President Trump says that after the drone closed to approximately 1,000 yards of the U.S. warship and ignored calls to stand down, it was "immediately destroyed."

(Image credit: Getty Images)

The president and social media companies pantomime conflict while quietly helping each other.

The force of Drew Angerer's photo is in what it names: It tells us what the US Department of Justice failed to about the Eric Garner case.

The dramatic EU Galileo incident underscores the threat of satellite timing and navigation system failures.

In addition to ordering Shkreli to stay in prison, a fedeal appeals court also affirmed that he must forfeit more than $7.3 million, along with paying restitution of $388,336

Trump said he would hire 5,000 new border patrol agents, but has fallen short of that promise. Garrett Graff discusses the leadership vacuum that's plagued the agency and worsened the border crisis.

New court documents describe Trump's direct involvement with negotiations that led to a $130,000 payment to an adult film star to buy her silence about her alleged extramarital affair with Trump.

(Image credit: AP)

U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman ordered the 66-year-old multimillionaire to remain in jail until trial. Federal prosecutors had called Epstein a flight risk.

(Image credit: Elizabeth Williams/AP)

Disney's Lion King is so realistic-looking that, paradoxically, you can't believe a moment of it. The computer-generated blockbuster feels like the world's most expensive safari-themed karaoke video.

(Image credit: Disney Enterprises, Inc.)

Oxford University Press Blog: “Idioms, especially if we add proverbs and familiar quotations to them, are a shoreless ocean. Especially numerous are so-called gnomic sayings (aphorisms) like make hay while the sun shines, better safe than sorry, and a friend in need is a friend indeed. Their age is usually hard or even impossible to determine. Since most of them reflect people’s universal experience, they may be very old. In contrast, such undecipherable phrases as kick the bucket, put a spoke in someone’s wheel, or cut the mustard are fairly recent. At least they presuppose the existence of buckets, spokes, wheels, and the cultivation of mustard.  (This type of reasoning is called relative chronology and sometimes yields useful results.)…”

DataSpii: The catastrophic data leak via browser extensions Sam Jadali SecurityWithSam.com – Abstract – “We present DataSpii (pronounced data-spy), the catastrophic data leak that occurs when any one of eight browser extensions collects browsing activity data — including personally identifiable information (PII) and corporate information (CI) — from unwitting Chrome and Firefox users. Our investigation uncovered an online service selling the collected browsing activity data to its subscription members in near real-time. In this report, we delineate the sensitive data source types relevant to the security of individuals and businesses across the globe. We observed two extensions employing dilatory tactics — an effective maneuver for eluding detection — to collect the data. We identified the collection of sensitive data from the internal network environments of Fortune 500 companies. Several Fortune 500 companies provided an additional measure of confirmation through a process of responsible disclosure. By deploying a honeypot to monitor web traffic, we discovered near-immediate visits to URLs collected by the extensions. To address the evolving threat to data security, we propose preemptive measures such as limiting access to shareable links, and removing PII and CI from metadata…”

Thanks to my UK publisher Orbit for hosting the long chat I had with fellow fantasy author Evan Winter in which we discuss writing craft, world-building, influences and a lot more:

Of Wolves and Dragons: Anthony Ryan and Evan Winter in Conversation

Evan’s excellent first novel The Rage of Dragons is out now in the US and published in all formats in the UK today. You can read my review here.

Earth, Wind & Fire, Sally Field, Linda Ronstadt, Sesame Street and Michael Tilson Thomas will be recognized for their lifetime contributions to the performing arts at a gala in December.

(Image credit: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)

Washington Post :”…The app uploads people’s photos to the “cloud” of servers run by Amazon and Google, the company said, meaning deleting the app would likely make no difference on how the photos are used. In its privacy terms, the company said it can collect any of a user’s uploaded photos as well as data on the user’s visited websites and other information.

The app’s terms of service say users grant the company a “perpetual, irrevocable . . . [and] worldwide” license to use a user’s photos, name or likeness in practically any way it sees fit. If a user deletes content from the app, FaceApp can still store and use it, the terms say. FaceApp also says it can’t guarantee that users’ data or information is secure and that the company can share user information with other companies and third-party advertisers, which aren’t disclosed in the privacy terms…”

To follow in Apollo 11’s footsteps, all you need is a space bike, 240,000 miles of cable, and a whole lot of sandwiches.

Pew – A majority of Americans (62%) continue to say the country’s openness to people from around the world is “essential to who we are as a nation. “But the share expressing this view is 6 percentage points lower than it was in September – a result of a shift in opinion among Republicans. Democrats continue to overwhelmingly take the view that openness is an essential characteristic of the nation. Currently, 57% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say that if the United States is too open to people from around the world, “we risk losing our identity as a nation.” Fewer (37%) say America’s openness to those from other countries is essential to who we are as a nation, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted July 10-15 among 1,502 adults.

Both last fall and in 2017, Republicans’ opinions on this question were divided. Since September, the share of Republicans who say America risks losing its identity if it is too open has increased 13 percentage points, while the share who view the nation’s openness to others as essential has declined 10 points. Over the past two years, there has been virtually no change in Democrats’ attitudes. Today, an overwhelming majority of Democrats and Democratic leaners (86%) say America’s openness is essential to who we are as a nation; 85% said this last September…”

See also – “A USA Today-Ipsos poll finds that 68 percent of Americans who were aware of Trump’s tweets about the four liberal minority lawmakers said they are offensive. But 57 percent of Republicans polled said they agreed with the president, and a third said they strongly agreed. Overall, 59 percent called the president’s tweets “un-American,” including independents by a 2-to-1 margin, and 65 percent of those surveyed said telling minority Americans to “go back where they came from” is a racist statement. Among Republicans, however, 45 percent agreed and 34 percent disagreed. Seven in 10 Republicans say that “people who call others ‘racist’ usually do so in bad faith,” compared with 17 percent of Democrats…”

Hashem Abedi has denied involvement in the 2017 bombing at the end of an Ariana Grande concert that killed 22 people in Manchester, England. He was charged with murdering all of them.

(Image credit: Force for Deterrence in Libya/AP)

The New York Times – “Her pioneering approach involved quietly examining birds in their natural habitat, rather than shooting them, as people had previously done…A student at Smith College at the time, Bailey decided to start a grassroots effort, with a simple step: She took her fellow classmates outdoors. “We won’t say too much about the hats,” she wrote in Bird-Lore. “We’ll take the girls afield, and let them get acquainted with the birds. Then of inborn necessity, they will wear feathers never more.”

It was the beginning of an animal rights campaign that evolved into a lifelong crusade of ecological conservationism and promotion of what would become modern day bird-watching. Bailey eventually traveled around the country to write about the pursuit. Back then ornithology was generally practiced by examining “skins,” or dead birds preserved in universities or museums. Ornithologists typically trapped or shot birds and then decamped indoors to identify the bodies. Bailey, on the other hand, urged that birds be observed quietly in their natural habitat.

“Florence was one of the first bird-watchers to actually watch birds instead of shoot them,” Marcia Bonta, a naturalist and author of “Women in the Field: America’s Pioneering Women Naturalists” (1991), said in a phone interview. In 1889, at the age of 26, Bailey published “Birds Through an Opera-Glass,” considered the first field guide to American birds. The book, one of many travelogues and field guides she would publish, suggested that the best way to view birds was through the lenses of opera glasses, not a shotgun sight. Her approach, now commonly practiced with binoculars, helped form the basis of modern bird-watching…”

Chris Hemsworth will reportedly return for the new movie.

Fortune – “Amy Hess, boss of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s cyber division, warned a room of business executives about the various threats China poses to American interests on stage at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, Colo., on Wednesday. Her team is responsible for pursuing criminals and nation state actors who are targeting—and pilfering—American companies and citizens.

“China’s goal is, clearly, to become the world’s dominant superpower,” Hess said. “To do that they’re willing to steal information, to steal intellectual property, to steal PII [personally identifiable information], to steal military secrets, government secrets, academic secrets, and R&D.” Hess described China’s siphoning of American trade secrets as unfair and imbalanced. China “can get information that American companies and American ingenuity has taken years to develop,” she said. “They get it for free, they get it quickly, and it positions them to achieve their goal” of international supremacy….”