By Reed Nelson After being stuck in legislative limbo for 14 years, industrial hemp is now a sanctioned agricultural crop in the state of California. The California Industrial Hemp Farming Act (SB 566) was signed into law on Wednesday by Gov. Jerry Brown, after years of deliberation dating back to 1999, a process that included multiple gubernatorial vetoes. The freshly signed law will allow approved California residents to grow hemp for industrial purposes by reclassifying the once-felonious plant as a “fiber or oilseed crop.”
Author: mediahitman
You may have noticed an unusual sight over the Baltimore area in the last few days—a Navy balloon hovering in the sky. Christie Ileto explains what the blimp is doing: The Navy is conducting aerial mapping over Baltimore, and it’s caught the eye of many residents far below. If you’ve looked up lately, you may have spotted a U.S. Navy blimp hiding in the clouds, or hovering over Baltimore’s harbor on clear sunny days.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and other Department of Justice agencies have spent almost $5 million during the last few years on an underreported domestic drone program that a government auditor says lacks sufficient privacy safeguards. A report released on Thursday by the Justice Department’s internal office of the inspector general revealed that the DoJ has invested roughly $4.9 million since 2004 on unmanned aerial systems (UAS) that allow for law enforcement agencies to conduct surveillance from the sky during certain missions.
Bill Gertz Washington Free Beacon An official al Qaeda website that is restricted to members of the terrorist group opened its first Twitter account this week in what U.S. officials say is an effort to resolve a major split over Syria’s Islamist rebels.
Arizona doctors and law enforcement officials are warning the public about a dangerous homemade narcotic that can cause human flesh to quickly decay and drastically reduce users’ life expectancy after the drug surfaced in the US state. Desomorphine, known in Russia as “krokodil,” or crocodile, is an extremely toxic drug made from codeine-based pills that are then mixed with iodine, paint thinner, gasoline, alcohol or oil. The concoction is injected
WFTV A Florida legislator wants to let people fire warning shots if they are threatened. Polk City Republican Rep. Neil Combee filed a bill Thursday that he says would let people defend themselves without fear of getting arrested.
In his dramatic speech in New York, Bolivian President Evo Morales called for the UN to be moved out of the US and for Barack Obama to be tried for crimes against humanity. Speaking to RT, Morales explained his controversial proposals. In his most controversial demand, Morales said that Obama should face an international trial with human rights watchdogs among the judges. The Bolivian president accused his US counterpart of instigating conflicts in the Middle East to make the region more volatile and to increase the US’s grip on the natural resources it abounds in.
A religious group has filed suit against the Kansas Board of Education seeking to stop educators from adopting global warming and evolution into the state curriculum. The Christian organization said such lessons would violate parents’ religious freedom. The non-profit group, known as Citizens for Objective Public Education (COPE), has attacked Kansas along with 25 other states and the National Research Council for implementing new standards which mandate that mainstream science be taught in classrooms. COPE is based in the small town of Peck, Kansas, to the south of Wichita.
The new National Security Agency building in Bluffdale, Utah will be the most expensive facility in the NSA’s history, but don’t expect any sort of grand unveiling when it’s finally functioning. The $1.5 billion NSA data center is scheduled to officially open up this fall, but the Salt Lake City Tribune is now reporting that the facility may already be up and running.
At least 350 illegitimate security clearances were given out in the US in the past nine years. The real number is likely to be much higher, as a descending ladder of investigations reveals negligence at all levels. Reuters derived the figure by calculating all the falsified profiles listed in 21 successful cases between 2004 and 2012 against U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) employees and contractors, in which it was proven that they made false statements.
In a surprise development, it has been reported that several months ago Britain’s National Cyber Crime Unit “secretly” arrested a 16-year-old London schoolboy on suspicion of being involved in the “biggest cyberattack in the history of the Internet.” The arrest of the teenager, whose name is not being disclosed, is a part of the investigation into the distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on Spamhaus on March 20 this year.
The FBI has harassed, threatened and even denied Fifth Amendment rights to friends of an Orlando man agents killed in May who was close to alleged Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the Council on American-Islamic Relations said Wednesday. Friends of Ibragim Todashev have told the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) that FBI agents have asked them to spy on Orlando-area mosques, threatening arrest if they failed to comply.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh says that the raid which killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011 is “one big lie” and that “not one word” of the Obama administration’s narrative on what happened is true. In a wide-ranging interview published today by the Guardian, Hersh savages the US media for failing to challenge the White House on a whole host of issues, from NSA spying, to drone attacks, to aggression against Syria.
A man says that within hours of making an impassioned post on Facebook, he was being interrogated by police and the FBI. Blaine Cooper, 33, contacted policestateusa.com with a concerning story about how his sentiments posted on Facebook had drawn the attention of the federal government. He showed me the comment and told me that within 24-hours of posting it, he was being contacted by the police and FBI.
Investigators are trying to figure out how a machine gun ended up hidden in the ceiling of an office at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport before being discovered this week. An electrician was doing renovation work at JFK’s Terminal One on Thursday when he stumbled upon a Mac-11, a subcompact machine pistol that can unload its 32-round magazine in under two seconds.
A Pennsylvania elementary school is being sued by the parents of a 7-year-old student who was suspended for bringing a novelty pen to class earlier this year. The child, identified only in court documents as G.B., was barred from attending Hershey Elementary School in Pennsylvania for four days earlier this year after a bus driver confiscated the pen, a writing implement that emits a small buzz when triggered.
For the first time in more than 30 years the President of the United States has spoken with Iran’s leadership. Barack Obama announced he believes the two sides can reach a deal regarding the future of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. From the White House Friday afternoon, Obama said he just got off the phone with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and discussed “our ongoing efforts to reach an agreement over Iran’s nuclear program.” “I believe we can reach a comprehensive solution,” Obama said, adding that he has asked US Secretary of State John Kerry to continue pursuing a deal with…
Workers from Japan’s TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi plant have located a crack in the bottom of a tank that may have leaked 300 tons of radioactive water in August, Japanese media reports. This comes as the company seeks to reopen another nuclear plant. The water that was being pumped into the tank at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant could have caused the existing gap to expand and likely led to the massive leak, TV channel NHK reported. The leak which sparked the crisis came from one of the 1,000 above-ground storage tanks built inside the plant by Tokyo Electric Power Company…