Lifeboat Foundation

The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s New York office recently sent out an alert to local authorities warning of extremist groups it said are encouraging their members to spread the novel coronavirus to police and Jewish people, ABC News reported.

According to the news agency, the alert, which was reportedly issued on Thursday, said that “members of extremist groups are encouraging one another to spread the virus, if contracted, through bodily fluids and personal interactions.”

The alert reportedly warned that the racist groups were urging their members to go to places where Jewish people “may be congregated, to include markets, political offices, businesses and places of worship.”

Continue reading “FBI warns white supremacists encouraging members to spread coronavirus to law enforcement, Jews: report” »

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A team of scientists at North Carolina State University have developed a technique that could allow bricks and other common building materials to act as “cameras” that can reveal the location and distribution of radioactive materials that were once in their vicinity. Using optically stimulated luminescence, the team was able to retrieve a historical snapshot thanks to how radioactive elements like weapons-grade plutonium affected certain minerals in the materials.

On Christmas Day, 1972, the BBC aired a ghost story called The Stone Tape, which postulated that ghosts were the result of the stones in a room acting as a recording medium of past events – a stone tape, as it were. It was regarded as not only one of the best horror stories produced for television, it also popularized the hypothesis in paranormal circles known as residual hauntings or the Stone Tape theory.

Continue reading “Scientists turn bricks into gamma-ray cameras” »

Circa 2000

The intentional release of biological agents by belligerents or terrorists is a possibility that has recently attracted increased attention. Law enforcement agencies, military planners, public health officials, and clinicians are gaining an increasing awareness of this potential threat. From a military perspective, an important component of the protective pre-exposure armamentarium against this threat is immunization. In addition, certain vaccines are an accepted component of postexposure prophylaxis against potential bioterrorist threat agents. These vaccines might, therefore, be used to respond to a terrorist attack against civilians. We review the development of vaccines against 10 of the most credible biological threats.

“Cycling is considered a new sport,” he says. “Ice skating is considered a separate event at the Olympic games. As technology develops and performance becomes not comparable to running, we might see this device being considered as an augmentation device that would initiate a new sport.”

As exciting as it is to look forward to a new realm of super-fast sports, there’s always the chance such technology might be used non-recreationally. Braun is aware of the potential for misuse of his spring legs by law enforcement agencies (a group who may benefit from them, per the paper’s abstract).

Braun likens the hypothetical use of his devices to the use of Segways by police forces. They allow for more mobility. But making sure they’re used ethically, is still an open question.

Continue reading “Extremely steampunk leg attachments could let humans run 46 miles per hour” »

Sediment layers in rock or tree rings can hold clues to what the environment was like at different times in the past – and the same idea may even apply to your own teeth. Scientists at New York University have found that the material that makes up tooth roots preserves a lifelong record of stresses on the body, such as childbirth, illness, and even prison time.

While most of a tooth doesn’t grow once it’s popped up in your jaw, the tissue around the roots do. Known as cementum, this stuff regularly adds new layers after the tooth surfaces. And for this study, the researchers investigated the hypothesis that major physiological events would leave their mark in these layers.

To test the idea, the team examined 47 teeth from 15 different people, between the ages of 25 and 69. The life histories of all of these people were known, including things like whether they’d given birth, had major illnesses or even moved from rural to urban areas. Crucially, they also knew what ages these events had occurred.

The EARN IT Act could give law enforcement officials the backdoor they have long wanted — unless tech companies come together to stop it. But Match Group has already endorsed it, putting pressure on Facebook, Twitter, and others.

The DEA-led initiative focused on members of Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG), one of the most dangerous drug cartels in the world, who were monitored by federal law enforcement officials over a six month period.

The agencies announced that the operation resulted in 600 arrests nationwide, 350 indictments and seizures of money and drugs.

Continue reading “More than 600 suspected Mexican drug cartel members arrested in US” »

Despite a federal judge’s ruling last September that the U.S. government’s terror watch list violates constitutional rights, an FBI report obtained by Yahoo News shows local and state law enforcement agencies are being used to gather intelligence on individuals to collect information about those already in the database.

Law enforcement “encounters of watchlisted individuals almost certainly yield increased opportunities for intelligence collection,” says the FBI document, dated more than a month after the federal court ruling. The FBI says such encounters could include traffic stops or domestic disputes, which gives law enforcement “the opportunity to acquire additional biographic identifiers, fraudulent identification documents, financial information and associates of watchlisted individuals,” which might assist in thwarting terrorist acts.

The Terrorism Screening Database, widely known as the watch list, was created in 2003 and consists of names of people suspected of being involved with terrorism. Over the years, the list has grown to include the names of 1.1 million people, raising concerns that many of those on the list have no involvement in terrorism but have little or no legal resources with which to challenge the designation.

Continue reading “Exclusive: FBI document reveals local and state police are collecting intelligence to expand terrorism watch list” »

Medications for opioid addiction work. Most prisons and jails don’t offer them.