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U.S. Secretly Removed Accused Pedophile Diplomat From Britain: Report

American authorities allegedly removed a U.S. diplomat serving in London from the country in a secret operation after he was accused of possessing child porn.

A report from The Sun — Britain’s top circulation newspaper — has claimed that U.S. secret agents carried out a clandestine operation on UK soil without informing local police, seizing an American diplomat from his London flat, taking him to a U.S. air base, and returning him to the United States.

The diplomat was reportedly under investigation after allegedly receiving indecent images of children from his brother. According to the report, American agents received a court order in the U.S. before carrying out the raid on the diplomat’s apartment in Putney, London, on August 25th. An investigation of the flat is said to have confirmed that the diplomat was in possession of the child pornography in question.

The move to remove the unnamed man back to the United States has riled feathers in London given that American officials have no authority to carry out policing operations in the United Kingdom.

A British government source is quoted by The Sun saying: “They should have told Scotland Yard when they carried out the raid, and certainly when they found material. Instead, we think they have taken him to a US airbase and flown him 4,000-plus miles to where his brother was being investigated. We think it was a dawn raid before they then took him to the base in a US military convoy.

“If there are child-abuse crimes, there are possibly other crimes he could have committed. There are fears the Yanks are trying to keep this in-house and it’s a cover-up. And we now don’t know if we’ll ever get him back to face British justice.”

An American diplomatic source reportedly defended the action, saying that the United States “acted decisively” and that if it had not acted swiftly, “there could have been delays and diplomacy that could have gone on for weeks or months.”

It is not the first time that American officials have avoided the British judicial system for crimes allegedly committed in the UK. London has previously raised the alarm over the case of a U.S. fighter pilot, Captain Jacob Wulfson, who strangled a woman in Cambridge. Rather than facing trial in England, Capt. Wulfson was tried on a U.S. air base.

He was acquitted of sexual assault and aggravated sexual contact, but was found guilty of strangulation, for which he received a six-month sentence. Downing Street said that it was “very concerning” that he avoided prosecution in Britain.

Commenting on the latest report, a U.S. Embassy spokesman said: “We are aware of allegations concerning an individual assigned to the U.S. Embassy in London. The United States government expects all personnel to adhere to the highest standards of conduct, and we take these allegations seriously.

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SCOTUS Directs NYC to Offer Defense of Its Stun Gun Ban

The Supreme Court wants to hear from the city of New York after the Firearms Policy Coalition, Second Amendment Foundation, and several individual plaintiffs asked the Court to accept their lawsuit challenging the Big Apple’s ban on stun guns. The request from the High Court doesn’t guarantee that the justices will grant cert in Calce v. New York, but it does indicate that one or more justices are interested in the lawsuit. 

Back in 2016, SCOTUS issued a per curiam opinion in Caetano v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts that rejected the state’s arguments in favor its own stun gun ban. The Court reminded the First Circuit that the Second Amendment doesn’t only protect those arms that existed in 1791, but modern arms as well. SCOTUS didn’t directly strike down the stun gun ban, but it did negate the argument used to uphold it. …………………

While Massachusetts ended its outright prohibition shortly thereafter, New York City has kept its ban on the books. A district court judge and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals have upheld the ban, arguing that the plaintiffs failed to “provide any evidence that stun guns and tasers are in common use.”

The cert petition filed with the Court not only questions the Second Circuit’s opinion on the validity of the stun gun ban, but how the Court reached its conclusion. Does a challenger to a ban on a type of arm have to first demonstrate that the arm is “in common use” to establish that the ban implicates the Second Amendment’s plain text? Or is it up to the defenders of the ban to demonstrate that the arm is not in common use for lawful purposes? 

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CIA ‘Proxy’: Unravelling Saudi Arabia’s True 9/11 Role

In the leadup to 9/11’s silver anniversary, it was widely reported a forthcoming New York District Court civil case brought against notorious Saudi government operative Omar Bayoumi would deliver “smoking gun” proof tying Riyadh directly to the attacks. Compelling evidence Saudi Arabian intelligence not only managed several hijackers as agents, but did so as a “proxy” for the CIA, has lain unexamined in plain sight for years. Yet, the Agency’s sinister shadowplay remains eerily absent from media consideration, despite mounting recognition of Riyadh’s role.

Bayoumi has long-been accused by major news outlets and US officials of maintaining an intimate and suspicious relationship with hijackers Nawaf Hazmi and Khalid Mihdhar, immediately upon their arrival to the US in January 2000. A subsequent FBI investigation, dubbed Operation Encore, ruled there was a “50/50 chance” Bayoumi – and the House of Saud by extension – had detailed advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks. This explosive finding was not publicly divulged until March 2022.

However, the media remained steadfastly silent a year later when a bombshell filing from the Office of Military Commissions – the legal body overseeing prosecutions of 9/11 defendants – was released. The document summarises classified government discovery disclosures, and private interviews conducted with anonymous high-ranking US intelligence officials. Its contents shed unprecedented light on how the CIA recruited at least Hazmi and Mihdhar if not others who participated in the 9/11 attacks, “via a liaison relationship” with Riyadh’s General Intelligence Directorate (GID).

The same document elucidates how the 9/11 Commission was deliberately sabotaged by its chief Philip Zelikow, who personally endeavoured “to blunt” inquiries “into Saudi involvement with the hijackers.” Concurrently, senior FBI officials tasked with investigating the attacks were prohibited from interviewing Saudi nationals, despite “many” leads pointing directly to Riyadh’s Washington DC embassy. No wonder – probing those connections would’ve amply revealed how the GID was acting as a “cutout” for the CIA, in all its clandestine dealings with the 9/11 hijackers.

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Medicine Has Forgotten How to Touch the Patient

When was the last time your doctor actually examined you? I do not mean when someone checked your blood pressure, copied your medication list, looked at your laboratory results, or listened briefly through a shirt before returning to the computer. I mean examined you. Looked at you. Watched you breathe. Felt your pulse. Looked at your eyes. Examined your neck. Listened carefully to your heart and lungs. Palpated your abdomen. Watched you walk. Noticed the color of your skin, the movement of your hands, the expression on your face, and the thousand other small pieces of information that a human body offers to someone who has learned how to observe it.

For most of the history of medicine, this was not an optional ritual performed before ordering the “real tests.” This was medicine. Today, increasingly, it is treated as something quaint, inefficient, or unnecessary.

I have spent most of my professional life taking care of very sick people. Critical care is one of the most technologically intensive areas of medicine ever created. I love technology. I have watched mechanical ventilators breathe for patients who could no longer breathe for themselves. I have used ultrasound, CT imaging, sophisticated hemodynamic monitoring, extracorporeal technologies, molecular diagnostics, and laboratory measurements that physicians a generation before me could only have dreamed about.

I would never want to return to a world without these tools. But after decades at the bedside, I have also learned something that becomes more obvious, not less, with experience: technology is most powerful when it extends the physician’s senses. It becomes dangerous when it persuades the physician that those senses are no longer necessary.

The Patient Before the Data

Experienced clinicians understand something that is remarkably difficult to teach in a lecture hall or classroom. Sometimes you walk into a room and know immediately that something is wrong. You may not yet know what it is, but you know it before the laboratory does. The patient is breathing differently. His skin looks different. She answers a question a fraction of a second more slowly than she did several hours earlier. Posture, speech, facial expression, respiratory effort, or level of attention changes. None of these observations is magical. They are data, collected by a biological instrument trained through thousands and thousands of encounters: the physician.

When I round in an intensive care unit (ICU), I can learn an enormous amount before touching the computer. I can see whether a patient is fighting the ventilator. I can hear secretions from the doorway. I can see accessory muscles contracting. I can recognize when someone who looked reasonably comfortable earlier suddenly looks exhausted. I can see peripheral perfusion, diaphoresis, agitation, abdominal distension, or a subtle change in mental status. None of this means I should ignore the arterial blood gas, the chest radiograph, the CT scan, or the monitor. Of course I need them. The mistake is believing that because those measurements are more technologically sophisticated, they are necessarily more real than what is happening directly in front of me.

Medicine once began with the patient and proceeded toward testing. Increasingly, it begins with testing and eventually works its way back toward the patient. Abraham Verghese and colleagues have described this inversion of the diagnostic process, in which clinicians may encounter an image or electronic representation of a patient before encountering the patient himself. That change sounds subtle. It is not. Once the CT scan, laboratory panel, consultant note, medication list, and previous diagnoses have entered our minds, we no longer approach the patient without preconceptions. The data have already told us what we are supposed to see.

This is one reason the physical examination should never be reduced to nostalgia. Its value is not that physicians once carried black bags and made house calls. Its value is epistemological. It provides an independent stream of information. The history and physical examination can support what the tests tell us, but they can also contradict them. That contradiction is often where important medicine begins. A normal number should make us reconsider an abnormal observation, but an abnormal observation should also make us reconsider a normal number.

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NASA teams up with NFL for Inspiration Tour with flyovers scheduled for football games

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Football League (NFL) have announced a collaboration featuring aircraft flyovers and astronaut appearances at select games.

“The agency will soon bring America’s strengths in space exploration and aeronautics innovation to the football field,” NASA said in a press release on Thursday, announcing its new Inspiration Tour.

So far, NASA participation is scheduled for the following games:

  • Pittsburgh Steelers vs. Atlanta Falcons in Pittsburgh on September 13th
  • Baltimore Ravens vs. New Orleans Saints in Baltimore on September 20th
  • Philadelphia Eagles vs. Los Angeles Rams in Philadelphia on October 4th
  • New York Jets vs. Cleveland Browns in East Rutherford, New Jersey on October 11th

More football game dates could be added, according to NASA.

The administration said that some of the games will experience flyovers showcasing NASA’s aircraft fleet, used for high-speed testing, high-altitude research, astronaut training and more.

“Regularly flying the aircraft maintains the health of the fleet and publicly demonstrates new technologies that may be applied to future commercial air travel,” NASA stated.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman will lead the tour across the country in order to “connect the agency with the people, technologies, and organizations that drive American leadership in space.”

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DOJ Conducting Criminal Investigation Into Governor Newsom’s International Travel and Personal Spending

The Justice Department is investigating California Governor Gavin Newsom’s international travel and personal spending.

The US Attorney’s office issued subpoenas this month requesting testimony and communications with Newsom and others.

Prosecutors requested six years of records from the California State Protocol Foundation, a nonprofit that has paid for Newsom’s international travel.

Newsom has directed millions of dollars in donations to the Protocol Foundation, according to records reviewed by the California Post.

“Since 2019, Newsom has directed more than $7.5 million in donations from outside groups to the Protocol Foundation, according to state records reviewed by The California Post. Roughly $5.1 million of that amount came from leftover inaugural funds,” the California Post reported.

The San Francisco Standard reported:

The federal government is conducting a criminal investigation related to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s international travel and its funding, according to subpoenas reviewed by The Standard.

The subpoenas — which were issued in early September and requested testimony and communications with the governor, among others — seek six years of records involving the California State Protocol Foundation, a nonprofit that has paid for Newsom’s overseas travel, as well as communications with a circle of his current and former aides, advisers, and associates. Those aides include Rebecca Prowda, who oversees Newsom’s overseas travel as his chief protocol officer and is the wife of San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie.

The documents provide the clearest picture yet of the scope of a federal investigation effort Newsom first disclosed in June(opens in new tab), which he said was focused on him and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom.

“The records requested by this subpoena are for use in a criminal investigation pending in the Eastern District of California,” according to one of the subpoenas. It was signed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael D. Anderson.

The records obtained via subpoena will be presented to a grand jury, a group of jurors that acts like a judge, reviewing evidence and testimony to decide if there’s sufficient grounds for an indictment.

In addition to investigating the Protocol Foundation, federal prosecutors are probing the taxes of Newsom’s wife, Jennifer Seibel Newsom.

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PA Dem Candidate Condemns Voter ID, Then Demands It at His Own Campaign Event

Pennsylvania Democrat congressional nominee Bob Brooks opposes voter identification requirements for elections, but his campaign apparently has a different standard when controlling admission to its own events.

Brooks required attendees to present identification, and campaign staff reportedly denied entry to at least one person seeking to attend.

The episode offers voters another striking example of Democrat hypocrisy surrounding basic election security.

Identification is portrayed as sinister when citizens cast ballots, yet it suddenly becomes reasonable when Democrat campaigns want to know exactly who is entering the room.

Brooks is running in Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District, where he hopes to unseat Republican Rep. Ryan Mackenzie.

The district is expected to host one of the most closely watched and competitive House contests of the 2026 election cycle.

The Democrat nominee has collected endorsements from Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

Those endorsements place Brooks firmly inside the national progressive operation, even as he attempts to appeal to Pennsylvania voters concerned about costs, public safety, and election integrity.

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They Said This Never Happens: Mexican Illegal Charged for Alleged Illegal Voting in Swing State

The Department of Justice announced charges against a 30-year-old Mexican national who allegedly voted illegally in the 2024 election.

Katya Rodriguez, 30, who lives in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, has been charged with “false statement of citizenship in order to vote, fraudulent registration, and voting as an alien,” per a news release from the agency.

“The integrity of our elections, which are fundamental to democracy, should be of utmost importance to every American,” Attorney General Todd Blanche said.

“It is a cherished right for eligible American citizens, and only eligible American citizens, to vote for their representatives in government,” he added.

“Election fraud is a serious crime, and it is the duty of the Department of Justice to treat it as such.”

Rodriguez faces up to 11 years in prison, as well as a fine and a term of supervised release after her sentence.

Homeland Security Investigations led the investigation into the case.

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Mathematicians want proof OpenAI didn’t use their work

Another researcher is challenging OpenAI about the data driving its increasingly impressive array of mathematical discoveries. Just days after a bitter row erupted over whether the company’s models benefited from unpublished work, a second mathematician has come forward accusing the AI giant of unethical and “dishonest” behavior and a lack of transparency about the origins of its training data.

In a series of posts on Mastodon, mathematician Andreas Thom raised concerns that interactions he and his colleagues had had with the ChatGPT chatbot before OpenAI’s triumphant announcement may have contributed to its success in the field. One of the 10 results OpenAI announced with great fanfare last month involved Thom’s area of expertise, so-called non-sofic groups, and OpenAI acknowledged that their result built heavily on previous work by Thom and fellow mathematician Gábor Kun.

Thom said he began reflecting on his own interactions with OpenAI after Tristan Buckmaster, a mathematics professor at New York University, publicly questioned whether the company’s AI models had benefited from his use of OpenAI’s Codex. After OpenAI announced its non-sofic groups result, it was widely criticized in mathematical circles for failing to acknowledge recent contributions from Thom and Kun and the company quietly amended its writeup. Non-sofic groups are, roughly speaking, infinite mathematical structures that cannot be approximated by finite ones.

Thom said he was also struck by “OpenAI’s detailed command of our techniques,” which he said were neither the most obvious nor the most promising routes to a solution at the time. He said he wrote emails to OpenAI researchers Sébastien Bubeck and Mark Sellke, also a statistician at Harvard, to ask whether his interactions with ChatGPT were “part of the training data or accessible to the reasoning process” and could therefore have contributed to the result.

But the answer did not satisfy Thom, who said it only addressed whether his conversations with the chatbot could be accessed directly, not whether they had entered into the vast pools of training data the company uses to improve its models. “No such qualification, explanation, or evidence was given,” he wrote. “I take this as dishonesty to say the least.”

Thom said researchers aren’t equipped to reverse-engineer OpenAI’s training pipeline to figure out whether their work has been used or not. “Only OpenAI has the relevant data for that.” If the company is going to deny doing this, he said the responsibility is on them to prove that by disclosing all necessary datasets and clarifying various settings and terms setting out how it uses data.

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New Biohacker Company Plans to Create Real-Life Unicorns. What’s the Catch?

Unicorns, dragons, pixies, and the like are the stuff of kids’ stories, or at least they should be. But now a new Texas startup, a bioengineering firm, The Embryo Corporation, is looking at the possibility of producing these creatures for real, and that new company is headed by a woman who doesn’t shy away from experimenting on herself.

That’s taking putting one’s money where one’s mouth is to a rather extreme extent.

Perched beneath a “Hippies use the back door” sign was Josie Zayner, sipping coffee in a crop top, jean shorts, and a patchwork of video game– and anime-themed tattoos. Zayner, a former NASA research fellow and world-famous biohacker turned gene-editing start-up CEO, relishes Bebo’s. She feels more at home here, laughing with the waitress about cheese sticks, than she ever did in the Bay Area.

“Nobody wants to be a San Franciscan except for the tech world,” said Zayner, 45, who’s called Austin, Texas, home since 2021. “These people show more warmth than you’d ever experience in San Francisco,” she continued, nodding at the dizzying decor. “This is the soul of America.”

Zayner gained infamy in the 2010s through a series of audacious gene-editing stunts and experiments conducted in California, during which she spliced jellyfish DNA into her own skin, injected herself onstage at a conference with a CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) solution designed to knock out the gene that limits muscle growth, performed her own fecal transplant to cure her chronic gut problems, and even livestreamed herself on YouTube self-injecting a Covid DNA vaccine.

This is the kind of person we want messing around with genetic engineering? At least Colossal Bioscience claims to be “de-extinctioning.” They aren’t, of course; they are producing, to quote a famous movie scientist, genetically engineered theme park monsters. But Zayner has some more radical goals.

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