journalists are chanting, Australians are streaking, and passengers are being forced to consume strange foods.

Mutiny #RIHANNAPLANE

— mary hk choi (@choitotheworld) November 19, 2012

OMG!!! Streaker runs through Rihanna’s 777 plane – riles up 150 angry journalists #777Tour twitter.com/VH1Music/statu…

— VH1 Music (@VH1Music) November 19, 2012

Journalist gone mad on the @rihannaplane lockerz.com/s/262593963

— Necole Bitchie(@necolebitchie) November 19, 2012

Mutiny, Streaking and German Meat Chips: The Rihanna Plane Has Officially Descended Into Madness

BEDLAM on the @rihanna plane and press corp YELLS “save our jobs” and “just one quote.” And screams “B ROLL” to sabotage the doc footage.

— mary hk choi (@choitotheworld) November 19, 2012

The Australian with the harmonica STREAKED the plane asthe press corp chanted. #RIHANNAPLANE #WHEREHAVEYOUBEENALLTHISFLIGHT

— mary hk choi (@choitotheworld) November 19, 2012

THE MUTINY FINALLY HAPPENED on plane BLN>LDN. Ppl chanting “RIHANNA! SAVE OUR JOBS!” WE ALL COLLECTIVELY LOST IT AT THE SAME TIME. #777tour

— J. Escobedo Shepherd (@jawnita) November 19, 2012

So yeah, the #777tour plane staged a revolution against Rihanna on flight between Berlin and London

— Jason Newman (@Jasonrnewman) November 19, 2012

Crowd chanted “Just one quote!,” “I need a headline!” and “Occupy 777” while Aussie journo stripped naked and ran around the plane.

— Jason Newman (@Jasonrnewman) November 19, 2012

Watch the streaker run naked on @rihanna #777Tour plane! WE GOT VIDEO! youtu.be/Ugax2gEQgiM

— Fuse TV (@fusetv) November 19, 2012

That thing where everyone starts screaming for Rihanna to leave her panic room on the plane and she doesn’t come out but it’s the best.

— itsthereal (@itsthereal) November 19, 2012

And we now have reports about the food. “We have eaten such a strange amount of lox. And coleslaw. French people are obsessed with carrot coleslaw,” says MTV’s Maud Deitch. Her colleague Mary HK Choi adds they were served “German meat chips” as a 4 AM snack. Deitch also reports that “it now smells like a movie theater concession stand on the Rihanna plane and the people next to us just rolled up to their seats with tumblers filled with whiskey and then one of them promptly spilled it into his seat back pocket.”
#pray4therihannaplane

Throughout the #777Tour, Gawker.com will be bringing you updates about the status, location, activities and smells of the Rihanna Plane and its inhabitants, cobbled together from the distorted dispatches of the embedded Rihanna correspondents.

via Gawker http://gawker.com/5961691/mutiny-streaking-and-german-meat-chips-the-rihanna-plane-has-officially-descended-into-madness

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Rightbloggers Revisit the Battle of Chick-fil-A with Papa John’s Anti-Obama Crap Food Fest

With last week’s big doings in the Petraeus scandal and Israel’s latest skirmishes with Hamas, why are we focusing on fast food?

Because as important as those affairs of state may be, they are, for

via Runnin' Scared http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2012/11/rightbloggers_r_4.php

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Scarlett Johansson at Beatrice Inn with dark haired mystery man

Scarlett Johansson was spotted looking cozy with a new man Thursday night. The “Hitchcock” star was having dinner at the Beatrice Inn, where she was…

via NY Post: Page Six http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/scarjo_new_guy_sZqR4LFboP7XvhLh0BbxgJ?utm_medium=rss&utm_content=Page%20Six

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Tad Friend: Bryan Cranston’s old stomping grounds.

The Upper West Side, shrine to the pricey pillow sham, is no longer much of a frontier. But, on a recent sparkling Tuesday, Bryan Cranston revisited the proving grounds that—when he arrived here as a callow redhead, in 1983, to star in the ABC soap opera “Loving . . .

via The New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2012/11/26/121126ta_talk_friend

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Jill Lepore: The history of income taxes.

It began with an earthquake. What hit San Francisco in 1906 was one of the worst natural disasters in American history. Once the water mains broke, there was no way to fight the dozens of fires caused by ruptured gas mains, except by dynamiting buildings in the fire’s . . . (Subscription required.)

via The New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/11/26/121126fa_fact_lepore