The South China Morning Post reports that the U.S. may be taking a stand against China. This week the U.S. House of Representatives passed a new bill that would "tighten export controls on China-bound U.S. technology that could be used to 'suppress individual privacy, freedom of movement and other basic human rights' [and] ordering the U.S. president, within four months of the legislation's enactment, to submit to Congress a list of Chinese officials deemed responsible for, or complicit in, human rights abuses in Xinjiang... "The UIGHUR Act also demands that, on the same day, those individuals are subject to sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Act, seizing their U.S.-based assets and barring them from entry onto U.S. soil." Reuters notes that American government officials "have sounded the alarm on China's detention of at least a million Uighur Muslims, by U.N. estimates, in the northwestern region of Xinjiang as a grave abuse of human rights and religious freedom..." U.S. congressional sources and China experts say Beijing appears especially sensitive to provisions in the Uighur Act passed by the House of Representatives this week banning exports to China of items that can be used for surveillance of individuals, including facial and voice-recognition technology... A U.S. congressional source also said a Washington-based figure close to the Chinese government told him recently it disliked the Uighur bill more than the Hong Kong bill for "dollars and cents reasons," because the former measure contained serious export controls on money-spinning security technology, while also threatening asset freezes and visa bans on individual officials. Victor Shih, an associate professor of China and Pacific Relations at the University of California, San Diego, said mass surveillance was big business in China and a number of tech companies there could be hurt by the law if it passes. China spent roughly 1.24 trillion yuan ($176 billion) on domestic security in 2017 -- 6.1% of total government spending and more than was spent on the military. Budgets for internal security, of which surveillance technology is a part, have doubled in regions including Xinjiang and Beijing.

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Trump happens to be right about toilets. I bought a house recently and plan to rip out the toilets and replace them with ones that can handle the load so to speak. But I get to think about this stuff because I'm not president of the United States.

More than 30 balloons from 13 countries to be featured at 12-day event in the Qatari capital.

Long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger brings the news that D. C. Fontana, an influential story editor and writer on the original 1960s TV series Star Trek, has died this week. People reports: The writer is credited with developing the Spock character's backstory and "expanding Vulcan culture," SyFy reported of her massive contribution to the beloved sci-fi series. Fontana was the one who came up with Spock's childhood history revealed in "Yesteryear," an episode in Star Trek: The Animated Series, on which she was both the story editor and associate producer. As the outlet pointed out, Fontana was also responsible for the characters of Spock's parents, the Vulcan Sarek and human Amanda, who were introduced in the notable episode "Journey to Babel." In fact, Fontana herself said that she hopes to be remembered for bringing Spock to life. "Primarily the development of Spock as a character and Vulcan as a history/background/culture from which he sprang," she said in a 2013 interview published on the Star Trek official site, when asked what she thought her contributions to the series were. With Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, she also penned the episode "Encounter at Farpoint," which launched The Next Generation in 1987. The episode introduced Captain Picard, played by Patrick Stewart, and earned the writing pair a Hugo Award nomination. Fontana was one of four Star Trek writers who re-wrote Harlan Ellison's classic episode The City on the Edge of Forever , and her profile at IMDB.com credits her with the story or teleplay for 11 episodes of the original series. In the 1970s Fontana worked on other sci-fi television shows, including Land of the Lost, The Six Million Dollar Man, and the Logan's Run series. Fontana later also wrote an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, three episodes of Babylon 5, and even an episode of the fan-created science fiction webseries Star Trek: New Voyages.

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Adama Barrow says probe launched as nation mourns 'national disaster' that saw dozens of people drowning off Mauritania.

Something really weird. I watch MSNBC at least one hour every night. The first ads for a presidential candidate I’ve seen are in the last few days and they’re all from Bloomberg. Why didn’t any of the other candidates advertise to me? They advertise to me on the net, mostly to get me to give them money. A TV ad for a Democratic presidential candidate in 2020 is still a novelty and if the ad is good, it can do more than motivate donations. People want to be inspired. TV advertising done well can do that. Bloomberg's ads check all the boxes. They're winning ads.

Aighearach (Slashdot reader #97,333) shared this story from Reuters: Tesla Inc boss Elon Musk emerged victorious on Friday from a closely watched defamation trial as a federal court jury swiftly rejected the $190 million claim brought against him by a British cave explorer who Musk had branded a "pedo guy" on Twitter. The unanimous verdict by a panel of five women and three men was returned after roughly 45 minutes of deliberation on the fourth day of Musk's trial. Legal experts believe it was the first major defamation lawsuit brought by a private individual over remarks on Twitter to be decided by a jury... The jury's decision signals a higher legal threshold for challenging potentially libelous Twitter comments, said L. Lin Wood, the high-profile trial lawyer who led the legal team for the plaintiff, Vernon Unsworth... Other lawyers specializing in defamation agreed the verdict reflects how the freewheeling nature of social media has altered understandings of what distinguishes libel punishable in court from casual rhetoric and hyperbole protected as free speech. Musk, 48, who had testified during the first two days of the trial in his own defense and returned to court on Friday to hear closing arguments, exited the courtroom after the verdict and said: "My faith in humanity is restored."

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A 3,000 square-metres space at climate summit is dedicated to raising awareness and showcasing innovative projects.

Government and Russian attacks kill at least 18 people in rebel-held northwestern Syria, rescue workers say.

As anti-establishment protesters call for an end to corruption, women too are fighting a system that they blame for sexual assaults.

"Russia's controversial intelligence ship Yantar has been operating in the Caribbean, or mid-Atlantic, since October," writes defense analyst H I Sutton this week in Forbes. He adds that the ship "is suspected by Western navies of being involved in operations on undersea communications cables." Significantly, she appears to be avoiding broadcasting her position via AIS (Automated Identification System). I suspect that going dark on AIS is a deliberate measure to frustrate efforts to analyse her mission. She has briefly used AIS while making port calls, where it would be expected by local authorities, for example while calling at Trinidad on November 8 and again on November 28. However in both cases she disappeared from AIS tracking sites almost as soon as she left port... Yantar has been observed conducting search patterns in the vicinity of internet cables, and there is circumstantial evidence that she has been responsible for internet outages, for example off the Syrian coast in 2016. Yantar is "allegedly an 'oceanographic research vessel'," notes Popular Mechanics, in a mid-November article headlined "Why is Russia's spy ship near American waters?" A study by British think tank Policy Exchange mentioned that the ship carried two submersibles capable of tapping undersea cables for information -- or outright cutting them, the Forbes article points out. "Whether Yantar's presence involves undersea cables, or some other target of interest to the Russians, it will be of particular interest to U.S. forces."

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Experts say around 700 sites had been identified globally with low oxygen levels, up from only 45 in the 1960s.

Mark Wilson quotes BetaNews: Apple has failed in an attempt to block a class action lawsuit being brought against it by a customer who claimed the company concealed the problematic nature of the butterfly keyboard design used in MacBooks. The proposed lawsuit not only alleges that Apple concealed the fact that MacBook, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air keyboards were prone to failure, but also that design defects left customers out of pocket because of Apple's failure to provide an effective fix. Engadget argues that Apple "might face an uphill battle in court. "While the company has never said the butterfly keyboard design was inherently flawed, it instituted repair programs for that keyboard design and even added the latest 13-inch MacBook Pro to the program the moment it became available. Also, the 16-inch MacBook Pro conspicuously reverted to scissor switches in what many see as a tacit acknowledgment that the earlier technology was too fragile."

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In one English town, residents describe their battle against a decade of cuts that made lives 'smaller and harder'.

Up to 1,000 people expected to protest against controversial win of Handke, criticised as an apologist for Milosevic.