The 9th Circuit determined that forcibly mashing a suspect's thumb into his phone to unlock it was akin to fingerprinting him at the police station.

As we keep more and more personal data on our phones, iPhone and Android devices now have some of the most advanced encryption technology in existence to keep that information safe from prying eyes. The easiest way around that, of course, is for someone to gain access to your phone.

This week, a federal court decided that police officers can make you unlock your phone, even by physically forcing you to press your thumb against it.

Brigitte Macron, the First Lady of France, filed a complaint last year against two women who uploaded a YouTube video titled "Brigitte Macron is a man." The video alleged that Brigitte had a gender reassignment at 18.

On Wednesday, the French newspaper Le Point reported that Brigitte's complaint against the two women was "voided" by a Paris Judge.

In its decision, consulted by AFP, the court declared void the summons issued by Brigitte Macron for invasion of privacy and image rights, considering that the facts she denounced should have been qualified of public defamation.

Brigitte Macron, her brother, and the three children of the First Lady had assigned two women on February 15, 2022, one presenting herself as a "medium," the other as an "independent journalist."

They asked the court to condemn these two women to pay them damages for having broadcast on the YouTube channel of the "medium", on December 10, 2021, "a perfectly eccentric thesis" according to which Brigitte Macron, born Trogneux, does not would never have existed, but that his brother would have taken on this identity after changing sex.

In Part 1: I explained that the next financial crisis will be bailed out not with central bank money creation but with our stocks, bonds and bank balances.

In Part 2: I explained the multi-year quiet regulatory changes that dispossessed us of our property.

In Part 3: I explain David Rogers Webb's conclusion that a massive financial crisis is pending in which our financial assets are the collateral underwriting the derivative and financial bubble and will result in the loss of our assets but leave us with our debts as happened to those whose banks failed in the 1930s.

Webb begins with the economic formula that the velocity of circulation of money times the money supply equals nominal Gross Domestic Product. V x MS = GDP.

The velocity of circulation is a measure of how many times a dollar is spent during a given period of time, e.g., quarterly, annually. A high velocity means people quickly spend the money that comes into their hands. A low velocity means people tend to hold on to money.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterates that the Biden administration "cannot support a major military operation in Rafah."

Blinken, at a press conference in Italy, said:

"First, there are currently somewhere around 1.4 million people in Rafah — many of them displaced from other parts of Gaza. It's imperative that people are able to get out of the way of any conflict, and doing so is a monumental task for which we have yet to see a plan. Not only getting them out of harm's way, but making sure that they can be supported with humanitarian assistance.

"Second, even if people are largely out of harm's way, inevitably there's going to remain a pretty significant civilian population in Rafah, and we believe that a major military operation with a large presence of the civilian population would have terrible consequences for that population.

"We are committed, as Israel is, to ensuring that Gaza cannot be controlled by Hamas... But in terms of major military operations in Rafah, that's something that we don't support, and we believe that the objective can be achieved by other means.

"We've been engaged in conversations at senior levels with Israel over the past couple of weeks on this, including as recently as this week."

Israel had vowed to make Iran pay for Tehran's unprecedented drone and missile attack on April 13.

But Israel's suspected military response early on April 19 appeared to be limited in scale and scope and aimed at de-escalating tensions with Iran.

Tehran said it shot down three quadcopter drones outside the central city of Isfahan, which is home to key military and nuclear facilities. Unnamed U.S. officials said Israel used missiles in the attack.

Experts said the use of small quadcopter drones, which are unable to travel long distances, suggests the attack was carried out from inside Iranian territory.

Israel has not claimed the attack in Isfahan. But experts said the suspected Israeli response sent a clear message to Tehran.

Kiev's forces are struggling to hold back the Russians due to delays in foreign aid and personnel shortages. The US and the EU are concerned that Russian forces may punch through Ukrainian defensive lines in the coming weeks, people familiar with the matter have told Bloomberg. Russian troops are continuing to advance thanks to an advantage in ammunition, the agency acknowledged in an article on Thursday.

At the same time, Ukrainian forces "struggle because of delays in US and European military aid and personnel shortages." Ukraine also faces daily Russian missile, drone and bomb attacks that are knocking out key energy infrastructure and striking military positions, due to its lack of air defenses, according to Bloomberg.

Because of this, "concerns are mounting that Russia may make major gains in the coming weeks by punching through overstretched Ukrainian lines," sources in the US and Europe told the agency.

Russian forces have now reached the outskirts of Chasov Yar in the Donetsk People's Republic, a crucial town for Ukraine's defenses in the area due to its elevated position, the article continued.

The so-called 'DISGRACE' Act directly targets Trump who is facing 91 felony charges in federal and state courts

House Democrats have introduced a bill that would strip Secret Service protection from convicted felons sentenced to prison, a move directly targeting former President Trump who is currently on criminal trial in New York City for alleged hush money payments made during the 2016 election campaign and faces several other cases which could land him behind bars.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the former chair of the now disbanded Jan. 6 congressional committee, introduced legislation that would automatically nix Secret Service protection for those who have been convicted of a federal or state felony that carries a minimum one-year prison term.

The Iran attack story continues to unfold. Everybody has an opinion - but we still don't actually know what really happened. As a result, some think the attack was a victory for Iran. Others, even those on the Left, think not. Finian Cunningham calls it "lame retaliation".

The Iranians say they gave the American 72 hours' notice.

Pepe Escobar says that the Iranians and Americans met in Oman and the Iranians told the Americans their attack would be on military bases only. And...

THE SHADOWPLAY:

So this is how it happened.

Burns met an Iranian delegation in Oman.

He was told the Israeli punishment was inevitable - and if the US got involved then all US bases will be attacked, and the Strait of Hormuz would be blocked.

Burns said we do nothing if no civilians are harmed. The Iranians said it will be a military base or an embassy.

The CIA said go ahead and do it.

The Americans of course deny this.

So, somebody's lying.

The U.S. House on Saturday voted on a bipartisan basis to pass a $95 billion foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific.

Why it matters: The vote puts Congress on track to send long sought-after aid to Ukraine more than two months after similar legislation was sent over from the Senate.

Driving the news: The package was passed in four separate bills, one each for Israel, Ukraine and the Indo-Pacific and another containing sanctions on Russia, China and Iran, including the REPO Act and TikTok ban legislation.

Yuval Hariri, Klaus Schwab's spokesman, recently made a statement that should send chills up everyone's spine. "If bad comes to worse and the Flood comes," Harari said, he and the likeminded cabal of shadowy world masters will "build an Ark and leave the rest to drown."

Elsewhere, Harari elaborates on the reasons for his fellow elitists' cold-hearted indifference to the fate of the vast majority of Earth's inhabitants:

"If you go back to the middle of the 20th century ...and you think about building the future, then your building materials are those millions of people who are working hard in the factories, in the farms, the soldiers. You need them. You don't have any kind of future without them."

What he means is that you - referring to the dominant social and financial elites of that era - still "needed" the labour of millions in the various fields of economic endeavour in order to turn a profit. Since then, how have things changed according to "futurologist" Harari?

"Now, fast forward to the early 21st century when we just don't need the vast majority of the population, because the future is about developing more and more sophisticated technology, like artificial intelligence [and] bioengineering, most people don't contribute anything to that, except perhaps for their data, and whatever people are still doing something useful, these technologies increasingly will make them redundant and will make it possible to replace those people."

Elitist mouthpiece Harari deserves credit for blood-curdling honesty, if not for the morality of his and his masters' "visions." He is plainly signalling the view that this writer, the editors of this portal, its readers and the rest of mankind are expendable and apart from whatever economic utility they still might possess are bereft of any inherent dignity or value.