February, 2019

The agency that oversees the online address book of websites warned on Friday that key parts of the internet infrastructure are under attack and raised a rallying cry to harden defenses.

Billionaire equity firm owner John Childs is one of several men accused of soliciting prostitution in connection with a Florida spa tied to an international human trafficking ring, police said Thursday.

Childs, who lives seasonally in Indian River Shores, is wanted on a solicitation of prostitution charge, according to a warrant for his arrest. He has not been arrested.

His first court date is listed as March 8, according to records.
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Michael Avenatti, a well known attorney who said he recently provided a videotape of R. Kelly having sex with a minor to the Cook County state’s attorney’s office, applauded prosecutors for filing charges. It is unclear if the charges are related to the videotape the attorney provided.

“The day of reckoning has arrived” for R Kelly, Avenatti said in a tweet.

According to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, last year the country’s 50 most generous billionaires -- with a list that includes Amazon founder and world’s wealthiest man Jeff Bezos (who made the giving list for the first time), Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg -- gave only about half to charity of what they gave to good causes in 2017.

How much are we talking about, specifically? The country’s wealthiest gave $7.8 billion in disclosed donations in 2018. That may sound like a lot, but the nation’s top 50 mega-donors gave $14.7 billion to charity in 2017.

Tennis great Martina Navratilova is the target of LGBTQ scorn after dropping a truth bomb on transgender women. On Sunday, Navratilova wrote a controversial op-ed wherein the 18 time Grand Slam champion called transgender women who compete in women’s sports “cheats.”

“Letting men compete as women simply if they change their name and take hormones is unfair — no matter how those athletes may throw their weight around,” Navratilova wrote. This was too much for some folks. Immediately, Athlete Ally, a non-profit organization that advocates for LGBTQ inclusion and equality in sports, particularly transgender athletes, severed ties with Navratilova and released her from their board.

Iranian military leaders disclosed on Thursday that their intelligence operatives had infiltrated a U.S. Army Command Center and commandeered control of several American drones flying through Syria and Iraq.

Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Aerospace Force, released information and photographic evidence that Iran claims as proof it was able to take control of several U.S. drones.

As part of a takedown of a human trafficking ring, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft was busted in Florida on two counts of soliciting prostitution at a spa.

Rosaine Santos, a 41-year-old immigrant, from Brazil living in Falmouth, was charged with disorderly conduct, assault and battery after a confrontation at Casa Vallarta” Mexican restaurant last Friday. According to police, Santos was upset that a man – later identified as 23-year-old Bryton Turner of Mashpee – had the audacity to wear the iconic red hat at the Mexican eatery, Boston 25 reported.
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"I had a little bit to drink maybe that’s the reason that I couldn’t walk away but being discriminated for so many times in my life, I just had to stand up for myself,” she said. “He’s not a victim. I am the victim. I have been bullied, OK?”

... according to an eye-witnesses and community leaders, that Venezuelan soldiers opened fire on a group of civilians attempting to keep open a segment of the southern border with Brazil for deliveries of humanitarian aid, leading to multiple injuries and the first fatality.
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The Washington Post details the deadly events started at 6:30 a.m. on Friday, a military convoy approached a checkpoint set up by an indigenous community in the southern village of Kumarakapai, that rests on the main artery linking Venezuela to Brazil. When the volunteers sought to block the military vehicles by standing in front of them, soldiers began firing assault rifles, wounding at least 12 people, four of them seriously. One woman, Zorayda Rodriguez, 42, was killed.

Swarms of genetically modified mosquitoes are released in a high-security lab located in Italy in aid of an experiment to end malaria in Africa.

Scientists at Ruth Müller Lab bioengineered large numbers of mosquitoes, allowing them to spread the gene drive to the insects' offspring. The idea is to use the editing technique called CRISPR to alter a specific gene known as doublesex, which is responsible for sexual development. If successful, nearly all of the children of parent mosquitos whose genes were modified will inherit the same trait.

The region is called the geocorona, part of an atmospheric layer called the exosphere. It's a tenuous cloud of neutral hydrogen that glows in far-ultraviolet light.

Because it's so thin, it's been hard to measure; previously, its upper limit was thought to be around 200,000 kilometres (124,000 miles) from Earth, because that's the point at which solar radiation pressure would override Earth's gravity.

Well, according to data from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) co-owned by the European Space Agency and NASA, that limit doesn't even come close. The geocorona, scientists have found, extends out to as much as 630,000 kilometres (391,000 miles).

The White House said Friday it's "looking into" Labor Secretary Alex Acosta's handling of a secret plea deal with a wealthy financier accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls

A federal judge ruled Thursday that prosecutors in Florida violated the rights of victims by reaching the non-prosecution agreement with Jeffrey Epstein. Acosta was the Miami U.S. attorney who oversaw the arrangement.

The Trump administration posted a final rule Friday that would require family planning clinics to be housed in separate buildings from abortion clinics, a move that would cut off Planned Parenthood from some federal funding.

The rule applies to a $286 million-a-year grant, known as Title X, that pays for birth control, testing of sexually transmitted diseases, and cancer screenings for 4 million low-income people. It requires the "physical and financial" separation of family planning services and abortion.

State Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and Assemblywoman Susan Eggman (D-Stockton) introduced recent legislation “to end blatant discrimination against LGBT young people regarding California’s sex offender registry.”

However, under their bill, SB 145, the offenders would not have to automatically register as sex offenders if the offenders are within 10 years of age of the minor.

A wave of bad news, which also included a dividend cut and a weak outlook for the year, sent shares plunging 26 percent at the opening bell Friday, their largest decline in a single day. Before noon, the company had lost $16 billion of its market value.

Kraft Heinz cited the impairment charge for a stunning $12.6 billion fourth-quarter loss.

Kraft Heinz said the investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is related to its accounting practices in the division that handles interactions with suppliers. The SEC declined to comment.

Mueller criticized the decision. "How does being a patriot and trying to show pride in your country, how is that inappropriate?" she told KGPE-TV.

The $2.5 billion has already been spent — but California has failed to deliver the high-speed rail (on time, or at all) as promised.

Therefore, the Trump administration argues, the state has to repay federal taxpayers.

Borders, 61, did not explain the circumstances behind her abrupt exit, which came after just four months on the job. But the Los Angeles Times has learned that Borders suddenly found herself at odds with the core mission of Time’s Up because of a desire to stand by a man — her son — facing allegations of sexual misconduct.

Borders stepped down four days after a 31-year-old Santa Monica woman alleged, in a Facebook post, that Borders’ 36-year-old son had been sexually inappropriate with her...

Remember when Jussie Smollett and his sister were representing Time's Up at a MLK Parade and were photographed with Kamala Harris?

The state Senate on Thursday approved a bill — which the Legislature passed once before, in 2017, but which then-Gov. Chris Christie blocked by issuing a scathing veto — that would prohibit candidates for president and vice president from appearing on the ballot unless they make their tax returns public.

Similar legislation has been introduced in at least 30 states but never enacted, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, meaning New Jersey would be the first to impose such a disclosure requirement if its measure is also approved by the Assembly and signed by Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat.

An Israeli man who had been on the run from local authorities for 15 years after being accused of raping a teenage girl was caught and returned to Allegheny County.

Moshe Journo was 39 and living in Pittsburgh’s Beechview neighborhood when he was arrested for allegedly raped a 15-year-old girl at a Dormont tanning salon on Sept. 6, 2004.

Soon after his arrest, Mr. Journo posted bond and left the country, according to the FBI.