A long-winded 16-minute podcast about CJR's bold experiment in trusting readers. Are there fewer blogs today than in the early days of blogging? I think there might be many many more. And I think there's more that CJR can do, and this is on the path to finding the journalism that's made possible by open networking.

Thousands cheer the Maroons, Qatar's national football team, as they arrive in Doha after winning the Asian Cup title.

schwit1 quotes Behind the Black: A science paper released today and available for download [pdf] cites evidence from about two dozen deep impact craters located from the equator to 37 degrees north latitude that Mars has a ground ice table at an elevation that also corresponds to other shoreline features. The paper calls this evidence of "planet-wide groundwater" with elevations that "notably coincide with the elevation of some ocean shorelines proposed by previous authors." Science writer Robert Zimmerman adds that "The evidence suggests that this deep groundwater water table (as ice) almost certainly still exists at all latitudes, though almost entirely underground... "All you will have to do is dig a well..."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ICC acquitted the ex-president who stood trial for murder, rape, persecution and other inhumane acts committed in 2010.

Long-time Slashdot reader v3rgEz quotes MuckRock: Government investigations into California's electricity shortage, ultimately determined to be caused by intentional market manipulations and capped retail electricity prices by the now infamous Enron Corporation, resulted in terabytes of information being collected by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. This included several extremely large databases, some of which had nearly 200 million rows of data, including Enron's bidding and price processes, their trading and risk management systems, emails, audio recordings, and nearly 100,000 additional documents. That information has quietly disappeared, and not even its custodians seem to know why. The web page where a defense contractor hosts the data has been down since 2013, and after a one-month wait they replied to a request by stating the data was "under review" and "currently not accessible," adding that it might never be available again. And while a U.S. government site also claims they offer a trio of datasets on CD, that agency "has not responded to repeated requests for these datasets sent over the past two months." The site also instructs visitors to email Lockheed Martin, who maintains some of the data -- but the provided email address bounces.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Russia and the United States pull out of a Cold War-era nuclear pact igniting fears of a new arms race.

Long-time Slashdot reader darkwing_bmf writes: In an exclusive interview with Popular Mechanics, SpaceX founder Elon Musk explains why stainless steel is the best material to build rocket ships, beating carbon fiber in cost, durability and even weight. "As far as we know, this marks the first time the material has been used in spacecraft construction since some early, ill-fated attempts during the Atlas program in the late 1950s," reports Popular Mechanics. "It took me quite a bit of effort to convince the team to go in this direction..." Musk tells them. But among the other benefits "It has a high melting point. Much higher than aluminum, and although carbon fiber doesn't melt, the resin gets destroyed at a certain temperature... But steel, you can do 1500, 1600 degrees Fahrenheit."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The US could leave Afghanistan in exchange for the Taliban joining government and ensuring the country will not be used by armed groups, but achieving peace will be far more complicated.

At least eight children have died in December because of the lack of food and medicine in the camp.

UN chief Guterres asks the two sides to come to a deal to protect the Palestinians after Israel suspends the TIPH.

Saudi Arabia refused to cooperate with UN special rapporteur Agnes Callamard's inquiry into Jamal Khashoggi's killing.

The tower was created in the 1980s by Paik Nam June, a pioneer of video art until his death in 2006.

World Health Organization says it has managed to control the disease in the concerned areas of DRC.

schwit1 quotes ABC News: Vaccines are universally backed by respected scientists and federal agencies, but that isn't enough to convince every parent to vaccinate their children. The decision to fly in the face of near universal scientific opinion doesn't come as a result of a lack of intellect, however, as experts who have studied vaccines and immunology acknowledge that many parents who don't vaccinate their children are well-educated. They also appear to be the victims of a widespread misinformation campaign, the experts said. Daniel Salmon, who is the director of the Institute of Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins University, said that existing research suggests that there are some common attributes that many parents who choose not to vaccinate their children share. "They tend to be better educated. They tend to be white, and they tend to be higher income. They tend to have larger families and they tend to use complementary and alternative medicine like chiropractors and naturopaths," Salmon said. Salman also says outbreaks typically start when an American returns from a visit to Europe, where there are much higher rates of measles than in the U.S. But lower vaccination rates help it spread. One study in August reported Russian trolls "seem to be using vaccination as a wedge issue, promoting discord in American society," though their campaign on Twitter failed to gain traction. "I blame Amazon Prime," writes long-time Slashdot reader destinyland. "That 'misinformation' they're talking about is the pseudoscience documentary Vaxxed -- and Amazon is one of the top site's pushing it. The movie is not only free for all Prime members -- Amazon's actually featuring it on the front page showing free-with-Prime movies."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Qatar is hosting the 2022 World Cup - the smallest nation to receive that honour and the first from the Arab world.