From the Trenches World Report

RT News

A federal judge has ruled that a New Orleans newspaper must turn over information it has about anonymous commenters as part of an investigation into prosecutorial misconduct in the Danziger Bridge shootings that took place following Hurricane Katrina.

US Magistrate Judge Joseph Wilkinson decided Tuesday in favor of a lawyer for Stacey Jackson, the former New Orleans Affordable Homeownership executive director who has been accused of misusing federal funds before and after Hurricane Katrina for personal benefit. Theft and bribery are among the charges she is facing.   Continue reading “New Orleans paper must reveal online commenters’ identities – judge”

RT News

The art of cyber-stalking is about to get an upgrade, as a team of computer whizzes on Kickstarter.com work towards a pocket-sized drone that is silent, maneuverable and, most importantly, so easy to set up it could probably be used by a chimpanzee.

What’s more, the “world’s first multicopter” is built well enough to carry a portable camera – any camera, in fact, as long as it’s about 15 grams in weight – and can even be operated from an Android phone or tablet via a USB port.   Continue reading “Photographers and stalkers rejoice – pocket drones coming soon”

Mail.com

DALLAS (AP) — The pregnant, brain-dead Texas woman being kept on life support over her family’s protests is carrying a fetus that is “distinctly abnormal,” attorneys for the woman’s husband said Wednesday.

Marlise Munoz remains hooked up to machines in a Fort Worth hospital, while her husband and the hospital are locked in a court battle about whether to retain life support. The case has raised questions about end-of-life care and whether a pregnant woman who is considered legally and medically dead should be kept on life support for the sake of a fetus. The case has gotten the attention of groups on either side of the abortion debate, as anti-abortion groups argue Munoz’s fetus deserves a chance to be born.   Continue reading “Attorneys: Brain-dead woman’s fetus ‘abnormal’”

Mail.com

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The largest object in the asteroid belt just got more attractive: Scientists have confirmed signs of water on the dwarf planet Ceres, one of the few bodies in the solar system to hold that distinction.

Peering through the Herschel Space Observatory, a team led by the European Space Agency detected water plumes spewing from two regions on Ceres. The observations, published in Thursday’s issue of Nature, come as NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is set to arrive at the Texas-sized dwarf planet next year.   Continue reading “Telescope spies water plumes on dwarf planet Ceres”

Mail.com

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Tensions in Ukraine spread far from its embattled capital on Thursday as hundreds of people in the city of Lviv stormed into the regional governor’s office and forced him to write a letter of resignation.

Kiev, the capital, has been the epicenter of two months of protests against President Viktor Yanukovych after he turned away from closer ties to the 28-nation European Union in favor of getting a bailout loan from Russia. The protests have turned violent this week as pro-EU demonstrators feel Yanukovych has ignored their demands to resign, call a new election and rescind his harsh laws against protesters.    Continue reading “Tensions in Ukraine spread to second major city”

Mail.com

SAN DIEGO (AP) — A man who went from teenage millionaire to convicted con artist to professional fraud fighter and pastor was convicted Wednesday of cheating his San Diego church congregation out of some $3 million.

Barry Minkow pleaded guilty to embezzling funds from the San Diego Community Bible Church, a U.S. attorney’s statement said. He was already serving a five-year sentence for a securities fraud conviction in Florida and could get five additional years when he is sentenced for the new conviction April 7.   Continue reading “Conman-turned-pastor convicted of cheating church”

Ben Swann – by Michael Lotfi

NASHVILLE, January 22, 2014–  As eight states have introduced legislation to keep the NSA out of their borders, Tennessee’s newly introduced legislation packs the strongest punch yet.

The bill is known as the “Tennessee Fourth Amendment Protection Act”. State Senator Stacey Campfield (R) and State Representative Andy Holt (R) are the Senate and House sponsors. The bill was drafted and lobbied for by the Tenth Amendment Center, a national think-tank, which seeks to impede unconstitutional federal laws, regulations and entities on the state level.   Continue reading “Tennessee Files Historic Legislation; Takes Aim at State’s NSA Facility”

Philosophy of My Metrics – by JC Collins

In essence, China has been slowly buying up the Federal Reserve for some time now.  If you can call it a purchase.  Its more of a negotiation over assuming the liabilities of both the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury.

The Federal Reserve is the largest holder of U.S. debt at $2.1 trillion.  China is second at $1.3 trillion.  Think of it as the United States government doing a debt consolidation of all its treasury bonds because it can no longer pay or service the debt.   Continue reading “China to Purchase the Federal Reserve”

Lew Rockwell by David Hathaway

 

There is a lot of chatter amongst conservative “2^nd Amendment cops” and military folks about how they will not obey the orders when the grand pronouncement is made to take guns. It will be a cop sit out. What will really happen is quite different. Your Republican cop or military buddy will gladly and patriotically take your guns.

 

Gun grabs and grabs of anything else – children, money, real estate, raw milk – don’t come down the chain of command as such. There is not an edict that comes out saying:   Continue reading “Your 2nd Amendment Cop Buddy Will Take Your Guns”

PC World – by Jeremy Kirk

Cybercriminals have stolen payment card data from six more U.S. retailers using similar point-of-sale malware that compromised Target, a computer crime intelligence company said Friday.

The conclusion comes from a study of members-only forums where cybercriminals buy and sell data and malicious software tools, said Dan Clements, president of IntelCrawler, which conducted the analysis.   Continue reading “Six more US retailers attacked like Target, security firm says”

World Events and the Bible

WEB Notes: The people say, concerning the return of Christ. 2Pe 3:4  “And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.” Things are changing very rapidly my friends, are you spiritually awake to discern the sign of the times? 

(Economic Collapse Blog) – If the extreme drought in the western half of the country keeps going, the food supply problems that we are experiencing right now are only going to be the tip of the iceberg.  As you will see below, the size of the U.S. cattle herd has dropped to a 61 year low, and organic food shortages are being reported all over the nation.  Continue reading “U.S. Cattle Herd Is At A 61 Year Low And Organic Food Shortages Are Being Reported All Over America”

Economic Times

BEIJING: About 34 million Chinese males would have to look outside China to find brides as male population continue to heavily outnumber the women population in the world’s most populous country.

China had 697.2 million males and 663.4 million females in 2013, which meant that there were 33.8 million more men than women, head of China’s National Bureau of Statistic, (NBS) Ma Jiantang, today said.    Continue reading “Skewed sex-ratio may force Chinese men to marry foreigners”

Mail.com

MONTREUX, Switzerland (AP) — Furiously divided from the start, representatives of Syrian President Bashar Assad and the rebellion against him threatened Wednesday to collapse a peace conference intended to lead them out of civil war.

Assad’s future in the country devastated by three years of bloodshed was at the heart of the sparring, which took place against a pristine Alpine backdrop as Syrian forces and rebel fighters clashed across a wide area from Aleppo and Idlib in the north to Daraa in the south.   Continue reading “Peace talks on Syria stuck over Assad’s future”

Mail.com

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and his wife are accused of taking at least $165,000 in loans and gifts to help the chief executive of a health supplement company peddle his products. But proving the couple broke the law may be difficult.

Legal experts say the case hinges on whether prosecutors can show that McDonnell agreed to provide specific favors in exchange for the gifts, a tough task given the fine line between what is illegal versus what is unseemly. And prosecutors will need to prove the McDonnells abused their positions and conspired together to sell their influence.   Continue reading “Lawyers: Case against ex-Va. governor no slam dunk”

Mail.com

SUMTER, S.C. (AP) — Lawyers finally got the chance to argue on behalf of George Stinney, 70 years after the 14-year-old black boy was sent to the electric chair for killing two white girls in South Carolina.

Whether his conviction from that segregation-era court is tossed out is now up to Judge Carmen Mullen after a two-day hearing concluded Wednesday. She gave both sides at least 10 more days to consult witnesses and make more arguments.   Continue reading “SC judge gets case of new trial for executed teen”

Mail.com

CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) — An 86-year-old Nevada woman shot by her husband while hospitalized died Wednesday and her spouse of more than six decades was charged with murder, authorities said.

Frances Dresser of Douglas County died from injuries suffered when she was shot once in the chest Sunday while at Carson-Tahoe Regional Medical Center, Carson City Sheriff Ken Furlong said. Her husband told officers he planned to “end his wife’s suffering” by killing her and then himself, but his gun jammed, police said.   Continue reading “Woman shot at Nev. hospital dies; husband charged”

NJ.com – by Michaelangelo Conte/The Jersey Journal, January 20, 2014

Residents in northern New Jersey and New York City will see a low-flying helicopter in the upcoming days as it surveys naturally occurring background radiation as a security measure for the upcoming Super Bowl, officials said today.

The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration will use a twin-engine Bell 412 helicopter equipped with radiation sensing technology, flying in a grid covering about 10 square miles at altitudes of 150 feet or higher at about 80 miles per hour, according to the New Jersey Office of Emergency Management.   Continue reading “Choppers to scan background radiation as Super Bowl security measure”

MassPrivateI

The type and amount of personal, family, and non-academic data collected by the schools, reported in state longitudinal databases and used for research by the federal government was stimulated by the passage of the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 (ESRA) and has grown rapidly since then.  Loss of student and family data privacy has been accelerated by the proliferation of education programs funded by the federal government, especially in the early childhood realm and including home visiting programs that collect a plethora of medical, psychological, and family data and the effort to integrate standards, programs and data literally from “cradle to career” through P-20W education program integration.   Continue reading “Common Core creates a womb-to-tomb dossier on kids and families”