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TGIF: Watch Shep report on a huge blob of foam spreading in #CA, and the #NakedCowboy greeting people in #TrumpTower #FOXNews #TGIF #Friday http://pic.twitter.com/MsVU9nuzu6

— Shepard Smith (@ShepNewsTeam) November 18, 2016

If the constant news gathering regarding President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet picks has become too much for you, never fear! The city of Santa Clara, California, located just southwest of San Francisco, is here to save the day. That, and Fox News presenter Shepard Smith, as he (and practically everyone else with a Twitter account) couldn’t get enough of a mysterious blob of foam that had consumed almost an entire building and several nearby streets.

“There’s fear, there’s widespread panic across America, that this could really swallow of all San Francisco,” Shepard joked. “So on the west coast, undulating foam, and on the east coast, [the Naked Cowboy] serenading the future president.”

Meanwhile, local Fox affiliate KTVU reporter Ann Rubin went on the scene in Santa Clara to film the slow-moving, foamy onslaught and interview emergency personnel and random bystanders. The news crew was told the foam “appears to be some type of fire retardant,” which began exiting the building at an alarming rate when the “fire system malfunctioned.”

A spokesperson initially told Rubin the “fire retardant foam” was “nontoxic,” which prompted one young and upstanding gentleman to ride his bike through the material:

Rubin subsequently interviewed the bicyclist, given name Blake Harrington, who said “someone had to do it.” He added: “We were on the other side and the officers over there were like ‘you should ride through.’ And I was like, ‘OK you guys don’t mind?’ So we decided to do it.” Unfortunately for Blake and the officers who egged him on, Rubin was subsequently told the material “might be toxic after all”:

Needless to say, Twitter couldn’t contain its glee at having the weekly Friday afternoon news dump being interrupted by a potentially hazardous outbreak of fire-smothering foam near San Francisco:

(Via KTVU and Shepard Smith/Fox News)

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On Friday, the World Health Organization announced the lifting of a nine-month emergency declaration for the Zika virus, as reported by ABC News. While this latest news may help ease some people’s fears about the mosquito-borne threat, the United Nations health agency stressed that it remains a concern, and they are simply switching their efforts to a long-term battle.

Since November 2015, Zika has been frightening the public since the WHO announced how the virus was responsible for a surge in birth defects, which have been reported in 30 countries. WHO has cataloged 2,100 cases in Brazil alone. There have also been reports that Zika affects adults too. But Dr. David Heymann, head of a WHO emergency committee on Zika, said the immediate threat of a Zika pandemic has subsided while still remaining a “significant and enduring” threat.

Some experts worry that the Zika virus being downgraded could further impact the research and aid process, which hasn’t been as fast as some would have hoped for. Bureaucracy has been a roadblock in the U.S. too, but Georgetown University international health law expert Dr. Lawrece Gostin told Fox News how the response to the virus has been slow everywhere:

“The international response to Zika has been lethargic, and if WHO called off the global emergency it would provide reason for governments and donors to pull back even more. That would be a recipe for the very lack of preparedness the world has seen time and again with infectious diseases.”

WHO has not announced the details of their future plans for combating Zika, but it’s sure to be a lengthy ordeal.

(Via ABC News & Fox News)

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This time of year, the North Pole is in “polar night.” It sees no, or at least minimal, sun for roughly half the year, and becomes one of the coldest places on Earth. Except this year, it’s not getting very cold. In fact, so far, it’s 36 degrees warmer than normal. If you’ve noticed an unusually balmy winter so far, that’s part of the reason.

But a warm polar night is doing a lot more than just killing polar bears, although for many that’s bad enough. Long term, if this isn’t reversed, and quickly, it may literally change where we live, what we eat, and how our economy functions.

The Heat Spiral

The biggest problem is that polar night is supposed to be when the Arctic ice is at its thickest. That’s consequential for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that as the ice melts and refreezes, it becomes harder and harder to restore the ice cap to its natural state.

Part of this is that as the ice melts, it forms a sort of heat spiral. White polar ice reflects the sun and its heat away from the ocean, but the less of it there is, the more heat is absorbed by the dark water of ocean, making it harder when the temperature drops for the ice to freeze. Not only that, melting Arctic ice releases methane, a relatively short-lived but powerful greenhouse gas that drives up the temperature even further.

But that’s just the start. A balmy winter right now can become a total disaster in a snap, thanks to the Arctic’s control of weather patterns. The Arctic is key to maintaining the weather patterns that we’re used to. It serves as a sort of global cooling system, releasing enormous amounts of heat from the Earth’s atmosphere. But, without the polar ice, it can’t do that job, which means warmer water across the globe. And that, in turn, means more extreme weather and more frequent weather problems.

For example, the jet streams that drive our climate are created by the heat of the sun and the rotation of Earth. Jet streams generally keep the cold air over the poles and the hotter air over the places we as a species like to live. But the hotter the sun gets, the more erratic the jet streams can be and the more dangerous weather we get. In 2012, the Arctic jet stream was unusually southerly, and Britain paid the price with record flooding as it was pounded by torrential rains.

Nor is that the only problem. Jet streams generally push weather patterns West to East; no jet stream means that weather patterns will stay in place for a while. This is thought to be one of the core problems behind California’s struggles with drought.

These are only the short-term effects, though. Long term, it might change things as basic as where we live and what, or whether, we eat. If Greenland melted tomorrow, the oceans would rise roughly six meters. That would be enough to wipe most US coastal cities off the map and possibly give California an inland sea. This likely wouldn’t happen all at once, but over time, it would indeed shift where people lived. It would also mean that quite a bit of farmland and food infrastructure would suddenly be underwater, not to mention the pollution leaking into the water as buildings and facilities that shouldn’t be under the water are submerged.

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So, can we prevent this? Or at least bring it back to normal? The short answer is yes, with time and action, but it may be tricky. We’ve already managed to sever the link between carbon emissions and economic growth, thanks in part to cheap renewable energy sources and the shift of many energy producers from “dirtier” forms of fuel like coal to still-dangerous, but cleaner forms like natural gas. The shift away from fossil fuels will likely only accelerate, especially in America. Renewable energy sources like wind and solar farms are creating jobs in many states, and finding unlikely allies like oil man T. Boone Pickens, who wants to build a wind corridor from Texas to North Dakota that supplies 20% of America’s power.

We can also attempt climate engineering, although that’s at best in very early stages. No climate engineering comes without some form of compromise. For example, we can add iron to the ocean to encourage plankton to bloom, but it’s not clear what that would cause, or how effective it would be. Similarly, “solar radiation management,” or simply keeping the sun from shining on certain parts of the world, may work, but it’s only been tested with computer modeling and many are worried that these measures would slow down attempts at mitigation.

No matter what, though, it’s clear that pretending weather is not a problem is officially over. We need to act, and act quickly, before we’re forced to.

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Donald Trump’s national security team is discussing plans to dismantle the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the organization that was created in response to the 9/11 attacks, according to an adviser to the president-elect and a former senior intelligence official. The news comes as the current director of national intelligence, James Clapper, announced his resignation Thursday.

The Trump national security team has been meeting in recent days, planning the removal of the cabinet-level position and assessing how to fold parts of the organization into the 16 federal intelligence agencies it oversees, according to both people with knowledge of the plans. If the restructuring is accomplished, it would undo legislation passed by Congress in 2004, dismantle the biggest American intelligence bureaucracy created since the end of World War II, and roll back a key recommendation of the 9/11 Commission.

The national security team believes the effort will be “long and messy” but is confident it will be successful, according to the former senior U.S. intelligence official who is consulting with those involved in the transition.

Both sources asked for anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly about confidential plans.

The former senior intelligence official, who supports the proposal, said the DNI was never a solution to the 9/11 attacks. “It was always a naive idea that American intelligence can be ‘fixed.’ You’ll never get it all correct,” the former official said. “You can never have 100 percent intelligence, never stop every terror plot or penetrate every terrorist cell. There will always be gaps.”

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment, but a source close to Clapper said the director was not aware of the Trump transition team’s plans.

The Trump team sees removing the office as an opportunity to reorganize other parts of the intelligence community, something that some career officials have long sought. The transition team, for example, is also contemplating reversing the recent restructuring of the CIA that took place under its current director, John O. Brennan. “Assuming the DNI gets taken apart, they want to undo Brennan’s reorganization of the agency,” the former senior official said.

Last year, Brennan restructured the CIA by removing the wall between analysts and spies, putting them together in mission centers, rather than geographic divisions, as had been the organization since the agency was created. The new structure was largely modeled after the Counterterrorism Center, which had become the agency’s dominant section after 9/11. Critics from inside the agency complained that it weakened the core skill of the agency — human espionage — and removed expertise. Brennan said the move allowed the agency to better reflect the changing landscape of global threats, including cyberspace.

The Trump transition team announced Friday morning that Mike Pompeo, a Republican representative from Kansas, will be nominated to head the CIA. It’s unclear whether Pompeo, a former Army officer, would support reversing Brennan’s reforms, or whether it was a condition of accepting the nomination.

More than a decade ago, a combination of executive orders signed by President George W. Bush and congressional legislation led to the new cabinet-level position. The office, which launched in 2005, was designed to fill gaps that contributed to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks by facilitating information sharing among the 16 federal agencies that make up the intelligence community. The director of the Central Intelligence Agency had previously served as the president’s cabinet-level position overseeing intelligence.

Even before the director of national intelligence was established, critics griped about the new bureaucracy. The chief complaint was that while the new position would have budgetary control over the 16 agencies it oversaw, it would have no hiring or firing authority at any individual agency, limiting its ability to actually control personnel decisions or effect espionage operations.

The office lacked direct authority over employees at other agencies, but its own workforce grew to 1,750 employees by 2008.

In his memoir, Playing to the Edge, Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and CIA, recalls the skepticism the intelligence community had at the time for what many felt would be an unnecessary bureaucratic intrusion. “There were few in the intelligence community at the time who thought that restructuring was a good idea,” he wrote. “I certainly did not.”

By the time the office got up and running, Hayden decided that it could work, but only if the right people were in charge.” Good people overcome imperfect structures,” he concluded.

While complaints about the new position eventually subsided, tensions continued between the new office and those under its authority. During the first year of President Barack Obama’s administration, retired Adm. Dennis Blair, the third director of national intelligence, sought to place the office’s employees in embassies overseas and supersede the authority of the CIA’s station chief. Blair’s effort, which received considerable pushback from then CIA Director Leon Panetta, ultimately led to Blair’s dismissal, and the plan was never implemented.

Blair, who now serves as chairman and CEO of Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA, said that getting rid of the director of national intelligence would be a mistake. “Elimination of the DNI position would be a major setback for the kind of integrated intelligence that the U.S. will need in the future,” Blair told The Intercept. “Despite the advances made since 9/11, there is still a need for a powerful organization to bring together the individually skilled, but often disjointed efforts of the separate intelligence organizations.”

David Priess, author of The President’s Book of Secrets and a former intelligence officer, said that concerns about the office and the size of its bureaucracy are not new, but that actually eliminating it would be a difficult undertaking for a new administration. “The office of the DNI is not like so many other things that they’ve talked about reversing and overturning,” he said in a phone interview. “It’s a law, not an executive order at the whim of the president; it was part of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act; [they] can’t unilaterally decide it no longer exists, they would have to pass a new law unwrapping all the things in that law.”

The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The post Donald Trump Hopes to Abolish Intelligence Chief Position, Reverse CIA Reforms appeared first on The Intercept.

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First and foremost, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey and StarTalk host Neil deGrasse Tyson is a scientist. Maybe that’s why the celebrity astrophysicist decided to wade into the political waters on Twitter early Friday afternoon when he tweeted something rather, um, intriguing about President-elect Donald Trump. Whatever inspired Tyson’s tweet — let alone its wording — remains unclear as the famed intellectual hasn’t followed it up without any subsequent tweets or explanations. However, his intentions are clear — he wants to “discuss science” with the President-elect of the United States, and he wants to do so with his complete attention.

“When I meet President Trump,” Tyson tweeted, “I may first grab his crotch — to get his attention — then discuss Science with him.”

Via Neil deGrasse Tyson on Twitter

Perhaps it’s a delayed response to a New York Times report last week that Myron Ebell, a known climate change denier, is Trump’s top choice for the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. (He’s also consulting with the transition team over matters of “choosing personnel and setting the direction of the federal agencies that address climate change and environmental policy more broadly.”) That, or China’s recent rebuke of an old Trump tweet claiming climate change, as a concept, “was created by and for the Chinese” and their business interests against American manufacturing.

Whatever Tyson’s reasoning may be, the reactions to his tweet have been stellar:

A few took a slightly more serious route, suggesting or implying Tyson’s tweet legitimized jokes about sexual harassment:

Interestingly, Tyson’s previous tweet from Tuesday described “a great challenge in life: Knowing enough to think you’re doing it right, but not enough to know you’re doing it wrong.”

Some of the astrophysicist’s detractors probably thought he should have taken his own advice.

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In a surprising turn of events, President-Elect Donald Trump is reportedly close to offering a $20 to $25 million settlement in New York and California lawsuits that allege fraud concerning Trump University. If true, this comes as a shock, as Trump’s attorneys recently asked for the trial to be delayed until after Inauguration Day.

Trump University was one of the president-elect’s many (failed) ventures, and he promised to share his success secrets to willing students for a large chunk of change. But students weren’t happy with the results and didn’t take too kindly to the school’s plagiarized textbooks. In 2013, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman brought a class-action lawsuit against Trump, and during campaign season, Trump said he had no plans on settling the issue and defended the university:

Now that Trump’s reportedly considering a settlement, part of the agreement is that he wouldn’t have to admit any wrongdoing in the case.

On Friday, the day he reportedly hinted at settling, a federal judge was considering arguments to delay the trial till after Inauguration Day on January 20. His lawyer’s reasoning was that he was going to be too busy during his transition phase, and as reports have shown, his transition team is having a heck of a time at the moment. But if he settles, then this will be a done deal, albeit one that hits him in the wallet.

New York Daily News reported Schneiderman sought $40 million from Trump for the more than 5,000 students who signed up for the university The final settlement will go to students as part of the New York and California cases.

(Via New York Daily News & ABC News)

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That didn’t take long. Donald Trump isn’t even in office yet, and those closest to him are already favorably comparing themselves to Satan.

The Hollywood Reporter recently spoke to face of the alt-right Steve Bannon, who smoothly transitioned from Breitbart News to the head of Trump’s presidential campaign to senior counselor and chief strategist, about how he’s now “arguably the most powerful person on the new White House team.” That’s the same Steve Bannon who supported such Breitbart articles as “There’s No Hiring Bias Against Women In Tech, They Just Suck At Interviews” and “Would You Rather Your Child Had Feminism Or Cancer?” In the eyes of many liberals, he’s evil incarnate, a comparison Bannon seems fine with.

“Darkness is good,” he told the Reporter. “Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That’s power. It only helps us when they get it wrong. When they’re blind to who we are and what we’re doing.” The “they” is, of course, anyone who doubted Bannon and Trump, but more importantly: one of the president-elect’s most trusted advisors praised Darth Vader and Satan as role models.

He then complained about sand for 15 minutes, for some reason.

Bannon later added, “Like [Andrew] Jackson’s populism, we’re going to build an entirely new political movement. It’s everything related to jobs. The conservatives are going to go crazy. I’m the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the world, it’s the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Ship yards, iron works, get them all jacked up. We’re just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks. It will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution — conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement.”

That’s probably not the only reason he wishes it was still the 1930s.

(Via the Hollywood Reporter)