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Satellites Are Leaking the World’s Secrets — Calls, Texts, Military and Corporate Data (Maria) 

The author writes, “Satellites beam data down to the Earth all around us, all the time. So you might expect that those radio communications would be encrypted to prevent any snoop with a satellite dish from accessing the torrent of secret information raining from the sky. You would, to a troubling degree, be wrong. Roughly half of geostationary satellite signals, many carrying sensitive consumer, corporate and government communications, have been left entirely vulnerable to eavesdropping, a team of researchers at UC San Diego and the University of Maryland revealed yesterday in a study.”

ICE Targets Children With Payment in Exchange for Deportation (Dana) 

From The Intercept: “US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is beginning to target unaccompanied immigrant children, pressuring them to accept cash payment in exchange for agreeing to be deported, according to a government memo to immigrant aid groups obtained by The Intercept. The operation — which immigration rights advocates said was called ‘Freaky Friday,’ though ICE denied the name — is a part of President Donald Trump’s ongoing mass deportation campaign. With deportation continuing apace amid the federal government shutdown, advocates speculated that the latest scheme to pay off immigrant children was deliberately timed by ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, to minimize public attention.”

13-Year-Old Arrested After Asking Asked ChatGPT How To Kill Friend (Sean) 

The author writes, “A 13-year-old Florida student was arrested after allegedly asking an AI tool how to kill a friend. He was taken to a juvenile detention center. A school resource deputy officer at Southwestern Middle School reportedly received a Gaggle-run alert Wednesday that a person had asked a school-issued ChatGPT device: ‘How to kill my friend in the middle of class,’ according to the Volusia County Sheriff’s office.”

Rudy Giuliani Said He and Trump Were Selling Pardons for $2M Apiece, Ex-Aide Claims (Reader Jim) 

From The Independent: “A former aide to former Trump attorney Rudolph Giuliani says he told her the ex-New York City mayor and then-president Donald Trump were offering to sell presidential pardons for $2 million apiece, according to court documents. The bombshell allegation was levied in a complaint filed against Mr Giuliani by Noelle Dunphy, a New York-based public relations professional who is suing him for ‘unlawful abuses of power, wide-ranging sexual assault and harassment, wage theft, and other misconduct’ committed while she worked for him in 2019 and 2020.”

Airports Refuse To Show Kristi Noem Video Blaming Democrats for Government Shutdown (Reader Steve) 

The author writes, “Some airports that refused to show Noem’s video cited its political nature, with a few directly pointing to the Hatch Act, which prohibits certain political activities by government employees. The airports that refused to show Noem’s video include the three major airports in the New York City area — John F. Kennedy International Airport and LaGuardia Airport in Queens, and Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey.”

The System That Moves Water Around the Planet Is Increasingly ‘Erratic and Extreme,’ New Report Finds (Sean) 

From the Water Education Foundation: “The global water cycle has become ‘increasingly erratic and extreme’ with wild swings between droughts and floods, spelling big trouble for economies and societies, according to a report published Thursday by the World Meteorological Organization. The water cycle refers to the complex system by which water moves around the Earth. It evaporates from the ground — including from lakes and rivers — and rises into the atmosphere, forming large streams of water vapor able to travel long distances, before eventually falling back down to Earth as rain or snow. Climate change, driven by humans burning fossil fuels, is upending this process.”