Univision, a hugely successful Spanish language broadcaster, bought humor newspaper/site The Onion two weeks ago, and in so doing, transferred control over a site that has produced scathing comedy at Hillary Clinton's expense to Haim Saban, millionaire financier and Democratic power-broker, who calls Clinton "pristine plus" and "great for the country and great for the world."

Saban describes himself as a staunch zionist and partisan for Israel ("I’m a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel&quot , which also has implications for The Onion, given its long history of scathing commentary on the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory and the system of Apartheid enforced by the Israeli state.

But what’s gotten no attention at all is that Haim Saban, Hillary Clinton’s biggest fan and financial supporter, is Univision’s co-owner, chairman, and CEO. Saban and his wife, Cheryl, are Hillary Clinton’s top financial backers, having given $2,046,600 to support her political campaigns and at least $10 million more to the Clinton Foundation, on whose board Cheryl Saban sits. The Sabans are also generous supporters of the overall Democratic Party infrastructure, donating, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a total of $16.1 million since 1989 to Democratic and liberal candidates, party committees, leadership PACs, and federally focused 527s.

Saban badly wants Hillary Clinton to be elected president this year, vowing to provide “as much as needed” to see it happen, since “she would be great for the country and great for the world,” and “on issues I care about, [Clinton] is pristine plus.”

Surgeons have made history in France, removing a cancerous brain tumor from a conscious patient wearing 3D virtual reality glasses. Placing the patient in an “artificial world” allowed the doctors to easily test parts of the brain during the operation.
"In creating a completely artificial world for the patient, we could map certain zones and connections of his brain related to functions that we could not, up to now, easily test on the operating table," Philippe Menei, a neurosurgeon at Angers hospital in western France, told AFP.

The US intelligence chief has acknowledged for the first time that agencies might use a new generation of smart household devices to increase their surveillance capabilities.
In the future, intelligence services might use the [internet of things] for identification, surveillance, monitoring, location tracking, and targeting for recruitment, or to gain access to networks or user credentials,” Clapper said.

Clapper did not specifically name any intelligence agency as involved in household-device surveillance. But security experts examining the internet of things take as a given that the US and other surveillance services will intercept the signals the newly networked devices emit, much as they do with those from cellphones. Amateurs are already interested in easily compromised hardware; computer programmer John Matherly’s search engine Shodan indexes thousands of completely unsecured web-connected devices.

In a candid letter published online Wednesday, Apple head Tim Cook blasted the Federal Bureau of Investigation for requesting a customized version of iOS that would allow access to private data stored on an iPhone.

The note is a direct response to a new court order that would require the tech giant to assist in unlocking a device belonging to one of the terrorists who carried out an attack in San Bernardino, California, last December.

"In the wrong hands, this software -- which does not exist today -- would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone’s physical possession," Cook wrote.

"The FBI may use different words to describe this tool, but make no mistake: Building a version of iOS that bypasses security in this way would undeniably create a backdoor.
And while the government may argue that its use would be limited to this case, there is no way to guarantee such control."

Many Samsung "SmartTVs" come equipped with voice recognition, which allows you to bark commands at your TV. Since the television is always listening for your voice, Samsung has warned its SmartTV customers that every word is being captured and sent over the Internet.

"Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition," Samsung posted in its SmartTV privacy policy.

Samsung says it needs to send your voice commands to a third-party, because that company converts your speech to text. But Samsung also collects your voice commands to perform research and determine whether it needs to make improvements to the feature.

"Samsung does not retain voice data or sell it to third parties," the company said in a statement. "If a consumer consents and uses the voice recognition feature ... the voice data is sent to a server, which searches for the requested content then returns the desired content to the TV."

The train, carrying 32 containers of commercial products from eastern Zhejiang province, took 14 days to make the 9,500-kilometre (5,900-mile) journey through Kazakstan and Turkmenistan.
"The arrival of this train in less than 14 days is unprecedented," said the head of the Iranian railway company, Mohsen Pourseyed Aqayi.

"The revival of the Silk Road is crucial for the countries on its route," he said at a ceremony at Tehran's rail station attended by the ambassadors of China and Turkmenistan.

The journey was 30 days shorter than the sea voyage from Shanghai to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, according to Aqayi