Four people - including one teenager - have been arrested in connection with the rape and subsequent death of Louisiana State University student Madi Brooks
The 19-year-old sorority girl was hit and killed by a vehicle on January 15
The East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office has now arrested Kaivon Washington, Casen Carver, Everett Lee, and an unnamed 17-year-old
Brooks had a blood alcohol level of .319 percent at the time of her death- meaning she was highly intoxicated at nearly four times the legal limit
#2
That seems reasonable, NN2N1. Sadly, the odds are that something bad would have happened to the young lady who chose to so badly cloud her thinking in an unsafe environment.
[USA Today] A Kansas man is dead after officials said he was struck by gunfire from a rifle that discharged when a dog stepped on it in a truck.
The fatal shooting took place in rural Kansas along a road in Sumner County, about 45 miles south of Wichita, Wellington Fire and EMS Chief Tim Hay told USA TODAY Wednesday.
The Sumner County Sheriff’s Office identified the victim as Joseph Austin Smith of Wichita.
According to the sheriff's office, deputies were dispatched to the scene Saturday morning for a male who had been shot in the back.
At the scene, EMS personnel administered CPR before the victim was pronounced dead, Hay said.
The driver of the truck, who was sitting next to Smith when the gun fired, was not hurt, Hay said.
[AT] More than two dozen hopeful pilots who were caught cheating on a written test in September 2022 while attending the Army’s flight school at Fort Rucker,
...soon to be renamed Fort Novosel, according to previous announcements...
Alabama, received a second chance and passed a retest on Thursday, according to command officials and an internal investigation.
Army Times obtained a 212-page internal investigation by an Army Aviation Center of Excellence officer detailing the cheating ring among officers and warrant officers attending the service’s initial entry rotary wing training course. They used an “altered” version of an official publication — which Army Times also obtained — that contained the answers to an open-book doctrine exam.
Aviation Center of Excellence spokesperson Lt. Col. Andy Thaggard confirmed the violations in a statement emailed to Army Times on Thursday in response to questions about the investigation. The spokesperson stressed that “all flight school students, regardless of if they are from the U.S. Army or one of our Allies and Partners, are briefed multiple times during orientation about...standards and expectations — including the Honor Code.”
Thaggard added that the center’s top general, Maj. Gen. Michael McCurry, met individually with the implicated students and decided to give “each Soldier...an opportunity to successfully complete flight school.”
None of the students faced court-martial for the cheating, nor did they receive any administrative punishments that would “have a lasting effect on their career,” Thaggard added in a phone interview.
#4
None of the students faced court-martial for the cheating, nor did they receive any administrative punishments that would “have a lasting effect on their career,” Thaggard added in a phone interview.
1. "No lasting effect..." You have gotta be joking. At the very least this goes in their document jacket and will follow them forever...
2. How many were part of the new 'oppressed classes' (not that we have a gender / racial / 'alternate life style' quota that has to be met, no sirree!)?
#7
You can cheat a test, but you can’t cheat the ground. The ground is very hard. If you are going to cheat on something, choose something other than the astronautics curriculum.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/25/2023 21:11 Comments ||
Top||
Critical Race Theory (CRT) creator Kimberlé Crenshaw pockets nearly half a million dollars a year from her law professor jobs at UCLA and Columbia - also charges up to $100,000 for public speeches
She instructs teachers on how best to peddle her theories in the classrooms
And she runs the African American Policy Forum and the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies, where she is the co-founder and executive director
It comes as seven states ban CRT in the classroom and 16 are considering bans
...and we wonder why kids are crazy. Surely this would lead to higher craziness in older people — children generally prefer milk chocolate, which the article does not point to as a risk.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Consumer Reports put out open letters to Hershey, Modelez International — which owns Cadbury — and Theo Chocolate and Trader Joe's on Monday, following the a report by the group in late 2022 which found high levels of lead and cadmium in the companies' dark chocolate products.
The watchdog highlighted that long-term exposure to the metals could result in nervous system problems, immune system suppression and kidney damage. Though there is no indication that any of the bars individually contain enough to cause harm
Last month, Consumer Reports said 23 of the 28 dark chocolate bars it tested included potentially harmful levels of lead, cadmium or both for people who eat more than one ounce of chocolate a day.
Cadmium is naturally in soil and is thought to get absorbed by cocoa plants during the harvesting process.
There currently is no national limit on lead and cadmium in chocolate bars set by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
[JustTheNews] Of the five deadliest shootings in the U.S. since 2020, four of the states in which they occurred have at least a "B" grade for gun laws from gun control nonprofit.
The mass shooting in California that left 10 people dead this weekend is the latest reminder that many of the deadliest mass shootings in America since COVID-19 have occurred in states with strict gun laws.
The worst mass shooting by far since the start of the COVID pandemic occurred in Uvalde, Texas, where when 21 elementary school students were killed. The Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence gives Texas an F grade for gun laws, as the state allows permitless carry and does not have restrictions on assault weapons, among other things.
However, of the five worst shootings in the United States since 2020, four of the states in which they occurred have at least a "B" grade from Giffords.
Excluding murder-suicides within a family, half of the ten deadliest mass shootings over this period occurred in states that received at least an "A-" gun law grade.
The ten, in order, are:
5/24/2022 Texas 12 killed at Robb Elementary
1/21/2023 California 10 killed at Monterey Park dance studio
3/22/2021 Colorado 10 killed in Boulder grocery store
5/14/2022 New York 10 killed in Buffalo supermarket
5/26/2021 California 9 killed in San Jose Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority
4/15/2021 Indiana 8 killed by former FedEx employee
3/16/2021 Georgia 8 killed at Atlanta area Asian massage parlors
7/4/2022 Illinois 7 killed ar Highland Park 4th of July parade
9/8/2020 California 7 killed at marijuana grow house
6/4/2020 Alabama 7 killed by members of a “Seven Deadly Sins” club at a member’s home
#2
They sort of skip over those cases someone stopped a mass murder when another carrier takes out the miscreant before he gets too far in his attempt to set a record.
#7
Doing the demographics, politics,and lifestyle background checks on the shooters.
A bunch on the list were murder-suicides catching whoever happened to be home at the time, as opposed to attempting to wipe out a crowd of strangers in public.
[Gateway] DirecTV announced it was de-platforming conservative Newsmax Channel this week.
DirecTV says they will drop Newsmax after they dropped the conservative channel OAN last year.
GOP lawmakers are promising to investigate this "red flag First Amendment violation" and have asked for DirecTV to turn over their ratings for each of their channels and the fees paid by the network to all of the channels.
This is despite the fact that DirecTV PAYS 11 liberal channels on its network lineup. DirecTV also lost NFL Ticket IIRC for 2023-24 season
#2
I don't miss DirecTV. Haven't had it for over 10 years.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/25/2023 9:01 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Entirely independent of this, Mr. Wife cancelled our DirecTV account this week. If I understand correctly, though I probably don’t, we are now to watch television shows on YouTube.
He manages our household budget the way he used to manage his work budget, so I’m sure he is not alone in this decision.
#8
I dumped cable TV a long time ago and saved a lot of money. I got tired of the predatory escalating pricing policies of cable. I also went the way of YouTube for some things and an inexpensive ROKU add-on for other things. I get more TV than available time. There is also a way that what is on you phone or pad can be "cast"onto you smart TV (most TV today are smart TVs).
#10
I use an old AppleTV box to output HDMI to my "smart" tv - whose features I don't use. I'm looking for a better monitor.
I haven't had cable for decades. I do pay YouTube a small amount to get rid of the ads - well worth it, but I have no interest in the YouTubeTV they keep flogging.
YouTube has a plethora of great DIY channels. Try Torbjörn Åhman, Essential Craftsman, or Living Traditions Homestead.
Also, Blancolirio (Juan Browne) has a lot of interesting stuff, non-DYI.
#3
Both articles make it sound like the DDOS attack is more likely Russian or criminal hackers than jihadis. Maybe North Korea? They have a group for that — remember the cyber attack on SONY when the Norks thought Pudgy was being unfairly maligned?
[JustTheNews] Those who once served to protect the nation are now using their intel smarts to regulate speech in America.
As Congress and the courts delve deeper into federally sanctioned censorship by Big Tech, a troubling revolving door has emerged between the U.S. intelligence community and the Big Tech giants on the front lines of one of the fiercest battles over free speech in modern American history.
A Just the News review of LinkedIn employment histories of senior Big Tech executives found that at least 200 former workers of the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Security Agency, National Security Council and Homeland Security Department have landed Silicon Valley jobs, many within content moderation units regulating supposed "disinformation" and disproportionately throttling news and opinion deviating from approved, left-tilting norms.
These individuals range from Aaron Berman, who spent a decade and a half as a CIA analyst before joining Facebook parent Meta as product policy manager for disinformation, to James Baker, the former FBI general counsel recently fired by Elon Musk as Twitter's chief lawyer over a spat about prior review of "Twitter Files" releases exposing past censorship by the platform. Baker was one of the key FBI figures involved in obtaining a FISA warrant based on the now-debunked Steele dossier to surveil onetime Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
The spooks-to-Silicon-Valley pipeline has sent an army of federal agents, intel analysts and even psychological operations experts once trained with taxpayer money to fight foreign enemies or capture big criminals into higher-paying private sector jobs where those same skills now target Americans' opinions in the name of fighting "disinformation."
None of the former intel world employees contacted by Just the News returned phone or email requests for comment. But in videos posted online, some acknowledged they are part of a new vanguard of Big Tech censors operating in a world where there is little consensus about what should be done and what is legal.
"There is very little agreement whether we should be leaving more content up or taking more content down," Berman said in a video posted on Meta's site. "With any particular rule or issue that we're looking at where something has come up, where the rules are not 100 percent clear, we're not going to make everybody happy."
Berman, whose LinkedIn biography boasts he used to prepare the presidential daily brief at the CIA, acknowledged there is some discomfort in the power he now wields in his new role in Big Tech to decide the difference between "harmful content" and free speech.
"It's a balance," he said in the video. "I think it should make me uncomfortable, and all of us who do this work."
Some of the federal intel veterans are less inhibited about expressing biases. For example, Nick Rossmann, former CIA analyst and current senior manager of Trust & Safety at Google, overtly supported defeated 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, said Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner should be strangled and declared, "Anti-vaxxers are like Nazis."
During the COVID-19 outbreak, Rossmann even seemed to wish death on elderly Trump voters, tweeting, "I hope they cough on their grandparents, who voted for Trump, & get to rot."
Jacqueline Lopour, another Hillary Clinton supporter and former CIA analyst — she served for 10 years in the agency — is currently Google Senior Manager, Intel Collection, Trust & Safety. In that capacity, she manages "Intel operations spanning multiple threat verticals, including violent extremism, cyber threats, misinformation, hate speech, spam, fraud, security and privacy, and more," according to her LinkedIn bio.
In a 2017 Canadian Broadcasting Company interview, Lopour invoked her CIA experience to uncritically vouch for the agency's assessment that Russia meddled in U.S. politics to tip the 2016 election in favor of Donald Trump, saying, "They [Russia] deliberately released the DNC information to @wikileaks ... with the specific motivation of helping Trump get elected."
Further LinkedIn profile checks revealed several other key members of Big Tech teams who served in either the Department of Defense, CIA, FBI, NSA, or DHS. The growing pipeline of intelligence and law enforcement officials was previously documented in detail by an anonymous Twitter account posted by the user @NameRedacted247 in a 30-part Twitter thread.
Former President Donald Trump weighed in on the issue with a video message, touting his proposal to end the revolving door between the Deep State" and the "tech tyrants" by imposing "a 7-year cooling off period, before any employee of these powerful agencies is allowed to take a job at a major platform."
Recent reporting "shows the FBI and other rogue agencies have been systematically colluding with former national security officials placed in high positions at Twitter and very likely other companies to advance their censorship regime," said Trump.
"This anti-American effort," he went on, has been "working to silence dissenting opinions on COVID and crucial issues in public health and on the [2020] election." The suppression of dissenting doctors and health experts "had nothing to do with science" or "saving lives," he alleged. "This was about government working with powerful corporations to seize power over you, the American people."
Twitter currently employs at least 10 former FBI agents, according to LinkedIn profile checks performed by Just The News.
Just the News reached out to several former members of the intelligence community now employed by Big Tech for comment but has received no replies.
Just the News also reached out to Facebook, Google, and Twitter, along with the FBI, NSA, and DOD, but only received a brief response from the CIA which read, "CIA's intelligence mission is foreign focused, and the Agency at all times abides by US laws, regulations, and executive orders that prohibit unlawful collection related to US persons."
The FBI field office in Washington, D.C. refused to comment directly, while the NSA recommended reaching out and questioning each Big Tech firm individually.
#2
The deep state is pushing its tentacles everywhere we can't speak out against them. Nobody votes for these executives.
Pretty soon, we won't be able to speak out at all. They'll be able to start any new wars they like. Remember last year how they wanted to start a nuclear armageddon?
[Garowe] The economies in the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council will grow this year at half the rate of 2022 as oil revenues take a hit from an expected mild global slowdown, according to the median view from a Rooters poll of economists.
Crude oil prices, a major driver for Gulf economies, are down more than a third from last year's highs and were expected to remain under pressure this year over fears of a recession in major economies sapping demand.
It’s a little late to fear a recession when the usual indicator — 6 months/2 quarters of negative GDP growth — has apparently already happened. Although I really do wonder how much the oil price drop is related to new discoveries around the world.
Overall growth in the six GCC economies was forecast to average 3.3 percent and 2.8 percent this year and next respectively, the Jan. 9-23 poll showed, down from 4.2 percent and 3.3 percent in the previous poll.
"The outlook for 2023 is more cautious given the weaker external environment, although the GCC will likely continue to outperform many developed economies in terms of GDP growth," wrote Khatija Haque, head of research and chief economist at Emirates NBD.
"While oil and gas output growth is expected to slow this year, continued investment to boost production capacity in the region should see the sector contribute positively to headline GDP again in 2023."
Brent crude is expected to average $89.37 a barrel in 2023, nearly 4.6 percent lower than the $93.65 consensus in a November survey and lower than an average of $99 per barrel seen last year, a separate Rooters poll showed.
Saudi Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. Fifteen of the nineteen WTC hijackers were Saudis, and most major jihadi commanders were Saudis, to include Osama bin Laden. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman quietly folded that tent in 2016, doing terrible things to the guys running it, and has since been dragging the kingdom into the current century... , the region's largest economy and top crude oil exporter, was forecast to grow 3.4 percent this year and 3.1 percent in 2024, slightly outperforming the region as a whole. The economy expanded at a record pace of 8.8 percent in 2022.
Economic growth in the UAE was expected at 3.3 percent this year, down from 6.4 percent last year.
Among other Gulf countries — Qatar ...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi... , Oman, and Bahrain — growth was expected at 2.4 percent - 2.7 percent for 2023. Kuwait was seen growing at 1.7 percent.
Despite lower oil GDP growth, non-oil growth was expected to remain resilient in 2023, economists in the survey said.
Analysts expected continued current account surpluses for the main Gulf economies, based on relatively high oil prices.
Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, and Kuwait were predicted to see double-digit growth in current account surpluses in 2023, with Oman and Bahrain in single digits.
The inflation outlook was modest, but varied, with the lowest in Oman at 1.9 percent and the highest at 3.1 percent in the UAE.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
01/25/2023 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11124 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Saudi Arabia
[IsraelTimes] Group allegedly aimed to create ’civil war-like conditions’ in Germany, violent mostly peacefully overthrow democratic government, restore authoritarian 19th-century Reich.
Five Germans have been charged with treason over a far-right plot to overthrow the government that included plans to abduct the health minister, prosecutors said Monday.
The four men and a woman were arrested in recent months over the plot, with German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach — unpopular among far-right groups because of anti-Covid measures — confirming that he was targeted.
They were charged on January 16 and face counts ranging from founding a domestic terror group to preparing a treasonous act and violating weapons laws, the federal prosecutors’ office said.
The group aimed to "trigger civil war-like conditions in Germany by means of violence... to cause the overthrow of the government and parliamentary democracy," it said in a statement.
The suspects accepted that fatalities could result from the attempted overthrow, it added.
It said the group’s ideology was "shaped" by the woman charged — identified only as Elisabeth R. — and was centered on the belief that the modern German state was not legitimate.
Instead, they claimed that the German Empire of the 19th century was the country’s true system of government and that an authoritarian ruling order should be re-established.
Their beliefs chime with those of the far-right Reichsbuerger (Citizens of the Reich) movement, which rejects Germany’s democratic institutions and has attracted a growing number of followers.
’MILITARY, ADMINISTRATIVE ARMS’
The five members organized themselves into "military" and "administrative" arms to plan the coup, prosecutors said.
It involved triggering a "long-lasting, nationwide blackout by damaging or destroying important power supply facilities," and then abducting Lauterbach, with his bodyguards killed if necessary.
A special assembly would then be called in Berlin to publicly depose the government and appoint a new leader, prosecutors said.
They had sought support via the Telegram messaging app.
One of the accused, Sven B., was to lead the abduction of Lauterbach, while Thomas O. scouted areas as part of plans to trigger blackouts and obtained maps of electricity infrastructure, prosecutors said.
The two men also tried to procure explosives, which they wanted to import from the former Yugoslavia, and Thomas O. was arrested after obtaining assault rifles, handguns, and ammunition.
Elisabeth R., along with three others, was in charge of recruiting potential members.
"She insisted on quick implementation of the plan and repeatedly named specific dates," prosecutors said.
Another far-right group planning to overthrow the government — including an ex-MP and aristocrat — was uncovered in December, though authorities have not linked that group to the one that plotted to abduct Lauterbach.
#3
Overthrow the government by abducting the Health Minister? This sounds rather like the 'plot' to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and set her adrift in a boat in Lake Michigan.
[NewsMax] Former President Donald Trump beats Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in a possible Republican Party primary showdown and leads President Joe Biden in a hypothetical 2024 rematch, a new Emerson College poll reveals.
The poll results, released Tuesday, show:
44% of respondents say they would vote for Trump in 2024, compared to 41% who say they would cast their ballot for Biden. The poll's margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
10% of respondents say they would vote for someone else.
55% of respondents say they would vote for Trump in the 2024 Republican primary, compared to 29% who say they would vote for DeSantis. Other Republicans receiving support include former Vice President Mike Pence (6%) and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley (3%).
55% of respondents say they expect Trump to be the nominee regardless of whom they support, compared to 35% who say they expect DeSantis to be the nominee.
58% of Democrat primary or caucus voters say Biden should be the party's nominee in 2024.
42% of respondents say it should be someone else.
44% of voters say they approve of the job Biden is doing compared to 48% who disapprove.
The poll, conducted Jan. 19-21, surveyed 1.015 registered voters.
Posted by: Skidmark ||
01/25/2023 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11130 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#1
That’s like 2/3 of the US with no power. Should be an opportunity to learn how to do a black start on a massive scale. What to do - what not to do. Hopefully their nuclear power plants will have adequate backup power to maintain their cooling systems intact until the grid restores power to them.
#5
I used to call on engineers at WAPDA (Water and Power Development Authority) in the early’90’s. A hive of corruption and shiftless bureaucracy. I’m surprised this isn’t an annual event.
#2
Let's see.... hummm sitting around highly combustible rocket fuel, and couple 100 lbs of RAD producing weapons... I guess that could have something to do with it..
#7
NASA and their fake Mission Control full of Diverse and hyper-stoked about space participants is the best PR they've done since they fired that actual technician who was actually excited about that mission for his Hawaiian shirt's pattern.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[USA Today] A Kansas man is dead after officials said he was struck by gunfire from a rifle that discharged when a dog stepped on it in a truck.
[AT] More than two dozen hopeful pilots who were caught cheating on a written test in September 2022 while attending the Army’s flight school at 
[Gateway] DirecTV announced it was de-platforming conservative Newsmax Channel this week.
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. Fifteen of the nineteen WTC hijackers were Saudis, and most major jihadi commanders were Saudis, to include Osama bin Laden. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman quietly folded that tent in 2016, doing terrible things to the guys running it, and has since been dragging the kingdom into the current century...
