Rolls-Royce wins UK funds for ‘Moon’ nuclear reactors

British aerospace giant Rolls-Royce said Friday it had secured UK funding to develop small nuclear reactors that could provide power on the Moon.

Rolls said the UK Space Agency had offered it £2.9 million ($3.5 million) to help research “how nuclear power could be used to support a future Moon base for astronauts”.

“Scientists and engineers at Rolls-Royce are working on the micro-reactor program to develop technology that will provide power needed for humans to live and work on the Moon,” the aerospace company added in a statement.

Rolls forecast its first car-sized reactor would be ready to be sent to the Moon by 2029.

Friday’s news comes as US space agency NASA aims to return humans to the Moon in 2025.

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Lowes introduces surveillance robots that monitor license plates, mobile devices, to detect repeat offenders

Home improvement products retailer Lowe’s has started using security robots manufactured by Knightscope in four stores in Philadelphia.

The robots, K5’s – first launched in 2015 – are supposed to help the retailer collect evidence in case of criminal prosecutions, and act like “security guards.”

Even though the K5 can detect persons, has 16 microphones, and Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR), as well as sonar sensors, along with four 360-degree high definition wide angle cameras, it does not have facial recognition software baked into it.

(But Knightscope offers that feature – “seeing” a person, and knowing who it is – in the K1 Tower and KA Hemisphere models.)

K5’s other features include a security button on the back that people can press to summon help, what seems like limited communication letting users send customized messages through it and, as it patrols parking lots, the robot can emit a sound.

By using the robots to identify license plates and mobile devices, Lowe’s is able to cross-reference that data with an existing database of previous “offenders.”

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Man arrested over disturbing graffiti at historic black Atlanta church

A black man was arrested in Atlanta last month after he reportedly vandalized a historic Baptist church with hateful spray-painted images of swastikas as a hanging and other offensive messages, according to several reports.

James McIntyre, 60, was taken into custody by the Atlanta Police Department on February 19 in connection to the shocking vandalism. He was reportedly captured on surveillance cameras creating some hurtful imagery at the Providence Missionary Baptist Church on Benjamin E. Mays Drive, Fox 5 reported.

The front of the church building was tagged with multiple offensive messages, which included “devil worship 666,” “apostate,” “Satan,” “sin,” and at least one unspecified homophobic message. Moreover, the main doors to the facility had a backward swastika along with imagery of a hanging painted on them, 11 Alive reported.

During the investigation, police found McIntyre sitting across the street from the scene of the crime, according to authorities. He was subsequently taken into custody and charged with vandalism to a place of worship.

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Giving up biometrics at US airports soon won’t be optional, transport security chief says

The chief of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) David Pekoske said that the agency is considering biometric technology to reduce traveler processing times and reduce the number of screening officers. He made the comments at the South by Southwest conference, which focused on aviation security.

Pekoske noted that the TSA’s role is maintaining security and the transportation system and staying ahead of threats. For those reasons, it is “critically important that this system has as little friction as it possibly can, while we provide for safety and security.”

The TSA has been relying on biometric technology in the identification verification process. According to the agency, the newest technology it has been using is over 99% effective and does not have problems identifying darker-skinned people like the old technology.

“We’re upgrading our camera systems all the time, upgrading our lighting systems,” Pekoske said. “[We’re] upgrading our algorithms, so that we are using the very most advanced algorithms and technology we possibly can.”

Pekoske said that the agency will ensure it remains transparent with the public about the data that is taken, what it is used for, and for how long it will be stored. For now, he said that travelers can opt out of processes they are not comfortable with.

According to The Dallas Morning News, giving up biometric data for travel will eventually not be optional.

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Censorship Masquerades and Disinformation Control

Twitter Files #19 have dropped. I am happy to have assisted Matt Taibbi and team to put that release together, along with release #18.

The Files show widespread censorship masquerading as “anti-disinformation,” and intense collusion between government agencies, NGOs, academia, Big Tech, media, philanthropy, the intelligence community, and more.

Tinfoil hat stuff? The Twitter Files show it is real.

They uncover a level of corruption that is hard to grasp, much of it among the “anti-disinformation” and digital-rights fields where I have worked for almost 20 years.

To say this is disappointing would be an incredible understatement. A 180 on what I understood to be our values.

Twitter Files #18 and #19 focus on the Virality Project, an “anti-vaccine misinformation” effort led by Stanford and bringing together elite academia, NGOs, government, and experts in AI and social-media monitoring, with six of the biggest social-media companies on the planet. They went far beyond their “misinformation” remit. Twitter Files show the Virality Project pushed platforms to censor “stories of true vaccine side effects.”

Partnered in the effort were Facebook/Instagram, Google/YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, Medium, and Twitter.

Reporting side effects of the now-pulled Johnson & Johnson vaccine would have been labelled “misinformation” under Virality Project decrees. Had Kerryn Phelps (the first female president of the Australian Medical Association) taken to Twitter to describe her and her wife’s vaccine injuries, these too would have been labelled misinformation. German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach would have also been censored last week for admitting that as a result of the vaccines “there are severe disabilities, and some of them will be permanent”.

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FBI Is Now A ‘Weaponized Apparatchik’ Of The Presidential Administration: Whistleblower

There’s a growing divide between the rank-and-file officers of the FBI and upper management, according to FBI agent-turned-whistleblower Steve Friend, and it’s those at the top who are pushing a political agenda.

“I spent close to nine years in the FBI, spent a good chunk of my time just keeping my head down and working the cases in front of me,” Friend noted in a March 14 interview with NTD News, The Epoch Times’ sister outlet.

“There are a lot of agents that sort of share that sentiment and just want to drive the mission forward. Unfortunately, there’s a big disconnect between the rank-and-file and the management class, and as you climb that ladder, it’s tending to become more and more political.”

The evidence, Friend said, could be seen in the bureau’s disparate treatment of pro-life activists—like Mark Houck, whose home was raided by the FBI over an altercation outside of a Planned Parenthood—and pro-abortion activists, like those who protested outside of Supreme Court justices’ homes and were never investigated.

“I think there’s an argument to be made that the FBI has now just become a weaponized apparatchik of the presidential administration,” he added, holding that public trust in the agency has diminished largely as a result of the perception of political bias.

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GOP Compromise Unintentionally Creates Universal Firearm Background Checks

Remember the Cornyn-Murphy Compromise that Gun Owners of America and our members warned Congress about? We were loud and clear about how this legislation did nothing to end mass public murders and only infringed on gun owners’ rights.

We attempted to warn elected officials. Nevertheless, Congress rushed to sign gun rights away, including 15 Republican Senators who enabled the passage of the “Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.”

Well, President Biden just announced that he’ll be using his “regulatory authority” to implement Universal Background Checks thanks to that bill.

When we told the anti-gunners in Congress how this bill was poison and would just add fuel to the fire for President Biden to go beyond what was written, compromise-hungry swamp monsters didn’t believe us.

Well, we hate to say, “I told you so,” but that’s exactly what happened. The Biden Administration, by their own admission, is going around Congress to infringe on your rights.

President Biden wants to use the expanded definition of “engaged in the business” to force you to file a background check for every single time you purchase a firearm.

According to the White House, the President is directing the Attorney General to move the U.S. as close to universal background checks as possible without additional legislation by supposedly clarifying the statutory definition of who is “engaged in the business” of dealing in firearms, as updated by the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.

It seems that Biden would rather harass law-abiding gun owners who sell as few as just one firearm per year than lock up the criminals who are responsible for gun violence.

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Stanford partnered with Twitter, Biden admin to censor ‘stories of true vaccine side effects’: Twitter Files

Matt Taibbi has unearthed still more evidence of collusion and censorship at Twitter, all done by people and institutions who believed that they were righteous in their efforts to ban and block Americans from telling the truth about their own personal experiences with the Covid vaccine. This time, it’s Stanford University and their Virality Project that told officials what information should be banned.

Taibbi reports that Stanford’s Virality Project took issue with accounts that used factual information to question the “expert guidance” of Dr. Anthony Fauci, former head of the NIAID. He notes that accounts that questioned the “Wuhan wet market” origin story of Covid, instead suggesting that the virus could have leaked from a Wuhan Virology Lab, were suspect per Stanford. That “lab leak” theory is now the primary Covid-origin theory per officials.

Accounts that purported that natural immunity was as good a protection against Covid as the vaccines, if not better, were also suspect, as well as what the Virality Project called “worrisome jokes.” Over the past few years, jokes have gotten many accounts in trouble with Twitter censors, and some mainstream media outlets questioned whether or not satire itself was an actionable offense.

All of these, Taibbi reports, were “characterized as ‘potential violations’ or disinformation ‘events’ by the Virality Project, a sweeping, cross-platform effort to monitor billions of social media posts by Stanford University, federal agencies, and a slew of (often state-funded) NGOs.”

The Virality Project had targeted “stories of true vaccine side effects” as actionable content, and in 2021, they “worked with government to launch a pan-industry monitoring plan for Covid-related content. At least six major Internet platforms were ‘onboarded’ to the same JIRA ticketing system, daily sending millions of items for review.”

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“Disinformation experts” blame “conspiratorial narratives,” “far-right websites,” for Silicon Valley Bank panic

Just days after a Senator was caught asking whether there were systems in place to censor social media in an attempt to prevent a bank run, “disinformation experts” are partially blaming the Silicon Valley bank collapse exacerbation on online conspiracy theorists on social media.

“Russian media outlets, far-right websites, short sellers and doomsday preppers were among those who pushed and amplified conspiracy theories online focused on the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank,” Bloomberg alleges.

According to anti-disinformation for-profit firm Alethea, a wide range of accounts used the bank’s collapse to promote their own agendas.

The firm’s founder Lisa Kaplan told Bloomberg that the claims by venture capitalists speculating the collapse of the bank that were amplified “propagandists and foreign influencers” contributed to the collapse of the bank.

“We assess that these outlets may have increased online panic and contributed to the broader cross-platform spread of false or misleading content about SVB,” Kaplan said to Bloomberg.

“We also assess that conspiratorial narratives may have accelerated panic, which then posed a risk to the broader financial system,” she said.

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