July, 2019

On Wednesday night, Supreme Court justice and heralded liberal and feminist hero Ruth Bader Ginsburg called her colleague Justice Brett Kavanaugh a "very decent" person as she talked about the "dysfunction" that surrounds the confirmation process for new justices, according to Business Insider... Ginsburg was taking part in a question and answer session with Duke Law professor Neil Siegel at an event for prospective law students at Duke University. The Q&A came after she delivered a speech on the 2018 Supreme Court terms and the late Justice John Paul Stevens.

Delowar Mohammed Hossain, 33, allegedly wanted to join the Taliban and was boarding a flight to Pakistan when he was arrested on terror-related charges, including attempting to provide material support for acts of terrorism, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said. “Hossain wanted to kill Americans, and particularly wanted to target members of our armed forces, serving our nation overseas," U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said in a statement. The Joint Terrorism Task Force is investigating his case. Hossain appeared in federal court in Manhattan Friday on the terror-related charges. He faces up to 15 years in prison, the DOJ said.

The lawsuit, which was filed in February, sought $250 million in damages and accused the Post of practicing "a modern-day form of McCarthyism" by targeting Sandmann and "using its vast financial resources to enter the bully pulpit by publishing a series of false and defamatory print and online articles ... to smear a young boy who was in its view an acceptable casualty in their war against the president"...

In a 36-page ruling, U.S. District Judge William Bertelsman noted that the Post never mentioned Sandmann by name in its initial coverage of the incident, referring only to groups of "hat wearing teens." Bertelsman added that "the words used contain no reflection upon any particular individual" and thus could not be constituted as defamation. The judge also ruled that the newspaper used language that was "loose, figurative," and "rhetorical hyperbole" which is protected by the First Amendment.

A consumer privacy group has filed a challenge to Facebook’s $5 billion settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, saying it is not “adequate, reasonable or appropriate” and lets the social media giant off the hook for years of violations. The Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center asked a federal district court in Washington D.C. on Friday to intervene in finalizing the settlement, which was approved 3-to-2 by the FTC.

EPIC says the deal, which also includes new privacy oversight and transparency requirements for Facebook, would extinguish more than 26,000 existing consumer complaints against Facebook that are pending at the FTC.

The Internal Revenue Service has begun sending letters to more than 10,000 cryptocurrency holders, warning they may have broken federal tax laws. The agency wasn’t specific about the possible violations it was reviewing, but those who hold digital currencies could be subject to a variety of taxes, especially on capital gains... An IRS spokesman declined to say how it learned about the targeted cryptocurrency holders and their transactions. One possible source is information provided to the agency by cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. In mid-March of 2018, Coinbase provided data—under a federal-court order—on about 13,000 accounts as requested by the IRS. Coinbase turned over data on customers who bought, sold, sent or received digital currency worth $20,000 or more between 2013 and 2015.

The Trump administration moved to reallocate the money earlier this year, after Congress denied the president’s full request for border wall construction funds. The Sierra Club and a coalition of border communities sued, arguing that President Trump had violated federal law.

Did you know that the Sierra Club helped create the Sunrise Movement? Sunrise Movement is the "young people" activist arm for AOC and co-wrote the Green New Deal.

"I said to (U.S. President Donald) Trump (at the G20 summit) in Osaka: even if Turkey is not buying the Patriot anti-aircraft missile system, the Patriot missile system, we are buying Boeing,” Erdogan was quoted as saying by Bloomberg.

"We are good customers. But if our conflict continues, we will have to reconsider this issue,” he said...

A DOJ internal review of the Russia investigation is now focusing on transcripts of (not-so) covertly recorded conversations between former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos and 'at least one government source' during an overseas conversation in 2016. In particular, DOJ investigators are focusing on why certain exculpatory (or exonerating) evidence from the transcripts was not included in subsequent FBI surveillance warrant applications.
[...]
Also under review by AG Barr and US Attorney John Durham of Connecticut is the actual start date of the original FBI investigation into the Trump campaign and Russian interference in the US election...

The artist behind the alterations goes by the name Sabo, and he says that the faux ads are meant to insult the entertainment industry for embracing Polanski, who plead guilty to sex with a minor four decades ago, and, to a lesser extent Epstein, who was arrested July 6 for sex trafficking of minors.... Beyond the billboard, there are ads at numerous bus stops, some on benches and others behind glass. Insiders say a street crew worked through the night to get the phony ads in place before the sun rose on Friday... “I felt they should all share a billboard to highlight a decades-old problem that has plagued Hollywood for decades: the abuse of children,” Sabo said.

A conservative coalition filed a lawsuit this week challenging the constitutionality of two new gun laws in New Mexico – one requiring background checks, the other prohibiting the possession of guns by domestic abusers. The New Mexico Patriots Advocacy Coalition also accused state officials of illegally blocking their right to petition for the repeal of 10 bills passed in this year’s legislative session, when Democrats held substantial majorities in both chambers.

Something isn't right in the "greatest economy ever," as the general fertility rate continues to drop in the US, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)... Researchers used data from the National Vital Statistics System, discovered that the general fertility rate dropped 2% between 2017 and 2018 among females aged 15 to 44.

Overall fertility dipped to 59.1 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44. In non-Hispanic white and non-Hispanic black women, it fell 2% in 2018, while a 3% drop in rates was observed in Hispanic women. Teen pregnancy rates plunged to record lows, the report revealed. The rate dropped 7% from 2017 to 2018, falling from 18.8 per 1,000 to 17.4 per 1,000. Teen births in non-Hispanic black teenagers declined 4% in 2018, and 8% in non-Hispanic white and Hispanic teenagers.

Satellite companies say they keep a person's data separate from any identifying characteristics, but Peter Martinez of the Secure World Foundation told MIT Technology Review that doesn't matter. Martinez said satellites don't need to recognize faces to identify someone if they can combine the images with data streams from sources like GPS, security cameras and social media posts.

Then there's the sheer volume of satellites overhead. Imaging company Planet Labs alone, the report said, has 140 satellites, which is enough to pass over every place on Earth once a day.

Meanwhile, satellite imagery is getting closer to a level that investors and businesses will want to exploit. The goal, Mapbox's Charlie Loyd told MIT Technology Review, is to make a "living map" of Earth...

Starting to? It's been going on for decades.

This Wednesday, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards declared a state of emergency in response to ransomware attacks on three public school districts.

There's no word so far on which ransomware variant has hit the school districts or what the exact extent of damages is. Eddie Jones, principal of Florien High School (a school in one of the three affected districts), told KSLA News that his technology supervisor received an alert on his phone at 4am Sunday about unusually high bandwidth usage. Shortly afterward, investigators discovered ransomware on the school servers. Jones says "anything and everything housed solely on the School District's servers" was lost, including 17 years of his own personal documents...

Human–animal hybrid embryos have been made in countries such as the United States, but never brought to term. Although the country allows this kind of research, the National Institutes of Health has had a moratorium on funding such work since 2015.
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Hiromitsu Nakauchi, who leads teams at the University of Tokyo and Stanford University in California, plans to grow human cells in mouse and rat embryos and then transplant those embryos into surrogate animals.

Until March, Japan explicitly forbid the growth of animal embryos containing human cells beyond 14 days or the transplant of such embryos into a surrogate uterus.

The strategy that he and other scientists are exploring is to create an animal embryo that lacks a gene necessary for the production of a certain organ, such as the pancreas, and then to inject human induced pluripotent stem cells into the animal embryo.

As the animal develops, it uses the human iPS cells to make the organ, which it cannot make with its own cells.

The hybrid embryos, grown for 28 days, contained very few human cells, and nothing resembling organs...

France just put a digital tax on our great American technology companies. If anybody taxes them, it should be their home Country, the USA. We will announce a substantial reciprocal action on Macron’s foolishness shortly. I’ve always said American wine is better than French wine!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2019

"...without the massive borrowing and printing of money and controlling of interest rates - we wouldn't be able to sustain a permanent state of war."...

Gold: Airport of Garulhos in San Paolo(Brazil).
Military command steals 752 KG of Gold destinated to USA and Switzerland (value 30 Million USD) from Brinks facilities. pic.twitter.com/rautSJ30Tu

— Talal Salamé (@MediatikNews) July 26, 2019

The House Judiciary Committee on Friday asked a federal judge to unseal grand jury secrets related to Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation, using the court filing to declare that lawmakers have already in effect launched an impeachment investigation of President Trump.

In a legal maneuver that carries significant political overtones, the committee told a judge that it needs access to the grand jury evidence collected by Mr. Mueller as special counsel — such as witness testimony — because it is “investigating whether to recommend articles of impeachment” against the president.

investigators seek to question the financier’s employees in the wake of his indictment on sex-trafficking charges. The grand jury subpoenas were served on the pilots earlier this month after Mr. Epstein’s arrest on July 6, some of the people said. A lawyer for one of the pilots confirmed the subpoena, but declined to provide further details.