[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Three teenagers allegedly kidnapped a wealthy man at gunpoint and drove him to a remote Arizona desert to steal $4 million in cryptocurrency in a sinister plot.
Austin Fletcher and Belal Ashraf, both 16 and from Pasco County, Florida, allegedly teamed up with a third, as-yet-unidentified teenager to target the victim, who has remained anonymous.
Prosecutors said at Fletcher's probable cause hearing on Friday that the third teenager is no longer in the United States. It is not clear if authorities know where they are or if they plan to extradite them.
A juvenile court judge ruled that Ashraf and Fletcher will face charges as adults, including robbery, kidnapping, and extortion.
The horror robbery allegedly unfolded last November when the man told police that he had been forced into a car at gunpoint before being driven to the White Hills area, around an hour outside Las Vegas.
The victim said he had been hosting a cryptocurrency event in downtown Las Vegas that evening, and was ambushed by the three teens when he returned to his apartment complex.
Court records cited by 8NewsNow showed that the teenagers allegedly wrapped a towel around the man's head and 'told him not to look at them', and warned him that 'if he did not comply, they had his dad and would kill him.'
They told him that if he complied and handed over his digital assets, he 'would live to see another day.'
After driving the man out into the desert, the three teens allegedly demanded his banking passwords and threatened to murder him if he refused.
Prosecutors added in their filings that the teenagers appeared to be on the phone with another person during the ordeal, which the victim said he could hear through speakerphone.
When his cryptocurrency accounts were drained, the man was then left out in the Arizona desert as the teens drove off, prosecutors say.
The victim only found safety after walking over five miles through the barren desert until he found a gas station, where he called a friend to pick him up.
According to authorities, the teens were linked to the attack through a vehicle that traveled from Florida to Nevada beforehand, and visited key locations including the victim's apartment.
The vehicle was also reportedly tracked to a stop in Mississippi, where a gun owned by one of the suspect's family members was then seen in a social media post shared by one of the teens, police said.
Court records cited by 8NewsNow showed that the third, unidentified teenage suspect may have gone to high school with Fletcher and Ashraf in Florida and they were involved in 'disturbances' at the school.
In one such instance, the three teens 'were reported as swearing in English and Arabic', and Ashraf was 'observed shoulder checking a school resource officer' and screaming in the face of an assistant principal, records said.
In court this week, a Las Vegas judge set Fletcher's bail at $4 million, rejecting his attorney's request for him to serve house arrest.
This decision came after a different judge allowed Ashraf to be released with electronic monitoring days before.
Fletcher and Ashraf are next due in court in June.
[HotAir] UCLA's medical school is being sued for racial discrimination in admissions. The class action lawsuit was filed Thursday.
A federal class-action lawsuit accuses UCLA’s medical school and various university officials of using race as a factor in admissions, despite a state law and Supreme Court ruling striking down affirmative action.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in California’s Central District federal court, was brought by the activist group Do No Harm, founded in 2022 to fight affirmative action in medicine; Students for Fair Admissions, the nonprofit that won its suit at the Supreme Court against Harvard’s affirmative action program; and Kelly Mahoney, a college graduate who was rejected from UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine.
According to the lawsuit, the legal action was being taken to stop the medical school and UCLA officials from allegedly “engaging in intentional discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity in the admissions process.”
This story really began last year when the Washington Free Beacon reported that dean of admissions at the medical school, Jennifer Lucero, was putting race above merit in admissions decisions. She allegedly shouted at her own team when one of them questioned whether a black candidate with subpar test scores was qualified.
...when it came time for the admissions committee to consider one such student in November 2021—a black applicant with grades and test scores far below the UCLA average—some members of the committee felt that this particular candidate, based on the available evidence, was not the best fit for the top-tier medical school, according to two people present for the committee's meeting...Jennifer Lucero, exploded in anger.
"Did you not know African-American women are dying at a higher rate than everybody else?" Lucero asked the admissions officer, these people said. The candidate's scores shouldn't matter, she continued, because "we need people like this in the medical school."
State law made affirmative action in admissions illegal in California since 1996, long before it was overturned nationwide by the Supreme Court. So this sort of thing is not supposed to happen. And yet it allegedly was under Lucero's leadership which began in 2020. The results of setting aside merit standards were not good for the school.
Within three years of Lucero's hiring in 2020, UCLA dropped from 6th to 18th place in U.S. News & World Report's rankings for medical research. And in some of the cohorts she admitted, more than 50 percent of students failed standardized tests on emergency medicine, family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics...
One professor said that a student in the operating room could not identify a major artery when asked, then berated the professor for putting her on the spot. Another said that students at the end of their clinical rotations don't know basic lab tests and, in some cases, are unable to present patients...
Led by Lucero, who also serves as the vice chair for equity, diversity, and inclusion of UCLA's anesthesiology department, the admissions committee routinely gives black and Latino applicants a pass for subpar metrics, four people who served on it said, while whites and Asians need near perfect scores to even be considered.
The bar for underrepresented minorities is "as low as you could possibly imagine," one committee member told the Free Beacon. "It completely disregards grades and achievements."
What UCLA's medical school was doing should have been flatly illegal but the story went on to say that Lucero rarely referred directly to race and instead used proxies including zip codes to achieve the same results.
That story was published last May. In March of this year, HHS announced it was launching an investigation.
HHS’s Office of Civil Rights will investigate whether the school’s admissions office, led by anesthesiologist Jennifer Lucero, holds black and Hispanic applicants to a lower academic standard than white and Asian applicants, according to a source familiar with the investigation. California law has banned racial preferences in university admissions for nearly three decades, and the Supreme Court followed suit in 2023...
"HHS will not tolerate informal admissions practices and institutional policies that promote racial discrimination at HHS-funded institutions," the agency told the Free Beacon. "This investigation reflects the Administration’s commitment to honor the hard work, excellence, and individual achievement of all students and not just those of particular racial backgrounds."
Earlier this week, just two days before the lawsuit was filed, the WFB published a follow-up suggesting racial discrimination was still taking place.
On April 8, according to a person with knowledge of the matter, the medical school circulated a memo that outlined "guiding principles for student representation on the admissions committee," which includes third- and fourth-year medical students as well as faculty members. Those guidelines require the committee to consider race when picking students to serve as admissions officers.
"The Chairs of the [admissions committee] will review all submitted recommendations to ensure representation from those who identify as BIPOC and LGBTQ+," the memo reads, according to a screenshot obtained by the Washington Free Beacon...
Lawyers who reviewed the guidelines said they were patently illegal and would be exhibit A in any kind of enforcement action against the medical school.
"Putting in writing, while under federal investigation for discrimination, that your faculty will ‘review’ the proposed slate of students included in a program ‘to ensure representation from those who identify as BIPOC and LBGTQ+’ is astonishingly brazen," said Dan Morenoff, the executive director of the American Civil Rights Project. "You have to wonder how it’s possible for no one either in the administration or with its outside counsel to even roughly read either the law or the room."
[ZeroHedge] The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is planning to roll out artificial intelligence across the agency following a successful pilot program.
FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary has directed all FDA centers to immediately start using artificial intelligence (AI) and fully integrate it by the end of June, the FDA said in a May 8 statement.
By June 30, all centers will use what the agency described as a “common, secure generative AI system integrated with FDA’s internal data platforms.”
“I was blown away by the success of our first AI-assisted scientific review pilot,“ Makary said in a statement. ”We need to value our scientists’ time and reduce the amount of non-productive busywork that has historically consumed much of the review process. The agency-wide deployment of these capabilities holds tremendous promise in accelerating the review time for new therapies.”
AI refers to computer systems that can carry out complex tasks typically performed by humans.
“AI can be generally described as a branch of computer science, statistics, and engineering that uses algorithms or models to perform tasks and exhibit behaviors such as learning, making decisions, and making predictions,” FDA officials said in 2023.
Makary said on Thursday that past years have featured discussions on utilizing AI and that it’s time to start using it to save time, with some tasks that once took days now taking mere minutes.
“We at the FDA now have to ask big questions that we’ve never asked before. Why does it take over 10 years for a new drug to come to market? Why are we not modernized with AI and other things? We’ve just completed our first AI-assisted scientific review for a product and that’s just the beginning,” he said earlier in the week on social media platform X.
The rollout across the FDA is being coordinated by Jeremy Walsh, Booz Allen Hamilton’s former chief technologist, who was recently appointed as the agency’s chief AI officer, and Sridhar Mantha, who previously led the Office of Business Informatics at the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.
President Donald Trump has encouraged agencies to adopt wider use of AI, including through an executive order that said it is U.S. policy to “sustain and enhance America’s global AI dominance in order to promote human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security.”
An April memorandum from the White House said that agencies “must adopt a forward-leaning and pro-innovation approach that takes advantage of this technology to help shape the future of government operations.”
The FDA had previously expressed concern that AI contains bias that may “worsen inequalities in health care delivery,” while also saying AI could speed up review of drug applications to bring quicker timelines for making drugs available to patients.
[FoxBusiness] Google will pay $1.4 billion to Texas to settle a lawsuit claiming the company collected users' data without permission, according to state Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Paxton said the settlement sends a message to tech companies that he will not allow them to profit off "selling away our rights and freedoms." He also said the agreement "is a major win for Texans’ privacy and tells companies that they will pay for abusing our trust."
"In Texas, Big Tech is not above the law," Paxton said in a statement. "For years, Google secretly tracked people’s movements, private searches, and even their voiceprints and facial geometry through their products and services. I fought back and won."
This is the largest amount won by any state in a settlement with Google over similar data-privacy violations, Paxton said.
The agreement settles several claims Texas made against Google in a 2022 lawsuit over geolocation, incognito searches and biometric data. The state argued Google was unlawfully tracking and collecting users’ private data.
Paxton claimed the tech giant collected millions of biometric identifiers, including voiceprints and records of face geometry, through applications like Google Photos and Google Assistant.
Google said the agreement settles various "old claims," including some related to product policies the company has already changed. The company said the settlement does not require any additional product changes.
"We are pleased to put them behind us, and we will continue to build robust privacy controls into our services," Google spokesperson José Castañeda said in a statement to The Texas Tribune.
Texas had previously reached two other settlements with Google within the last two years, including in December 2023 when the company agreed to pay $700 million and make several other concessions to settle allegations that it had been stifling competition against its Android app store.
Last year, Meta agreed to a $1.4 billion settlement with Texas over claims that the company used facial recognition software without users' consent. The "tag suggestions" feature was specifically cited in the suit, as Facebook would run photos uploaded to the website through its facial recognition software and suggested people to tag in photos.
#3
OBTW:
The USA has about 1,680 miles of coastline in the Gulf.
Mexico has about 1,740 miles of Gulf coastline.
The US has FAR more population and infrastructure along its Gulf coastline than Mexico.
Then there is the Exclusive economic zone (EEZ) versus territorial sea argument.
USA wins here. USA 40% vs Mexico 38% and the remaining 12% belongs to Cuba.
Then there is the Continental Shelf argument, and the US wins again.
The other argument is: Draw a line from the tip on TX to the Tip of Key West Fla.
Distance: 964.12 mi (1,551.59 km)
Vs
Mexico's Faro Bagdad Lighthouse to Cancun
Distance: 703.37 mi (1,131.96 km)
Why not have both a Gulf of the USA and Gulf of Mexico?
[ZeroHedge] The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) said on May 7 that it has canceled about half a million “unneeded” credit cards used by federal agencies.
In a post on social media platform X, DOGE wrote that over the past 10 weeks, its program to audit “unused” or “unneeded” credit cards has been expanded to 32 federal agencies.
DOGE, led by tech billionaire and Trump administration adviser Elon Musk, said that more than 500,000 agency credit cards were deactivated in that time period, out of roughly 4.6 million active cards and accounts used by the government.
“So, still more work to do,” the organization wrote in the post, which included a screenshot of a spreadsheet showing the canceled agency cards.
The spreadsheet showing what cards were canceled included ones used by the Office of Personnel Management, General Services Administration, Labor Department, Small Business Association, Treasury Department, Commerce Department, Interior Department, Education Department, Environmental Protection Agency, Housing and Urban Development Department, Defense Department, Health and Human Services Department, State Department, and others.
The May 7 statement means that DOGE has canceled another 30,000 credit cards used by agencies since mid-April, when it provided the last update on the effort.
At the time, Musk reposted DOGE’s comment and claimed that “twice as many credit cards are issued and active than the total number of government employees.”
DOGE’s website says that it has saved about $165 billion, or $1,000 per taxpayer, since it was established through an executive order issued by President Donald Trump in January.
Days before that, top congressional Democrats alleged that DOGE, the Trump administration, and Musk were holding up some $430 billion in funds that they said were appropriated by Congress.
Trump’s drive to downsize and reshape the federal government has already led to the dismantling of entire agencies, such as the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
DOGE has been a major part of that effort, and the White House has said it is responsible for tackling what it calls fraud, waste, and abuse in the federal government, while streamlining operations.
The government overhaul has led to numerous lawsuits seeking to block the Trump administration and DOGE from proceeding with some of the planned dismissals and other activities.
Musk’s government tenure is nearing its end. As a special government employee, the Tesla CEO is allowed only 130 days to work before he must depart.
Musk told Tesla investors last week that he would be stepping away from DOGE and the Trump administration in May. However, he said he would still be involved in some capacity to ensure that DOGE’s cuts remain intact. In its quarterly report released on April 23, Tesla posted lower-than-anticipated profits due to a variety of factors.
Musk told Trump at a Cabinet meeting on April 30 that it had been “an honor“ to work with his ”incredible Cabinet” and with Trump himself.
“A tremendous amount has been accomplished in the first 100 days,” Musk said. “As everyone has said, it’s more than has been accomplished in any administration before. Ever. So this portends very well for what happens, for the rest of the administration.”
What about legitimate teachers?
[JustTheNews] Virginia has over 51,000 open cybersecurity positions in 2025, with only 77% of demand currently met—one of the largest workforce gaps in the nation, according to CyberSeek, a federal workforce data tool used by the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Over three-quarters of young Americans are ineligible for military service, disqualifying thousands each year who still want to serve — a Virginia-led bill now aims to direct those individuals into civilian defense roles.
In response to gaps in cybersecurity, logistics and disaster response that continue to rise, lawmakers have created the Defense Workforce Integration Act, requiring the Department of Defense to create a formal pathway within one year for medically disqualified applicants to access civilian national security jobs.
A companion version has also been introduced in the Senate.
House Bill 3241, introduced by U.S. Rep. Jen Kiggan, R-Va., also mandates coordination with defense contractors, federal agencies and academic institutions to help fill critical workforce gaps.
"Every year, tens of thousands of young Americans are turned away from military service – not because they aren't willing to serve, but because of medical disqualifications that may have no bearing on their ability to contribute," said Kiggans.
She continued, "This bipartisan, bicameral bill strengthens our workforce, preserves talent, and reinforces our commitment to the defense industrial base at a time when global threats are growing by the day."
Virginia has over 51,000 open cybersecurity positions in 2025, with only 77% of demand currently met—one of the largest workforce gaps in the nation, according to CyberSeek, a federal workforce data tool used by the U.S. Department of Commerce.
"Every year, tens of thousands of young Americans who want to serve our country are medically disqualified from military service, leaving too much talent on the sidelines," said Rep. Jimmy Panetta, D-Calif. "By opening these new pathways, we can strengthen our defense workforce, bolster our national security, and enhance that American desire to serve."
Panetta's remarks come as military eligibility continues to decline nationwide.
Only two in five young adults meet both weight and physical activity requirements to join the military, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Obesity alone disqualifies about one-third of potential recruits, and the Department of Defense spends over $1.5 billion a year on obesity-related health costs for current and former service members.
The legislation also expands the Air Force's DRIVE program, which stands for Develop, Redistribute, Improve, Vault and Expose, a similar initiative that allows "highly qualified and motivated airmen" medically disqualified from Basic Military Training to continue serving the Air Force through civilian service.
It will also require better coordination with defense contractors and academic institutions and directs the Defense Department to refer medically disqualified applicants to civilian roles in national security.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] The new head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency has threatened to 'run right over' staff in his department who resist Donald Trump's agenda.
David Richardson took over as acting chief at FEMA after previous boss Cameron Hamilton was booted from the role a day after criticizing the president's plans to abolish the department.
The incoming head, whose title is Senior Official Performing the Duties of FEMA Administrator, was caught on camera issuing the stark warning during a staff meeting on his first day.
'Don't get in my way,' the former US marine told staffers, according to a recording of the speech obtained by CBS News.
'I don't need the full title I just need the authority from the president,' Richardson continued from behind a presidential-style podium.
'Obfuscation, delay, undermining. If you're one of those 20 percent of the people and you think those tactics and techniques are going to help you, they will not, because I will run right over you. I will achieve the president's intent.
'I, and I alone in FEMA, speak for FEMA,' Richardson said.
FEMA employees later described the speech to CBS as 'unhinged' and 'terrifying'.
Richardson was appointed after Hamilton was fired on Thursday, days after he broke with Trump during a hearing on Capitol Hill over proposals to take a chainsaw to the national disaster relief agency.
'I do not believe it is in the best interests of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency,' Hamilton said.
Richardson however took his first meeting with thousands of his new staff as an opportunity to pledge his allegiance to the president.
'I am as bent on achieving the President's intent as I was on making sure that I did my duty, where I took my Marines to Iraq, eleven of them,' Richardson said on the recording, per CBS.
He previously served as a United States Marine Corps ground combat officer and saw action in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Africa, earning an award for valor in the process.
During the 17-minute speech he told an anecdote about sending a member of the Second Marine Division home from Iraq.
'I had too important of a mission for anybody to undermine me or to make things difficult,' Richardson said.
His first act in office was to issue two memos to staff which he encouraged them to read.
They demand that employees produce reports and data outlining FEMA's readiness for 2025 and any potential weaknesses.
He said his first day would be spent, 'looking at all the laws and statutes that guide FEMA and making sure that we are only doing the things that are within the law.'
'If we're not doing that, we are wasting the American taxpayer dollars,' he said.
The administrator said that a town hall event would be held at a later date where staff can ask questions.
Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said the recordings of the speech, 'sounds like a productive first meeting'.
DailyMail.com has contacted FEMA for comment.
Richardson hails from Waterford, Michigan and was previously appointed as the Assistant Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security's Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office, according to his official biography.
He also taught history at George Washington University, as well as strategy at the US Army Field Artillery School and Marine Corps Martial Arts.
[FoxNews] A French startup named Robeauté has just raised about $29 million to develop a truly groundbreaking neurosurgical microrobot.
Imagine a device no bigger than a grain of rice that can carefully navigate the complex and delicate pathways of the brain.
This little robot could change the way doctors treat brain tumors and other neurological conditions, making surgeries safer and more precise than ever before.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] The Soviet interplanetary spacecraft Cosmos-482, which was launched in 1972 to explore Venus but did not leave near-Earth space, has ceased to exist. This was reported by the press service of Roscosmos.
The device left orbit under the control of the automated warning system for dangerous situations and sank into the ocean.
It was a noble effort. Now the world ocean is its tomb.
“According to calculations by specialists from JSC TsNIIMash (part of Roscosmos), the device entered the dense layers of the atmosphere at 09:24 Moscow time, 560 km west of Middle Andaman Island, and fell in the Indian Ocean west of Jakarta,” the statement said.
"Cosmos-482" was the second of the devices sent to Venus in the spring of 1972. Four days apart, on March 27 and 31, the USSR launched two similar automatic interplanetary stations. The first device, "Venera-8", successfully reached the planet and spent a little over 50 minutes on its surface. The station managed to transmit data on the environment to Earth, including the composition of the atmosphere and soil, having fully completed its task.
The second Venera-72A spacecraft reached near-Earth orbit after the first three stages of the Molniya-M launch vehicle operated normally. However, due to a malfunction of the booster engine, the station could not be launched into an interplanetary trajectory. The spacecraft remained in a high elliptical orbit and began to gradually approach Earth. The unsuccessful launch was not announced, and the spacecraft that remained near the planet was named Cosmos-482.
Earlier, Roscosmos reported on the correction of the orbit of the International Space Station (ISS) using the Progress MS-30 spacecraft to prevent a possible collision with fragments of space debris. On May 1, the spacecraft turned on its engines, which worked for almost 213 seconds. This impulse was enough to increase the station's orbit by about 540 m. The average orbital altitude reached 418.74 km.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
