Trump, 'Do not underestimate us' speaking in Seoul, warns North Korea

Speaking in front of South Korea’s National Assembly Wednesday morning, President Trump warned North Korea: "Do not underestimate us."

"Today, I hope I speak not only for our countries, but for all civilized nations, when I say to the North: Do not underestimate us. And do not try us," Trump said. "We will defend our common security, our shared prosperity, and our sacred liberty," the president said to cheers.

"We will not allow American cities to be threatened with destruction," he continued. "We will not be intimidated. And we will not let the worst atrocities in history be repeated here, on this ground we fought and died so hard to secure."

The comments contrasted remarks the president made earlier in the week, in which he appeared open to possible talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

During a news conference with South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Tuesday, Trump argued that "it makes sense for North Korea to come to the table and make a deal that is good for the people of North Korea and for the world."

"I do see certain movement," Trump said.

Read More:: Driverless shuttle bus crashes just after launch in Las Vegas

But a day earlier, while in Tokyo, the president argued that "the era of strategic patience" with North Korea was finished and defended his previous rhetoric regarding the country.

That tone matched his speech on Wednesday.

"The world cannot tolerate the menace of a rogue regime that threatens with nuclear devastation," Trump argued, while advocating for "peace through strength."

"All responsible nations must join forces to isolate the brutal regime of North Korea," he said.

"It is our responsibility and our duty to confront this danger together - because the longer we wait, the greater the danger grows, and the fewer the options become," he continued. "And to those nations that choose to ignore this threat or, worse still, to enable it: The weight of this crisis is on your conscience."

The speech in South Korea comes amid a 13-day trip to Asia that has already seen the president visit Japan and South Korea with stops in China, Vietnam and the Philippines still on the docket.  

Read More:: Why has Twitter doubled the character limit for tweets to 280?

Trump to become first foreign leader to dine in Forbidden City since founding of modern China

Source 

Read More

Tweeting in 280 Characters? Now You Can Do It, Too

Twitter is about to get more words -- a lot more.

The company announced on Tuesday it is doubling how many characters users can cram into a tweet.

Most tweets will now fit 280 characters, up from 140. The new limit will roll out to Twitter users in almost all 40 languages Twitter supports.

In late September, Twitter began a test of 280-character tweets with a small group of users.

Read More:: Why has Twitter doubled the character limit for tweets to 280? 

Like many Twitter (TWTR, Tech30) changes, some users complained about the move.

Interestingly, Twitter said that after the novelty of tweeting more characters wore off, most people in the test stopped tweeting the full length.

According to the company, only 5% of tweets sent from people in the 280-character test group were longer than 140 characters, and just 2% were over 190 characters.

The new character length won't apply to Japanese, Korean or Chinese-language tweets. Those languages can convey twice as much information in less space, so tweets will remain at 140 characters, Twitter said.

Of course, the change means America's highest-profile Twitter user, President Trump, will have more space. Twitter cofounder Biz Stone had said the prolific Twitter user was not in the test group.

The move modifies a fundamental aspect of Twitter. Aside from the test, the social network's character limit hasn't changed since the company launched in 2006.
The 140-character length wasn't a random choice: Twitter's founders wanted tweets to fit in a text message, which can only hold 160 characters. So Twitter chose 140 characters for the tweet, and 20 characters for the user name.

During the 280-character test, some users argued Twitter should focus less on the length of the tweets and more on the content. The platform continues to be rife with harassment and abuse, despite the company's efforts to better police it.

Twitter recently updated its rules to be more explicit in its definitions and policies towards harassment, threats, and adult content.

Everyone affected by the new length should have it by Tuesday evening.

Read More:: Trump, 'Do not underestimate us' speaking in Seoul, warns North Korea

Read More:: Trump to become first foreign leader to dine in Forbidden City since founding of modern China


Read More:: Driverless shuttle bus crashes just after launch in Las Vegas

Read More

WTA Finals: Caroline Wozniacki Thumps Karolina Pliskova to Enter Final

Caroline Wozniacki. (Getty Image)

A tireless Caroline Wozniacki stormed into the final of the season-finale in Singapore with a straight sets victory over Karolina Pliskova, ending the Czech's dreams of finishing world number one.

A tireless Caroline Wozniacki stormed into the final of the season-finale in Singapore with a straight sets victory over Karolina Pliskova, ending the Czech's dreams of finishing world number one.

The world number six prevailed in a rollercoaster match 7-6 (11/9), 6-3 in one hour and 57 minutes to reach the decider of the WTA Finals for the first time since 2010.

Wozniacki will play American veteran Venus Williams or in-form Caroline Garcia in Sunday’s final. She rebounded back to top form after a tough three-set loss to Garcia on Friday night. 

"That was a little bit crazy, it was a bit of a rollercoaster," Wozniacki said after the match. "I've been playing really great tennis this week. It means a lot to me to be in the final."

Long rallies, with both in-form players slugging from the baseline, highlighted a grinding start. There was little separating the pair with holds of serve hard to come by.

There were four straight breaks in the first set and Wozniacki held off three set points in the 10th game.

The Dane blew a 6-1 lead in the tiebreak, losing six straight points, but eventually claimed the marathon first set lasting 82 minutes.

Wozniacki seemingly had a stranglehold of the match with an early break in the second set only for Pliskova to storm back. But she had a decisive break in the eighth game and then served it out to book her spot in the final.

Pliskova needed to lift the trophy on Sunday to overtake world number one Simona Halep in the rankings.

The 25-year-old had been hoping to regain the top ranking after being crowned world number one in July.

Read More

Blatter Says He is Going to World Cup at Putin's Invitation

FIFA's disgraced ex-president Sepp Blatter has told AFP he will go to next year's World Cup in Russia at the invitation of President Vladimir Putin, despite being banned from football. "I will go to the World Cup in Russia. I received an invitation from President Putin," the 81-year-old said in an interview.

File image of Sepp Blatter. (Getty Images)

Blatter said Michel Platini, the ex-UEFA president who is banned from football over corruption, had also been invited to the tournament by Putin. But according to one of his close allies Platini "hasn't received an invitation from Putin to go to the World Cup and doesn't know what he will be doing next summer".

Blatter, who led world football's governing body for 17 years, was thrown out of the sport in 2015 at the height of a massive corruption scandal. FIFA's ethics committee has suspended him from all football-related activities for six years after finding him guilty of accepting an improper 2 million Swiss franc ($2.1 million, 1.8 million euros) payment from then-UEFA chief Platini.

But the ever-defiant Blatter said he had no plans to miss the World Cup, an event he has habitually attended since going to work at FIFA in the 1970s. "I don't know how long I will go for, whether I will be there for the opening match or the final," he said during the interview in Zurich. 

"Because I can't work in football and I don't have an assignment to do, maybe I will only make a short visit." Blatter is also the target of an investigation by Swiss prosecutors over alleged criminal mismanagement at FIFA and the infamous Platini payment. 

Switzerland has ongoing probes into the 2018 World Cup, including possible bribery and corruption that may have led to Russia winning hosting rights. "I'm sure that World Cup 2018 will be a great World Cup. Russia has to show that it can welcome the whole world. It's a big challenge," Blatter said. 

It was not immediately clear how the FIFA ban would impact Blatter's attendance at matches or events. Platini, banned from football for four years, was allowed to attend Euro 2016 matches in his native France, provided he played no official role.

Read More

How to deactivate your Facebook account, and what happens next

• I just deactivated my Facebook account
• I think the product Facebook offers — its core social network — isn't very attractive anymore
• I'll walk you through how to do the same

I just deactivated my Facebook account.

It wasn't a snap decision, but a culmination of a lot of things that peaked with some of the revelations about how the Russians used the platform to spread targeted ads and widen political divisions in the U.S. during the last presidential election.

I also found that the product is no longer the one I used to love — the one I found useful in college to learn more about friends I was meeting and whether we shared classes.

Instead, it seems more like a wasteland of political opinion, memes and cartoons I don't find interesting and snippets of video I have no interest in watching. It's become an outlet for opinion and random entertainment instead of a place to connect with other people.

There are some things I'll miss. I've found Facebook useful for managing my social life, particularly with the invites to events that other Facebook friends are attending. I'm willing to give that up for now, though, and maybe it'll help me learn to reach out to people more directly, like over the phone, instead of with a quick "like" on a post or an automatic "happy birthday" comment.

If you're like me and want to do the same, here's how:

Tap the drop-down menu on the top right of your Facebook page and select settings


You'll see a page with all sorts of settings. You should spend time exploring them, even if you're not planning to delete your Facebook account. There's a lot you can learn about what Facebook knows about you, like advertisers you've interacted with.

Tap the General button

Tap the General tab at the top of the screen

This should be the default page you land on anyway. The good news is you don't have to dig through menus to deactivate your account.

Select "Manage Account"

Choose "edit" under Manage Account

This is at the very bottom of the General Account Settings Page. Look for the entry, "modify your legacy contact settings or deactivate your account."
Tap "Deactivate your account"

Tap deactivate. This won't be the first time.

Now you'll deactivate your account. This means you won't be available to friend people, and your friends will no longer see you as an active user.
However, pictures of you that other people have snapped and uploaded will remain.

Explain why

Explain why you're leaving. Then tap deactivate again.

Facebook will try to keep you, suggesting friends will miss you (for their privacy, I've removed the image that shows my friend from this post). You'll also be required to input why you've decided to leave. Tap "Deactivate."

Are you sure?

Yes! I'm sure!

Facebook will ask one more time if you're sure you want to delete your account. If so, tap "Deactivate Now" on the pop up one last time.

That's it

Now you're done. You'll end up back on Facebook's login screen.

Keep in mind that this removes you from the social network but won't stop you if you have a serious Facebook addiction. All you have to do is log back in and everything will be restored again.

You should also know that deactivating your Facebook account doesn't deactivate your Facebook login or wipe you out of Facebook's memory banks forever. You will still be able to use other Facebook services such as Instagram and Facebook Messenger.

As long as your Instagram account is still live, you're also abiding by Instagram's privacy policy, which gives it the right to anonymously track personal information, including websites you visit, so that advertisers can better target you.

Want something more permanent? You can completely delete your account by requesting that directly from Facebook.

Read More

Scientists send secret message to aliens in new search for intelligent life

SETI astronomer opens up on how human race could communicate with extraterrestrial intelligence

If the "truth is out there," scientists are determined to find it – so much so that they've spent a message into space trying to contact aliens.

But a response could take 25 years – if it comes at all.

Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI) International sent an encoded message into space using radio waves known as "Sonar Calling GJ273b," which the organization's president and founder Doug Vakoch, believes could be received by intelligent life.

"[The message is] distinctive because it's designed with extraterrestrial SETI scientists in mind. We sent the sort of signal we'd want to receive here on Earth," he said in an interview with CNET.

METI's purpose, along with the well-known Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), has a number of missions, including understanding and communicating "the societal implications and relevance of searching for life beyond Earth, even before detection of extraterrestrial life."

It also conducts programs to "foster increased awareness of the challenges facing our civilization’s longevity" among other directives.

The San Francisco-based METI sent its message toward the red dwarf star GJ 273 (also known as Luyten's Star), 12 light-years away from Earth. The message was sent in October from the Eiscat transmitter in Tromsø, Norway and included details such as basic math and science, as well as information on mankind's understanding of time. 

In a statement obtained by CNET, METI said it wanted to know if intelligent life understood the message and then go from there.

"In a reply message, I would first want to know that the extraterrestrials understood what we said in our first message," METI said in the statement. "The easiest way to do this is to repeat our message, but in expanded form. We tell them that '1 + 1 = 2.' They could let us know that they understand that '10 + 10 = 20.'"

Pressing ahead despite concerns

While some luminaries, such as Stephen Hawking, have warned against trying to contact extraterrestrials, Vakoch said contact is already being endorsed by many people.

"Everyone engaged in SETI is already endorsing transmissions to extraterrestrials through their actions," Vakoch said in an interview with Newsweek. "If we detect a signal from aliens through a SETI program, there’s no way to prevent a cacophony of responses from Earth."

Vakoch added that once news of the initial contact has appeared, it would become almost impossible to stop anyone from trying to contact them on their own. "Once the news gets out that we’ve detected extraterrestrials, anyone with a transmitter can say whatever they want."

When can we expect a possible response?

Any response probably would be forthcoming in at least 25 years due to the distance the message has to travel between Earth and GJ273b. 

The exoplanet was chosen because of its visibility from Earth's northern hemisphere, even if it is not the closest potentially inhabited exoplanet to Earth. That distinction belongs to Proxima b, which is just 4 light-years away. 

Earlier this week, scientists discovered a new exoplanet, Ross 128 b, that is 11 light-years away from Earth. It orbits a very quiet red-dwarf star, meaning it does not have to deal with issues such as deadly ultraviolet or X-ray radiation and could also be home to life.

One light-year is approximately 5.88 trillion miles.

Sonar calling GJ273b is not the first message sent to space. The first was the Arecibo message, sent in 1974. The Arecibo message is expected to take 25,000 light-years to reach its target of the M13 star cluster.

While hopeful of receiving a response, Vakoch says we may never hear anything from another intelligent civilization. 

"Practically speaking, if we get a signal from Luyten's Star, it will mean the Milky Way is teeming with life. It's certainly possible," Vakoch said. "It seems more likely that we'll need to target not just one star, but hundreds, thousands, or even millions before we get a reply back."

Read More

Nobel Prize in Literature 2017 Awardee Kazuo Ishiguro Sees Surge in Book Sales

Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro (Image courtesy: AFP Relaxnews)

The Japanese publisher of Nagasaki-born Kazuo Ishiguro said Friday it would republish eight of the British author's books in translation, reporting "a huge number of orders" after he won the Nobel Literature Prize. Ishiguro left Japan when he was five and moved to Britain, only returning to visit his native land as an adult three decades later. Japan had been pinning its hopes on its best-known novelist Haruki Murakami to win the Nobel Prize but eagerly claimed a link to the British winner with Japanese roots.

"Since last night, we have received a huge number of orders. We're very happy," a spokeswoman for Ishiguro's Japanese publishers Hayakawa told AFP. "We have decided to reprint the eight works that we have already published in Japanese," she said.

Ishiguro's best-known novel, The Remains of the Day, is among the works that have been translated into Japanese. Japanese media showed images of late-night bookshops frantically digging out their sparse stocks of Ishiguro works and placing them above Murakami books. Government spokesman Yoshihide Suga told reporters on Friday that Japan congratulated its native son "from the bottom of its heart". "His novels are also read by many Japanese and they have been turned into a play and a TV drama," said Suga.

Nagasaki mayor Hodo Nakamura also congratulated Ishiguro, saying it was an "immense honor" for his city.

Both his first novel, A Pale View of Hills from 1982, and his subsequent work, An Artist of the Floating World from 1986, take place in Nagasaki a few years after World War II.

Read More