Two FBI workers are accused of using surveillance equipment to spy on teenage girls as they undressed and tried on prom gowns at a charity event at a West Virginia mall. The FBI employees have been charged with conspiracy and committing criminal invasion of privacy. They were working in an FBI satellite control room at the mall when they positioned a camera on temporary changing rooms and zoomed in for at least 90 minutes on girls dressing for the Cinderella Project fashion show, Marion County Prosecutor Pat Wilson said Monday.
In the throes of an economic crisis and two wars, does the nation want more headlines about a “Pec-tacular” “Buff Bam”? President Obama appears shirtless in a bathing suit on the cover of May issue of The Washingtonian magazine. The magazine’s excuse? The pec pic illustrates the #2 reason (out of 26) to love living in the nation’s capital: “Our New Neighbor is Hot.” The monthly style/culture publication uses a paparazzi photograph taken during the president-elect’s Christmas vacation in Hawaii last year.
Barack Hussein Obama approval rating at lowest level since he took office.
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 34% of the nation’s voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-two percent (32%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of +2. (snip) Overall, 54% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President’s performance so far. That’s his lowest total approval rating to date.
A federal appeals court ruled Monday that private citizens can challenge state and local gun laws by invoking the constitutional right to bear arms – the first such ruling in the nation – but upheld a ban on firearms at gun shows at the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton. The ruling by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco followed last year’s landmark Supreme Court decision that the Constitution’s Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to possess guns for self-defense.
Computer hackers have gained access to Pentagon’s “costliest project ever.” The suspect(s)? China.
Computer spies have broken into the Pentagon’s $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter project — the Defense Department’s costliest weapons program ever — according to current and former government officials familiar with the attacks. Similar incidents have also breached the Air Force’s air-traffic-control system in recent months, these people say. In the case of the fighter-jet program, the intruders were able to copy and siphon off several terabytes of data related to design and electronics systems, officials say, potentially making it easier to defend against the craft.
Hells Angels leaders in the US have ordered their Australian counterparts to restore the gang’s tough reputation by shooting at any rival Comanchero member “on sight”, according to a report. A demand from the bikie gang’s US headquarters also specified that their Australian chapters would be banned from their annual world run next month, the Herald Sun reports.
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Animal rights whack job and building bomber now on F.B.I.’s Most Wanted list.
For the first time, an accused domestic terrorist is being added to the FBI’s list of “Most Wanted” terror suspects. Daniel Andreas San Diego, a 31-year-old computer specialist from Berkeley, Calif., is wanted for the 2003 bombings of two corporate offices in California. Authorities describe San Diego as an animal rights activist who turned to bomb attacks and say he has tattoo that proclaims, “It only takes a spark.”
A medical student will be arraigned Tuesday on a murder charge in Boston Municipal Court in connection with the death of a woman who may have been contacted through a Craigslist ad, police said. Philip Markoff, 22, of Quincy, Massachusetts, also was charged with armed robbery and kidnapping in a separate case involving another woman, Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said Monday evening. He has no criminal record.
It was their dream home, a two-story, four-bedroom colonial in one of Detroit’s nicest and most stable neighborhoods. But then, one day in December, City Councilman Kwame Kenyatta and his wife packed up their belongings, locked the doors, mailed in the keys and walked away — adding another vacant house to the thousands in a city hard hit by the nation’s mortgage crisis. “We’re already underwater when it comes to what we’re paying on the house versus what the house is worth,” Kenyatta said.
Cost of bailout program fraud could be tens of billions. Gee, never could have seen that one coming.
In the first major disclosure of corruption and fraud in the $750 billion federal bailout program, investigators said Monday that they have opened 20 criminal probes into possible securities fraud, tax law violations, insider trading and mortgage modification fraud.
Neal Barofsky, the special inspector general overseeing the bailout program, said in an interview that the investigations are just the first wave of cases by his office. He expects the first criminal indictments to occur later this year. The disclosures reinforce the worst fears that the hastily designed and rapidly changing bailout program run by the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve is going to carry a heavy price of fraud against taxpayers – even as questions grow about whether it can accomplish its goal of stabilizing the nation’s financial system.
Mac malware making the rounds via pirated versions of iWork ‘09 distributed through P2P networks.
Back in January pirated versions of iWork ‘09 being shared on P2P networks were discovered to contain a trojan horse called “iWorkServices.” The author of the malware did his thing by adding a malicious binary to the trial version of the software package. ZDNet’s own Ryan Naraine in “iBotnet” notes that researchers at Symantec claim that the resulting botnet of thousands of Macs is already being used for nefarious purposes.
President Barack Obama says torture memos reflect the United States “losing our moral bearings.” The president is leaving the door to open to possible prosecution of Bush administration officials who devised harsh terrorism-era interrogation tactics. He also said Tuesday that he worries about the impact of high-intensity hearings on how detainees were treated under former President George W. Bush. But Obama did say, nevertheless, he could support a Hill investigation if it were conducted in a bipartisan way.