ansible
ansible's JournalJeffrey Epstein guards won't get jail time, make deal with prosecutors
The two Bureau of Prisons workers tasked with guarding Jeffrey Epstein the night he killed himself in a New York jail have admitted they falsified records, but they will skirt any time behind bars under a deal with federal prosecutors, authorities said Friday.The prison workers, Tova Noel and Michael Thomas, were accused of sleeping and browsing the internet instead of monitoring Epstein the night he took his own life in August 2019.
They were charged with lying on prison records to make it seem as though they had made required checks on the financier before he was found in his cell. New York City’s medical examiner ruled Epstein’s death a suicide. As part of the deal with prosecutors, they will enter into a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department and will serve no time behind bars, according to a letter from federal prosecutors that was filed in court papers Friday.
https://apnews.com/article/business-government-and-politics-3a0b465c080e1b0a53ce15315179d542
Could Trump know important state secrets that he's using as leverage to not get imprisoned?
The lack of any push to imprison him even after something as bad as 1/6 makes me wonder this. Presidents are supposed to be privileged to certain important state secrets, could he be using that as leverage?
Belgian manhunt for heavily armed far-right soldier
Special Belgian police units are searching for a heavily armed soldier with far-right views who they believe poses a serious threat. The suspect has been named as Jurgen Conings, a military shooting instructor who took weapons from a barracks. He is said to have made threats in the past against virologist Marc Van Ranst, who led Belgium's public health response to coronavirus. Mr Van Ranst and his family have been taken to a safe place.
Latest reports say as many as 350 police and some military have been deployed in and around a national park near the Dutch border. Six shots or "detonations" were reportedly heard in the area at 18:35 local time (17:35 BST) but it is unclear if this was gunfire. A motorway going through the area was closed because of the operation. Questions are now being asked why a known far-right sympathiser was allowed access to military weapons. Reports said he had taken the arms from the base at Leopoldsburg on the pretext of organising target practice.
Police appealed to the public not to approach the suspect but to get in touch if he was spotted. Authorities say he represents the highest level of threat on their scale of four and may have plans to attack either individuals or institutions. For hours a forest was searched near the town of Dilsen-Stokkem, not far from his home in the northern province of Limburg, after a car said to belong to the soldier was spotted containing heavy weapons.
Inside the car they found four anti-tank rocket-launchers and ammunition but believe the suspect is still armed with other guns, including a sub-machinegun, and carrying a bulletproof vest. Police then closed the Hoge Kempen national park, a 12,000-hectare area (46 sq miles) of forest and heathland, not far from the Dutch border. Reports say several barracks have been closed, and soldiers barred from leaving. Newspaper Le Soir reports that special forces have entered the area with an armoured vehicle.
Reports described him as a "potentially highly violent extremist". He is said to have left letters indicating he is prepared for a deadly battle with police and "could no longer live in a society where politicians and virologists have taken everything away from us".
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57168576
Teen busted for allegedly kidnapping sleeping boy later found dead on Texas street
A teen suspect has been arrested for allegedly breaking into a Dallas home and kidnapping a sleeping 4- year-old boy who was later found dead on a street, authorities said Monday. The child, who suffered multiple fatal wounds from what police say was an “edged weapon,” was identified Sunday by his grieving guardian as Cash Gernon, WFAA reported.
The “happy-go-lucky” boy was sleeping when a suspect, identified by cops as 18-year-old Darriynn Brown, barged into his home through a back door and kidnapped him on Saturday, his guardian said. Brown is now charged with kidnapping and theft in connection to Cash’s death. He is being held on $750,000 bail, according to the Dallas Morning News.
Brown was busted for evading arrest in late April and the case is still pending, the newspaper reported. Court documents show he lived with his parents just a half-mile from where the boy’s body was found. An initial WFAA report the accused kidnapper was wearing an ankle monitor at the time of the abduction is inaccurate, according to the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office.
The boy’s grieving mom said she had no idea what allegedly led Brown to target her son, whose body was later discovered in the street by a jogger early Saturday. The teen suspect did not know Cash, his guardian told the station off-camera.
https://nypost.com/2021/05/17/boy-found-dead-in-texas-street-was-kidnapped-while-he-slept-mom/
Anyone notice how so many people are on drugs now?
Maybe I'm just in a really poor area but jesus christ, almost everyone I know and see around here are on some sort of drugs now. Either legal stuff or not-so-legal, they're all trying to cope with how shitty this world is.
Ransomware Hackers Claim To Leak 250GB Of Washington, D.C., Police Data After Cops Don't Pay $4 Mill
Hackers who broke into the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department, locked up files and demanded $4 million in return for not leaking the agency’s data, have now released what they claim is the full batch of documents they pilfered. The Babuk ransomware crew said it amounted to a huge 250GB trove of files, including a “gang database” and masses of personal data of police personnel.
“We publish the full data of the police department. . . . The police also wanted to pay us, but the amount turned out to be too small,” Babuk wrote on its dark web site on Thursday, after the hackers had posted an alleged conversation with the police, indicating that the department had offered a $100,000 ransom. “Look at this wall of shame, you have every chance of not getting there, just pay us!” The post came with a picture taken from the Police Academy movie, during a scene in which two characters, standing close together, shout at each other through megaphones.
The group posted links to two batches of data: one marked “HR” for “human resources,” the other simply labeled “all.”
The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) declined to comment, though it has previously acknowledged an attack on its IT systems and has brought in the FBI to assist with the investigation.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2021/05/13/ransomware-hackers-claim-to-leak-250gb-of-washington-dc-police-data-after-cops-dont-pay-4-million-ransom/amp/?utm_campaign=forbes
Pipeline hackers just got paid $5 milliion, holy crap
What an incredible expensive mistake that affected millions of people
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/colonial-pipeline-paid-hackers-nearly-141548661.html
Colonial Pipeline Co. paid nearly $5 million to Eastern European hackers on Friday, contradicting reports earlier this week that the company had no intention of paying an extortion fee to help restore the country’s largest fuel pipeline, according to two people familiar with the transaction.The company paid the hefty ransom in untraceable cryptocurrency within hours after the attack, underscoring the immense pressure faced by the Georgia-based operator to get gasoline and jet fuel flowing again to major cities along the Eastern Seaboard, those people said.
Colonial, which operates the largest fuel pipeline in the U.S., became aware of the hack around May 7 and shut down its operations, which led to fuel shortages and lines at gas stations along the East Coast.
Gasoline hoarding has now begun
I guess we'll find out within the next several days if these people are nuts or wise to hoard that much gas
California reports first yearly population decline in its history, a drop of more than 182K people
SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- California's population fell by more than 182,000 people in 2020, marking the first year-over-year loss ever recorded for the nation's most populous state.
State officials announced Friday that California's population dipped 0.46% to just under 39.5 million people from January 2020 to January 2021.
The news comes one week after the U.S. Census Bureau announced a paltry population growth for California, resulting in the state losing a congressional seat for the first time because it grew more slowly than other states over the past decade.
But the census numbers reflect the state's population in April 2020. The new state numbers released Friday reflect the state's population as of January 2021.
https://abc7.com/california-population-decline-congressional-seat/10594297/
At least 68 killed in Afghan school blast, families bury victims
The death toll from a bomb attack outside a school in the Afghan capital Kabul has risen to 68, officials said on Sunday, with doctors struggling to care for 165 injured victims and families searching desperately for missing children.
Explosions on Saturday evening shook the neighbourhood of Dasht-e-Barchi, home to a large community of Shi'ites from the Hazara ethnic minority which has been targeted in the past by Islamic State, a Sunni militant group.
A car bomb was detonated in front of the Sayed Al-Shuhada school and two more bombs exploded when students rushed out in panic.
Officials said most of those killed were schoolgirls. Some families were still searching hospitals for their children.
"The first blast was powerful and happened so close to the children that some of them could not be found," said an Afghan official, requesting anonymity.
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/afghan-school-blast-toll-rises-58-families-bury-victims-2021-05-09/
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