Concord

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  1. It is a hugely ambitious - some might say megalomaniacal - project to create a new global currency. Facebook's David Marcus tells me it is about giving billions of people more freedom with money and "righting the many wrongs of the present system".

     

    The message is this is not some little side project a small team at the Facebook's Menlo Park headquarters will try out for a few months before moving on to something else - this is both the future of Facebook and the future of money, an initiative that has seen an alliance of big players in payments such as Paypal and Visa, Silicon Valley players such as Uber and Lyft and major venture capital firms, a kind of Avengers: Endgame of technology and finance superheroes come together to make the world a better place.

     

    But there are still many questions about FaceCoin - or Libra as the company wants us to call it. The principal one I keep coming back to is - why? As in why do we need a new global currency and do we really want it from Facebook?

     

     

     

    More on: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-48667525


  2. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott enacted a two-year spending bill this weekend that included a $1 million public safety campaign for firearm storage opposed by the National Rifle Association (NRA) and gun rights activists. Abbott, a Republican, approved the $250 billion budget without any line-item vetoes. The money would go to the Texas Department of Public Safety to design and deploy a campaign promoting safe gun storage, similar to those warning against drunk driving and encouraging motorists to use their seatbelt. A bill to write the program into state law was opposed by the NRA and gun-rights activists and did not reach a vote.

     

    An NRA lobbyist told lawmakers that a campaign designed by Texas state police could be corrupted by anti-gun rhetoric. However, the money was approved by the Republican-controlled Texas House of Representatives and later supported by Senate budget negotiators by mid-May.

     

    The program comes into effect following a mass shooting at Santa Fe High School near Houston that killed 10 people and wounded 13 others in May 2018. Investigators said the then-17-year-old gunman took his father's weapons before opening fire. After that shooting, Abbott said he wanted to "encourage the millions of law-abiding, gun-owning Texans to embrace their personal responsibility for gun safety." The governor did not mention in the program in a statement about the budget that was released Saturday.

     

    Last month, Texas lawmakers voted to allow anyone who can legally own a gun to carry it openly or concealed for a week after a natural disaster declaration.

     

     

     

    Source: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/texas-governor-greg-abbott-budget-gun-storage-safety-nra-opposed


  3. At least five people have been killed and thousands more have been left stranded after record rainfall hit southern China, officials say. Hundreds of homes and thousands of hectares of crops have been destroyed by the downpours, which are expected to continue for several days. More than two million people have been affected and roads and bridges have been badly damaged, state media report. In Guizhou province, an entire town was submerged under 2m (6ft 6in) of water. Elsewhere, China's metrological association said rainfall in the southern provinces of Jiangxi and Hunan had hit record highs for June.

     

    In Jiangxi province alone, 150,000 people were relocated after nine cities were swamped by deep floodwaters. More than 20,000 homes in the south-west region of Guangxi are without power, the state-run China Daily newspaper reports. Rainstorms are expected to spread to a number of areas including Guangdong, Sichuan and Taiwan by Thursday, the metrological administration said. It also warned local authorities to be on alert for dangerous mudslides caused by the flooding.

     

    Torrential rain has triggered mudslides in southern China in the past. In 2014, Sichuan and Yunnan provinces were hit by large mudslides that caused damage to houses, roads and vast areas of farmland.

     

     

     

    Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-48592711