January, 2020

Supporters of the law say it reduces economic disparity in the criminal justice system, while opponents argue it threatens public safety... Republicans have denounced the new law, holding events with prosecutors and law-enforcement officials who said it went too far. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, said he supported the intent of the law but believes it should be revisited.

The encrypted message from Crown Prince Mohammed allegedly included a virus that hacked the billionaire's phone by means of a video file sent to Bezos, according to a digital forensic analysis. Bezos and Crown Prince Mohammed were having an apparently friendly conversation on May 1 2018, when the video file was sent. Within hours, a significant amount of data was extracted from Bezos's phone, with little indication over what was examined. The news has been described as "extraordinary", and will likely backfire on Mohammed bin Salman's effort to bring to attract foreign investors to the country...

A university policy first floated in the summer of 2018 and recently finalized dictates that university employees “are expected to use the names, gender identities and pronouns specified to them by university members.” Failing to abide by this policy “could result in discipline,” according to the policy’s FAQ page.

Their findings show how environmental cues from flowers can stimulate the mosquito brain as much as a warm-blooded host—and can draw the mosquito toward a target or send it flying the other direction, said Riffell, who is the senior author of the study... "Scent is actually a complex combination of chemicals—the scent of a rose consists of more than 300—and mosquitoes can detect the individual types of chemicals that make up a scent."

Mike Bloomberg is running a new ad urging lawmakers to vote to remove President Trump from office. The 30-second ad will run in 27 states, including Colorado, Maine, Arizona, and North Carolina, where Republican senators are facing difficult re-election bids. In the ad, Bloomberg touts his work in the 2018 midterms to help elect Democrats to Congress...

“Florida is a state with the third-highest rate of per-capita calls regarding human trafficking, so we thought it was important to teach our employees on the indicators of human trafficking,” said Indira Pardillo, a public relations official at the airport.

During the next few weeks, in the run-up to Super Bowl LIV, dozens of federal agents will fan out across South Florida looking for strange behavior or anything that seems amiss...

The deadline for seeking reimbursement for time, losses and out-of-pocket expenses from the breach, which affected more than 145 million U.S. consumers, is Jan. 22...

The novel coronavirus, known as 2019-nCoV, has left at least nine people dead and 440 infected, mostly in the central Chinese city of Wuhan... In a media briefing following the announcement of the US case, Dr. Martin Cetron, the director for the Division of Global Migration and Quarantine at the Centers for Disease Control, outlined a comprehensive "funneling approach" to make sure every traveler from Wuhan makes it to one of five US airports that can screen them.

In one section of the letter, Schiff claims that Parnas “continued to try to arrange a meeting with President Zelensky,” citing a specific text message exchange where Parnas tells Giuliani: “trying to get us mr Z.” The remainder of the exchange — which was attached to Schiff’s letter — was redacted. But an unredacted version of the exchange shows that several days later, Parnas sent Giuliani a word document that appears to show notes from an interview with Mykola Zlochevsky, the founder of Burisma, followed by a text message to Giuliani that states: “mr Z answers my brother.” That suggests Parnas was referring to Zlochevsky not Zelensky.

The sources, including one current and three former FBI officials and one current and one former Apple employee, said that in order to prevent hacking of their devices, Apple had planned to offer users end-to-end encryption when storing their phone data on iCloud, informing the FBI back in 2017. Under that plan, Apple would no longer have a key to unlock the encrypted data – and thus would not be able to turn material over to authorities in a readable form even under court order.

However, the representatives of the FBI’s cybercrime agents and its operational technology division objected to the plan, saying that it would make it impossible to gather evidence against iPhone-using suspects...

All of the officers listened to a simulated dispatch call for a potential trespass in progress with a description of the subject involved.

• One group of officers received the initial dispatch information. When they later encountered a subject matching the description from the call who rapidly produced a cellphone from his pocket, 28% of the officers shot him.
• A second group of officers listened to the same initial call with an update that said the subject "appeared to be holding a gun." 62% of the officers in this group shot the subject when he produced a cellphone.
• A third group of officers received the initial dispatch information with an update that said the subject "appeared to be talking on a cellphone." 6% of officers shot the subject who quickly drew their cellphone out from their pocket.

The administrator of the elite Catholic school in Cancun, Mexico, used to take the girls out of class and send them to the chapel, where the priest from the Legion of Christ religious order would sexually abuse them... Salazar's horrific story, which has been corroborated by other victims and the Legion itself, has sparked a new credibility crisis for the once-influential order, 10 years after the Holy See took it over after determining that its founder was a pedophile. But more importantly, it has called into question the Vatican reform itself...

“[October 2022] is still the timeline we are working under,” SDA Director Derek Tournear said about the merge with Space Force during a Jan. 21 roundtable. “That works for a lot a of different [reasons] ... primarily that will allow us to have [satellites] up and operational, to be able to demonstrate the capabilities of a proliferated system and how that fits in.”...

"No matter what happens, nobody is going to win this election in a national landslide. Those don't happen anymore. Trump could lose. Will he lose? Well, that depends entirely on what he runs on," Carlson said on his show Monday night... "The candidate who makes it easier for 30-year-olds to get married and have kids will win the election and will deserve to win," Carlson prefaced his warning. "Improve people's lives, and they will vote for you. Period. Republicans ought to write that on their hands."...

Each generation, it now seems clear, needs to confront collectivism anew. As Ronald Reagan noted, “freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”

It has largely become an inter-generational battle as well, with idealistic young people with little or no experience of life—many of them educated by Marxist professors—rallying to the cries of diehard leftists. They seek to right real or imagined injustices while also hoping to get everything for free, including health care, education and a lifelong gratis lease on their parents’ basements...

Shari Guertin brought the case against the city of Flint and state officials in 2016, claiming her child was harmed by drinking lead-contaminated water... A federal district court dismissed state officials from the lawsuit but allowed the case against the city. A three-judge panel on the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals allowed her lawsuit to move forward...