From the Trenches World Report

Fast Company

Police in Raleigh, North Carolina, have presented Google with warrants to obtain data from mobile phones from not just specific suspects who were in a crime scene area, but from the mobile phones of all people in the area, reports Raleigh television affiliate WRAL.

The request will trouble Fourth Amendment advocates as it could be seen that police are carrying out unreasonable searches on people who just happened to be in the area at the time the crimes were committed.    Continue reading “Raleigh police are asking Google to provide user data for all people near crime scenes”

Sent to us by Clay.

KCRA 3 News

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Los Angeles city prosecutors have charged two men with unlawful firearms storage following investigations into separate gun violence threats allegedly made last month by their teenage sons at two high schools.

City Attorney Mike Feuer announced the filings Monday, saying that locking up firearms not only saves lives, it’s the law.   Continue reading “2 California parents charged with unlawful gun storage”

NBC Connecticut – by Heather Burian

Students across the nation walked out of school Wednesday in honor of the victims of the Parkland shooting last month, including a group of New London kindergarteners.

“We love school! We love school,” children in New London are chanting in a video posted on Facebook.

While people involved in the walkout involving a group of 5-year-olds at Harbor Elementary School said the demonstration was about school safety, student safety and parent permission have been called into question.    Continue reading “New London Kindergartners Walkout Drums Up Concerns”

New York Times

LONDON — As the upstart voter-profiling company Cambridge Analytica prepared to wade into the 2014 American midterm elections, it had a problem.

The firm had secured a $15 million investment from Robert Mercer, the wealthy Republican donor, and wooed his political adviser, Stephen K. Bannon, with the promise of tools that could identify the personalities of American voters and influence their behavior. But it did not have the data to make its new products work.

Continue reading “How Trump Consultants Exploited the Facebook Data of Millions”

Fox News

Caterpillar Inc. could layoff nearly 900 employees through closures of two facilities in Texas and Panama and a possible third shutdown of a manufacturing plant in Illinois, in a corporate restructuring that company officials said has been in the works for months.

The closure of the work tools facility in Waco, Texas, and a demonstration center in Panama would affect a total of about 280 full-time and contract jobs. Caterpillar subsidiary Progress Rail is also “contemplating the closure” of an engine manufacturing facility in LaGrange, Illinois.   Continue reading “Caterpillar could lay off 900 workers amid facility closures”

Yahoo News

NEW YORK (AP) — When the Kushner Cos. bought three apartment buildings in a gentrifying neighborhood of Queens in 2015, most of the tenants were protected by special rules that prevent developers from pushing them out, raising rents and turning a tidy profit.

But that’s exactly what the company then run by Jared Kushner did, and with remarkable speed. Two years later, it sold all three buildings for $60 million, nearly 50 percent more than it paid.   Continue reading “Kushner Cos. filed false NYC housing paperwork”

BBC

A local lawmaker in Washington, DC, has apologised for sharing a video based on a conspiracy theory that Jewish financiers control the weather.

Councilman Trayon White Sr posted a video of snow flurries on Friday and warned of “climate manipulation”.

He blamed the Rothschilds, a famous Jewish business dynasty, who are a target of anti-Semitic conspiracies.   Continue reading “Lawmaker sorry for spreading anti-Semitic weather conspiracy”

KTVL 10 News

TEMPE, Ariz. (AP) — Police in a Phoenix suburb say one of Uber’s self-driving vehicles has struck and killed a pedestrian.

Police in the city of Tempe said Monday that the vehicle was in autonomous mode with an operator behind the wheel when the woman walking outside of a crosswalk was hit.  Continue reading “Uber self-driving vehicle hits, kills pedestrian in Arizona”

Foreign Affairs Committee

“This is long overdue and needed,” says Foreign Affairs Chairman Royce 

Washington, D.C. – Today, the president signed into law the Taiwan Travel Act (H.R. 535). Championed by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-CA), the bipartisan legislation encourages visits between the United States and Taiwan at all levels.   Continue reading “Taiwan Travel Act Becomes Law”

Action Network

International pop star Lorde is scheduled to perform in Tampa, Florida on April 11th and Miami, Florida on April 12th for thousands of adoring fans.

But Florida politicians are now trying to pressure Tampa and Miami to cancel these concerts.   Continue reading “Do not cancel Lorde’s Florida concerts because of anti-free speech laws!”

Jon Rappoport

“Whether he went on with the diary, or whether he did not go on with it, made no difference. The Thought Police would get him just the same. He had committed—would still have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper—the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.” (George Orwell, “1984”)

Welcome back, George. Things are playing out as you predicted.  Continue reading “The London police now have a firm definition of thought-crime – And they’re going to use it”

The Mind Unleashed – by Claire Bernish

With honey bee populations still in peril from one or several of a litany of hotly debated causes — neonicotinoid insecticides, changing climate, and more — Walmart appears to have joined the race for a technological solution to a potential looming disaster, filing a patent for robotic, drone bees earlier this month.

Technically called pollination drones, Business Insider points out, the tiny bee imposters’ capabilities would theoretically include crop pollination — managed remotely through sensors and cameras allowing precision maneuverability between crops and monitor, as well as to monitor that pollination was both sufficient and successful.   Continue reading “Raising Countless Eyebrows, Walmart Files Patent for Autonomous Bee Drones”