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French masonic lodge at heart of murky murder trial

Twenty-two people went on trial in France on Monday on charges of murder and other serious crimes centred on members of a Masonic lodge accused of running hit squads.

Thirteen of the defendants face life imprisonment.

Those in the dock include four military personnel from France’s foreign intelligence service (DGSE), two police officers, a retired domestic intelligence officer, a security guard and two business executives.

They are accused of the murder of a racing driver, the attempted murders of a business coach and a trade unionist, aggravated assault and criminal conspiracy — all on behalf of a mafia network inside the former Athanor Masonic Lodge in the Paris suburb of Puteaux.

Several freemasons from the 20 or so members of the lodge are in the dock.

Most of the accused, aged between 30 and 73, have no previous criminal records.

The alleged ringleaders are Athanor freemasons Jean-Luc Bagur, Frederic Vaglio and Daniel Beaulieu. They face life in jail if convicted.

So does Beaulieu’s right-hand man Sebastien Leroy, who was not a member of the freemason lodge. He is accused of carrying out the trio’s dirty work himself or through a hitman network.

The case was triggered by a botched contract killing in July 2020, when two members of the military were arrested in possession of weapons near the home of business coach Marie-Helene Dini.

Under questioning, they said they thought they had been asked to murder Dini on behalf of the French state on the grounds that she worked for Israeli spy agency Mossad.

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Government Actions Against Anthropic Are ‘Classic First Amendment Retaliation’

Good news in the battle between the federal government and the AI company Anthropic: A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Department of Defense from declaring Anthropic a “supply chain risk,” which would have barred any federal agency or contractor from doing business with the company.

The government’s “conduct appears to be driven not by a desire to maintain operational control when using AI in the military but by a desire to make an example of Anthropic for its public stance on the weighty issues at stake in the contracting dispute,” wrote U.S. District Judge Rita Lin in an order granting Anthropic’s motion for preliminary injunction.

“Weighty issues” might undersell it. The supply chain risk designation—usually reserved for foreign companies—and President Donald Trump’s declaration that all federal agencies must “IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology” came after Anthropic refused to remove contract language preventing the Pentagon from using its AI system, Claude, for autonomous weapons or mass domestic surveillance.

Rather than simply discontinue Anthropic’s contract, the Trump administration threw a massive public tantrum over not being able to use Claude for killer robots or new frontiers in the surveillance state. (Not that it wanted to do these things, the Pentagon insisted. It just needed these restrictions removed because…reasons.)

Anthropic sued, alleging a violation of its First Amendment rights.

In a March 26 order, Lin issued a preliminary injunction order that prohibits the federal government “from implementing, applying, or enforcing in any manner” the president’s directive and “any and all other agency actions taken in response to the Presidential Directive.” Lin further blocked the Department of Defense and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth from designating Anthropic a supply chain risk.

“It is the Department of War’s prerogative to decide what AI product it uses,” notes Lin in the order.

Everyone, including Anthropic, agrees that the Department of War may permissibly stop using Claude and look for a new AI vendor who will allow ‘all lawful uses’ of its technology. That is not what this case is about.

The question here is whether the government violated the law when it went further.

For now, Lin has concluded that there is strong evidence that it did. “This appears to be classic First Amendment retaliation,” she wrote.

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New York Sues Valve Over Loot Boxes, Calls Them Illegal Gambling

Valve, the maker of Steam and many of PC gaming’s most popular titles, is being sued by New York for its use of loot boxes. New York Attorney General Letitia James filed the lawsuit, claiming that loot box systems enable gambling habits and are particularly harmful for younger people.

The lawsuit specifically cites three games: Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, and Team Fortress 2. It wants the video game developer to stop using loot boxes in its titles and to pay fines for previously promoting them.

A press release from Attorney General James notes that Counter-Strike 2’s loot box system resembles a slot machine, featuring a spinning wheel that reveals a virtual item. Loot boxes are common in online titles, acting as a randomized treasure chest that may provide valuable in-game items.

It explains that valuable items found in loot boxes can be sold on Valve’s Steam Community Market and other third-party stores, indicating they have real-world value. It points to reports of a virtual gun skin within Counter-Strike 2 that sold for over $1 million in 2024.

However, the likelihood of gamers finding a valuable item is low, and the lawsuit alleges that Valve intentionally makes some items harder to win than others to increase value.

“Illegal gambling can be harmful and lead to serious addiction problems, especially for our young people,” said Attorney General James. “Valve has made billions of dollars by letting children and adults alike illegally gamble for the chance to win valuable virtual prizes.”

“These features are addictive, harmful, and illegal, and my office is suing to stop Valve’s illegal conduct and protect New Yorkers.”

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Too High To Thrive: Excessive Cannabis Taxes Are Undermining Legal Markets

In recent piece, The New York Times editorial board called for a federal tax on cannabis and urged states to raise their own taxes to “dollars per joint, not cents.” That argument assumes cannabis is lightly taxed today—but across the country, the opposite is true.

Taxes on legal cannabis are higher than almost every industry in the United States and have generated nearly $25 billion since adult-use sales commenced in 2014. Despite these rates, efforts to increase cannabis levies are continuing to gain steam.

In 2025 alone, Maryland, Minnesota, Maine, Ohio, Michigan and California attempted to raise or expand cannabis taxes. This year, Colorado and Oklahoma are looking to do the same. Many of those proposals emerged as lawmakers confronted budget shortfalls and the expiration of federal pandemic aid. Cannabis has increasingly been treated as an untapped source of revenue.

In several large markets, cannabis taxes are layered on top of one another. Excise taxes are combined with state sales taxes, wholesale taxes, local taxes and, in some cases, potency-based taxes. In states such as Illinois, Michigan and Washington, the effective burden can exceed 40 percent. This is in addition to the federal tax burden cannabis businesses carry under §280E, which limits their ability to deduct ordinary operating expenses.

These structures are straining the legal market. High tax burdens are contributing to business closures (particularly among smaller operators) and pushing many consumers to the illicit market.

According to publicly available data, several highly taxed states, including California, Colorado, Illinois, and Washington, have experienced year-over-year declines in adult-use sales and industry job losses in recent years. At the same time, the illicit markets across these states remain entrenched. In California, one of the nation’s oldest legal cannabis markets, estimates suggest that roughly 60 percent of sales still occur outside the regulated system.

Higher taxes do not eliminate consumer demand. They simply change where consumers buy their cannabis.

Licensed businesses pay for testing, packaging, compliance systems, labor and sometimes local licensing. Unregulated sellers do not. When the legal price rises too far above the illicit alternative, price-sensitive consumers shift accordingly. That weakens the regulated market that legalization was intended to build. When tax increases take effect, the impact shows up quickly in wholesale pricing pressure, retailer margin compression, and shifts in purchasing behavior.

The cannabis industry is still new, but data tell us that the type of tax matters as much as the rate.

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Legalizing Marijuana For Recreational Or Medical Use Leads To Reductions In Different Types Of Crime, Study Finds

Legalizing marijuana for adult use is linked to gradual reductions in violent crime—while medical cannabis legalization is associated with lower rates of property crime—according to a new study.

As more states move to enact legalization, researchers at Jack Welch College of Business and Technology, Barnard College, National Chengchi University and Longwood University set out to investigate the relationship between different versions of the reform and crime trends.

The study, published in the journal Economic Modelling, identified a unique divide when looking at the impact of legalizing cannabis for recreational as compared to medical purposes, with analytic models revealing how different forms of regulated access seem to be associated with different patterns in criminal activity.

“Novel policies may generate unintended spillovers, particularly when legalizing one activity alters incentives for other forms of crime,” the study authors wrote. “Marijuana legalization provides a useful setting to examine such effects, given the staggered adoption of medical and recreational laws across all 50 U.S. states.”

While initial analyses signaled that adult-use legalization might increase property crime, once state-specific time trends where incorporated into the researchers’ models with synthetic specification, “the effect becomes negative and statistically insignificant.”

“Overall, the findings indicate that estimated crime effects are highly sensitive to identification assumptions and do not provide robust evidence of an increase in property crime following legalization, underscoring the importance of careful empirical design in policy evaluation,” the study says.

Notably, the researchers found that the impact of cannabis reform on crime is gradual, with the effects manifesting “powerfully after several years.” For advocates pushing for legalization, the authors said, that means they should exercise caution in how they frame the issue, as crime rate declines don’t appear to happen overnight.

“What emerges from our multi-step analysis is a birds-eye view of legalization: medical and recreational legalization have different impacts and operate through diverse channels, with significant lag effects,” they said. “The overarching result from our main synthetic difference in differences model is that medical legalization reduces property crime, while recreational legalization reduces violent crime.”

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Eric Swalwell makes wild claim about secret Kash Patel plot

Congressman Eric Swalwell, a leading Democratic candidate in the California gubernatorial race, accused President Donald Trump this weekend of meddling in the election after reports that his administration is seeking to publicize files about Swalwell’s link to a Chinese spy.

Swalwell appeared in multiple media appearances to capitalize on the report and told CNN that Trump and FBI Director Kash Patel are “dangerous individuals.”

“Donald Trump and Kash Patel do not get to pick the next governor. Californians do,” Swalwell said on Saturday.

Patel is reportedly pushing to release documents around Christine Fang, also known as Fang Fang, a suspected Chinese intelligence agent who cultivated ties with American politicians, according to The Washington Post.

Fang developed extensive ties with Swalwell when he was a city council member at Dublin. She bundled donations for his 2014 reelection campaign and recommended staff for his office. Fang allegedly had sexual relationships with at least two mayors.

Swalwell wasn’t immediately removed from a congressional committee over his ties to Fang, but Rep. Kevin McCarthy ordered a House Ethics Committee investigation into the incident after he became House Speaker in 2021.

In a podcast shared with the California Post, Swalwell’s gubernatorial campaign insisted he was cleared of wrongdoing.

“The air was cleared immediately by the FBI when there was even a suggestion of wrongdoing,” Swalwell told the Sources Say podcast.

His connections with the Chinese spy have dogged his campaign for governor. The Democrat even got into an online spat with Barstool founder Dave Portnoy, who commented, “Call me crazy I like my politicians not to get tricked by foreign spies.”

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Trump Says He Wants to “Take the Oil” in Iran

President Donald Trump has suggested the United States may try to take over Iran’s oil the way it did with Venezuela’s, per a Financial Times interview.

“To be honest with you, my favourite thing is to take the oil in Iran, but some stupid people back in the US say: ‘Why are you doing that?’ But they’re stupid people,” Trump told the FT.

“Maybe we take Kharg Island, maybe we don’t. We have a lot of options,” the U.S. president also told the publication, adding. “It would also mean we had to be there [in Kharg Island] for a while.”

Kharg Island is Iran’s oil hub, handling 90% of the country’s oil exports. The island lies beyond the Strait of Hormuz, however, which would make taking it a challenge, as noted by various military experts. According to official Pentagon statements, the U.S. has bombed as many as 90 targets on Kharg Island but these have not included oil facilities or infrastructure, per President Trump himself.

“We can do that on five minutes’ notice. It’ll be over,” Trump said earlier this month, referring to the pipelines connecting mainland Iran to Kharg Island. “Just one simple word, and the pipes will be gone too. But it’ll take a long time to rebuild that.”

That one simple word has yet to be pronounced, it seems, even as Trump told the FT on Sunday that “I don’t think they have any defence. We could take it [Kharg Island] very easily.”

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61-Year-Old Woman Executed in Wisconsin by Deranged Ex-Coworker Who Targeted Her for Being a Trump Supporter, Legacy Media REFUSING to Cover This Politically Motivated Murder

Christine A. Jones, a 61-year-old housekeeping supervisor from Cottage Grove, Wisconsin, was shot and killed in a downtown Madison parking ramp last week after being targeted by a former coworker for supporting President Donald Trump.

The suspect is her former coworker, 31-year-old Diamond Simone Wallace, who had previously accused Jones of racism because of her support for the president.

Police responded to the 300 block of West Washington Avenue around 8 a.m. on March 22 after reports of a person down in the parking ramp.

Jones was pronounced dead at the scene.

She had parked in the ramp before heading to her shift at a nearby hotel.

According to the criminal complaint, Wallace worked with Jones at the same downtown Madison hotel until he was fired in April of last year.

After the firing, Wallace returned to the hotel, made threats, and caused disturbances. The hotel’s general manager obtained a temporary restraining order against him.

The complaint states Wallace blamed Jones for the termination, slashed the tires on her Chevrolet Silverado, and had previously accused her of being racist just because she supported Trump.

Wallace “expressed animosity towards CAJ [Christine A. Jones] for being a Trump supporter,” the filing reads, according to a report from The Center Square.

The killer was arrested on March 23, the day after the shooting.

Police recovered a handgun and a blue hooded sweatshirt that matched surveillance video from the scene. Ballistics linked the gun to the murder.

Wallace has a prior felony conviction from 2019 for resisting an officer, which prohibited him from possessing a firearm.

The leftist killer appeared in Dane County Court on Wednesday.

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White House App Found Tracking Users’ Exact Location Every 4.5 Minutes via Third-Party Server

The Trump administration’s newly launched White House App is under scrutiny after a software developer claimed to have found embedded code that tracks users’ precise GPS coordinates every 4.5 minutes and automatically syncs them to a third-party server. The claim, posted on 28 March 2026 by the X account @Thereallo1026, has drawn nearly 260,000 views and prompted questions about data collection practices in government-operated applications.

The post included what appeared to be decompiled source code from the app, revealing what the user described as OneSignal’s ‘full GPS pipeline compiled in.’ According to the post, the code showed the app ‘polling your location every 4.5 minutes, syncing your exact coordinates to a third-party server.’ The White House has not publicly responded to the specific technical claims.

What the Code Allegedly Shows

OneSignal is a widely used push notification platform that, according to its own documentation, updates a user’s GPS coordinates ‘approximately every 5 minutes (based on permission and system rules)’ when location sharing is enabled within a mobile app. The platform is designed to allow developers to segment and target users based on their physical location for messaging campaigns.

The decompiled code shared by @Thereallo1026 references Android location permission strings, background location access, and a foreground update time set to 270,000 milliseconds — the equivalent of 4.5 minutes — alongside a background update time of 600,000 milliseconds, or 10 minutes. If accurate, these constants suggest the app is configured to collect and transmit precise location data at regular intervals, even while running in the background.

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Apple UK Age Verification Chaos: Users Face Failed Scans, Rejected Passports, and Forced Content Filters

Apple’s iOS 26.4 age verification system is failing UK users who don’t have a credit card or photocard driving license, leaving them with no way to prove they’re adults on devices they’ve owned for years.

The system arrived without warning, without explanation, and without any apparent consideration for the people who don’t fit Apple’s narrow assumptions about what a British adult looks like.

No Warning, No Communication

Apple sent no email. Included no mention of age verification in the iOS 26.4 release notes it shared publicly.

Unless you’d been following the developer beta track, where the feature appeared in February or reading Reclaim The Net’s earlier coverage, the first you knew about it was a prompt on your screen after restarting your phone.

That’s how 35 million UK iPhone users found out their devices now require identity documents to function normally. A “Confirm You Are 18+” label appeared at the top of Settings, and anyone who couldn’t or wouldn’t comply got silently downgraded. Apple’s Web Content Filter switched on, blocking websites across Safari and every third-party browser. Communication Safety is activated, scanning images and videos in Messages and FaceTime for nudity. Features that worked fine the day before now require government-approved proof of adulthood.

A company that controls what software runs on every iPhone it sells decided overnight that UK users needed to hand over identity documents to keep using the devices they already paid for. And it didn’t bother to tell them it was coming.

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