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https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/convicted-paedophile-given-custody-of-young-girl-and-gets-her-pregnant/

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https://www.axios.com/2023/01/20/faa-outage-workers-files

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said Thursday that last week's computer system outage that temporarily grounded all U.S. airline departures was caused by the accidental removal of files.

Driving the news: A preliminary review determined that "contract personnel unintentionally deleted files while working to correct synchronization between the live primary database and a backup database," the agency said in a statement.

The big picture: The outage of the system that sends pilots safety alerts and other critical information caused thousands of delays and cancellations and cost airlines billions of dollars.

Details: The FAA, which is still investigating the outage, has so far found no evidence of a cyber-attack or malicious intent, per the agency.

They've made the necessary repairs to the system and taken steps to make the Notice to Air Missions System system more resilient, according to the statement.

What they're saying: "The agency is acting quickly to adopt any other lessons learned in our efforts to ensure the continuing robustness of the nation’s air traffic control system," the FAA said.

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Neymar is the first man to appear on Lisa's Insta, of BLACKPINK. (BLΛƆKPIИK)

https://www.ofuxico.com.br/futebol/neymar-e-o-primeiro-homem-a-aparecer-no-insta-de-lisa-do-blackpink/

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https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/education/2023/01/23/fearing-prosecution-manatee-county-teachers-cover-up-classroom-books/69832276007/

Fearing prosecution under a new law on library books, a group of teachers in Florida are using construction paper to hide their classrooms’ libraries from students. Manatee County School District Superintendent Kevin Chapman said teachers were instructed to remove books from their classrooms that had not yet been approved by a media specialist, who would determine if the content was “free of pornography” and appropriate for the designated grade level. However, rather than going through the process of checking whether their books—sometimes hundreds—had been authorized, teachers closed up shop altogether and fashioned construction-paper barriers to keep students from selecting any of the reading materials. “If you have a lot of books like I do, probably several hundred, it is not practical to run all of them through (the vetting process) so we have to cover them up,” Manatee High School teacher Don Falls said. “It is not only ridiculous but a very scary attack on fundamental rights.” Some teachers posted photos of their locked-up books on social media, demonstrating the exhausting book-vetting process. “It’s a scary thing to have elementary teachers have to worry about being charged with a third-degree felony because of trying to help students develop a love of reading,” Manatee Education Association President Pat Barber said.

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In 2019, a few weeks after the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, the Trump administration flipped the script and began investigating the investigators.

Attorney General Bill Barr appointed US Attorney John Durham to investigate those government officials who had presumed to look into Donald Trump’s ties to Russia.

The FBI’s Trump-Russia probe, Barr argued publicly, was born of chasing thin conspiracy theories and relied on phony evidence, and its investigators were either blinded by political bias or acting with blatant political motives.

And then Durham and Barr proceeded to do all those same things.

A new, detailed exposé by the New York Times’s Charlie Savage, Adam Goldman, and Katie Benner digs into what exactly happened with the nearly four-year Durham investigation, which is purportedly about to conclude, and it isn’t pretty. Anecdote after anecdote portrays Durham and Barr as believing in conspiracy theories without evidence but with clear political motives to bolster one of Trump’s favorite arguments: that he was the victim of a nefarious plot.

Basically, Durham and Barr wanted to prove that the Trump-Russia investigation was manufactured in bad faith by either “deep state” officials or the Clinton campaign (or both), with the goal of hurting Trump politically. Again and again, Durham pursued various versions of this theory, and again and again, he fell short of proving his case.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2023/1/27/23573026/durham-barr-new-york-times-trump-investigation

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https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-inc-technology-science-social-media-a7e2e3214abb4470dcb6e2837aa39c2e

WASHINGTON (AP) — Search for the word “climate” on Twitter and the first automatic recommendation isn’t “climate crisis” or “climate jobs” or even “climate change” but instead “climate scam.”

Clicking on the recommendation yields dozens of posts denying the reality of climate change and making misleading claims about efforts to mitigate it.

Such misinformation has flourished on Twitter since it was bought by Elon Musk last year, but the site isn’t the only one promoting content that scientists and environmental advocates say undercuts public support for policies intended to respond to a changing climate.

“What’s happening in the information ecosystem poses a direct threat to action,” said Jennie King, head of climate research and response at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based nonprofit. “It plants those seeds of doubt and makes people think maybe there isn’t scientific consensus.”

The institute is part of a coalition of environmental advocacy groups that on Thursday released a report tracking climate change disinformation in the months before, during and after the U.N. climate summit in November.

The report faulted social media platforms for, among other things, failing to enforce their own policies prohibiting climate change misinformation. It is only the latest to highlight the growing problem of climate misinformation on Twitter.

Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, allowed nearly 4,000 advertisements on its site — most bought by fossil fuel companies — that dismissed the scientific consensus behind climate change and criticized efforts to respond to it, the researchers found.

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>Republican lawmakers who've spread election conspiracy theories and falsely claimed that the 2020 presidential outcome was rigged are overseeing legislative committees charged with setting election policy in two major battleground states

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/election-denying-lawmakers-hold-key-election-oversight-roles-96739238

HARRISBURG, Pa. -- Republican lawmakers who have spread election conspiracy theories and falsely claimed that the 2020 presidential outcome was rigged are overseeing legislative committees charged with setting election policy in two major political battleground states.

Divided government in Pennsylvania and Arizona means that any voting restrictions those GOP legislators propose is likely to fail. Even so, the high-profile appointments give the lawmakers a platform to cast further doubt on the integrity of elections in states that will be pivotal in selecting the next president in 2024.

Awarding such plum positions to lawmakers who have repeated conspiracies and spread misinformation cuts against more than two years of evidence showing there were no widespread problems or fraud in the last presidential election. It also would appear to run counter to the message delivered in the November midterm elections, when voters rejected election-denying candidates running for top offices in presidential battleground states.

At the same time, many mainstream Republicans are trying to move past the lies told by former President Donald Trump and his allies about his loss to President Joe Biden.

“It is an issue that many Americans and many Pennsylvanians are tired of seeing litigated and relitigated over and over," said Pennsylvania state Sen. Amanda Cappalletti, the ranking Democrat on the Senate committee that handles election legislation. "I think we’re all ready to move on, and we see from audit after audit that our elections are secure, they are fair and that people’s votes are being counted.”

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https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-warns-us-house-republicans-not-touch-social-security-medicare-2023-01-20/

WASHINGTON, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Former President Donald Trump warned his fellow Republicans on Friday not to "destroy" federal retirement and health benefits as they try to exact spending cuts from President Joe Biden and his Democratic allies in the looming debate over the debt ceiling.

"Under no circumstances should Republicans vote to cut a single penny from Medicare or Social Security," Trump said in a two-minute video message posted to social media that could test his influence among Republicans who now control the U.S. House of Representatives.

"Do not cut the benefits our seniors worked for and paid for their entire lives. Save Social Security. Don't destroy it!"

Trump's call to protect the two single largest federal spending programs could put him at odds with some House Republicans who have said they should not be off the table in budget talks.

Social Security, which provides retirement and disability payments, accounted for 17% of federal spending in the 2021 fiscal year, while Medicare, the health-insurance program for seniors, accounted for 13%, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Both programs are projected to grow dramatically in coming years due to an aging population.

Trump, who launched his 2024 presidential reelection bid in November, was rebuffed by hard-line conservative House Republicans earlier this month when he urged them to fall in line behind Representative Kevin McCarthy as he sought to lead the chamber.

Trump's video appeared a day after the U.S. Treasury hit its $31.4 trillion borrowing limit, forcing the agency to use "extraordinary" cash-management measures to pay its bills. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has asked Congress to promptly raise the cap to stave off a default, which she said could come by June 5.

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First, some Scottish guy. Now this lady.
>The woman attended classes in New Brunswick for four days before her ruse was discovered, officials said.

>For four days, a 29-year-old woman pretended to be a student at a New Jersey public high school. She attended classes, spent time in the guidance office and collected phone numbers from teenagers who helped her find her way through the maze of hallways, according to students and a school official.

>She continued to text former classmates days after the ruse was discovered last week, students said.

>The woman, identified by the police as Hyejeong Shin, was arrested on Tuesday and charged with providing documents that falsified her age to officials at New Brunswick Public Schools, a district with nearly 10,000 students in central New Jersey.

>The incident, first reported by New Brunswick Today, has raised concerns about the safety protocols in place to verify student identities - and the woman's reason for sneaking into a school that enrolls children as young as 15 in the first place.

>Aubrey A. Johnson, the school superintendent, told board members Tuesday night that the district would be evaluating "how to better look for fake documentation and other things," according to a video of the meeting shared on Twitter. Neither school nor police officials offered any information about a possible motive for her behavior.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/26/nyregion/new-jersey-high-school-older-woman.html

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https://www.axios.com/2023/01/17/george-santos-committee-assignments-congress

Embattled Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) has secured two committee assignments, despite receiving growing blowback for fabricating key details of his background that were central to his campaign, a committee spokesperson confirmed.

Why it matters: Republicans and Democrats have called on Santos to resign, and the freshman lawmaker faces numerous investigations into his financial disclosures, campaign finances, and outstanding legal issues.

Driving the news: Santos on Tuesday got a seat on the House Committee on Small Business, a committee spokesperson confirmed, and a seat on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, per three House Steering Committee members.

Flashback: When asked during freshman member orientation on Nov. 13 which committees he was aiming to be on, Santos told Axios, “Naturally, with my background, Financial Services.”

>It emerged a month later that Santos never worked at Goldman Sachs or Citigroup, as he’d claimed while on the campaign trail.

Zoom out: McCarthy, balancing a fragile House majority, previously said that Santos would receive committee assignments.

>Santos has maintained that he will not give up his seat in Congress, despite public pressure to do so. "I was elected to serve the people of [New York's 3rd District] not the party & politicians, I remain committed to doing that," he tweeted on Jan. 11.

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https://www.rawstory.com/voter-suppression-ads-free-speech/

Two far-right social media influencers were arrested in 2021 after working online to suppress votes targeting people of color in 2016. Things aren't going well in court for them, however.

"Douglass Mackey, aka Ricky Vaughn, 31, of West Palm Beach, was charged by criminal complaint in the Eastern District of New York," the Justice Department said in a release after the arrest. "He was taken into custody ... in West Palm Beach and made his initial appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce E. Reinhart of the Southern District of Florida."

“According to the allegations in the complaint, the defendant exploited a social media platform to infringe one the of most basic and sacred rights guaranteed by the Constitution: the right to vote,” said Nicholas L. McQuaid, Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “This complaint underscores the department’s commitment to investigating and prosecuting those who would undermine citizens’ voting rights.”

Mackey is a white nationalist troll that has built his profile as a pro-Trump activist name “Ricky Vaughn."

Mackey's lawyers had two motions before the court, one to change the venue from the Eastern District of New York and a motion to dismiss the charges because his right to tweet whatever he wants falls under the First Amendment. The judge ruled Wednesday that both of those motions are being denied.

"Defendant Mackey's motion to dismiss the Indictment is denied," the judge said in the order. "This court finds first that a reasonable jury could hold, under any one of several theories, that it was reasonably foreseeable that Tweets from a Manhattan-based Twitter personality with thousands of followers would reach or pass through a judicial district as large as the Eastern District of New York, and that venue was therefore properly laid in the district," the judge continued.

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https://www.krqe.com/digital-now/apd-to-make-announcement-in-high-profile-case
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – Albuquerque Police says a former New Mexico House candidate who lost his election in November is now accused of conspiring to shoot at the homes of four Albuquerque lawmakers in December and January. The department made the announcement late Monday afternoon, saying Solomon Peña is aaccused of shooting at the homes of two Democratic Bernalillo County commissioners and two Democratic state lawmakers.

A 39-year-old Republican, Peña ran and lost the race for House District 14 in the November 2022 election. APD arrested Peña during a SWAT situation Monday afternoon near downtown Albuquerque.


Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina first made the announcement on Twitter Monday ahead of a 5 p.m. news conference. Medina wrote that Peña is “accused of conspiring with and paying four other men to shoot at the homes of two county commissioners and two state legislators.”

Peña is among five suspects alleged in the conspiracy. In a press release published Monday, Albuquerque Police said detectives learned that Peña paid the men cash and sent text messages with address where he wanted them to shoot at the homes” in December and January.

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New research provides evidence that libertarians in the United States tend to prioritize men’s reproductive autonomy at the expense of women’s. The study, published in Political Psychology, found that libertarianism was associated with both opposition to women’s right to an abortion and support for men’s right to withdraw financial support for a child when women refuse to terminate the pregnancy.

Libertarianism is a political philosophy that centers around the concept that each individual should be free to live their life in whatever way they choose, as long as other people’s rights are respected. Libertarians view the government as nothing more than a tool for protecting people’s fundamental rights; anything beyond this should arguably be done locally and voluntarily by individuals. The authors of the new study sought to investigate how libertarianism translates into attitudes to abortion policy.

“Both abortion and libertarianism are concepts that illustrate the divide between abstract, philosophical ideas (e.g., freedom; morality; personhood) and the complexities that arise when you try to translate these abstractions into people’s real, complicated lives,” said study author Jocelyn Chalmers, a PhD student and associate lecturer at the University of Kent in Canterbury.

“Since no society in our world today follows a strictly ‘libertarian’ governing model, it’s easy for libertarianism’s subscribers to suggest that prioritizing freedom (or their concept of it) above all else would lead to easy solutions for all of our problems – research like this allows us to interrogate that idea by highlighting that freedom is far from a simple concept in practice.”

https://www.psypost.org/2023/01/new-study-finds-libertarians-tend-to-support-reproductive-autonomy-for-men-but-not-for-women-64912

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https://thehill.com/policy/defense/3834320-us-general-predicts-country-will-be-at-war-with-china-in-2025/

A U.S. general said in a memo on Friday that he believes the country will be at war with China by 2025, according to several outlets that obtained a copy of the communication.

“I hope I am wrong,” Gen. Mike Minihan, a four-star Air Force general who leads the Air Mobility Command (AMC), said in the memo to troops under his command, which was first reported by NBC News.

However, he added: “My gut tells me we will fight in 2025. [Chinese President] Xi [Jinping] secured his third term and set his war council in October 2022. Taiwan’s presidential elections are in 2024 and will offer Xi a reason. United States’ presidential elections are in 2024 and will offer Xi a distracted America. Xi’s team, reason, and opportunity are all aligned for 2025.”

Minihan told AMC personnel to accept some increased risk in training as they prepare for the “China fight” and sometime in February to “fire a clip into a 7-meter target with the full understanding that unrepentant lethality matters most. Aim for the head.”

He also urged personnel in his command to get their personal affairs in order to “ensure they are legally ready and prepared” in March.

However, a Defense Department spokesperson told NBC that Minihan’s comments “are not representative of the department’s view on China.” The U.S. has long walked a fine line with its ambiguous “One China” policy, which acknowledges China’s claims to sovereignty over Taiwan without accepting them and opposes any unilateral changes to the status quo.

China has taken an increasingly aggressive posture toward Taiwan in the last year, heightening the risk of a war being sparked that could potentially draw in the U.S. However, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen said in a recent letter to Pope Francis that “armed confrontation is absolutely not an option” for the self-governing island.

Streaming giants like Netflix, Disney and Amazon Prime will be required to invest in making local Australian content under new rules set to be imposed on the industry.

From mid-2024, the federal government will require the major streaming platforms to put some of their revenue back into Australian content.

The details of the new policy are still to be negotiated with both the platforms and the Australian film and television sector, but the sector has previously argued for 20 per cent of revenue.

The rules would also bring the streaming sector into line with free-to-air networks, which are already subject to local content quotas.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-29/streaming-giants-to-be-required-to-make-australian-films-and-tv-/101904938