Documents released by the Department of Defense reveal some of what its infamous Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program was working on. From a report: The Department of Defense funded research on wormholes, invisibility cloaking, and "the manipulation of extra dimensions" under its shadowy Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, first described in 2017 by the New York Times and the Washington Post. On Wednesday, the Defense Intelligence Agency released a list of 38 research titles pursued by the program in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy. The list provides one of the best looks at the Pentagon's covert UFO operation or study of "anomalous aerospace threats." According to Aftergood's FOIA request, the document marked "For Official Use Only" was sent to Congress on January 2018. One such research topic, "Traversable Wormholes, Stargates, and Negative Energy," was led by Eric W. Davis of EarthTech International Inc, which describes itself as a facility "exploring the forefront reaches of science and engineering," with an interest in theories of spacetime, studies of the quantum vacuum, and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Thanks to such acts as Britney Spears, Twenty One Pilots and Guns N' Roses, along with soundtracks from the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise -- which boasts the year's top two sellers -- and Netflix's Stranger Things series, cassette tape album sales in the U.S. grew by 23 percent in 2018. According to Nielsen Music, cassette album sales climbed from 178,000 in 2017 to 219,000 copies in 2018. While that's a small number compared to the overall album market (141 million copies sold in 2018), that's a sizable number for a once-dead format. In 2014, for example, cassette album sales numbered just 50,000. But, 20 years before that, back in 1994, when cassettes were still very much a hot-selling format, there were 246 million cassette albums sold that year, of an overall 615 million albums.

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A bunch of people are using Electric Pork these days. Somehow it caught on??

Internet services totally shut down for most of the day as the UN appeals for restraint from Zimbabwe authorities.

As the shutdown stretches on, President Trump blocks permission for congressional delegation's military aircraft.

Copyright activists just scored a major victory in the ongoing fight over the European Union's new copyright rules. An upcoming summit to advance the EU's copyright directive has been canceled, as member states objected to the incoming rules as too restrictive to online creators. From a report: The EU's forthcoming copyright rules had drawn attention from activists for two measures, designated as Article 11 and Article 13, that would give publishers rights over snippets of news content shared online (the so-called "link tax") and increase platform liability for user content. [...] After today, the directive's future is much less certain. Member states were gathered to approve a new version of the directive drafted by Romania -- but eleven countries reportedly opposed the text, many of them citing familiar concerns over the two controversial articles. Crucially, Italy's new populist government takes a far more skeptical view of the strict copyright proposals. Member states have until the end of February to approve a new version of the text, although it's unclear what compromise might be reached. Further reading: EU Cancels 'Final' Negotiations On EU Copyright Directive As It Becomes Clear There Isn't Enough Support.

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Grace Meng has remained in France since her husband Meng Hongwei disappeared in September.

U.S. regulators have met to discuss imposing a record-setting fine against Facebook for violating a legally binding agreement with the government to protect the privacy of its users' personal data, The Washington Post reported Friday [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], citing three people familiar with the deliberations. From the report: The fine under consideration at the Federal Trade Commission, a privacy and security watchdog that began probing Facebook last year, would mark the first major punishment levied against Facebook in the United States since reports emerged in March that Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy, accessed personal information on about 87 million Facebook users without their knowledge. The penalty is expected to be much larger than the $22.5 million fine the agency imposed on Google in 2012. That fine set a record for the greatest penalty for violating an agreement with the FTC to improve its privacy practices.

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After months of user complaints, Mozilla will remove a misleading "dark pattern" from its page screenshot utility. From a report: The problematic feature is the "Save" button that appears when Firefox users take a screenshot. The issue is that the Save button doesn't save the screenshot to the PC, as most users would naturally expect, but uploads the image to a Mozilla server. This is both a privacy violation, as some users don't appreciate being tricked into uploading sensitive images saved on remote servers, but also an incovenience as users would still have to download the image locally, but in multiple steps afterward.

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Defence minister says ELN explosives expert Jose Rojas detonated his vehicle at a Bogota police academy on Thursday.

Lebanese FM Gebran Bassil calls decision to keep Syria out of upcoming Arab economic summit an 'historic shame'.

Documents outlining how Facebook profited off children are expected to be made public soon, according to Reveal News of the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR), who requested the documents. From a report: In a report about the trove of previously-sealed documents, Reveal News explains that Facebook has previously faced lawsuits for failing to refund charges made by children playing games on Facebook. According to Reveal, the children did not know that their parent's credit card was stored on the platform when they clicked "buy," and in some cases, hundreds or even thousands of dollars were spent. In one case, the plaintiff, who is a child, spent several hundreds of dollars in just a few weeks. According to the report, more documents show "widespread confusion by children and their parents, who didn't understand Facebook continued to charge them as they played games."

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Al Jazeera visits a West Bank checkpoint and speaks to Palestinians who spend hours there every day just to get to work.

The United States wants to renew efforts to persuade the Taliban to have direct talks with the Afghan government.

US official says Pompeo had 'good discussion' with North Korean envoy Kim Yong Chol about Trump-Kim summit commitments.