DIPLOMACY: Russia Ambassadors Reportedly Summoned In Poland, Baltics.

The reports on March 26, which cited various named and unnamed Russian diplomats, did not say whether reasons were given for the summonses.

They came amid signs that several European Union countries are preparing to expel Russian diplomats in response to the poisoning of a former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia with a nerve toxin in England.

The two remain in critical condition after being found gravely ill on a bench in the southern English city of Salisbury on March 4.

Britain accuses Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government of using a military-grade nerve agent that was developed during the Cold War — part of a series known as Novichok — to attack them with intent to kill.

On March 23, the EU collectively condemned the attack, said it was “highly likely” Moscow was responsible, and agreed to take further punitive measures.

Officials in the three Baltic states, Poland, and the Czech Republic said they are considering expelling Russian diplomats.

Related: US to expel 60 Russian diplomats over Skripal attack.

That doesn’t exactly play to the “Collusion!” charges.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: CBS Promotes Porn Star, Kids March Against 2A and Much, Much More. “Last night, porn star Stormy Daniels was on 60 Minutes because this is what CBS has become. She’s going to release a DVD, which was ‘teased’ before the big interview last night. Smart marketing.”

OH: Overhaul of U.S. Telecoms Database Sparks Fear of Catastrophic Failure. “Foreign firm handling overhaul cited for national security breaches.”

On April 8, a foreign firm will initiate the first phase in a Federal Communications Commission-mandated overhaul of the national telecoms database that stores and facilitates millions of American phone numbers.

The national database, known as the Number Portability Administration Center (NPAC), handles millions of phone transactions each day. It is being taken over by a foreign-owned firm with a past of breaching U.S. national security clauses banning it from employing foreign workers, such as those tied to China. NPAC handles around 1.8 million phone transactions a day.

Ahead of the deadline, industry insiders have been raising concerns that iconnectiv, the firm responsible for handling the nation-wide transition, is not prepared to implement the switch, a situation that could cripple emergency services and interrupt cell service for scores of Americans.

We couldn’t at least find a domestic firm to screw things up for us?

NOW YOU SEE ME…: Boeing’s Next-Gen Super Hornet Will Be (Sort Of) Stealthy.

Boeing is about to kick off an exhaustive effort to transition the U.S. Navy’s carrier air wing to the “Block III” Super Hornet, a next-generation version of the strike fighter complete with new sensors, extended range, a more powerful computer and, yes, enhanced stealth coating.

These changes will allow the Super Hornet to fly alongside the Lockheed Martin F-35C carrier variant as the backbone of the Navy’s carrier air wing into the 2040s and beyond, says Dan Gillian, Boeing F/A-18 and EA-18 program manager.

Gillian confirms that an improved low-observable (LO) coating will be one of five key characteristics of the Block III Super Hornet. The fighter is already “a very stealth airplane today”—he says, declining to elaborate—but there are new coatings engineers can apply on different surfaces of the aircraft to make it even more survivable, he says.

It’s a helluva high/low aircraft mix when the low end is a souped-up semi-stealthy Super Hornet.

HMM: $70 Oil Could Spark An Offshore Oil Boom.

In fact, oil prices have already seemingly found a floor with both global-benchmarks Brent crude and NYMEX-traded West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude prices trading in a low to mid $60s range for an extended period of time. However, given renewed geopolitical risk, that trading average could easily trend upward into the low to mid-$70s range.

All of this of course is not lost on oil and gas exploration and production (E&P) companies, who pulled back their endeavors, particularly more cost intensive offshore drilling actives, during the 2014-2016 global oil price crash.

Now, it seems offshore drilling, at least in some parts of the world, could be poised for a healthy comeback, particularly in the waters of Southeast Asia.

$70 oil would also be healthy for American frackers, too, but mostly what it looks like is that every producer is licking its chops, eager to steal marketshare when Venezuela’s production collapses.

BRAVE NEW MIDDLE KINGDOM: China’s New Frontiers in Dystopian Tech. “Facial-recognition technologies are proliferating, from airports to bathrooms.”

Don’t even think about jaywalking in Jinan, the capital of Shandong province. Last year, traffic-management authorities there started using facial recognition to crack down. When a camera mounted above one of 50 of the city’s busiest intersections detects a jaywalker, it snaps several photos and records a video of the violation. The photos appear on an overhead screen so the offender can see that he or she has been busted, then are cross-checked with the images in a regional police database. Within 20 minutes, snippets of the perp’s ID number and home address are displayed on the crosswalk screen. The offender can choose among three options: a 20-yuan fine (about $3), a half-hour course in traffic rules, or 20 minutes spent assisting police in controlling traffic. Police have also been known to post names and photos of jaywalkers on social media.

The system seems to be working: Since last May, the number of jaywalking violations at one of Jinan’s major intersections has plummeted from 200 a day to 20. Cities in the provinces of Fujian, Jiangsu, and Guangdong are also using facial-recognition software to catch and shame jaywalkers.

Once AI lipreading becomes semi-reliable, Chinese will be afraid to even talk about jaywalking — or anything else.

As usual, Arthur C. Clarke was way ahead of the curve.

PRIVACY: Facebook scraped call, text message data for years from Android phones.

A New Zealand man was looking through the data Facebook had collected from him in an archive he had pulled down from the social networking site. While scanning the information Facebook had stored about his contacts, Dylan McKay discovered something distressing: Facebook also had about two years’ worth of phone call metadata from his Android phone, including names, phone numbers, and the length of each call made or received.

This experience has been shared by a number of other Facebook users who spoke with Ars, as well as independently by us — my own Facebook data archive, I found, contained call-log data for a certain Android device I used in 2015 and 2016, along with SMS and MMS message metadata.

In response to an email inquiry by Ars about this data gathering, a Facebook spokesperson replied, “The most important part of apps and services that help you make connections is to make it easy to find the people you want to connect with. So, the first time you sign in on your phone to a messaging or social app, it’s a widely used practice to begin by uploading your phone contacts.”

The spokesperson pointed out that contact uploading is optional and installation of the application explicitly requests permission to access contacts. And users can delete contact data from their profiles using a tool accessible via Web browser.

Facebook uses phone-contact data as part of its friend recommendation algorithm. And in recent versions of the Messenger application for Android and Facebook Lite devices, a more explicit request is made to users for access to call logs and SMS logs on Android and Facebook Lite devices. But even if users didn’t give that permission to Messenger, they may have given it inadvertently for years through Facebook’s mobile apps — because of the way Android has handled permissions for accessing call logs in the past.

Neither Facebook nor Google (which makes Android) gives a damn about your privacy.

MICHAEL WALSH: Fallout Continues as Obamacare Collapses.

MUST-SEE TV: Actors at Casting Call Are Surprised by Real Gun Facts They’re Asked to Read.

TRUE CRIME: Man charged with threatening to murder Va. congressman over marijuana dispute.

That’s a marijuana policy dispute, not a drug deal gone bad.

BRUCE BAWER: Who the Hell Is Pankaj Mishra?

HEH: 5 Metal Classics That Evoke the Coming Midterms.

Alas, I’d been hoping for a little more “No More Mr. Nice Guy” and a little less “Immigrant Song.”

YOUR DAILY TREACHER: Arresting People for Joking About Fascism Is Fascism.

SOCIOLOGIST: Vegan Diets Promote ‘White Masculinity.’ “A sociology instructor at North Carolina State University (NCSU) is warning in a new academic article that vegan men are guilty of perpetuating ‘white masculinity’.”

Well, we can’t have that — I’d better grill bacon cheeseburgers for dinner tonight, just to be safe.

OH: Pa. school district arms teachers, students with buckets of rocks in case of shooting.

JACK DUNPHY: Why I Can’t Defend Minneapolis Police Officer Mohamed Noor.

HEH: A guy who makes Role-playing games has criticised a map of New Orleans for being “unrealistic” and it’s gone viral.

There’s an old saying: The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. John Bolton Is The National Security Advisor Trump Has Been Waiting For.

I HAD BEEN ASSURED HIS WAS “A REMARKABLY SCANDAL-FREE ADMINISTRATION”: Obama Regs on For-Profit Colleges, Finance, Railroads, and Airlines All Profited His Best Friend.

Tyler O’Neil is on this story like no one else I know of.

SWAMP THING: Trump says he’s signed $1.3 trillion spending bill into law despite being ‘unhappy’ about it.

JUSTICE: Two more MS-13 members plead guilty in plot to kill 16-year-old in Lawrence.

Oscar Recinos Garcia, 24, and Jose Andrade, 27, pleaded guilty to federal RICO-related charges in US District Court in Boston in the July 2015 killing of Jose Alexander Aguilar-Villanueva, according to legal filings and US Attorney Andrew E. Lelling’s office.

Recinos Garcia, also known as “Psycho,” pleaded guilty Wednesday, and Andrade, who goes by “Inocente,” copped his plea the day before, prosecutors said. Both men are Salvadoran nationals and members of the Everett Locos Salvatrucha, or ELS clique, of MS-13, according to Lelling’s office.

“The defendants admitted that their racketeering activity, on behalf of MS-13, included their involvement in the murder of [Aguilar-Villanueva] who was associated with MS-13 and wrongly suspected by the gang of cooperating with law enforcement,” Lelling’s office said in a statement.

Plus: “Andrade and Recinos Garcia are the 36th and 37th defendants, respectively, to be convicted in this case either after trial or after entering a guilty plea,” Lelling’s office said.

TYLER O’NEIL: Senate roll of honor for opposing omnibus.

He has the “sellouts” listed, too.

DO NOT DISPLEASE THE SULTAN: Turkish singer, actress Zuhal Olcay sentenced to 10 months in prison for ‘insulting Erdoğan.’

A lawsuit was filed against the artist for “insulting” Erdoğan during a concert last year, with the prosecutor seeking a four-year prison sentence for the singer.

The indictment prepared by the Istanbul Prosecutor’s Office stated that a person told the police that Olcay had made an insulting hand gesture against Erdoğan during a concert in the Kadıköy district of Istanbul on Aug. 5, 2016. An investigation was subsequently launched and footage from the concert was examined by an expert, state-run Anadolu Agency reported on Dec. 12, 2017.

Olcay is accused of revising lyrics to the song “Boş Vermişim Dünyayı” (I Let Go of the World) to criticize Erdoğan, devising a hand-gesture to accompany the melody. According to the footage, the revised lyrics say: “Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, it’s all empty, it’s all a lie, life will end one day and you’ll say ‘I had a dream.’”

In her testimony, Olcay reportedly said she revised the lyrics because the president’s name fit the rhyme scheme and she “had not had any other ulterior or insulting motive.”

The singer also said the hand gesture had targeted an audience member in the front row after they had made a negative comment about her.

Ominous.

NON-LETHAL WEAPONS: DOD seeks to use lasers to create shouting will-o-the-wisp.

I’LL TAKE MY CHANCES: Your Grilled Burger May Come with a Side of High Blood Pressure. “Regularly eating meats that are sizzled on the grill may increase the risk of high blood pressure, a new study suggests. Other high-temperature cooking methods, including broiling and roasting, were also linked with high blood pressure, the study found.”

You know what really raises my blood pressure? Beef without a great sear on it.