Tag: All Regions

We’ve written a lot about AB 2273, California’s Age Appropriate Design Code (AADC) that requires websites with users in California to try to determine the ages of all their visitors, write up dozens of reports on potential harms, and then seek to mitigate those harms. I’ve written about why it’s literally impossible to comply with the law. We’ve had posts on how it conflicts with privacy laws and how it’s a radical experimentation on children (ironically, the drafters of the…

Governments around the world are cracking down on free speech. What they are demanding includes the ability to read private encrypted text messages and invade homes in search of wrongspeech. Their demands thus go far beyond what the Censorship Industrial Complex was able to get away with over the last six years. And things are getting worse. Last week, the European Union announced it would punish Twitter for withdrawing from its supposedly “voluntary” censorship laws. “Twitter leaves EU voluntary code…

The symposium that was to take place on Sunday aimed to honor the memory of Dominique Venner, a historian who took his life exactly 10 years ago in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris as a “sacrifice” to “break with the lethargy that is overwhelming us,” to “awaken slumbering consciences.” “I rebel against fate. I protest against poisons of the soul and the desires of invasive individuals to destroy the anchors of our identity, including the family, the intimate basis of our…

Epstein’s calendars show the financier meeting with A-listers including tech billionaires Bill Gates and Peter Thiel, music executive Tommy Mottola, artist Jeff Koons, magician David Blaine, and filmmaker Woody Allen – all after being required to register as a sex offender as part of the sweetheart plea deal that allowed him to serve less than two years under house arrest.  Allen, whose ex-wife and her children have accused him of molesting one adopted daughter and who married his other adopted…

WASHINGTON — More than 1 million F-35 spare parts worth at least $85 million have gone missing over at least the last five years, according to a new Government Accountability Office report criticizing the program’s supply tracking. Auditors said that because the government doesn’t have its own system tracking those parts, officials may not truly know how many spare parts are actually in the global spares pool, where they are, or their total value. As a result, “the full quantity…

Aderrien Murry, 11, called the police as his mother asked — but when officers arrived, one of them shot him in the chest. A new lawsuit says officials failed to train and supervise its officers. Courtesy of Nakala Murry The family of Aderrien Murry has filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Indianola, Miss., and at least two police officials, after an officer shot 11-year-old Murry in the chest after the boy placed a 911 call on May 20….

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — On the way to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton becoming a rising figure in the GOP, his wife, Angela, used to entertain crowds with a guitar and a song. “I’m a pistol-packin’ mama, and my husband sues Obama,” she sang at campaign events and Republican clubs in Texas. When it came time for the high school teacher and guidance counselor to launch her own political career, a $2 million loan from her husband propelled Angela Paxton…

Michael Sasso, a Florida attorney, was selected by DeSantis to join the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, which gained control of Walt Disney World’s special tax district through recent legislation. The reason for Sasso’s resignation remains unclear.However, Governor DeSantis appointed Sasso’s wife, Judge Meredith Sasso, to the state’s Supreme Court just last week. The latter’s husband is the managing partner of Sasso and Sasso, P.A., a law practice specializing in election law, complex business, and construction litigation.In response, Disney filed a lawsuit against DeSantis and other state officials, accusing them of harming its business by revoking Disney World’s self-governing status and engaging in a targeted campaign of government retaliation. The lawsuit claims that DeSantis orchestrated these actions to punish Disney’s protected speech, threatening its business operations, economic future, and constitutional rights.Governor DeSantis, who recently announced his official 2024 White House bid, has continued to clash with Disney. He recently filed a motion to disqualify the judge overseeing the First Amendment case, citing the judge’s previous comments regarding the Disney feud.

India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed a complaint on Monday against British multinational aerospace and defense company Rolls Royce, the company’s former India director – Tim Jones, arms dealer Sudhir Choudhrie and his son Bhanu Choudhrie (who are UK citizens), and British Aerospace Systems (BAE Systems). The allegations include criminal conspiracy, cheating and corruption in a 2004 procurement of training jets India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) — the country’s premier probe agency — on Monday registered a complaint…

A former Federal Security Service officer said Putin could be overthrown by Wagner. The Wagner Army is Putin’s private military army, largely made up of mercenaries. The Army chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, could pose an active threat to Putin, said the war analyst. Vladimir Putin could be ousted by Russia’s private military group, the Wagner army, according to Igor Girkin, a former Federal Security Service officer who once led a group of Russian militants in Donetsk. Girkin, who is also known…

Schwartz was using ChatGPT for legal research for the first time when he put it to work drafting the ten-page brief he hoped would convince Manhattan Federal Judge P. Kevin Castel not to dismiss his case, he told the court in an affidavit on Thursday, explaining that he “therefore was unaware of the possibility that its content could be false.”   When asked, ChatGPT even told Schwartz – a lawyer with 30 years of experience – that the half dozen…

PORTLAND, Ore.—After a six-week trial in Portland, a federal jury found three former executives of Aequitas Management, LLC, and associated companies, guilty today for their roles in a vast fraud conspiracy. Evidence at trial showed the conspirators raised nearly $300 million from defrauded investors. Robert J. Jesenik, 63, former chief executive officer of Aequitas and resident of Lake Oswego, Oregon; Andrew N. MacRitchie, 59, formerly of Palm Harbor, Florida; and Brian K. Rice, 56, of Portland were found guilty of…

While Ukrainian forces tend to treat each new addition to their arsenal supplied by the West as a game changer, their jubilation tends to be short-lived as Russian forces swiftly learn how to deal with these threats. A Storm Shadow cruise missile Kiev recently got from the UK proved to be no exception.Yesterday, Russian air defense units operating in the Ukrainian conflict zone shot down two Storm Shadow missiles, as well as several other airborne threats.Also, some 12 UAVs operated by Kiev forces were shot down by Russian air defense units in Russia’s Lugansk People’s Republic, Donetsk People’s Republic and Zaporozhye region.The United States and its allies have supplied billions of dollars worth of weapons and military hardware – including small arms, artillery, multiple launch rocket systems and air defense systems – to Ukraine, fanning the flames of the ongoing conflict in the country and effectively helping prolong the fighting and the suffering of the Ukrainian civilians.

CISA warned of a recently patched zero-day vulnerability exploited last week to hack into Barracuda Email Security Gateway (ESG) appliances. Barracuda says its security solutions are used by more than 200,000 organizations worldwide, including high-profile companies like Samsung, Mitsubishi, Kraft Heinz, and Delta Airlines. The U.S. cybersecurity agency also added the bug (CVE-2023-2868) to its catalog of security flaws exploited in the wild based on this evidence of active exploitation. Federal Civilian Executive Branch Agencies (FCEB) agencies must patch or…

Mila Antonova – a bridge player who multiple media reports this week claim had an affair with Gates starting in 2009 – was captured in a newly unearthed photograph walking alongside Chapman in New York City. The picture, which is believed to have been taken in 2009 or 2010, around the same time as Gates’ alleged trysts with the decades-younger Antonova, the newspaper claims. The report adds that Antonova was an “associate and financial beneficiary of the late financier and…

CorruptionLedger commentary in red.   Twitter has pulled out of the European Union’s voluntary code to fight disinformation, the EU has said. Thierry Breton, who is the EU’s internal market commissioner, announced the news on Twitter – but warned the firm new laws would force compliance. “Obligations remain. You can run but you can’t hide,” he said. Twitter will be legally required to fight disinformation in the EU from 25 August, he said, adding: “Our teams will be ready for…