February, 2019

The woman who claims to have left Alabama to join ISIS and now wants to return to the United States is not an American citizen and therefore cannot return to the nation, according to a statement from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

The mainstream media has been attempting to paint a “heartbreaking” and sympathetic portrait of Hoda Muthana, despite the fact that she married four ISIS fighters in Syria.

“‘ISIS bride’ Hoda Muthana, who has been asking to return to the United States, is not an American citizen,” Pompeo said on Wednesday.

A 42-year-old Mexican man was stopped Saturday while driving a truck into the United States at the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Officers inspected the shipment of frozen strawberries and found 906 pounds of methamphetamine worth an estimated $12,700,000.

In early February, Google announced that Assistant would work with its home security and alarm system, Nest Secure.

The problem: Users didn't know a microphone existed on their Nest security devices to begin with.

On Tuesday, a Google representative told Business Insider the company had made an "error."

"The on-device microphone was never intended to be a secret and should have been listed in the tech specs," the person said. "That was an error on our part."

Who would have thought that, this deep into the Russia collusion probe, we'd be learning about yet another dossier connected to Hillary Clinton? And, as it turns out, it was sort of a family secret.
[...]
No matter what the IG investigation finds, it is clearer today than ever before that Ohr played an essential role in feeding a Clinton-financed political opposition-research project to the FBI.

And, clearly, it was a family business.

Why? Because the Nest Guard alarm/motion sensor/keypad never listed a built-in microphone.

Now, Google has admitted it mistakenly did not list a microphone as part of the product's tech specifications. Its updated product page now mentions one.
[...]
Google's admission, first reported by Business Insider, comes as consumers increasingly find their privacy being encroached upon by technology.

Regina Budiao, 44, of Salinas, has been sentenced to the maximum prison term of 12 years for human trafficking on Tuesday.

Prosecutors with the Monterey County District Attorney's Office say in March of 2018, a 16-year-old runaway began living in Budiao’s tent in Salinas' Chinatown.

The victim was reportedly given drugs and alcohol and was encouraged to earn money by prostituting to support her drug habit.

At least 25 people affiliated with the MS-13 gang were deported from Mexico after they were revealed to be concealed within the caravan of 1,600 Central American migrants just across the U.S. border, immigration officials said Tuesday.
[...]
In addition to the gang members, a total of 70 Central American migrants have been deported to their home countries, while about 1,500 have been granted humanitarian visas to move freely within Mexico.

On Friday, McAllen agents working in Mission, Texas, apprehended a Salvadoran man after he entered the United States illegally. During processing, record checks revealed an arrest and conviction in the state of Iowa for enticing a minor and 3rd degree sexual abuse. The man received five years confinement.

That same day, agents working near Fronton, Texas, encountered a group of 14 illegal aliens comprised of family units and unaccompanied children. While processing the group, record checks revealed one of the men traveling with his two year old child has a previous arrest and conviction in the state of Pennsylvania for statutory sexual assault.

On Saturday, McAllen agents working in near Mission, Texas, arrested a Mexican national whose record checks revealed a warrant of arrest in Mexico for injury causing death/manslaughter/murder in the state of Quintana Roo.

On Monday, Harlingen agents working near San Benito, Texas, assisted the Department of Public Safety with a traffic stop. During the stop, agents determined one of the subjects to be an illegal alien and took him into custody. During processing, record checks revealed previous convictions for domestic violence and kidnapping in the state of South Carolina.

Additionally, over the holiday weekend, Rio Grande Valley agents arrested an MS-13 and a Sureño gang member in separate incidents.

Omar Alhalmi, 38, was charged last month with funneling $22.3 million to Yemen and other countries, while Fahd Samaha, 45, and Maged Alsabahi, 29, are accused of running an illegal cash delivery operation from 2013 through 2015, the Detroit Free Press.
[...]
According to indictments filed Jan. 22, the three men engaged in secret banking practices by creating multiple fake businesses by using the addresses of vacant buildings, storefronts of residences and used “straw business owners” or “fronts” to help send millions to various countries, including Yemen and China.

Prosecutors claim Alhalmi never disclosed where the money came from and where it was going and created at least 13 phony business bank accounts from 2011 to 2016 to access the banking industry’s wiring service, the Free Press reported.

Walt Disney Co. is said to have pulled its advertising spending from YouTube, joining other companies including Nestle SA, after a blogger detailed how comments on Google’s video site were being used to facilitate a “soft-core pedophilia ring.” Some of the videos involved ran next to ads placed by Disney and Nestle.

On Sunday, Matt Watson, a video blogger, posted a 20-minute clip detailing how comments on YouTube were used to identify certain videos in which young girls were in activities that could be construed as sexually suggestive, such as posing in front of a mirror and doing gymnastics. Watson’s video demonstrated how, if users clicked on one of the videos, YouTube’s algorithms recommended similar ones. By Wednesday, Watson’s video had been viewed more than 1.7 million times.

Here is the Video from Matt Watson that was being posted around all social media a couple of days ago:

Benton set up his stand at a local strip mall Saturday, selling cups of cocoa for $2 each, plus 50 cents for large marshmallows dedicated to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. He placed a large sign in front of the stand with the words "Proceeds help Trump build the wall."

He made $231 in about an hour of sales before closing down after complaints to the owner of the store where Benton set up shop, even though his stand wasn't on store property, his parents said.

“I guess some liberals – or whatever you want to call them – they were griping at the owner (of the store) and going in and yelling at him and slamming him on Facebook,” Jennifer said.

Venezuela on Tuesday shut the maritime border with nearby Dutch Caribbean islands ahead of an opposition effort to bring in humanitarian aid from foreign territories including neighboring Curacao despite the protests of President Nicolas Maduro.

Maduro has rejected offers of foreign aid, denying there are widespread shortages and insisting that the country’s economic problems are the result of sanctions by Washington.

Attorney General William Barr is preparing to announce as early as next week the completion of Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, with plans for Barr to submit to Congress soon after a summary of Mueller's confidential report.@evanperez @LauraAJarrett

— Shimon Prokupecz (@ShimonPro) February 20, 2019

“Clearly, the industry is getting pressure to be more transparent, which is a great thing for consumers,” Karbowicz told Healthline.

Part of that pressure is from the Trump administration, which last May unveiled “American Patients First,” its blueprint aimed at lowering drug costs and out-of-pocket expenses for consumers.

“One of my greatest priorities is to reduce the price of prescription drugs. In many other countries, these drugs cost far less than what we pay in the United States,” President Trump is quoted in the introduction to the report.

"There is no proven clinical benefit of infusion of plasma from young donors to cure, mitigate, treat, or prevent these conditions, and there are risks associated with the use of any plasma product," Scott Gottlieb, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, and Peter Marks, director of the agency's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in a statement.

"Simply put," they added, "we're concerned that some patients are being preyed upon by unscrupulous actors touting treatments of plasma from young donors as cures and remedies."

Researchers found that an ‘alarming’ number of patients were prescribed a deadly opioid.

The Kirovs fulfilled, and continue to fulfill, a very real role for Russian seapower. They can threaten U.S. assets, while also providing an impressive, prestigious platform for the display of Russian maritime prowess. They demonstrate that the large surface ship model that went out of style at the end of World War II can nevertheless result in a formidable collection of weapons, depending on the configuration of those systems. Assuming that the refits of Nakhimov and Pyotr Velikiy continue to go forward, we can anticipate continuing to see these ships in Russian service for decades.

While the Russian leader didn’t say what specific new weapons Moscow could deploy, his statement further raised the ante in tense relations with Washington.

"If the US imposes more tariffs on Chinese products while China responds with fiercer countermeasures, it would be a catastrophic strike to global stock markets."