Author: Sunfire

RT News

Google has put supercomputers in the pockets of millions of Americans and plans to have self-driving cars soon navigating the nation’s roads. Naturally, the tech giant says they’ll next have cloud-connected microphones inside ceilings everywhere.

That’s according to chief Google engineer Scott Huffman, who made his rounds among tech reporters this week to reveal what he has already envisioned for the Silicon Valley company’s future.   Continue reading “Ceiling microphones and inner-body microchips: Google engineer predicts company’s next steps”

RT News

The sharing of intelligence among American law enforcement agencies in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks is being conducted in a manner that resembles “organized chaos,” according to a new study published this week.

New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice published their findings on Tuesday by way of an 86-page report that contains their analysis of an investigation into dozens of local and federal law enforcement agencies across the United States, and how those offices disseminate on a large scale locally-collected activity reports that are regularly carelessly put together, then put into the hands of others.   Continue reading “Data sharing among US law enforcement agencies is in ‘chaos’”

RT News

Gun sales, profits, and share prices among top firearm manufacturers have rebounded since the mass shooting of December 2012 in Newtown, CT, exceeding levels seen before the tragic incident that left 26 dead at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

A financial disclosure Monday by the Freedom Group – a collection of gun manufacturers also known as Remington Outdoor Co., which makes the Bushmaster assault rifle used in Newtown – reported that its sales in the past year have risen as much as 36 percent.    Continue reading “Gun sales are up as support withers for tougher firearm restrictions”

Mail.com

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The parents of a Marine sergeant who died while stationed in Greece say that they discovered weeks after his funeral that his body had been sent home without a heart — and that the Department of Defense later gave them somebody else’s heart in its place.

Craig and Beverly LaLoup, who are suing the department, said Tuesday that authorities told them 21-year-old Brian LaLoup had shot himself in the head during a party at the U.S. Embassy compound in Athens, where he worked a security detail.   Continue reading “Suit: Marine’s body sent home to Pa. without heart”

RT News

The number of Americans incarcerated in federal prisons throughout the country has increased by nearly 30 percent over the past ten years, according to a new report by an investigative arm of Congress.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released Monday attributed the 27 percent surge in prison population to mandatory sentencing minimums. The practice, in which a judge’s discretion is almost completely removed from the sentencing process, mandates that nonviolent drug offenders are given pre-determined sentences. Critics have asserted that those prison terms are needlessly harsh and can put someone who presents no physical threat to society behind bars for decades.   Continue reading “US prison population jumps 27% in a decade over harsh drug sentencing”

Mail.com

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Bob Filner was sentenced Monday to three months of home confinement and three years of probation for harassing women while he was mayor of San Diego, completing the fall of the former 10-term congressman who barely a year ago achieved his long dream of being elected leader of the nation’s eighth-largest city.

Filner, who resigned amid widespread allegations of sexual harassment, pleaded guilty in October to one felony and two misdemeanors for placing a woman in a headlock, kissing another woman and grabbing the buttocks of a third.   Continue reading “Ex-San Diego mayor sentenced for harassment”

Mail.com

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Heavily armed riot troops broke into the offices of a top Ukrainian opposition party office in Kiev and seized its servers Monday, the party said, as anti-government protests crippled the capital for yet another day.

Elsewhere police dismantled or blocked off several small protest tent camps that near key national government buildings in the city. Tensions also rose as a double cordon of helmeted, shield-holding police deployed in the street near Kiev’s city administration building, which demonstrators had occupied and turned into a makeshift command post and dormitory.   Continue reading “Riot police storm opposition offices in Ukraine”

Mail.com

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — An inspection team from the U.N.’s nuclear agency will visit Libya to assess the thousands of barrels of yellowcake uranium that reportedly are being stored in a former military facility amid a “precarious” security situation in the country.

The International Atomic Energy Agency team will arrive in the North African country this month to “verify existing stockpiles and conditions of storage,” the U.N. secretary-general’s special representative to Libya told the Security Council on Monday.   Continue reading “IAEA will inspect Libya’s yellowcake stockpiles”

Mail.com

BANGKOK (AP) — Desperate to defuse Thailand’s deepening political crisis, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra dissolved Parliament’s lower house on Monday and called early elections. But protesters seeking to topple her vowed to carry on their fight, saying they cannot win the polls because of corruption.

A decree from King Bhumibol Adulyadej scheduled the elections on Feb. 2 and named Yingluck as interim prime minister until then. The protesters demanded that she resign as caretaker and rejected the election date, putting the strongly royalist movement at odds with the royal decree.   Continue reading “Thai PM dissolves Parliament, calls elections”

Mail.com

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — While the rest of North Korea’s top brass leaped to their feet before Kim Jong Un, clapping wildly in a requisite show of respect at high-level meetings, his uncle, Jang Song Thaek, often seemed nonchalant, at times even bored. Once considered the force behind the young leader, he displayed a bold insouciance that seemed calculated to show he was beyond reach.

So by purging his own uncle, Kim has delivered a more chilling message: No one is beyond reach, not even family. Jang’s fall from grace, accompanied by allegations from corruption to womanizing and capped by his dramatic arrest at a party meeting Sunday, has no doubt spooked Pyongyang’s elite. It also suggests Kim is still trying to consolidate the power he inherited from his father two years ago.   Continue reading “Purge sends chilling message to NKorea’s elite”

RT News

South Korea has announced it will expand its air defense zone in a move that could raise regional tensions with China. The new zone encroaches on air space that Beijing had previously claimed, sparking outrage from its Asian neighbors.

The South Korean government said that the new zone will come into effect December 15, AFP reported. The area included in the defense zone will encompass the Ieodo submerged rock formation that China calls Suyan.   Continue reading “South Korea expands air defense zone in territory row with China”

RT News

A recent maneuver out of the state attorney general’s office in Tennessee is being called unprecedented after officials there asked the Supreme Court for permission to execute 10 prisoners currently on death row.

Those ten inmates have been awaiting execution an average of more than 27 years, but the state put a hold on the practice of putting prisoners to death in 2011 after it was forced to surrender its supply of sodium thiopental, a sedative that had up until then been one of three components used in the lethal cocktail administered by executioners in Tennessee.   Continue reading “After acquiring necessary drug, Tennessee wants to execute 11 inmates”

RT News

The US Air Force is testing a large, top secret drone at Area 51, which outdoes the currently used unmanned aircrafts in terms of stealth and aerodynamic efficiency, US media report.

The new superior drone is scheduled to enter production and may be operational for the US Air Force as early as 2015, an exclusive report by Aviation Week magazine said.    Continue reading “US tests classified spy drone with ‘superior stealth, efficiency capabilities’”

RT News

Hundreds of protesters have broken into a Chevron site after the US oil giant resumed its search for shale gas in northeast Romania. RT’s Lucy Kafanov reports from the scene, where clashes ensued as riot police started streaming in.

Some 400 people gathered on Saturday in the village of Pungesti, according to local media.

RT’s Lucy Kafanov reports that the demonstration kicked off quite peacefully with the protesters chanting “Chevron go home.”   Continue reading “Anti-fracking clashes in Romania as activists break into Chevron site”

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Everywhere you go;
Take a look in the five and ten glistening once again
With candy canes and silver lanes aglow.
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Toys in every store
But the prettiest sight to see is the holly that will be
On your own front door.

A pair of hopalong boots and a pistol that shoots
Is the wish of Barney and Ben;
Dolls that will talk and will go for a walk
Is the hope of Janice and Jen;
And Mom and Dad can hardly wait for school to start again. School days school days dear old golden rules day don’t have to study don’t have to go look out the window it’s starting to snow   Continue reading ““It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas””

RT News

A tiny free app for Android devices turned them into a flashlight, but also secretly collected users’ location and device IDs to sell to mobile ad firms, the US Federal Trade Commission alleged. The app’s maker has agreed to settle compensation claims.

As many as 100 million people who installed the “Brightest Flashlight Free” app on their mobile phones and other devices were subject to the dubious practice. The FTC acted to investigate after complaints from tech-savvy users who wondered why a flashlight app would need to know a phone’s location.   Continue reading “Flashlight bug: Phone app spied on users for ad networks”

RT News

The US Navy has successfully launched an unmanned aerial system from a fully submerged submarine, marking the successful completion of a nearly six year long program designed to further the Navy’s drone capabilities.

The fuel-cell powered, completely electric unmanned aerial system (UAS) was developed by the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) with funding assistance provided by the Department of Defense Rapid Reaction Technology Office and the SwampWorks innovation program.   Continue reading “US Navy submarine fires drone from underwater”

RT News – by Robert Bridge

Buried deep inside a bulging US Army dossier relating to Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning’s court martial are 13 pages of online chat between Manning and a Wikileaks contact believed to be Julian Assange.

The communications, first published on the US Army’s FOIA reading room in late November but since removed, provide some interesting insight as to what may have motivated former US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to release the biggest haul of classified documents in US history.    Continue reading “‘Going to be one hell of a decade’ – Manning to Wikileaks (2010)”

RT News

Internet experts say huge chunks of sensitive web traffic have been routinely hijacked by hackers and diverted to foreign computers, compromising the data of victims in at least 150 cities worldwide.

Researchers at New Hampshire-based global internet intelligence company Renesys say that they’ve witnessed a complex type of Man-in-the-Middle attack occur on computer networks no fewer than 60 days this year already, the likes of which they say should never have happened.   Continue reading “Internet’s new biggest threat? How web traffic can be secretly redirected”