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California burning: Former college professor arrested for setting fires near massive Dixie blaze


Zerohedge
Wed, 11 Aug 2021 11:20 UTC
Dr. Gary Maynard

Comment: As if the worst fire in California's history weren't already bad enough...!


A former college professor living out of his car is accused of setting fires near the area of the massive Dixie Fire in Northern California.

CBS Sacramento reports forty-seven-year-old Gary Stephen Maynard was arrested Saturday for setting fire to public land. He's accused of setting the Ranch Fire near the Mendocino National Forest.

US Forest Agents began investigating the former Santa Clara University and Sonoma State University criminal justice professor on July 20 when he was spotted by someone acting strangely near the Cascade Fire.

Court documents reveal a witness saw Maynard come out of the woods where one of the fires was sparked. They said the man was "mentally unstable."
"Witness 1 believed the man was mentally unstable, describing the man as, 'mumbling a lot and having bipolar-like behavior,'" the court documents detailed.
Investigators were quick to place a tracking device on Maynard's vehicle looking for answers for who or what sparked the Dixie Fire, the largest single wildfire in California history. They also found additional evidence he might have stoked more fires.
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Dollar Gold

Poly Network pleads for hackers to return assets after $611 million crypto heist — and they start to do so - UPDATE: Hacker explains it was for the lulz

Mike Murphy
Market Watch
Wed, 11 Aug 2021 12:37 UTC
ethereum
© Getty Images
Hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of Ether was reportedly stolen in the hack.
Hack of DeFi platform could be one of the largest crypto heists ever.

Hackers who stole more than $600 million in cryptocurrency from a protocol known as Poly Network have returned more than half of that sum, after Poly Network pleaded with the culprits to return their haul Tuesday.

"Dear hacker," an open letter from Poly Network read. "The amount of money you have hacked is one of the biggest in defi history. Law enforcement in any country will regard this as a major economic crime and you will be pursued. ... The money you stole are from tens of thousands of crypto community members, hence the people.

Comment: RT reports:
In an improvised Q&A session held through transaction notes, the attacker claimed they wanted to expose a vulnerability in the platform's contract calls to "beat any insiders or hackers." Calling the Poly Network a "decent system," the hacker explained that they did not want to divulge the "bug" to a project team because "anyone could be the traitor."

They claimed that "saving" the assets in a secure account was the "only solution." In subsequent messages, the attacker said that they were angry at the network for making them a scapegoat before they had a chance to explain themselves, and insisted that they had no intention to launder the coins. "That's always the plan! I'm not very interested in money," the attacker said, claiming they perpetrated the hack "for fun."


Claiming that their motivation was "to do something cool but not harmful," the hacker raised even more eyebrows by asking for donations in support of his stunt.

So far, the attacker has racked up around $3,500 - a far cry from the $613 million worth of tokens snatched from the platform.

Poly Network is a transnational decentralized finance platform that operates on the Binance Smart Chain, Ethereum and Polygon blockchains, connecting them in one cyber-spot so that they can cut out intermediaries, thus making coin transfers easier and cheaper.
See also:

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Bizarro Earth

Large oil spill off Russia's southern Black Sea coast prompts criminal investigation


The Moscow Times
Thu, 12 Aug 2021 10:49 UTC
oil spill
© iki.cosmos.ru
A satellite image of the oil spill taken Sunday showed its size at nearly 80 square kilometers.
An oil spill off the coast of the Black Sea is at least 400 times larger than originally claimed, Russian scientists said Wednesday, citing satellite images.

A Russian-Kazakh consortium said Monday that 12 cubic meters of oil had spread over 200 square meters on Saturday when a Greek-flagged tanker was taking on oil at a terminal in southern Russia. The Caspian Pipeline Consortium's statement added that the situation was "normalized" by Sunday and did not pose a threat to local wildlife or humans.

But the Russian Academy of Science's (RAN) space research institute said a satellite image taken on Sunday showed the size of the oil spill to be almost 80 square kilometers, with a 19-kilometer oil slick stretching from the shore to the open sea.

Comment: Earlier this year, Russia announced it will block the profits of companies responsible for polluting the environment.

See also:

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Laptop

CodeMonkeyZ files released at Lindell Cyber Symposium — Not likely criminal issue as reported earlier — Findings a GAME CHANGER

Jim Hoft
The Gateway Pundit
Wed, 11 Aug 2021 18:42 UTC
cyber symposium
We have a BIG UPDATE BELOW....

CodeMonkeyZ, Ron Watkins, spoke at Mike Lindell's Cyber Symposium on Wednesday morning. Watkins brought with him the alleged images from before and after a software update of the Dominion Voting Systems in Mesa County Colorado. During his presentation, there were connection and audio problems.

On Tuesday night Mesa County Colorado Clerk Tina Peters stepped forward as the whistleblower behind CodeMonkeyZ's explosive report on Dominion Voting Machines last week. Tina Peters leaked documents to Ron Watkins, CodeMonkeyZ, last week before the planned Lindell Symposium. The Gateway Pundit reported on this leaked information last week.

Comment: See also:

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Info

CDC forced to "adjust" Sunday's Florida "record" COVID count lower by almost 50% after State Health Department cries foul on data

Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge
Wed, 11 Aug 2021 20:44 UTC
covid-19
The CDC has been forced to "adjust" its Covid-19 case tracker for Florida after the state's health department took to Twitter earlier this week to call out incorrect data.

As of Tuesday, the CDC "was working with the state's health department" to get the data right, according to a report from Fox News.

Florida's health department called out the incorrect CDC information publicly, stating earlier this week: "Wrong again. The number of cases @CDCgov released for Florida today is incorrect. They combined MULTIPLE days into one. We anticipate CDC will correct the record."

Comment: More from the Gateway Pundit:
The CDC *knowingly* combined several days worth of reporting and condensed it into one day.

The Florida Health Department took to Twitter to correct the record - AGAIN:

"This is not accurate. Florida follows CDC guidelines reporting cases Monday through Friday, other than holidays. Consequently, each Monday or Tuesday, there will be two or three days of data reported at a time. When data is published, it is attributed evenly to the previous days."


Another news site reported the CDC's inaccurate information and sounded the alarm on the record number of Covid cases in Florida.

Again, this is based on MULTIPLE DAYS of reporting into one.

The CDC knows this and falsely reported that Florida is experiencing record number of hospitalizations in an effort to attack Governor DeSantis.


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Handcuffs

Man sentenced to 25 years for murdering sister's rapist in prison

Patrick Reilly
New York Post
Sun, 08 Aug 2021 00:24 UTC
Shane Goldsby
© Washington Department of Corrections
Shane Goldsby killed cellmate Robert Munger after the 70-year-old teased Goldsby with details of his sister's rape.
A Washington state inmate was sentenced to another 25 years in prison for murdering his cellmate — a convicted child sex offender who raped his sister.

Shane Goldsby, 26, was sentenced this week after he beat to death his 70-year-old cellmate Robert Munger in June 2020.

Munger was reportedly serving a 43-year prison sentence for his child sex crimes.

Comment: From the report above, Munger sounds like an unrepentant psychopath, in which case, it's unlikely his family will actually mourn his loss. Not to condone murder, but it's difficult to fault Goldsby for his actions.

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Magnify

EU looking into new possible side-effects of mRNA COVID-19 shots

Pushkala Aripaka
Reuters
Wed, 11 Aug 2021 19:44 UTC
European Medicines Agency
© REUTERS/Piroschka van de Wouw
The exterior of the European Medicines Agency is seen in Amsterdam, Netherlands, December 18, 2020.
Three new conditions reported by a small number of people after vaccination with COVID-19 shots from Pfizer and Moderna are being studied to assess if they may be possible side-effects, Europe's drugs regulator said on Wednesday.

Erythema multiforme, a form of allergic skin reaction; glomerulonephritis or kidney inflammation; and nephrotic syndrome, a renal disorder characterised by heavy urinary protein losses, are being studied here by the safety committee of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), according to the regulator here.

Pfizer, by far the biggest supplier of COVID-19 vaccines to the European Union, and Moderna did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.

Just over 43.5 million doses of Moderna's vaccine, Spikevax, have been administered in the European Economic Area as of July 29, the EMA said, compared to more than 330 million doses of the Pfizer shot, Comirnaty, developed with Germany's BioNTech.

Comment: See also:

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Clipboard

Who fact checks the fact checkers? A report on media censorship

Phillip W. Magness and Ethan Yan
American Institute for Economic Research
Wed, 11 Aug 2021 06:32 UTC
censorship
The advent of fact-checker journalism may be wearing out its welcome. Perhaps the increasing politicization of American life is a contributor to the downward spiral of the fact-checking profession that is primarily run by politically engaged reporters, not expert specialists in the subjects they assess by any sense of the imagination. Not that any one group of experts should have the authority over the truth either. Self-appointed media gatekeepers are a ticking time bomb of political censorship, waiting to be unleashed when the temptations are too great and the necessity for impartiality is even greater. With White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki calling for collusion between social media companies and the government to censor "misinformation", this threat seems to be as close as ever.

Although fact checkers purport to be independent guardians of accountability, recent events have exposed them as mere enforcers of fashionable political positions. This brings us to a relatively new, but powerful company known as NewsGuard, which claims a partnership with Microsoft and gleaming spotlights in major outlets. Its staff and board boast powerful connections to the government, finance, and the media. According to an Op-ed in Politico written by NewsGuards' CEO, rather than simply being a fact-checking company that can only debunk stories after they go viral, NewsGuard rates entire websites' trustworthiness. This new strategy is aimed at discrediting the very source that alleged misinformation or disinformation may come from. NewsGuard publishes lengthy "nutritional labels," rating websites on various criteria of journalistic importance and outlining its reasons for giving certain ratings. Perhaps one day, these ratings may be used to filter out certain websites, which is what NewsGuard's CEO alludes to by citing the great political scientist Francis Fukuyama's article in Foreign Affairs.

In fact, the company made the following tweet on July 17, 2021, essentially siding with Psaki's call for a government-media partnership to censor internet content.

Comment: See also:

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Attention

Teenage boys are 14 TIMES more likely to suffer rare heart complication from Pfizer's Covid jab, study warns

Emily Craig
Daily Mail
Tue, 10 Aug 2021 19:23 UTC
Gobierno,Argentina,20 millones,
Pfizer's Covid vaccine may pose more of a risk to boys, a study claimed today amid growing calls for No10 to rethink plans to dish out jabs to children.

New research has suggested boys are 14 times more likely to be struck down with a rare heart complication called myocarditis.

The data, from the US, will likely fuel an already fierce debate over Britain's decision to press ahead with inoculating all 16 and 17-year-olds.

Last week, the Government's advisory panel ruled older teenagers should be given their first dose. Ministers plan to invite them before they head back to schools and colleges in September.

But health officials have yet to make concrete plans for children to get top-ups. They want to wait for more safety data about myocarditis before pressing ahead.

Real-world data from the US, which has been vaccinating children for months, have shown teenage boys to be at a higher risk.

Comment: See also:

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Eye 1

Melbourne discovers just 20 cases of Covid, city of 5 million put into lockdown for another week


RT
Wed, 11 Aug 2021 09:20 UTC
Melbourne
© Reuters / Sandra Sanders
FILE PHOTO. Melbourne, Australia.
Australian authorities have announced Melbourne's lockdown will be extended by another week, with its 5 million people subject to the longer restrictions after 20 new Covid-19 cases were recorded.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews confirmed the week-long extension of Melbourne's lockdown on Wednesday, just a day before restrictions were due to be lifted in Australia's second-most populous city.


Comment: One could be forgiven for thinking that this repeating pattern of reimposing restrictions just as they're about to be lifted, or saying that the restrictions will completely lifted only to retain a number of the harsh measures, is, for some in power, a psychological game.


Andrews instead announced that "we cannot afford to open up and let this variant run free - we need to get in front of this, just like we have done before," referring to the presence of the Delta strain of coronavirus responsible for the recent spike in infections.
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