The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has decided to censor some licensed therapists in California, including pastors, by upholding a ban on “change therapy.”The ruling today will prevent minors who want counseling regarding unwanted same-sex attractions, behavior or identity from getting that help.LINK

Unappreciative of Western philosophy, members of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood probably never heard an analogy first mentioned by Roman statesman Cicero — “putting the cart before the horse!” For more than two millennia, the phrase has applied to situations of misplaced priorities.LINK

Threats from the north, south, east, west, from nearby and from afar. That’s the gist of an alarming map graphic that the Israeli Embassy in the U.S. posted this week.“Some may say the map is alarmist,” the embassy said in a community post on BuzzFeed. “Undeniably, the map is our geopolitical reality,LINK

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“The airline teamed up with Sanrio, the agent of the cartoon cat, to dress up a number of its A330s in Hello Kitty motifs in 2011 (see ), and there are currently five of these aircraft, including Magic jet, Clouds jet, Music jet, World jet and Apple jet. These planes have taken the famed feline star on tour to Japan, LINK

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No one knows what started the Rim Fire, the 160,000 187,000 acre blaze that’s ripping through the western side of Yosemite National Park. But 3,700 firefighters have been dispatched to try to stop it using helicopters, bulldozers, and flame retardants. Although the situation is starting to look up—20 23 percent of the fire is now contained, LINK

On Aug. 13, the Columbia City Council approved a plan that effectively makes homelessness illegal in parts of the city. The proposal forces those who sleep outdoors to be sent to a shelter on the outskirts of town. Those who don’t comply will be rounded up and forced to leave or sent to the slammer. LINK

This is still an in-development project, but the potential for mayhem is unimaginable. Russia is currently working on weapons that employ electromagnetic radiation to directly affect the central nervous system – the root of all sensory processing – in a variety of unpleasant ways. LINK

The passenger pigeon, the dodo and the woolly mammoth are just a few of the species wiped off the Earth by changing environments and human activities. Now, advances in biotechnology could enable scientists to bring extinct animals back from the grave. LINK

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Of course, humanoid robots have been the stuff of science fiction for decades – ever since Fritz Lang’s 1927 film Metropolis, or Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot stories. The gap between what is robotic and mechanical and what’s human-like will minimise” The reality is somewhat more clunky. LINK

SEATTLE – A remarkable achievement has the science world abuzz. Researchers have been able to transfer the thought of one person to another person over the Internet. The possibilities could lead to the blind seeing what another person can see. LINK

Miniature “human brains” have been grown in a lab in a feat scientists hope will transform the understanding of neurological disorders. The pea-sized structures reached the same level of development as in a nine-week-old foetus, but are incapable of thought. LINK