The US food stamp system is to be reduced by $5 billion starting in November. The average benefit will shrink and the overall number of people receiving it will diminish by millions. The CEO of America’s largest food bank says the cuts will end in riots. “Riots always begin typically the same way: when people cannot afford to eat food,” Margaret Purvis, president and CEO of the Food bank for New York City, told online news and entertainment site Salon.com
Author: mediahitman
This article is the sixth in a six-part series about the drug war and police reform. Read Part 5 here. In November 2011, a homeless man estimated to be in his 40s was found dead in a tent at the Occupy encampment in Salt Lake City’s Pioneer Park.
Yet another law enforcement agency is looking to acquire a fleet of surveillance drones, but don’t act too surprised. Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the controversial lawman from Maricopa County, Arizona, is interesting in adding drones to his arsenal. Arpaio, 81, has made headlines before over his vehement stance against immigration and his thoughts about United States President Barack Obama.
By JOEL GEHRKE Justice Department attorneys are advancing an argument at the Supreme Court that could allow the government to invoke international treaties as a legal basis for policies such as gun control that conflict with the U.S. Constitution, according to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. Their argument is that a law implementing an international treaty signed by the U.S. allows the federal government to prosecute a criminal case that would normally be handled by state or local authorities.
As members of Congress grilled the secretary of the United States Health and Human Services department Wednesday morning in Washington, the agency’s Healthcare.gov site was being blamed for more issues than ever. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius had a rough morning on Wednesday answering to lawmakers during a Capitol Hill hearing, and her agency’s ongoing blunder — the Healthcare.gov site — even went offline again momentarily during the meeting.
Sriracha hot sauce may be known for burning your taste buds, but one southern California town is also blaming the company behind the popular product for harming its residents. Residents of Irwindale, CA claim that the odors coming from the Huy Hong Foods factory, where the sauce is made, are causing irritated eyes, throats, and headaches.
After suffering numerous problems with the latest class of surface warships, the Navy is hoping for a win with the introduction of the largest destroyer in United States history. On Monday, the Navy launched the new USS Zumwalt into Maine’s Kennebec River for the first time. Originally designed simply for shore bombardment, the ship is now intended to serve multiple purposes, including backing up Marines on clandestine missions.
The victims of a drone strike alleged to be launched last year by the United States spoke to members of Congress on Tuesday and urged the US government to stop killing civilians with weaponized unmanned aerial vehicles. Rafiq ur Rehman, a primary school teacher from North Waziristan, Pakistan, spoke through an interpreter on Capitol Hill on Tuesday along with his two children, ages nine and 13.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is investing $70 million to develop a new implant that can track, and respond to, brain signals in real time. The goal of the new project, dubbed “Systems-Based Neurotechnology for Emerging Therapies” (SUBNETS), is to gather new information via more advanced brain implants in order to reach the next level of effective neuropsychological treatment. DARPA is hoping to have the new implant developed within five years.
The NSA bugged 46 million phone calls in Italy in a month, according to digital library host Cryptome. The report is the latest in the revelations that the agency tapped hundreds of millions of phone lines across Europe. The snooping, between Dec. 10, 2012 and Jan. 8, 2013, reportedly did not appear to track the content of calls but rather telephony metadata, including the origin and duration of the calls.
Black boxes installed on cars in the US may soon track all their movements to determine how much wear they cause to American roads and, thus, how much each owner should pay. Adoption of the scheme however is being held back by privacy concerns. Maintaining roads in America currently relies on a gas tax, which is paid by motorists as they fill their tanks at pumps. However the cash flow is steadily drying up as cars become more fuel efficient and with authorities reluctant to raise tax rates. The advancement of hybrid and electric cars is also causing this means…
A 28-year-old man from Stradishall, England has been charged in the United States with hacking into US government and military computers, stealing sensitive data and causing millions of dollars in damages. The New Jersey US Attorney’s Office announced on Monday that Lauri Love of the United Kingdom was indicted with breaching thousands of computer systems
By Ari Bloomekatz Another set of human remains was found at a water-treatment facility in L.A. County on Monday, the second such discovery in less than a week. The latest remains were found Monday at a treatment facility in the 1900 block of Workman Mill Road near the 60 and 605 freeways, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Homicide detectives were en route to investigate the finding.
In the Alice in Wonderland meets 1984 world of the U.S. concentration camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, official state secrecy about matters already known the world over trumps the human rights of the prisoners still languishing there, according to lawyers trying to represent them despite the bizarre rules that hamper their efforts. Take the issue of torture, which arose at a recent Guantánamo Bay hearing. It is an indisputable fact that the U.S. tortured detainees, including alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, during interrogations between 2001 and 2006.
A mysterious four-story structure is being built atop a barge floating in the San Francisco Bay, and journalists say they are almost certain it is a new project being put together by Silicon Valley giant Google. CNET reporter Daniel Terdiman first reported on the floating structure near the former Treasure Island Navy base on Friday, and since then a number of writers have joined in to speculate as to what could be in the works.
US President Barack Obama’s Twitter and Facebook accounts were hacked and used to promote a video, which depicts the atrocities committed in Syria by the rebels, the Syrian Electronic Army hacker group said. “All the links that Barack Obama’s account tweeted and posted on Facebook were redirected to a video showing the truth about Syria,” a SEA spokesperson wrote in an email to Mashable website.
Military personnel are increasingly turning to liposuction in order to pass the Pentagon’s body fat test in an effort to maintain future prospects amid a budget-cutting environment. US service members say that the test used by the Defense Department measures the neck and waist to estimate body fat, which can easily lead weed out muscular or bulky physiques in addition to flabbier ones.
British G4S, world’s largest security company and London Olympic game security provider, is under fire for allegedly torturing, electroshocking and forcibly drugging inmates of a S. African prison. G4S, which was running the jail, denies the allegations. The allegations emerged on October, 9 South when Africa’s Department of Correctional Services announced that it was taking over the management of 3,000 inmates at Mangaung correctional center as “the contractor [G4S] has lost effective control of the facility”.