January 1, CRUISE SHIP QUARANTINED OVER CONFIRMED MEASLES CASE

(NBC News) – A cruise ship with nearly 300 passengers and crew was ordered quarantined in the Caribbean port of St. Lucia after a case of measles was confirmed on board, island health officials said Wednesday.

One female crew member has a confirmed case and St. Lucian authorities said they’ve been working in close consultation with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA).

The ship has been under quarantine since Monday morning, officials said.

A.G. Barr won’t testify before House panel Thursday

(Politico) – The attorney general is boycotting the hearing amid a fight with Democrats over the ground rules for his testimony.

The Justice Department issued a double-barreled rebuff to Democrats on Wednesday, informing the House Judiciary Committee that Attorney General William Barr would not show up for his scheduled testimony before the panel and that the department would not comply with a subpoena for special counsel Robert Mueller’s full report.

Fl Teachers Can Arm Themselves Under New Gun Bill

(Reuters) – Florida’s legislature on Wednesday passed a bill allowing teachers to carry guns in the classroom, expanding a program launched after the deadly high school shooting in Parkland with the aim of preventing another such massacre.

Florida’s House of Representatives voted 65 to 47 to pass the bill after hours of debate over two days in which the Republican majority thwarted Democratic efforts to amend, stall or kill the measure. Florida’s Senate approved it 22 to 17 last week.

160,000 year old human relative remains found

(Wall Street Journal) – A fossil jaw found in the Himalayan highlands of Tibet belongs to a vanished human species called Denisovans, deepening the mystery of human evolution in Asia, scientists said Wednesday in a new study probing the roots of humankind.

Discovered by a local Buddhist monk, the fossil shows these archaic human relatives lived on the roof of the world in the rarefied air at almost 11,000 feet—an altitude that would leave many people today starved for oxygen. They settled at these frigid heights at least 160,000 years ago, more than 120,000 years before modern humankind arrived, said the scientists, who published their work on the fossil in the journal Nature.

Amazon’s facial-recognition tech is supercharging local police

(SFGATE) – When workers at an Ace Hardware here reported that a woman had walked out of the store with an $11.99 tank of welding gas that she hadn’t paid for in her tote bag, an elaborate high-tech crime-fighting operation sprang into action.

A Washington County sheriff’s detective, working with the agency’s Special Investigations Unit, ran the store’s surveillance footage through an internal facial-recognition program built by Amazon, revealing a possible match.

Buzz Aldrin: It’s time to focus on the great migration of humankind to Mars

(WASHINGTON POST) – Last month, Vice President Pence announced that we are headed back to the moon. I am with him, in spirit and aspiration. Having been there, I can say it is high time we returned. When Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and I went to the moon 50 years ago this July, we did so with a mission. Apollo 11 aimed to prove America’s can-do commitment to space exploration, as well as its national security and technological superiority. We did all that. We also “Came in Peace for all Mankind.” More of that is needed now.