March, 2019

The western monarch butterfly population has declined 99.4 percent since 1980. Last November, volunteers with Xerces Society, a Portland invertebrate conservation group, counted 28,429 monarchs at wintering sites along the coast of California. In the 1980s, the count was nearly 4.5 million. That means that for every 160 monarch butterflies counted in 1980 there is one left today.

As a result of Operation SaboTor, U.S. and international law enforcement agencies made 61 arrests and shut down 50 Darknet accounts used for illegal activity. Law enforcement executed 65 search warrants, seizing 299.5 kilograms of drugs, 51 firearms, and more than $7 million ($4.5 million in cryptocurrency, $2.48 million in cash, and $40,000 in gold). They also conducted 122 interviews. In addition, participating agencies engaged in public education efforts regarding the dangers of opioid abuse during the operation.

Swedish authorities were raiding the headquarters of one of Sweden’s largest banks on Wednesday as part of an investigation into whether Swedbank was connected to a massive money laundering scandal in the Baltic countries.
[...]
“At this point of time, no individual or legal entity has been served suspicion of a crime,” the bank said in a statement. “We will cooperate with the authorities.”

Rep. Eric Swalwell - who sits on the House Intelligence Committee - has doubled down on his claim that President Trump is a Russian agent because nobody has been able to conclusively disprove all of the claims in the Steele Dossier.

He has not seen any evidence that Trump is not a Martian from a parallel universe either. That's not how it works, swallowell. How do you prove a negative? The burden of proof is on the those who make the claim. Not the other way around. This is the same guy who threatened to use nukes against the population if they would not disarm in violation of the 2nd Amendment.

We really need to administer drug tests and IQ tests before allowing someone to run for office. It's a must.

Study points toward lifelong neuron formation in the human brain’s hippocampus, with implications for memory and disease.

Announcement comes just over two weeks before polls open in Indian general election.

Anonymous Bitcoin buying and selling is no more. LocalBitcoins, one of the last places to offer such a service, is officially changing its policy after receiving pressure from the European Union.

The exchange announced yesterday the implementation of new know-your-customer (KYC) measures to satisfy the European Union’s 5th Anti-Money Laundering Directive. The directive came into effect on March 18. Although it is not stated how detailed the verification process will be, LocalBitcoins will nonetheless be forced to sacrifice some anonymity.

During Tuesday’s hearing on confiscatory red flag laws, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said, “every right has limits.”

Facial recognition software is a powerful technology that poses serious threats to civil liberties. It’s also a booming business. Today, dozens of startups and tech giants are selling face recognition services to hotels, retail stores—even schools and summer camps. The business is flourishing thanks to new algorithms that can identify people with far more precision than even five years ago. In order to improve these algorithms, companies trained them on billions of faces—often without asking anyone’s permission. Indeed, chances are good that your own face is part of a “training set” used by a facial recognition firm or part of a company’s customer database.

Consumers may be surprised at some of the tactics companies have used to harvest their faces. In at least three cases, for instance, firms have obtained millions of images by harvesting them via photo apps on people’s phones. For now, there are few legal restrictions on facial recognition software, meaning there is little people can do to stop companies using their face in this manner.

Previously, Facebook only had prohibited users from sharing messages that glorified white supremacy -- a rhetorical discrepancy, in the eyes of civil-rights advocates, who argued that white nationalism, supremacy and separatism are indistinguishable and that the policy undermined the tech giant's stepped-up efforts to combat hate speech online.

Facebook now agrees with that analysis, according to people who’ve been briefed on the decision. The new policy also applies to Instagram.

Broadband and cable providers already have a pretty scummy reputation for hidden fees and inconvenient setup times, but I’m not sure they’ve ever committed a cardinal sin — until now. Yesterday afternoon, a Spectrum employee in the Los Angeles area apparently stole a young woman’s dog and drove off with him. Fortunately for the dog, the entire incident was caught on the family’s security camera.

@GetSpectrum one of your drivers took my dog. pic.twitter.com/k270cqlpiU

— Melissa Cortez (@young_bluh) March 26, 2019

This is unbelievable... BUILD THE WALL! 🇺🇸

RT! pic.twitter.com/j0ETPnZrF7

— Ryan Fournier (@RyanAFournier) March 27, 2019

ICE officials said their detention capacity to detain border crossers and illegal aliens has been strained by the enormous levels of illegal immigrants arriving in the country every month.... At this current rate, DHS is releasing more than 36,000 border crossers and illegal aliens into the country every single month. For the year, DHS is on pace to release more than 430,000 border crossers and illegal aliens into the country.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirmed to reporters that the administration is closing a loophole that permits “backdoor funding schemes” under which foreign aid recipients that don’t commit or promote abortion themselves can still give money to other organizations that do. "American taxpayer dollars will not be used to underwrite abortions," he declared. "This administration has shown that we can continue to meet our global health goals while refusing to subsidize the killing of unborn babies."

The administration is also ordering full enforcement of the 1981 Siljander amendment, which bars federal funds from being used to lobby for or against abortion. The first group to be impacted by the amendment is the Organization of American States (OAS) for its pro-abortion lobbying across North and South America via two of its organs: the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and Inter-American Commission on Women (IACW).

You can also see the back of an owl's eye through its ears.

Well owl be damned.

• Israel, like other countries, has long courted China for investment and business opportunities.
• But like other countries, Israel has grown wary of Beijing's overtures abroad.
• Now Israel must reconcile two contradictory policies about engagement with China, argues Israeli journalist Yossi Melman.

A new bill introduced in Pennsylvania would establish a gun registry within the state.

HB0768 is known as the Firearms Registration Act.

Since the Parkland shooting, nine states have enacted legislation that allows law enforcement to remove guns from individuals deemed a risk to themselves or others.