John H. Durham, the United States attorney leading the investigation, has requested Mr. Brennan’s emails, call logs and other documents from the C.I.A…
December 19, 2019
He wants to learn what Mr. Brennan told other officials, including the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, about his and the C.I.A.’s views of a notorious dossier of assertions about Russia and Trump associates...
If you stopped at any Wawa in the past 9 months, your payment card details may have been snatched…
December 19, 2019
The Philadelphia-based gas and convenience store chain says it discovered the malware on its payment processing servers on December 10th, but it took quite a while for the company to notice — the malware may have affected all 700 of its locations across five states since March.
Democrat Mayor Of Taylor in Michigan And Two Others Indicted For Bribery And Fraud…
December 19, 2019
A thirty-three count Indictment unsealed today charges City of Taylor Mayor Richard “Rick” Sollars, businessman Shady Awad, and Taylor Community Development Manager Jeffrey Baum with conspiracy to commit bribery in a scheme spanning from 2015 to 2019, United States Attorney Matthew Schneider announced. The Indictment also charges Sollars and Awad with seven counts of bribery each, and charges Sollars and Baum with 18 counts of Wire Fraud...
Nearly half of U.S. population will be obese by 2030, analysis says…
December 19, 2019
The authors' findings showed that, by 2030, several states will have rates of obesity approaching 60 percent, while all states will have a prevalence of obesity higher than 35 percent. They also predict that, nationally, severe obesity will likely be the most common BMI category for women, non-Hispanic black adults and those with annual incomes below $50,000 per year...
World’s oldest fossil trees uncovered in New York…
December 19, 2019
The earliest fossilised trees, dating back 386 million years, have been found at an abandoned quarry in New York. Scientists believe the forest they belonged to was so vast it originally stretched beyond Pennsylvania. This discovery in Cairo, New York, is thought to be two or three million years older than what was previously the world's oldest forest at Gilboa, also in New York State.
Turkey To Establish Military Base In Libya As Egypt Threatens Its Own Intervention…
December 19, 2019
Given the heightened proxy war nature of the conflict, now threatening to draw in regional powers angered over what they see as illegal Turkish incursion in their own backyard, some geopolitical observers are warning of a new war between Egypt and Libya, with Turkish military involvement...
James Comey’s claim that the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation was run “seven layers” below him is a total lie according to Attorney General William Barr, who said that the FBI’s probe was actually handled by a “very small group of very high level officials.”…
December 19, 2019
AG Barr on Comey 'seven layers' above the investigation:
One of the problems that happened is the investigation was pulled up to the executive floors & was run by a very small group of very high level officials.
pic.twitter.com/0jA1eoM0kM— Red Nation Rising (@RedNationRising) December 19, 2019
NSA Allowed To ‘Unmask’ US Citizens Without Surveillance Warrant: US Court…
December 19, 2019
The “incidental collection” of Americans’ communications by NSA electronic dragnet that explicitly targets people abroad and without U.S. ties was permissible under the U.S. Constitution, the court ruled. It also said, however, that examining the content of databases of stored NSA information could violate the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures...
3 hurt in ‘active shooting situation’ in Westerly, Rhode Island…
December 19, 2019
The shooting took place at a senior living complex, the Babcock Village apartments... Rhode Island State Police have sent a tactical team to the scene, Murray said. Both local and state law enforcement are responding to the shooting situation...
NSA whistleblower, former NSA technical chief, Bill Binney, says CIA created the ‘evidence’ for the Mueller Report’s allegation that Russia had hacked DNC…
December 19, 2019
The relevant snippet below is at 39:00-44:00 in the audio interview:
I basically have always been saying that all of this Russian hack never happened, but we have some more evidence coming out recently. We haven’t published it yet, but what we have seen is that there are at least five items that we’ve found that were produced by Guccifer 2.0 back on June 15th, where they had the Russian fingerprints in them, suggesting the Russians made the hack. Well, we found the same five items published by Wikileaks in the Podesta emails. Those items do not have the Russian fingerprints, which directly implies that Guccifer 2.0 was inserting these into the files to make it look like the Russians did this hack.
[...]
Taking that into account with the fabrication of the Russian fingerprints, it leads us back to inferring that in fact the marble framework out of the Vault 7 compromise of CIA hacking routines was a possible user in this case. In other words, it looked like the CIA did this, and that it was a matter of the CIA making it look like the Russians were doing the hack...
Federal study confirms racial bias of many facial-recognition systems, casts doubt on their expanding use…
December 19, 2019
Asian and African American people were up to 100 times more likely to be misidentified than white men, depending on the particular algorithm and type of search. The study, which found a wide range of accuracy and performance between different developers’ systems, also showed that American Indians had the highest false-positive rate of all ethnicities...
It’s not a racial bias. Facial recognition systems rely on reflected light to extract the information about the shape, curves, and contours of a persons face. If you were paying attention in high school science you’ll remember light colors reflect more light dark colors absorb more light. Facial recognition will always be more accurate on lighter skinned people because more reflected light means more data which allows the software to more accurately make a match.
It’s not racist software or programmers, it’s not sample data being too white, it’s not a bias unconsciously baked in, it’s just less reflected light.
Democrats ask Barr & Durham to resign…
December 19, 2019
.@TheJusticeDept A message for Attorney General Barr: resign. pic.twitter.com/hwsFY6xqLg
— Rep. Hank Johnson (@RepHankJohnson) December 19, 2019
Attorney General Bill Barr goes one-on-one with Martha MacCallum…
December 19, 2019
House passes USMCA…
December 19, 2019
The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement passed the House of Representatives on Thursday after both the Trump administration and House Democrats took credit for the $1.2 trillion deal they say will be better for Americans than the North American Free Trade Agreement that President Trump has referred to in the past as "NAFTA the disaster"...
U.S. Congress approves massive funding bills to avert government shutdowns…
December 19, 2019
The U.S. Senate, rushing to meet a looming deadline, approved and sent to President Donald Trump a $1.4 trillion package of fiscal 2020 spending bills that would end prospects of government shutdowns at week’s end when temporary funding expires.
Rep. Jeff Van Drew meets with Trump, confirms he’s switching from Democrat to Republican…
December 19, 2019
Italian politicians and police among 300 held in mafia bust…
December 19, 2019
Italian military police have arrested more than 300 people including politicians and officials on suspicion of membership of the ‘Ndrangheta, in what is being described as the second biggest mafia bust in the country’s history. About 2,500 officers participated in raids centred on the Calabrian city of Vibo Valentia on Thursday...
Nancy Pelosi Says People Have ‘A Spring In Their Step’ After House Impeaches Trump And Goes On To Label McConnell A ‘Rogue’ Leader Ahead Of Senate Impeachment Trial…
December 19, 2019
The Communist Caucus, Sanders and Warren Demand McConnell Hold Full and Fair Impeachment Trial for ‘Most Corrupt President in Our History’…
December 19, 2019
"U.S. senators take an oath to support and defend the Constitution, not the president of the United States," Warren tweeted. "The Constitution requires the Senate to conduct a fair and honest impeachment trial, and that's what the American people expect."
[...]
"The House of Representatives rightly carried out its constitutional responsibility by voting to impeach Donald Trump, the most corrupt president in our history. No one, including the president, is above the law," said the Vermont senator. "I call on Mitch McConnell to conduct a full and fair trial to hold this president accountable."...Careful what you wish for...
Federal Reserve “Network Issues” Cause Nationwide Direct Deposit Outage…
December 19, 2019
Starting around 7am, there was a surge of outages reported at Capital One... What happened? According to CapitalOne, network issues at the Federal Reserve were causing certain banking transactions to be delayed... The Fed has yet to comment on the nature of the "network outage." Speculation that this is just a test of how the Fed plans to conduct Universal Basic Income by making direct deposits into each American's bank account remains just that.