Smart Guns Hit the Market 

After years of development and promotion, smart guns are finally on the market. In December, a brand called the Biofire Smart Gun will be widely available to US citizens from Florida to Oregon.

Smart guns aren’t AI-smart, but they do offer a feature that hasn’t been available before. They use fingerprint and facial recognition technology to identify registered owners. Nobody else can fire the gun. The gun isn’t smart enough to decide whether the owner should be using it. But in reducing the use to a single person, experts say it will lower the risk of unwanted shootings and theft.

That’s good. But couldn’t we do better?

With all the advanced technology available today, why can’t gun scientists develop smart guns that could stop bad guys in their tracks, but not kill them? What would be wrong with that?

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Venezuelans at the Top of Illegal Immigrant Flow to the US 

After 2.5 years of basically wide-open borders, the Biden administration has done a little tightening. Since May 12, the average number of daily illegal crossings has been around 3,360, down from about 7,100 in March.

A large number of those immigrants have been Venezuelans fleeing the economic disaster and political oppression that started when Hugo Chavez (who died in 2013) came to power in 1999. (Inflation in Venezuela is now over 400%.)

According to the WSJ, more than 7.3 million Venezuelans have left their country, making them the biggest refugee group in the world right now. About 6.4 million of them have settled in Central and South America, according to the Migration Policy Institute. But many hundreds of thousands are hoping to get into the US.

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What Do You Get When You Mix China with Russia and North Korea?

Danger, for sure! 

Top Russian and Chinese officials, including Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chinese Politburo member Li Hongzhong, met with North Korea’s dictator in North Korea last week to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the truce that ended the Korean War.

North Korea launched more than 100 ballistic missiles since last year, while China and Russia have blocked US-led efforts at the UN Security Council to have North Korea sanctioned.

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US Industry’s Recent Boom Market: It Is Ending. Or What? 

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 237 points last Thursday (0.7%), while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite dropped 0.6%, putting an end to the longest running bull market for tech stocks since 1987.

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