pelespirit

Boeing began Monday installing “workplace occupancy sensors” in the main Everett office towers that use motion detectors and cameras mounted in ceiling tiles above workstations, conference rooms and common areas.

The sensors are intended to gather information that’s then analyzed using artificial intelligence to feed data to Boeing real estate and facilities managers about how many people are coming to the office and using specific spaces, and for how long.

For people already concerned about how their internet and cellphone use can be tracked outside work, this new form of workplace surveillance proved unwelcome, despite Boeing’s insistence that it doesn’t invade anyone’s personal privacy.

The plan was outlined to employees last week and one was creeped out enough at the prospect to share the PowerPoint presentation with The Seattle Times.

“It scared me to my core,” said the employee, who declined to provide their name. “What you can see is, to say the least, evil.”

With the near complete end of commercial whaling, ship collisions are now a leading cause of death worldwide for large whale species, according to new research published in Science.

Yet little is done to manage this risk, found authors of the study, led by the University of Washington.

In a first of its kind global analysis, scientists found that shipping overlaps with 92% of whale ranges, and less than 7% of the hot spots with the greatest collision risk had any management strategies in place to reduce strikes.

U.S. Rep. Rick Crawford, the chairman of the House intelligence subcommittee overseeing the Central Intelligence Agency, published an interim report Thursday on an inquiry that began in February into how U.S. intelligence agencies handled the Havana Syndrome—which the government calls “anomalous health incidents.”

“It appears increasingly likely and the Chairman is convinced that a foreign adversary is behind some” of these incidents, the report says. “The Intelligence Community has attempted to thwart the Subcommittee’s investigative efforts to uncover the truth at every turn.”

“Unless TikTok executes a qualified divestiture by January 19, 2025 — or the President grants a 90-day extension based upon progress towards a qualified divestiture — its platform will effectively be unavailable in the United States, at least for a time,” the court wrote in Friday’s opinion.

“Consequently, TikTok’s millions of users will need to find alternative media of communication,” it continued. “That burden is attributable to the PRC’s hybrid commercial threat to U.S. national security, not to the U.S. Government, which engaged with TikTok through a multi-year process in an effort to find an alternative solution.”

The move by Minnesota to cut off lending companies controlled by LDF comes shortly after ProPublica reported extensively in August and September on LDF’s loan operations, finding that over the past decade, the tribe has grown to become one of the leading players in the tribal lending industry. Its loans contribute to the debt people shoulder throughout the country. A ProPublica analysis found companies owned by the LDF tribe showed up as a creditor in roughly 1 out of every 100 bankruptcy cases sampled nationwide.

The Minnesota attorney general’s office reported in its federal court filing that the state had received many consumer complaints about LDF Holdings, the tribe’s lending arm, that described extreme hardship caused by “continuing demands for payment of excessive interest.”

It gave the example of a Burnsville resident who took out a $1,398 loan from the LDF company Lendumo in December 2023 at an annual percentage rate of 795%. The loan snowballed to $8,593.

The justice department began investigating the police force for the Tennessee city in 2023, after the death of Tyre Nichols, who was brutally beaten by police during a traffic stop.

In its report from the investigation, released on Wednesday, the department said Memphis police "must correct these issues" that it said were part of a "pattern" of civil rights violations.

In response to the justice department's report and calls for change, the mayor of Memphis, Paul Young, said on Thursday that the city has already enacted reforms.

While the report acknowledged these changes, it also said there are "additional remedial measures" needed "to fully address" the listed issues.

An unknown number of mothers in Florida have abruptly lost Medicaid coverage after giving birth, despite being eligible, according to an ongoing federal lawsuit filed against the state in August 2023. The issue is linked to the state’s computer eligibility system, run by Deloitte Consulting, according to trial testimony from state and Deloitte employees. It is yet one more example of problems states and beneficiaries have encountered with Medicaid management systems operated by Deloitte, a giant consulting firm.

As of July, Florida had awarded the global firm contracts valued at more than $100 million to modernize, operate, and maintain the state’s integrated eligibility system for Medicaid and other benefits.

The town of Carrboro, North Carolina filed a lawsuit Wednesday accusing the utility company Duke Energy of carrying out a "knowing deception campaign concerning the causes and dangers posed by the climate crisis."

The municipality—which is near Chapel Hill and is after compensation for damages it has suffered or will suffer as a result of the alleged deception campaign—is the first town in the United States to challenge an electric utility for public deception about the dangers of fossil fuels and seek damages for the harms those emissions have created, according to the town's mayor, Barbara Foushee.

The case was filed in North Carolina Superior Court and argues that Duke Energy has engaged in a "greenwashing" campaign to convince the public it sought to address the climate emergency.

As we reported earlier, police confirmed there were words on three shell casings found at the scene of the fatal shooting of Brian Thompson.

The BBC's US partner CBS News is now reporting that the words - "deny", "defend" and "depose" - were meticulously written, not etched, onto the casings, according to a source briefed on the investigation.

Homeowners like McGregor are struggling in every corner of Texas to keep their homes insured, paying more for less coverage as climate change wreaks havoc on providers.

Home insurance in the state is now among the most expensive in the country, trailing only Florida and Louisiana, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis of U.S. Census survey data. Insurance carriers from Allstate and State Farm to smaller start-ups have responded to the rising frequency and intensity of storms not by pulling out of local markets en masse, as has happened in more regulated states like California, but by jacking up premiums and dropping homeowners in risky areas.

Conservative supporters of Trump had come out against Chronister, pointing to his enforcement of pandemic-era rules meant to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

In March 2020, he arrested the pastor of a Florida mega church for holding religious services in violation of lockdown rules.

Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie said he had "disqualified" himself for the role after arresting the pastor. On Fox News, Texas Congressman Chip Roy called Chronister an "authoritarian" and conservative commentator Liz Wheeler called him a "Covid tyrant".

The Federal Trade Commission said it has reached a proposed settlement with Evolv Technologies due to allegations that the company "made false claims about the extent to which its AI-powered security screening system can detect weapons and ignore harmless personal items."

The company claims that its technology can screen for weapons in a noninvasive way. But federal officials say its claims are "misleading."

Evolv Technologies provides weapon detectors for over 1,000 schools, in addition to sports venues, hospitals, and casinos. The company says that its detectors are used to screen over 700,000 children and school visitors throughout the U.S. daily for weapons.