Smartphones can detect when you’ve had too much to drink by monitoring your walk, a study has found.
American researchers used sensors in smartphones to detect when somebody was over the legal drink-drive limit.
Phones were able to do this with about 90% accuracy when users walked just 10 steps in the study by the University of Pittsburgh.
Scientists hope the discovery can be used to develop device alerts, such as asking people not to drive while drunk.
“We have powerful sensors we carry around with us wherever we go,” lead researcher Brian Suffoletto said. “We need to learn how to use them to best serve public health.”
The study had 22 participants aged 21 to 43, who were given a vodka and lime juice drink every hour until they reached the UK and US drink-drive limit of 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood.
With a smartphone strapped to their back, the participants performed a walking task every two hours – walking a straight line for 10 steps, turning around, and walking back.
About 90% of the time, the researchers were able to identify those over the limit through changes in gait highlighted by the phones.
Image copyright Press Association
Image caption
It’s hoped alerts could be developed on phones to stop people from driving while over the limit
One application could be to notify users who may not think they are impaired that they should not drive.
“I lost a close friend to a drinking and driving crash in college,” Dr Suffoletto said. “And as an emergency physician, I have taken care of scores of adults with injuries related to acute alcohol intoxication.
“Because of this, I have dedicated the past 10 years to testing digital interventions to prevent deaths and injury related to excessive alcohol consumption.”
Although this is a small preliminary study, the scientists hope it lays a foundation for further research. They want to carry out additional experiments which better mimic how people carry their phones, like in their hands or pockets.
Last year, almost 360,000 admissions to English hospitals were primarily due to drinking alcohol, with about 6,000 alcohol-specific deaths.
“In five years, I would like to imagine a world in which if people go out with friends and drink at risky levels, they get an alert at the first sign of impairment and are sent strategies to help them stop drinking and protect them from high-risk events like driving, interpersonal violence and unprotected sexual encounters,” Dr Suffoletto said.
The findings were published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.
Lottery Lawyer Is Accused of Fleecing Winners in 107 Million
He called himself the “Lottery Lawyer,” developing a national reputation for helping high-profile lottery winners with their investments.
He promised to secure their wealth for generations and to protect them from scam artists.
But on Tuesday, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn accused the lawyer, Jason M. Kurland, of working with a mob associate to steal millions of dollars from his clients.
Mr. Kurland, 46, was arrested on Tuesday morning at his home on Long Island alongside three other men — including Christopher Chierchio, 52, who prosecutors said was a reputed soldier for the Genovese crime family.
As part of the scheme, Mr. Kurland tricked three lottery winners who had hired him into putting $107 million into various investments, prosecutors said. The lottery winners lost a total of more than $80 million.
One of them was the winner of last year’s $1.5 billion Mega Millions jackpot in South Carolina.
After persuading the lottery winners to invest, the four men then spent some of the funds on golf club memberships, yachts, private jets, a Porsche and other luxury cars and shopping sprees at stores like Fendi, prosecutors said.
“Lottery winners can’t believe their luck when they win millions of dollars, and the men we arrested this morning allegedly used that euphoric feeling to their advantage,” said William F. Sweeney Jr., head of the F.BI.’s New York office.
Mr. Kurland and his alleged co-conspirators face several counts of fraud, money laundering and conspiracy. They each pleaded not guilty at their arraignments on Tuesday.
A lawyer for Mr. Kurland declined to comment. A lawyer for Mr. Chierchio said his client was not affiliated with the mafia and expected to be cleared of the charges.
Law enforcement officials had been wiretapping the men’s phone calls for months, including conversations in which they discussed whether they might go to jail.
The lottery winners paid between $75,000 and $200,000 in upfront payments to hire Mr. Kurland and his law firm, according to court papers. Mr. Kurland then charged monthly fees of between $15,000 and $50,000.
A spokeswoman for Rivkin Radler, the law firm where Mr. Kurland has worked since 2018, said the firm was cooperating with the authorities and planned to remove him as a partner.
In a 2016 interview with Vice, Mr. Kurland discussed the prevalence of scams targeting lottery winners. “A lot of these winners are not sophisticated enough to see it,” he said, “so you really have to rely on the professionals.”
On Mr. Kurland’s Twitter account, he often urged lottery winners around the country to hire him, using hashtags like #callme. In previous interviews, he said he has represented lottery winners since 2011, specializing in navigating the laws around real estate and trusts.
Behind the scenes, prosecutors said, Mr. Kurland was getting kickbacks for steering lottery winners to invest in business deals controlled by Mr. Chierchio and the two other defendants, Frangesco Russo, 38, and Francis Smookler, 45.
Some of the deals involved companies that sold personal protective equipment during the coronavirus pandemic to the state of California and to the New York Police Department, court papers showed.
During a phone call last month that was intercepted by law enforcement, Mr. Kurland told an associate that the growing coronavirus outbreak in Florida would bode well for business. “The worse it is the better,” he said, according to prosecutors.
Earlier this year, when Mr. Altieri failed to repay a loan, Mr. Russo and Mr. Smookler threatened to torture him and shoot his family, prosecutors said.
Mr. Russo’s father was a Colombo crime family captain who died while serving a life sentence in prison for murder, and he mentioned his father while threatening Mr. Altieri, prosecutors said.
A lawyer for Mr. Russo did not respond to a request for comment. Mr. Smookler’s lawyer had no immediate comment.
Law enforcement officials are seeking to recover any stolen funds by seizing 13 bank accounts associated with the scheme, which had been going on since at least 2018.
In one instance, Mr. Kurland transferred $19.5 million out of a client’s account without the client’s permission and funneled much of it to Mr. Chierchio, prosecutors said.
In 2004, Mr. Chierchio pleaded guilty in a state case in Brooklyn to falsifying business records. Last year, he was acquitted at trial on bid-rigging charges.
Prosecutors said Mr. Chierchio lived in a $11,000-a-month luxury building in Manhattan and purports to run a plumbing business.
In a call last month that was intercepted by law enforcement, Mr. Chierchio brushed off an associate’s concerns about a federal investigation into the lottery scheme, saying he had been pursued by the authorities his entire life.
“So bring the F.B.I. Who cares?” Mr. Chierchio said, according to prosecutors. “It doesn’t matter. I laugh at them. OK? I laugh at them.”
In phone calls, Mr. Kurland discussed with his associates how to cover up the scheme, worried they were “playing with fire,” according to court papers. The men wondered if giving the money back to the lottery winners would thwart the investigation or if they could make the theft look like legitimate business transactions, prosecutors said.
At one point, according to court papers, Mr. Smookler and Mr. Russo predicted that they might face fraud charges; Mr. Smookler said on a phone call that he hoped to merely face a fine and not go to jail.
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Scammers often pretend to be military men
You may well think you’d never fall for a romance scam, that they’re cheesy, inauthentic and very obviously after your cash. But security experts have warned that there’s been an increase in all sorts of online fraud during the coronavirus pandemic.
It happened to my friend Beth.
One day she mentioned that she had met a man online who was in the military. She thought it was a neat coincidence, because my partner is also in the armed forces. But the more she told me, the louder the alarm bells rang.
Despite being deployed on a “top secret mission” in a highly dangerous part of the world, “Alexander” managed to message Beth all the time. He was handsome, charming and affectionate.
When she showed me a photo, my heart sank. Alexander’s uniform and rank didn’t match the role he said he had or the unit he said he was in. There was no reason for him to be in the place where he claimed to be.
Telling Beth was hard. “It made me shake,” she said.
“You start thinking this could be someone that you could have the chance to meet and see if there’s any potential to see how it goes… then straight after that is the shock that you’ve been talking to someone who is not the person he said he was, and who could be anyone, anywhere in the world.”
If it hadn’t been for the coincidence of our joint military connection, Beth probably wouldn’t have mentioned him to me or anyone else – he had already spun a web of secrecy around his job.
In fact, telling someone else is probably your best chance of not getting sucked in.
Alexander contacted Beth on a dating platform, but he very quickly asked her to switch to a messaging app.
Cyber-security expert Prof Alan Woodward says scammers much prefer to operate within a private environment, away from the chance of being seen by others – whether that’s a direct messaging platform or a locked social media account.
“Effectively you’re giving them a bit of camouflage,” he says. “There isn’t going to be somebody who can see publicly that the same person who might have been trying to scam them is now trying to scam you.”
I noticed myself that, after making my own Instagram account private, I was deluged with follow requests and private messages, all apparently from men, many of them claiming to have military positions.
The military represents “authority, trust, romance” for many people, says New York Times reporter Jack Nicas, who made a documentary about romance scammers and their victims.
“For many, particularly women in middle America, the military guy is the ‘ideal man’,” he says.
Faking it
I wondered how the real people in the photos the scammers were using would feel if they knew, and I then got a small taste of it myself when someone set up a fake Instagram account using my pictures, and started messaging people – mainly men I believe – saying it was my “secret” space.
Image caption
The fake Zoe
I only found out when people started messaging me to ask what was going on. It was sickening, alarming and infuriating.
I’ll probably never know exactly what the “fake me” said and to whom. It was all in the form of private messages from an account bearing my name and my face.
Instagram deleted it when I complained, but declined to tell me whereabouts in the world it had been registered. Perhaps it was even Alexander, finding me via Beth’s followers.
The platform said impersonating a person or organisation is against its guidelines, and that such accounts are deleted once it is made aware of them. A quick search reveals that there are plenty out there though.
For scammers it’s worth the risk, as the pay-out can be huge.
Horror stories
There are people who work to try to help romance scam victims, and they hear plenty of horror stories.
One is Lisa Forte, from Red Goat Cyber-Security, who was contacted by a British lawyer in her 40s who had given $350,000 to a scammer in South America – which she got by re-mortgaging her house.
Wayne May, who runs the group Scam Survivors, told us of a man in Russia who gave $250,000 to a man he believed he was having a secret relationship with.
And Jack Nicas interviewed Renee Holland from Florida, who transferred her life savings to a man pretending to be in the US military. She was later killed by her husband.
The money, particularly if sent by wire transfer, is generally gone forever.
Image copyright New York Times
Image caption
Akinola Bolaji agreed to be interviewed by the New York Times and said he was a former romance scammer
Mr Nicas tracked Ms Holland’s scammer down to Nigeria – where romance scammers are rife. There young men work sometimes in groups, sometimes individually, and pretend to be both men and women online.
He interviewed a man called Akinola Bolaji, a 35-year-old Nigerian who said he had once been a “Yahoo Boy”, as romance scammers are colloquially known.
Mr Bolaji said finding victims was a numbers game.
“You may message thousands [of women],” he told the New York Times. “Only a few will respond. Five will comply. Out of the five, three may not have money. Two will have. Out of two, one may not be able to spend money. But one will surely send.”
He confessed to feeling guilty about the practice. “But poverty will not make you feel the pain because you need the money,” he said.
Mr Bolaji claims to have stopped romance scamming because he is now in a genuine relationship with a lady in the US state of Georgia. We only have his word for it.
The long game
In the few weeks that Alexander was messaging my friend Beth, he did not ask for any cash. That is not surprising, says Mr Nicas.
“You don’t even start asking for money until maybe a few weeks or a few months in,” he said. “You have to earn their trust first, because if you on the first day say, ‘I need money’, they’re going to know that you’re a scammer.”
Beth is adamant that she would not have sent any – but scammers are super-persuasive, says Ms Forte.
“They build a rapport and they slowly take you on this journey from being cautious all the way to re-mortgaging your house. I think we’re all vulnerable to it in the right situation.”
Where to go for help
Victim Support offers free, confidential advice via Supportline on 08 08 16 89 111 and/or live chat
My Support Space is designed to help manage the impact that crime has had on individuals
They were unable to sit exams because of lockdown, so the algorithm used data about schools’ results in previous years to determine grades.
It meant about 40% of this year’s A-level results came out lower than predicted, which has a huge impact on what students are able to do next. GCSE results are due out on Thursday.
There are many examples of algorithms making big decisions about our lives, without us necessarily knowing how or when they do it.
In many ways, social-media platforms are simply giant algorithms.
Image copyright Getty Images
At their heart, they work out what you’re interested in and then give you more of it – using as many data points as they can get their hands on.
Every “like”, watch, click is stored. Most apps also glean more data from your web-browsing habits or geographical data. The idea is to predict the content you want and keep you scrolling – and it works.
And those same algorithms that know you enjoy a cute-cat video are also deployed to sell you stuff.
All the data social-media companies collect about you can also tailor ads to you in an incredibly accurate way.
But these algorithms can go seriously wrong. They have been proved to push people towards hateful and extremist content. Extreme content simply does better than nuance on social media. And algorithms know that.
Facebook’s own civil-rights audit called for the company to do everything in its power to prevent its algorithm from “driving people toward self-reinforcing echo chambers of extremism”.
Whether it’s house, car, health or any other form of insurance, your insurer has to somehow assess the chances of something actually going wrong.
In many ways, the insurance industry pioneered using data about the past to determine future outcomes – that’s the basis of the whole sector, according to Timandra Harkness, author of Big Data: Does Size Matter.
Getting a computer to do it was always going to be the logical next step.
“Algorithms can affect your life very much and yet you as an individual don’t necessarily get a lot of input,” she says.
“We all know if you move to a different postcode, your insurance goes up or down.
“That’s not because of you, it’s because other people have been more or less likely to have been victims of crime, or had accidents or whatever.”
Innovations such as the “black box” that can be installed in a car to monitor how an individual drives have helped to lower the cost of car insurance for careful drivers who find themselves in a high-risk group.
Might we see more personally tailored insurance quotes as algorithms learn more about our own circumstances?
“Ultimately the point of insurance is to share the risk – so everybody puts [money] in and the people who need it take it out,” Timandra says.
“We live in an unfair world, so any model you make is going to be unfair in one way or another.”
Healthcare
Artificial Intelligence is making great leaps in being able to diagnose various conditions and even suggest treatment paths.
a tool that can predict ovarian-cancer survival rates and help determine treatment choices
artificial intelligence from University College, London, that identified patients most likely to miss appointments and therefore need reminders
However, all this requires a vast amount of patient data to train the programmes – and that is, frankly, a rather large can of worms.
In 2017, the UK Information Commission ruled the Royal Free NHS Foundation Trust had not done enough to safeguard patient data when it had shared 1.6 million patient records with Google’s AI division, DeepMind.
“There’s a fine line between finding exciting new ways to improve care and moving ahead of patients’ expectations,” said DeepMind’s co-founder Mustafa Suleyman at the time.
Policing
Image copyright Getty Images
Big data and machine learning have the potential to revolutionise policing.
In theory, algorithms have the power to deliver on the sci-fi promise of “predictive policing” – using data, such as where crime has happened in the past, when and by whom, to predict where to allocate police resources.
But that method can create algorithmic bias – and even algorithmic racism.
“It’s the same situation as you have with the exam grades,” says Areeq Chowdhury, from technology think tank WebRoots Democracy.
“Why are you judging one individual based on what other people have historically done? The same communities are always over-represented”.
Earlier this year, the defence and security think tank RUSI published a report into algorithmic policing.
It raised concerns about the lack of national guidelines or impact assessments. It also called for more research into how these algorithms might exacerbate racism.
Facial recognition too – used by police forces in the UK including the Met – has also been criticised.
For example, there have been concerns about whether the data going into facial-recognition technology can make the algorithm racist.
The charge is facial-recognition cameras are more accurate at identifying white faces – because they have more data on white faces.
“The question is, are you testing it on a diverse enough demographic of people?” Areeq says.
“What you don’t want is a situation where some groups are being misidentified as a criminal because of the algorithm.”
Public Health England is to be replaced by a new agency that will specifically deal with protecting the country from pandemics, according to a report.
The Sunday Telegraph claims Health Secretary Matt Hancock will this week announce a new body modelled on Germany’s Robert Koch Institute.
Ministers have reportedly been unhappy with the way PHE has responded to the coronavirus crisis.
The government was contacted by the BBC but declined to comment on the report.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “Public Health England have played an integral role in our national response to this unprecedented global pandemic.
“We have always been clear that we must learn the right lessons from this crisis to ensure that we are in the strongest possible position, both as we continue to deal with Covid-19 and to respond to any future public health threat.”
The Telegraph reports that Mr Hancock will merge the NHS Test and Trace scheme with the pandemic response work of PHE.
The paper said the new body could be called the National Institute for Health Protection and would become “effective” in September, but the change would not be fully completed until the spring.
The Robert Koch Institute, which the new body will reportedly be based on, is an independent agency that has taken control of Germany’s response to the pandemic.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has also said the country’s response to Covid-19 could have been done “differently” and the government needed to learn lessons.
There has been talk in the air at Westminster for a while about a major shake-up or even axing of Public Health England.
Blame for the controversial decision to halt community coronavirus testing and tracing in March has been laid at PHE’s door.
The organisation crops up with others in the political crossfire over the handling of the Covid-19 crisis. Now it has emerged that its remaining responsibilities for virus testing and infection data surveillance in England will be transferred to a new body including NHS Test and Trace.
PHE will continue to be responsible for now for prevention issues such as anti-obesity measures.
It is easy to point the finger at PHE, but it is an executive agency accountable to the secretary of state, Matt Hancock.
Decisions in March were made in collaboration with ministers and the chief medical and scientific advisers. Sources point out that PHE was never set up to be a body responsible for mass community testing.
A full examination of who is responsible and culpable for which policies will have to wait for an independent inquiry – whenever that takes place.
John Ashton, a former regional director of public health in north-west England, said PHE had had “a bad pandemic” but criticised the government’s reported plans to scrap the organisation.
He told the BBC News Channel: “You don’t deal with the problem of an over-centralised, dysfunctional organisation by creating another over-centralised organisation which is what is being proposed.
“You don’t change horses mid-stream – this pandemic has still got a long way to run,” he said, adding that PHE should be strengthened rather than ditched.
PHE was created in 2013 – as part of an overhaul of the NHS in England under former health secretary Jeremy Hunt – with responsibilities including preparing and responding to health-related emergencies such as pandemics.
It currently employs around 5,500 full-time staff, made up mostly of scientists, researchers and public health professionals.
Its website says it was established to bring together public health specialists from more than 70 organisations into a single public health service.
Diners at the luxury Ritz hotel in London have been targeted by “extremely convincing” scammers who posed as hotel staff to steal payment card details.
The scammers phoned people with exact details of their restaurant bookings, asking them to “confirm” card details.
They then tried to spend thousands of pounds at the catalogue retailer Argos.
The Ritz told the BBC it was investigating a “potential data breach” and said it had alerted the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
However, the ICO told the BBC it had not yet had a report from the Ritz.
The fraudsters phoned people who had already made a restaurant reservation at the Ritz, pretending to be hotel staff.
One woman, who had made an online booking for afternoon tea at the Ritz as part of a celebration, received a call the day before her reservation.
The scammers asked her to “confirm” the booking by providing her payment card details.
The call was convincing because it appeared to have come from the hotel’s real phone number, and the scammers knew exactly when and where her reservation was.
One cyber-security expert told the BBC that caller ID spoofing in this way was “quite easy”.
The scammers told the woman that her payment card had been “declined”, and asked her for a second bank card.
After they had taken the payment card details, the scammers tried to make several transactions in excess of £1,000 at the catalogue retailer Argos.
When her bank spotted the suspicious transactions, the scammer phoned again – this time pretending to be from her bank.
He told the victim that somebody was trying to use her credit card, and in order to cancel the transaction she should read out a security code sent to her mobile phone.
In reality, this would have authorised the transaction.
A second woman, who made her original booking over the telephone rather than online, told the BBC the exact same tricks had been tried on her.
She later felt suspicious that the scammer had not been able to correctly answer questions about the hotel’s facilities.
“People tend to trust caller ID, which is perfectly understandable because in theory it appears to authenticate the caller,” said Dr Jessica Barker, co-founder of the cyber-security company Cygenta.
“On top of that, when a scam like this involves insider information it adds an air of legitimacy and authority.”
What has the Ritz said?
The Ritz said it had been made aware of a potential data breach within its “food and beverage reservation system” on 12 August.
It is continuing to investigate how the scammers accessed customer information.
It said it had emailed customers that may have been affected, warning them: “After a reservation has been made at the Ritz London, our team will never contact you by telephone to request credit card details to confirm your booking with us.”
It has not revealed how many people were affected.
How can I protect myself from scams like this?
Restaurants should never phone you asking for payment information to “confirm” your booking. If you receive a suspicious call, you could hang up and call the venue back using the telephone number on their official website.
Dr Barker warns against giving card details to somebody who had called you, and suggests always calling the company back yourself.
If a bank believes a transaction has been fraudulent, they will not ask you for security codes in order to cancel the transaction.
If you receive a suspicious call you think is pretending to be from your bank, hang up and call your bank using the number on the back of your payment card.
Do you have more information about this or any other technology story? You can reach Chris directly via email, on Twitter or through encrypted messaging app Signal on: +44 7861 520418
Image caption
The robot boat was controlled via satellite from SEA-KIT’s HQ in Tollesbury in Essex
A UK boat has just provided an impressive demonstration of the future of robotic maritime operations.
The 12m Uncrewed Surface Vessel (USV) Maxlimer has completed a 22-day-long mission to map an area of seafloor in the Atlantic.
SEA-KIT International, which developed the craft, “skippered” the entire outing via satellite from its base in Tollesbury in eastern England.
The mission was part-funded by the European Space Agency.
Robot boats promise a dramatic change in the way we work at sea.
Already, many of the big survey companies that run traditional crewed vessels have started to invest heavily in the new, remotely operated technologies. Freight companies are also acknowledging the cost advantages that will come from running robot ships.
But “over-the-horizon” control has to show it’s practical and safe if it’s to gain wide acceptance. Hence, the demonstration from Maxlimer.
Image copyright BigOceanData.Com
Image caption
The boat mapped a section of seafloor on the edge of the continental shelf
The USV was despatched from Plymouth in late July and sent to a location some 460km (280 miles) to the south-west.
With a multi-beam echo-sounder attached to its hull, the boat mapped more than 1,000sq km of continental shelf area, down to about a kilometre in depth.
This was a segment of seafloor that had essentially no modern data registered with the UK Hydrographic Office.
SEA-KIT had wanted to send the USV across the Atlantic to America for the demonstration, but the Covid-19 crisis made this impossible to organise.
“The project’s overall aim was to demonstrate the capabilities of current technologies to survey unexplored or inadequately surveyed ocean frontiers and despite the planning challenges we faced due to Covid-19, I feel that we have done that. We have proven the true over-the-horizon capability of our USV design and the team are exhausted but elated,” the company’s director of technology, Peter Walker, said.
The USV Maxlimer was originally developed for – and won – the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE.
This was a competition to find the next-generation technologies that could be used to map the global ocean floor. Four-fifths of the sea bottom have yet to be surveyed to an acceptable resolution. Robotic solutions will be essential if we’re to have any chance of closing the knowledge gap.
Image copyright SEA-KIT International
Image caption
Artwork: The Netherlands-headquartered multinational Fugro has ordered a fleet of USVs from SEA-KIT
Maxlimer makes use of a communications and control system known as Global Situational Awareness via Internet.
This allows an operator to remotely access CCTV footage, thermal imaging and radar through the vessel, as well as listen live to the USV’s surroundings and even communicate with others in the vicinity.
Maxlimer links to three independent satellite systems to stay in contact with the control room in Tollesbury.
The robot boat moves slowly, at up to 4 knots (7km/h; 5mph), but its hybrid diesel-electric propulsion system is highly efficient.
SEA-KIT CEO and designer, Ben Simpson, told BBC News: “We had a sweepstake on how much fuel would be left in the tank. We thought there was going to be 300-400 litres. It turned out there was 1,300 litres.” In other words, Maxlimer returned to Plymouth with its fuel tank still around a third full.
As well as the European Space Agency, partners on the project included Global Marine Group, Map the Gaps, Teledyne CARIS, Woods Hole Group and the Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 initiative.
Another partner was Fugro, one of the world’s biggest marine geotechnical companies. The multinational recently announced a contract with SEA-KIT to purchase a fleet of USVs to use in survey work in the oil, gas and offshore wind sectors.
Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos
Fox News contributor Tom Homan is calling on a district attorney in Oregon to immediately resign after he attended and supported hundreds of protesters Wednesday night blocking U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Bend.
Federal agents say the two men arrested were a “threat to the public,” but Deschutes County District Attorney John Hummel, who attended the protest, wrote on Twitter he’s “never been so disgusted by my government and so proud of my community.”
ARRESTED PORTLAND PROTESTERS WON’T FACE CHARGES UNDER REVISED POLICY
“[Hummel] should resign today,” Homan, a retired acting ICE director, told “Fox & Friends” Thursday.
“It is disgusting. He is in direct conflict of his duties as a district attorney to, number one, protect his community. Number two, protect law enforcement and the rule of law.”
Protesters blocking an unmarked ICE bus hold up their hands as federal agents arrive in Bend, Ore. (Garrett Andrews/The Bulletin)
The protest, which spanned hours after two unmarked ICE buses were blocked by hundreds in the city, which is about a three-hour drive from Portland, was just the latest episode in tensions among protesters, local police and federal agents as calls to abolish ICE pick up steam.
“It’s really disgusting,” Homan told host Brian Kilmeade. “ICE is helping protect that community but, look, the state of Washington, the state of Oregon has been taken over by the progressive left, and for the police department to stand there and do nothing.”
BLACK PORTLAND POLICE SERGEANT SPEAKS ABOUT WHY ‘DEFUND THE POLICE’ CONCERNS HIM
He added: “What really irritates me is the district attorney of that county … is supposed to be about law enforcement protecting the community, enforcing the law and prosecuting criminals, that’s what ICE is doing in his county. He should be thanking them, not saying he’s disgusted with them.”
Acting DHS Deputy Secretary Ken Cucinelli tweeted: “The law enforcement activity in Bend, Oregon is part of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s mission to arrest criminal aliens presenting a danger to public safety and take them off the street. The two individuals arrested each had a history of criminal violent behavior.”
Bend Mayor Sally Russell said she doesn’t support ICE.
“I am very worried for everyone in our community, and especially our Latinx community,” Rusell tweeted. “ICE is a Federal agency and frustratingly we have no power over the Executive Branch of our country.”
Newly sworn-in Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz said in a news conference earlier that local police were there only to protect protesters and were not assisting ICE. Police stepped back when federal agents arrived.
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Reacting to a clip of Sen. Kamala Harris, who was picked as presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s vice president, compare ICE to the Ku Klux Klan on Capitol Hill during a hearing on the border, Homan accused Harris of making a “racist statement.”
“Men and women of ICE are American patriots,” he explained. “They are enforcing laws that Congress enacted, her, a member of Congress. ICE isn’t making this up. Nine out of 10 people ICE arrests are public safety threats. They either have a pending conviction or pending criminal charges. They’re enforcing the law, protecting this country, and to compare them to the KKK is ridiculous.”
Fox News’ Brie Stimson contributed to this report.
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The ZX Spectrum Next Issue 2 is a fully redesigned version of the original computer from the 1980s
A new remake of the 1980s British computer the ZX Spectrum has soared past its crowdfunding target in just two days.
The ZX Spectrum Next Issue 2 has raised nearly £900,000 – far beyond its £250,000 goal – with 28 days of fundraising left to go.
More than 2,500 backers have chipped in to the project so far.
The Issue 2 is an updated version of an earlier ZX Spectrum Next, which was funded via Kickstarter in 2017.
More than 3,000 units of that version were made, the last of which were shipped earlier this year.
The ZX Spectrum Next Issue 2 is to include upgraded hardware such as a faster processor, twice as much memory and a high resolution mode – though its computing power is closer to the retro console than modern high-end computers.
The remade computers allow players to use the original game cassettes if they want, rather than merely emulating the games purely via software.
Both the Next and Next Issue 2 models have been spearheaded by London-based developer Henrique Olifiers, co-founder of game maker Bossa Studios.
Image copyright Kickstarter
Image caption
The remade computers are intended to have superior graphics to the original ZX Spectrum.
A community of developers has embraced the ZX Spectrum Next models, meaning new games for the classic computer continue to be made, says retro games enthusiast David Douglas, who runs the RoseTintedSpectrum YouTube channel.
Mr Douglas, who has backed the new Kickstarter project, says his fondness for the Spectrum is partly thanks to the unusual style and tone of the original games.
“A lot of the games were very British, which you don’t really get nowadays,” he says.
He adds that he was inspired to shell out £325 towards the project to secure a slightly more advanced version of the ZX Spectrum Issue 2 himself because he was aware of the success of the previous Kickstarter.
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Game developer Henrique Olifiers has led the ZX Spectrum Next remake projects
“There’s a lot more confidence this time round in what it’s actually going to produce,” he says.
Not all ZX Spectrum-themed crowdfunding schemes have gone so smoothly.
The Bostonians roundly abused the soldiers. One was informed the crowd intended to tar and feather him. They would afterward affix his head to the highest post in town. Others were pelted with stones and dirt and pieces of brick, dragged by the hair, punched in the face, struck with bludgeons. Or so they reported. The insults flew in both directions. “They returned,” according to a former judge, “compliments for compliments, and every blow was answered by a bruise.” Townspeople were abused and assaulted, women harassed. Bloodshed ensued, as might be expected between an armed force and a people who felt they had nothing to lose other than their self-esteem, their freedom and their future.
Already the British knew the drill: A bonfire would flare; a whistle would sound. And out of nowhere 400 or 500 youngsters would materialize. On the night of March 5, 1770, they pelted soldiers with ice and oyster shells, bricks and broken glass bottles. No one thought to dance naked in the street — it was winter, in Boston — but they could hardly have been more provocative. “Damn you, fire, fire if you dare,” they taunted. “Damn them, where are they, knock them down,” a soldier was heard to swear.
Ultimately someone pulled a trigger. Five townspeople lay dead. Blood stained the street. A Black American was the first victim. For the most part the soldiers would be acquitted of wrongdoing. They had acted in self-defense. More important, the scuffle turned not into the Boston Riot or the Boston Uprising, but the Boston Massacre.
Several years later, after long December days of town meetings, after endless speeches and equally protracted negotiations, over a thousand colonists headed, early on a damp evening, to Griffin’s Wharf. Three hundred and forty-two troublesome chests of East India tea sat aboard the ships on which they had sailed from England. Hatches were opened, holds entered, chests hoisted on deck. In a few hours, every leaf of tea steeped in Boston Harbor. By 9 p.m. the town was still. Boston had not known a quieter night for some time.
No one was hurt. No gun was fired. No property other than the tea was damaged. The perpetrators cleaned up after themselves. In the aftermath, the surgical strike was referred to plainly as “the destruction of the tea.” To the indignant Massachusetts governor, it constituted nothing less than a “high handed riot.”
He had a point: There is a difference between burning a draft card or toppling a statue and tossing someone else’s goods overboard. This was an assault on property rather than on a symbol. Expertly choreographed, it qualified as a blatant act of vandalism. It was difficult to dress up, though John Adams would privately declare the dumping of the tea the grandest event since the dispute with Britain had begun. He thought it sublime.
To the occupiers it proved to be a particular mortification. The king demanded an immediate prosecution. It did not seem too much to ask: After all, thousands had watched the tea rain into the water, even if only several dozen men had actually boarded the ships. No one, however, seemed to have seen a thing. In all of Boston only one witness could be found— and he refused to testify unless transported out of the colony.
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