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'Seamless Traveller': Australia aims to process air passengers with 'contactless' biometric scanning

Nicholas West
Activist Post
Fri, 27 Jan 2017 21:43 UTC
facial recognition
© pixabay
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has announced a plan that could make Australia the world's first country to implement a nationwide "contactless" system for processing its air travelers.

As The Sydney Morning Herald reports:
The Department of Immigration and Border Protection has sought technology that would abolish incoming passenger cards, remove the need for most passengers to show their passports and replace manned desks with electronic stations and automatic triage.
Officials are looking to use existing databases coupled with iris scans, facial recognition and fingerprint scans as the final phase of a five-year project called "Seamless Traveller" that is slated for completion by 2020. It's all a part of the move toward a full-fledged Smart World where YOU become a digitally scanned device in a matrix of online and real-world activity.

Head of Australia's border security, John Coyne, highlighted the rapid acceleration of biometric technology, as well as government access to the massive processing power of Big Data which he noted "is increasing exponentially." Furthermore, he flatly stated that such access is global.

Comment: The US is on the biometric scanning bandwagon as well. How many other countries will follow suit?

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Sherlock

University of Kansas: Police investigating rape of 16 y.o. girl at men's basketball dorm

Eric Italiano
Reuters
Thu, 26 Jan 2017 20:32 UTC
Kansas basketball
University of Kanas campus police are investigating the alleged rape of a 16-year-old girl at a dorm that houses the men's basketball team.

While no charges have been filed yet, and police have not publicly identified any suspects, five members of the nation's #2-ranked men's basketball team are listed as witnesses on the police report.

According to the Kansas City Star, the 5 Jayhawks' basketball players are: Frank Mason III, Mitch Lightfoot, Lagerald Vick, Tucker Vang and Josh Jackson.

via Kansas City Star:
The alleged rape and three other crimes occurred between 10 p.m. Dec. 17 and 5 a.m. Dec. 18, according to a police report obtained by The Star on Wednesday.

According to the report, those alleged crimes are contributing to a child's misconduct, furnishing alcohol to a minor and possession of drug paraphernalia. An investigation remains open.

No description of a suspect was released by KU police, including whether the suspect is a student or lives at McCarthy Hall. The alleged offender was suspected of using drugs and alcohol, according to the police report, and officers confiscated two glass smoking devices, one with residue.
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House

Luxury real estate continued to slump in the fourth quarter

Robert Frank
CNBC
Thu, 26 Jan 2017 12:30 UTC
Real estate
Uncertainty around the election spooked wealthy home buyers in the fourth quarter, continuing 2016's slowdown in luxury real estate, according to several new reports

Sales in the Hamptons, Aspen and Los Angeles fell by double-digit percentages in the fourth quarter, as the supply of unsold homes grew and prices came under pressure, according to market reports Douglas Elliman and Miller Samuel Real Estate Appraisers & Consultants.

Separate research from Redfin found that luxury properties nationwide under-performed the broader housing market for the eighth consecutive quarter. The supply of homes priced at $1 million or more rose 1 percent in the fourth quarter, while the number of $5 million-plus homes was up 15 percent.

"The Trump rally in the stock market did little to move prices in luxury real estate," Redfin's chief economist Nela Richardson said. "Cities with booming luxury markets attracted traditional high-income buyers seeking a place to live, work and grow their families. Prices in cities with more transient luxury buyers, looking for investments or a place to park their wealth, had more tepid growth to close out 2016."

Comment: See also:

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Apple Red

Not just a few bad apples: Half of the cops in small village fired or forced to quit due to corruption

Matt Agorist
The Free Thought Project
Fri, 27 Jan 2017 19:45 UTC
willow springs PD

Willow Springs PD
It's become apparent that there is a systemic problem in policing, yet many Americans continue to be willfully ignorant of the dark reality transpiring outside of their front doors. Often people will claim "it's just a few bad apples," but the truth is that problem is much more deeply ingrained. The following example is evidence of the previous claim.

In Willow Springs, Illinois, a three-year long internal investigation is coming to fruition and the rats are scurrying for the exits. After hundreds of pages of depositions and many hours of investigations, half of the Willow Springs department has now been fired or forced to quit.

Isolated? No.

"The residents needed to know," Mayor Alan Nowacyzyk told NBC 5 of the massive corruption from within.

According to a recent press release, the investigation is still ongoing, so there could be even more cops ousted from the department in the coming months.

As NBC 5 reports, Nowacyzyk said it all began with a former officer, Michael Giorgetti, in 2013. Giorgetti got in an accident driving his squad car while doing private business in Wisconsin, Nowacyzyk said. The village said Giorgetti was working for a former village contractor and had traveled with another village official to retrieve equipment they planned to store in a village-owned public works garage.

"That police officer attempted to cover up certain facts, lied through an investigation, was terminated, turned around (and) sued the village for wrongful termination," he said.
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Megaphone

A refreshing perspective: Oscar winning actress Marion Cotillard says feminism is divisive

Kelli Serio
Breitbart
Thu, 29 Jan 2015 00:00 UTC
Marion cotillard
© Getty
Oscar-winning actress Marion Cotillard introduced a new conversation regarding feminism this week, arguing the term is divisive and "separates" women from men.

When speaking to Porter magazine about gender inequality in the film industry, Cotillard said she is not buying it.

"Filmmaking is not about gender," she told the mag. "You cannot ask a president in a festival like Cannes to have, like, five movies directed by women and five by men."

Comment: With all the 'radical feminists' coming out of the depths of Hollywood, it's refreshing to see someone with common sense commenting on the issue. Both men and women have their place in society and championing one over the other as many feminists do is discrimination in itself. God forbid you mention this to any hardcore feminist though, unless you want to be called a woman-hater, oppression denier, and told to check your privilege. For further reading:

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Heart - Black

Sad state of humanity: Dolphin dies on Argentinian beach as onlookers clamor to take pictures with their camera phones


RT
Fri, 27 Jan 2017 19:06 UTC
dolphin selfies
© Fabian Carmelo Risso / Facebook
Crowds tussle to get a picture with a beached dolphin on a beach in Santa Teresita near Buenos Aires
The death of a dolphin on a beach in Argentina has incited fury online with users questioning the behavior of onlookers clamoring for selfies with the creature rather than helping it back in the water - the second such incident in the country in less than a year.


The footage of the dolphin shows a crowd of people gathered around the animal as it struggles for life. "It's already dead. Look, it's all swollen," one eyewitness can be heard saying in the background.

"They could have returned him to the water — in fact, he was breathing. But everyone started taking photos and touching him. They said he was already dead," one eyewitness, told local media.

Reaction to the incident online has been one of anger and dismay.

Comment: What's worse: killing a baby dolphin by passing it around so everyone can take a selfie, or passing around a dead dolphin for selfies?

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Question

Why are so many young people live-streaming their suicides?

Kate Irby
Miami Herald
Fri, 27 Jan 2017 18:53 UTC
Naika Venant
© Facebook
An image of Naika Venant on her Facebook page. On the social media platform where she liked to post personal videos, some longer than an hour, she called herself Hothead Nikee.
There have been at least three live-streamed suicides in the past month, two by teenage girls. And while suicide isn't a new concern, the ability to live-stream the act - and therefore encourage copycat behavior - is an issue that experts fear could grow, especially among young adults.

One of the earliest cases of a live-streamed suicide was Abraham Biggs in 2008. The 19-year-old Florida teen had posted multiple times on an online body-building message board that he was planning to kill himself. Eventually, he linked to a live-stream site called Justin.tv, where the video showed him overdosing on prescription pills.

Bloggers egged him on and told him to "go ahead and do it," according to ABC News. Those bloggers said they didn't believe it was real so they didn't do anything to help.

Dr. Katherine Ramsland, a professor of forensic psychology at DeSales University in Pennsylvania who has studied suicide for 13 years, said that's a common problem, especially in the age of reality television.

"Many people don't think it's real, maybe it's a prank. It's hard to believe," Ramsland said. "And there are also just nasty people out there who have been emboldened by the internet, trolls, or whatever you want to call them."

Comment: See also:

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Magnify

Petition to force Trump to release tax returns reaches 375,000 people


RT
Fri, 27 Jan 2017 17:27 UTC
trump
© Carlos Barria / Reuters
More than 375,000 people have signed a petition on the White House website calling for President Donald Trump to release his tax returns, breaking the record for any petition on the site in under six days.

Trump was the first major party presidential candidate not to release tax returns in decades. During his campaign, Trump said that he would release them once he was no longer under audit.

Since taking the oath of office, however, Trump has stated that he has no intention of ever releasing his tax returns anytime soon.

"You know, the only one that cares about my tax returns are the reporters, OK?" Trump told reporters during his first press conference as president, according to a transcript from CNBC.

"I won. I became president," Trump said. "I don't think they care at all."
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Laptop

Dallas police reportedly lose 8 years of evidence to hackers who held data for ransom


Sputnik
Fri, 27 Jan 2017 17:21 UTC
hacking
© PIxabay
Police in Cockrell Hill, a city within the city of Dallas, Texas, have admitted losing years' worth of evidence after their server was infected with ransomware.

Lost evidence includes all body camera video and Microsoft Office documents collected from 2009 to present day, as well as some in-car video, some in-house surveillance video and some photographs collated during that period. Data backed up on DVDs and CDs remained intact.

The department confirmed some of the data was relevant to ongoing investigations. And the computer virus is thought to be the work of Ukrainian hackers.

In a statement, the department said it became aware that files on its server had been "corrupted by a computer virus" and "immediately disconnected the server and all computers from the internet and all state database systems," successfully containing the virus. It was later determined the virus had been introduced to the network via a spam email sent by a cloned email, imitating a department issued address.
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Evil Rays

Teacher placed on leave over 'mock assassination" of Trump


RT
Fri, 27 Jan 2017 17:14 UTC
mock trump assassination
© ResistanceMedia / YouTube
A Dallas public school teacher has been placed on administrative leave after footage emerged of her 'mock assassination' of President Donald Trump with a water pistol was shared on social media following last week's inauguration.

"Today, we were made aware of a social media posting being circulated involving a teacher at W. H. Adamson High School. The teacher has been placed on administrative leave and the district has opened an investigation," the school said in a statement.

The video was initially posted to the teacher's Instagram account, according to reports, but has since been made private. There are numerous cloned versions of the video online.

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