Your Car Could be ‘Spying’ on You! US Report Reveals Car-Makers are Collecting Data about Drivers’ Travel Habits

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Photo Credit: DailyMail

Photo Credit: DailyMail

As if Facebook, Google and the federal government squirreling away your personal information wasn’t enough, now it seems your car could also be spying on you.

According to a new report from the Government Accountability Office, several major automakers and GPS manufacturers have been collecting data about drivers’ whereabouts gathered from on-board navigation systems and keeping the information for varying lengths of time.

The report was released on Monday. It focused on the big three Detroit automakers, Toyota, Honda and Nissan, as well as GPS manufacturers Garmin and TomTom, and app developers Google Maps and Telenav.

The GAO – as well as Senator Al Franken, who requested the investigation – worries that the privacy of motorists is at risk if information about their travels are being recorded without their knowledge, and kept for indefinite amounts of time.

According to the report, even if a motorist wants data about their travel destroyed, the entity collecting the data isn’t required to destroy it.

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U.S. State Department Says Won’t Respond ‘Publicly’ to Palestinian Incitement

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Photo Credit: Screenshot.

Photo Credit: Screenshot.

U.S. State Department Deputy Spokesman Marie Harf told reporters that she would not comment directly on Israel’s report of incitement from Palestinian Authority leadership, but that rebukes are being made behind closed doors.

At a press briefing in Washington on Monday, Harf said “we make those discussions private,” according to a transcript of her comments.

“I’m not saying we don’t register complaints… I’m just saying we don’t always do it publicly,” she said in response to a reporter’s question.

When pressed to elaborate, Harf continued, “Well, publicly silent is different than privately silent. And again, nobody’s privately silent. If you’ve ever met the Secretary [of State John Kerry] or Ambassador [Martin] Indyk, nobody’s privately silent.”

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Michelle Obama Reportedly Vacationing With Oprah Winfrey at Maui Estate (+video)

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Island horses, guava cocktails, magnificent sunsets – and Oprah Winfrey!

Michelle Obama is reportedly enjoying it all at the media mogul’s swanky estate in Hawaii where the first lady is squeezing out a few more days of vacation.

President Obama and daughters Sasha and Malia returned to the White House Sunday after a two-week vacation in Hawaii, but Michelle Obama stayed behind in the Aloha State as a bit of an early birthday gift from the president.

“This was her decision to remain at, actually, the president’s suggestion in Hawaii, to spend time with friends ahead of her upcoming very big birthday,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Monday. “If you have kids, you know that telling your spouse that they can go spend a week away from home is actually a big present.”

She’ll be 50 Jan. 17.

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Prosecuter Claims Indiana National Guardsman Stopped for Speeding in Madison County Had 48 Bombs

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Photo Credit: The Columbus Dispatch

Photo Credit: The Columbus Dispatch

An Indiana National Guardsman was arrested outside Columbus on New Year’s Day after a state trooper found nearly 50 bombs and the blueprints for a Navy SEAL training facility inside his car, the Madison County prosecutor said yesterday.

Andrew Scott Boguslawski, 43, also had a remote-control device to detonate the bombs, Madison County Prosecutor Stephen Pronai said. Boguslawski’s civilian job is as a groundskeeper at the Muscatatuck Urban Training Center in south-central Indiana. Prosecutors could not say definitively yesterday whether the blueprints in his car were for the facility where he worked.

Boguslawski also had a bulletproof vest in his car, Pronai said.

“He said something to the trooper about making a bomb vest,” Pronai said.

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Bipartisan Critic Turns His Gaze Toward Obama

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

After ordering a troop increase in Afghanistan, President Obama eventually lost faith in the strategy, his doubts fed by White House advisers who continually brought him negative news reports suggesting it was failing, according to his former defense secretary Robert M. Gates.

In a new memoir, Mr. Gates, a Republican holdover from the Bush administration who served for two years under Mr. Obama, praises the president as a rigorous thinker who frequently made decisions “opposed by his political advisers or that would be unpopular with his fellow Democrats.” But Mr. Gates says that by 2011, Mr. Obama began criticizing — sometimes emotionally — the way his policy in Afghanistan was playing out.

At a pivotal meeting in the situation room in March 2011, called to discuss the withdrawal timetable, Mr. Obama opened with a blast of frustration — expressing doubts about Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander he had chosen, and questioning whether he could do business with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai.

“As I sat there, I thought: The president doesn’t trust his commander, can’t stand Karzai, doesn’t believe in his own strategy and doesn’t consider the war to be his,” Mr. Gates wrote. “For him, it’s all about getting out.”

“Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War” is the first book describing the Obama administration’s policy deliberations written from inside the cabinet. Mr. Gates offers 600 pages of detailed history of his personal wars with Congress, the Pentagon bureaucracy and, in particular, Mr. Obama’s White House staff. He wrote that the “controlling nature” of the staff “took micromanagement and operational meddling to a new level.”

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Robert Jeffress Claims Obama’s Policies Are Paving the Way for a Future World Dictator

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Photo Credit: katesheets

Photo Credit: katesheets

Dr. Robert Jeffress, senior pastor of the 11,000-member First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas, has received more national media exposure than any other pastor in the past year. His newest book, Perfect Ending (Worthy Publishing, January 2014), focuses on understanding the often-confusing topic of Bible prophecy and explains how Christians can recognize prophetic events that may be taking place in our world—and America’s government—today.

According to Jeffress, “Although President Obama is certainly not the Antichrist, his policies are paving the way for the Antichrist.” Jeffress describes how our present political leaders are enacting laws and issuing court orders that offend or trespass against God’s Law as shown in the Book of Daniel—such as the baker in Colorado who was ordered, against his religious convictions, to create a cake for a gay wedding or face punitive fines. “Even more alarming,” says Jeffress, “is the American people are allowing these leaders to proceed relatively unopposed, parallel to what the Bible details will happen in the end times.”

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63-Year-Old Great-Grandmother Shoots Attempted Robber Holding Her at Gunpoint

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Photo Credit: Shreveport Times

Photo Credit: Shreveport Times

Killing anyone — let alone a teenager — was the last thing Elzie Pipkins wanted to do when she bought a handgun at a local pawn shop days after a December burglary. But a few weeks later, on Sunday evening, Pipkins found herself using that weapon to defend herself and her family — ultimately taking the life of a 16-year-old holding her at gunpoint.

“I looked him dead in his eyes, like I’m looking at you, and I said, ‘Please, please, please don’t hurt us,”’ said a tearful Elzie Pipkins as she recounted shooting Devon Antonio Young as he attempted to rob Pipkins in her home.

“I was defending myself, my grandbaby and my great-grandson. We’re innocent people and he came up on us in the house with a loaded shotgun,” she said.

The 63-year-old great-grandmother lives alone, but serves as the matriarch of a large family and often cares for the youngest members.

“I did what any parent or loved one would do and that’s try to protect her own,” said Pipkins, surrounded by her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren on Monday afternoon in the living room of her home in the 3000 block of Morningside Drive.

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Insane Clown Posse Defends Fans, With F.B.I. Lawsuit

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Photo Credit: Marcus Yam for The New York Times

Photo Credit: Marcus Yam for The New York Times

The Michigan rap group Insane Clown Posse filed suit on Wednesday against the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, saying that the United States government had made the “unwarranted and unlawful decision” to classify fans of the band as criminal gang members, leading to their harassment by law enforcement and causing them “significant harm.”

The lawsuit was filed in Federal District Court in Detroit by lawyers for the band and for the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan. Plaintiffs include the Insane Clown Posse founders Joseph Bruce and Joseph Utsler, who perform as Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope, and whose fans call themselves Juggalos.

Also listed as plaintiffs are four Juggalos from Nevada, California, North Carolina and Iowa, who offered details of incidents in which they said they had been subjected to police harassment or other punishments for identifying with Insane Clown Posse.

Brandon Bradley, from Citrus Heights, Calif., and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said at a news conference in Detroit on Wednesday that he had been stopped and questioned by police on several occasions because he wore Juggalo tattoos and clothing. He said that after a lifetime of feeling like an outsider, the music of Insane Clown Posse “told me I wasn’t alone.”

He added that he was standing up “for people like me who are being discriminated against, just because of the music we listen to.”

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Outbreak of ‘Nightmare Bacteria’ in Illinois Stirs Worry

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

The largest outbreak to date of one strain of what authorities have called “nightmare bacteria” is adding to concerns about the spread of such drug-resistant bugs.

The outbreak, centered on a hospital in a Chicago suburb, has infected 44 people in Illinois over the past year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The bug, known as carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae, bears a rare enzyme that breaks down antibiotics.

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‘Sticky Balls’ May Stop Cancer Spreading

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Photo Credit: SPL

Photo Credit: SPL

The most dangerous and deadly stage of a tumour is when it spreads around the body.

Scientists at Cornell University, in the US, have designed nanoparticles that stay in the bloodstream and kill migrating cancer cells on contact.

They said the impact was “dramatic” but there was “a lot more work to be done”.

One of the biggest factors in life expectancy after being diagnosed with cancer is whether the tumour has spread to become a metastatic cancer.

“About 90% of cancer deaths are related to metastases,” said lead researcher Prof Michael King.

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