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Police stage ‘chilling’ raid on Marion County newspaper, seizing computers, records and cellphones

In an unprecedented raid Friday, local law enforcement seized computers, cellphones and reporting materials from the Marion County Record office, the newspaper’s reporters, and the publisher’s home.

Eric Meyer, owner and publisher of the newspaper, said police were motivated by a confidential source who leaked sensitive documents to the newspaper, and the message was clear: “Mind your own business or we’re going to step on you.”

The city’s entire five-officer police force and two sheriff’s deputies took “everything we have,” Meyer said, and it wasn’t clear how the newspaper staff would take the weekly publication to press Tuesday night.

The raid followed news stories about a restaurant owner who kicked reporters out of a meeting last week with U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner, and revelations about the restaurant owner’s lack of a driver’s license and conviction for drunken driving.

Meyer said he had never heard of police raiding a newspaper office during his 20 years at the Milwaukee Journal or 26 years teaching journalism at the University of Illinois.

“It’s going to have a chilling effect on us even tackling issues,” Meyer said, as well as “a chilling effect on people giving us information.”

The search warrant, signed by Marion County District Court Magistrate Judge Laura Viar, appears to violate federal law that provides protections against searching and seizing materials from journalists. The law requires law enforcement to subpoena materials instead. Viar didn’t respond to a request to comment for this story or explain why she would authorize a potentially illegal raid.

Emily Bradbury, executive director of the Kansas Press Association, said the police raid is unprecedented in Kansas.

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AI program can steal your password by listening to the sounds your keyboard makes when you type it

Research published by Cornell University showed that scientists programmed an artificial intelligence system that listened to people typing their passwords and was able to correctly identify the keys with 95% accuracy.

The group programmed an AI system to listen to a typed password on MacBook Pro keys over both a phone and a Zoom call, according to Daily Fetched.

The AI model was trained by pressing each of the MacBook Pro’s 36 keys 25 times each and recording the sounds. The sounds were fed into the AI so it could correctly identify each key.

Over the phone, the program correctly identified the keys with 95% accuracy, while over Zoom the number dropped slightly to 93%. The phone was placed about six and a half inches away from the keyboard, according to the Daily Mail.

“When trained on keystrokes recorded by a nearby phone, the classifier achieved an accuracy of 95 percent, the highest accuracy seen without the use of a language model,” the study reportedly said.

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Get Money (COVID remix)

Early 2021 was a prosperous time for Austin Richard Post, better known as the “Sunflower” singer Post Malone.

While many of his entertainment-industry colleagues struggled to pay rent under the pandemic-era lockdowns that decimated live music in the US, Post bought a 9,000-square-foot ski chalet in Park City, Utah, which had been listed for $11.5 million, in an all-cash transaction that February.

By May, he’d bought an industrial space in a Salt Lake City suburb that had been listed for $1.45 million. There, he opened a commercial forge to craft knives and swords, “as a hobby,” Post’s representative told the city’s planning commission. 

But later that year, a corporation controlled by Post successfully applied for a $10 million grant from a taxpayer-funded federal program intended to provide “emergency assistance” to help struggling arts groups recover from the pandemic. 

The program, the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant, was a lifeline for the live-entertainment business. Administered by the Small Business Administration, it doled out $14.5 billion to institutions like movie theaters, ballets, operas, talent agents, performing-arts venues, and museums. Unlike the Paycheck Protection Program, which many venues didn’t qualify for, the Shuttered Venue program was a grant, not a loan. Qualified applicants were eligible for up to $10 million with no obligation to repay it.

“SVOG was there to save us, and to carry us through,” said Meredith Lynsey Schade, who was managing an off-off-Broadway theater company when the pandemic hit.

But the Shuttered Venue program was also plagued by ineffective oversight and loopholes that allowed some of the biggest names in the music industry to get huge payouts, an Insider investigation found.

R&B artist Chris Brown got $10 million. Rapper Lil Wayne got $8.9 million. Nineties rockers The Smashing Pumpkins got $8.6 million. Nickelback — yes, Nickelback — received $2 million.

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National security panel reviewing secretive land buys near key Air Force base

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States is probing a secretive company that has been buying up land around a key Air Force base in California, sources familiar with the matter and a California lawmaker told CNN.

The ongoing review by CFIUS, an interagency panel chaired by the Treasury Department that is tasked with examining the national security implications of foreign investments, has not been previously reported.

But it comes as several California congressmen have raised concerns about the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of land bought up in recent years in Solano County, California, by Flannery Associates, a limited liability company registered in Delaware whose owners are publicly unknown.

“They’re right at the fence line with Travis Air Force Base, on three sides of the fence,” Rep. John Garamendi, a California Democrat whose district includes the base, told CNN.

Flannery is not required by Delaware law to disclose its owners. Attorneys representing the company did not return CNN’s requests for comment, but previously told the Wall Street Journal that British and Irish investors make up 3% of the company’s invested capital, with the rest being from US investors. They also denied that Flannery’s purchases were motivated by the proximity to Travis Air Force Base.

A Treasury Department spokesperson said in a statement to CNN that “CFIUS is committed to taking all necessary actions within its authority to safeguard US national security. Consistent with law and practice, CFIUS does not publicly comment on transactions that it may or may not be reviewing.”

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‘He Was Alive’: Tormented Chinese Doctor Recounts Harvesting Organs In Back Of Van

Stepping into the van guarded by armed soldiers with five surgeons and nurses, Zheng Zhi didn’t know he was entering into a world that would haunt him for the next quarter of a century.

Dr. Zheng, then a resident doctor at one of China’s largest military hospitals, knew little more than they were on a “secret military mission” near a military prison located around the northeastern Chinese city of Dalian.

A light blue fabric covered the four sides of the vehicle, shielding it from any curious glances.

When the door opened, four burly soldiers carried in a man whose limbs were bound with thin ropes that had cut deeply into his flesh. The man was no more than 18 years old; his organs, the surgical crew had been told the day before, were “healthy, fresh.”

A doctor instructed Dr. Zheng to “step on” the man’s legs and “don’t let him move.” He pressed the man’s legs down with his hands and to his shock, they were warm to the touch. Blood was now flowing from the man’s throat.

He watched a doctor slice open the man’s stomach and two others reach in to remove a kidney each. The man’s legs twitched and his throat moved—although no sound came out.

“Cut his artery and veins, quick!” a doctor told Dr. Zheng. As he did so, so much blood gushed out that it splashed all over Dr. Zheng’s gown and gloves. That was when he got the order to extract the man’s eyes.

Dr. Zheng looked at the man’s face. Staring back at him was a pair of wide-open eyes.

“It was horrifying beyond words. He was looking right at me. His eyelids were moving. He was alive,” Dr. Zheng recounted to The Epoch Times in July, the first time he agreed to use his real name to recount his story.

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Family of Man Killed During FBI Raid Speaks Out for First Time

Family members of the man killed during an FBI operation this week are decrying what happened.

“We, the family of Craig Deeluew Robertson, are shocked and devastated by the senseless and tragic killing of our beloved father and brother, and we fervently mourn the loss of a good and decent man,” the family said in a statement after Mr. Robertson was fatally shot during the Aug. 9 operation in Provo, Utah.

FBI agents and other law enforcement officers were trying to serve arrest and search warrants at the home after reviewing social media posts in which Mr. Robertson, 74, threatened President Joe Biden and other politicians, according to court documents and officials.

Video footage from the scene showed heavily armed officers outside of Mr. Robertson’s home before dawn shouting at him to open the door.

Jon Michael Ossola, who recorded the video, told The Epoch Times that about 20 officers were present and that they told Mr. Robertson to exit the home.

Mr. Robertson, said, responded by saying “I haven’t broken any federal laws.”

After gunshots rang out, Mr. Robertson, a U.S. Air Force veteran, was taken outside and declared dead.

The video did not capture the shooting and Mr. Ossola said he could not see exactly what unfolded.

The FBI has described what happened as an “agent-involved shooting” that took place around 6:15 a.m. local time. The shooting is being reviewed by the bureau’s Inspection Division, according to a spokesperson, who declined to provide more details.

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Moment seven officers drag ‘autistic’ girl, 16, kicking and screaming from Leeds home for committing a ‘hate crime’ after she told female cop ‘you look like my lesbian nana’

Police have been accused of heavy handedness after an autistic teenage girl was arrested by seven officers after saying ‘a female officer looked like her lesbian nana’.

The 16-year-old, who also suffers from scoliosis, had been driven to her home in Leeds, West Yorkshire, by officers after midnight when she allegedly made the comment.

She was later dragged away screaming in the early hours of Monday morning having been served a ‘homophobic public order offence’.

The incident was recorded by the girl’s mother who uploaded the footage to TikTok. 

The mother posted: ‘This is what police do when dealing with autistic children. My daughter told me the police officer looked like her nana, who is a lesbian.

‘The officer took it the wrong way and said it was a homophobic comment [it wasn’t].

‘The officer then entered my home. My daughter was having panic attacks from being touched by them and they still continued to manhandle her.’

The footage prompted outrage online, with one social media user writing: ‘I cannot believe my own eyes. Someone in the police force needs to be sacked for this egregious, disgraceful situation.’

Another posted: ‘This is disgusting behaviour by [West] Yorkshire police. And how many officers needed to attend? No small wonder that girl was terrified.’

Andrew Piper added: ‘@West Yorks Police completely unacceptable from the officers in this video. When the officer was informed that the daughter had autism, the comment [from the officer] “I don’t care” is completely inappropriate.’ 

In the footage, two officers can be seen in the hallway of the home, while the girl hides in a corner next to a cupboard. 

The female officer in question, who has cropped blonde hair, can be heard insisting ‘she [the girl] is going to be arrested’.

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What Imperial Japan Couldn’t Do in 250 Years American Christians Did in Nine Seconds

Seventy-five years ago today, an all-Christian bomber crew dropped “Fat Man,” a plutonium bomb, on Nagasaki, Japan, instantly annihilating tens of thousands of innocent civilians, a disproportionate number of them Japanese Christians, and wounding uncountable numbers of others.

For targeting purposes, the bombing crew used St. Mary’s Urakami Cathedral, the largest Christian church in East Asia. At 11:02 a.m., on Aug. 9, 1945, when the bomb was dropped over the cathedral, Nagasaki was the most Christian city in Japan.

At the time, the United States was arguably the most Christian nation in the world (that is, if you can label as Christian a nation whose churches overwhelmingly have failed to sincerely teach or adhere to the peaceful ethics of Jesus as taught in the Sermon on the Mount).

The baptized and confirmed Christian airmen, following their wartime orders to the letter, did their job efficiently, and they accomplished the mission with military pride, albeit with a number of near-fatal glitches. Most Americans in 1945 would have done exactly the same if they had been in the shoes of the Bock’s Car crew, and there would have been very little mental anguish later if they had also been treated as heroes.

Nevertheless, the use of that monstrous weapon of mass destruction to destroy a mainly civilian city like Nagasaki was an international war crime and a crime against humanity as defined later by the Nuremberg Tribunal.

Of course, there was no way that the crew members could have known that at the time. Some of the crew did admit that they had had some doubts about what they had participated in when the bomb actually detonated. Of course, none of them actually saw the horrific suffering of the victims up close and personal.

“Orders are orders” and, in wartime, disobedience can be, and has been, legally punishable by summary execution of the soldier who might have had a conscience strong enough to convince him that killing another human, especially an unarmed one, was morally wrong.

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Ecuador Arrests Six Colombians as Suspects in Slaying of anti-Corruption Presidential Candidate

The six men arrested as suspects in the assassination of an anti-corruption Ecuadorian presidential candidate are Colombian nationals, a police report said Thursday as authorities investigated the motive for a crime that shocked a nation already reeling from a surge in drug-related violence.

The six men were captured hiding in a house in Quito, Ecuador’s capital, said the report, which was reviewed by The Associated Press. Officers also seized four shotguns, a 5.56-mm rifle, ammunition and three grenades, along with a vehicle and a motorcycle, it said.

Fernando Villavicencio, 59, who was known for speaking up against drug cartels, was assassinated in Quito on Wednesday, less than two weeks before a special presidential election. He was not a front-runner, but his death deepened the sense of crisis around organized crime that has already claimed thousands of lives and underscored the challenge that Ecuador’s next leader will face.

Ecuador’s interior minister, Juan Zapata, had earlier confirmed the arrest of some foreigners in the case, although he didn’t give their nationalities.

Zapata described the killing as a “political crime of a terrorist nature” aimed at sabotaging the Aug. 20 presidential election.

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Ex-headteacher at school attended by Prince George committed child sex crimes

The former deputy headteacher at the London primary school attended by Prince George and Princess Charlotte was convicted of paying tens of thousands of dollars for photos and videos of children being sexually abused.

Matthew Smith — who worked at the ritzy Thomas’s Preparatory School — was sentenced to 12 years in prison this week for paying more than $85,000 for sexual images of children as young as seven, according to the South West News Service.

The conviction of the 35-year-old former teacher left staff at the school “shocked and appalled beyond measure,” a school spokesperson said.

The $25,000-a-year school, located in Battersea, southwest London, said that Smith has not worked at the school since charges had been brought against him.

The spokesperson emphasized Smith’s brief tenure at the school — just around eight weeks.

“Mr. Smith’s employment at the school, which commenced in September 2022, was terminated with immediate effect when the school first learned of the charges against him in November,” the school said.

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