The Arab Muslim Slave Trade Of Africans, The Untold Story (2014) - "The Muslim slave trade was much larger, lasted much longer, and was more brutal than the transatlantic slave trade and yet few people have heard about it."

Avalanche Airbag In Action

United States Congress Will Consider Proposal To Raise H-1B Minimum Wage To $100,000 (arstechnica.com)

 This is a very good thing:

President-elect Donald Trump is just a week away from taking office.

 From the start of his campaign, he has promised big changes to the US immigration system. 

For both Trump's advisers and members of Congress, the H-1B visa program, which allows many foreign workers to fill technology jobs, is a particular focus. 

One major change to that system is already under discussion: making it harder for companies to use H-1B workers to replace Americans by simply giving the foreign workers a raise. 

The "Protect and Grow American Jobs Act," introduced last week by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif. and Scott Peters, D-Calif., would significantly raise the wages of workers who get H-1B visas.

 If the bill becomes law, the minimum wage paid to H-1B workers would rise to at least $100,000 annually, and be adjusted it for inflation. 

Right now, the minimum is $60,000. 

The sponsors say that would go a long way toward fixing some of the abuses of the H-1B program, which critics say is currently used to simply replace American workers with cheaper, foreign workers.

 In 2013, the top nine companies acquiring H-1B visas were technology outsourcing firms, according to an analysis by a critic of the H-1B program.

 (The 10th is Microsoft.) 

The thinking goes that if minimum H-1B salaries are brought closer to what high-skilled tech employment really pays, the economic incentive to use it as a worker-replacement program will drop off. 

"We need to ensure we can retain the world's best and brightest talent," said Issa in a statement about the bill. "

At the same time, we also need to make sure programs are not abused to allow companies to outsource and hire cheap foreign labor from abroad to replace American workers."
 
The H-1B program offers 65,000 visas each fiscal year, with an additional 20,000 reserved for foreign workers who have advanced degrees from US colleges and universities. 

The visas are awarded by lottery each year. 

Last year, the government received more than 236,000 applications for those visas.

Someone Is Trying to Sell Those Stolen Three-Screen Razer Laptops in China (geek.com)

Just a few days ago, Razer's awesome Project Valerie laptops -- the one with three 4K displays -- were stolen.

 Now it looks like whoever stole them is trying to sell them.

From a report:

 It turns out that the thief (or thieves) didn't just nab one Project Valerie prototype. 

They actually got ahold of a pair. 

Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan understandably wants them back, really, really badly. 

The company was willing to offer $25,000 to anyone who could offer information that led to the prototypes' return.

 So where did the laptops end up? 

Somewhere behind the Great Wall, apparently. 

Whoever has them isn't trying to quietly fence them in some dark Beijing alleyway, either. 

They've actually been listed on the immensely popular Chinese e-commerce site Taobao -- where they were spotted by writers at Engadget Chinese and Wccftech.

 http://shekinahfellowship.blogspot.com/2017/01/two-triple-screen-laptops-were-stolen.html

Petition With Over 1 Million Signatures Urges President Obama To Pardon Snowden (cnet.com)

More than 1 million people signed onto a petition asking President Barack Obama to pardon Edward Snowden, proponents of the pardon said Friday. 

The campaign began in September, when Snowden, his attorney Ben Wizner from the ACLU, and other privacy activists announced they would formally petition Obama for a pardon. 

 Snowden leaked classified NSA documents detailing surveillance programs run by the U.S. and its allies to journalists in 2013, kicking off a heated debate on whether Americans should be willing to sacrifice internet privacy to help the government protect the country from terrorist attacks.

 Obama and White House representatives have said repeatedly that Snowden must face the charges against him and that he'll be afforded a fair trial. 

In the U.S., a pardon is "an expression of the president's forgiveness and ordinarily is granted in recognition of the applicant's acceptance of responsibility for the crime and established good conduct for a significant period of time after conviction or completion of sentence," according to the Office of the Pardon Attorney. 

 It does not signify innocence. Also on Friday, David Kaye urged Obama to consider a pardon for Snowden. Kaye, the special rapporteur to the United Nations Human Rights Council on the freedom of expression, said U.S. law doesn't allow Snowden to argue that his disclosures were made for the benefit of the public.

 The jury would merely be asked to decide whether Snowden stole government secrets and distributed them -- something Snowden himself concedes he did.

In response to the petition, Edward Snowden tweeted:

 "Whether or not this President ends the war on whistleblowers, you've sent a message to history: I feared no one would care. I was wrong."