The Daily Populous

Tuesday July 24th, 2018 evening edition

image for Forbes deleted a deeply misinformed op-ed arguing Amazon should replace libraries

On Saturday morning Forbes published an opinion piece by LIU Post economist Panos Mourdoukoutas with the headline “Amazon Should Replace Local Libraries to Save Taxpayers Money.”

It quickly received enthusiastic backlash from actual American libraries and their communities.

“Forbes advocates spirited dialogue on a range of topics, including those that often take a contrarian view,” a Forbes spokesperson says in a statement.

If libraries closed, he wrote, taxpayers would save money, and Amazon could open bookstores to provide those communities with physical books.

The functions of the library, Mourdoukoutas said, have been replaced: community and wifi are now provided by Starbucks; video rentals by Netflix and Amazon Prime; and books by Amazon.

As critics have pointed out, the communities that would be hardest hit by libraries closing would be the underprivileged.

Writer Kashana Cauley responded to Mourdoukoutas in a tweet with 14,000 likes at time of writing, “Let me clarify something. »

U.S. Breaks Up Fake I.R.S. Phone Scam Operation

Authored by nytimes.com

Over four years, more than 15,000 victims in the United States lost “hundreds of millions” of dollars to the sophisticated scam, and more than 50,000 individuals had their personal information misused, the department said Friday.

The money was routed through call centers in India back to the ringleaders in eight states.

The fraudulent calls came suddenly and frequently while the scam was active from 2012 to 2016, according to court documents. »

Greece has declared a state of emergency over deadly forest fires

Authored by businessinsider.com

Huge forest fires raging across Greece have killed at least four people and injured dozens more, forcing authorities to seek international assistance as they battle the flames.

Fire Service spokeswoman Stavroula Malliri said Greece had called on the European Union for assistance with aerial and ground support in helping battle the flames.

Firefighters, soldiers and local residents carry a hose as a wildfire burns in the town of Rafina, near Athens, Greece, July 23, 2018. »

The startup behind Silicon Valley’s favorite ‘bleeding’ veggie burger has scored a major victory in its battle for legitimacy

Authored by businessinsider.com

On Monday, the Food and Drug Administration said the key nutrient in Impossible Foods' "bleeding" veggie burger recipe is safe to eat, or in official parlance, "generally recognized as safe" (GRAS).

The FDA nod is a big win for Impossible Foods, the San Francisco-based startup behind the burger.

Brown said the FDA's green light underlines what he and the rest of the Impossible Foods team already knew — that heme and the Impossible Burger are safe to eat. »