6 News Stories to Connect to Orwell’s 1984. Big brother really is watching you.
Today we accept a certain amount of oversight by government and business as a part of daily life. Students know about all the surveillance cameras that follow them as they move about in the world. They realize the U.S. government tracks details on their income and health. They know that online vendors know what they buy and everything they looked at before they decide. They have all heard stories of someone who gets a ticket because of an act caught by a traffic light and toll booth camera.
Smokers Need Not Apply « CBS Boston – News, Sports, Weather, Traffic and Boston's Best. CBS Boston (con't) Affordable Care Act Updates: CBSBoston.com/ACA Health News & Information: CBSBoston.com/Health Get Breaking News First Receive News, Politics, and Entertainment Headlines Each Morning.
Sign Up. Shape Up or Pay Up: Emanuel. Who would want to bug Charlotte's Town Offices? CHARLOTTE — Two wireless listening devices hidden in Charlotte Town Hall allowed eavesdropping on town clerk business and private selectboard sessions, town officials said Tuesday.
Neither device was functioning when workers found the bugs in October, nor have authorities determined when, why or by whom they were installed, Town Planner and Selectboard Assistant Dean Bloch said. The bugs were discovered during an energy retrofit of a dropped ceiling. Selectboard members were briefed on the matter, but did not discuss it during regular meetings, Bloch said. China bars English words in all publications. New Laws Govern Guns, Web, Banks. 'Mother,' 'Father' Changing to 'Parent One,' 'Parent Two' on Passport Applications - FoxNews.com.
Section of current passport application asking for "father" and "mother" information.
The words “mother” and “father” will be removed from U.S. passport applications and replaced with gender neutral terminology, the State Department says. “The words in the old form were ‘mother’ and ‘father,’” said Brenda Sprague, deputy assistant Secretary of State for Passport Services. "They are now ‘parent one’ and ‘parent two.’ " A statement on the State Department website noted: “These improvements are being made to provide a gender neutral description of a child’s parents and in recognition of different types of families.”
The statement didn't note if it was for child applications only. The State Department said the new passport applications, not yet available to the public, will be available online soon. Sprague said the decision to remove the traditional parenting names was not an act of political correctness. Gay rights groups are applauding the decision. Click here for more on Fox News Radio. Video - NPR's Nina Totenberg Apologizes For Saying "Christmas" Metro randomly inspects passengers' bags - wtop.com. Metro conducts an inspection at the Braddock Road Metro station.
(WTOP Photo/Adam Tuss) Gallery: (1 images) WASHINGTON - Metro Police started randomly inspecting bags at the Braddock Road and College Park Metro stations Tuesday. The searches, which are designed to be non-intrusive, came in the wake of recent terror plots and the same morning that an explosive device was found under a subway car seat in Rome. The searches started at 7:30 a.m. and lasted about an hour at the Braddock Metro station.
During the searches, police randomly selected bags or packages and checked for hazardous materials using special technology. Some common items, such as household chemicals, can prompt a positive test. Why the Feds Banned Four Loko (And is your favorite drink next?) On December 21, Ramiro Diaz was arrested for selling eight cans of Four Loko to an undercover agent from the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.
Diaz faces up to a year in jail for the offense, but just a few months ago Four Loko was perfectly legal. What happened? The drink had been the subject of many media reports which suggested that Four Loko's mixture of alcohol and caffeine causes young people to engage in risky behavior. The drink was even dubbed "Blackout in a Can," and the story soon moved from newsrooms to Congress, where officials like Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) demanded that it be pulled from shelves. "We must protect children from the severe and deadly consequences of drinks like Four Loko," declared Schumer. Kiss your 100-watt lightbulb goodbye.
Parents fume over Black's 'birth control' quip about overcrowding - m.NYPOST.com. Now that’s Black humor.
Less than two weeks into her new gig, Schools Chancellor Cathie Black has riled parents and public officials by jokingly suggesting that “birth control” was the solution to school overcrowding. The off-color quip came in response to concerns by public-school dad Eric Greenleaf, who said at a meeting of parents and officials at state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s downtown office that there will be “huge shortages” of classroom space in lower Manhattan in coming years.
“Could we just have some birth control for a while?” Black cracked. Govt 'creating vast domestic snooping machine' Police: Man On Facebook Is Not The ‘Kensington Strangler’ « CBS Philly – News, Sports, Weather, Traffic and the Best of Philadelphia. FCC Gives Government Power to Regulate Web Traffic. No Congress Since 1960s Makes Most Laws for Americans as 111th - Bloomberg.com. 6 News Stories to Connect to Orwell’s 1984. News Headlines. Terrorist watch list: One tip now enough to put name in database, officials say. A year after a Nigerian man allegedly tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner, officials say they have made it easier to add individuals' names to a terrorist watch list and improved the government's ability to thwart an attack in the United States.
The failure to put Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on the watch list last year renewed concerns that the government's system to screen out potential terrorists was flawed. Even though Abdulmutallab's father had told U.S. officials of his son's radicalization in Yemen, government rules dictated that a single-source tip was insufficient to include a person's name on the watch list. Airport Security: Loaded Gun Slips Past TSA Screeners. <br/><a href=" US News</a> | <a href=" Business News</a> Copy Last fall, as he had done hundreds of times, Iranian-American businessman Farid Seif passed through security at a Houston airport and boarded an international flight.
He didn't realize he had forgotten to remove the loaded snub nose "baby" Glock pistol from his computer bag. But TSA officers never noticed as his bag glided along the belt and was x-rayed. With Air Force's new drone, 'we can see everything' In ancient times, Gorgon was a mythical Greek creature whose unblinking eyes turned to stone those who beheld them.
In modern times, Gorgon may be one of the military's most valuable new tools. This winter, the Air Force is set to deploy to Afghanistan what it says is a revolutionary airborne surveillance system called Gorgon Stare, which will be able to transmit live video images of physical movement across an entire town. The system, made up of nine video cameras mounted on a remotely piloted aircraft, can transmit live images to soldiers on the ground or to analysts tracking enemy movements. The app that can read your mind: iPhone brainwave detector was only a matter of time. By Matt Blake Updated: 03:56 GMT, 15 January 2011 It's a device that would be more at home on the set of a Star Wars movie than the streets of Britain. But an iPhone application has been developed that can read minds. The XWave allows users to control on-screen objects with their minds as well as train their brains to control attention spans and relaxation levels.