50,000% return: Assange thanks US for forcing him to invest in Bitcoin

"In his tweet, Assange called out current and former senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman, respectively, for forcing him into seeking alternative sources of funding which turned out to be a blessing in disguise. At the time, Lieberman called for the Department of Justice to indict Assange under the 1917 Espionage Act and sought his extradition from the UK for leaking US Embassy cables."

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Russia Issuing ‘CryptoRuble’

"According to the official, the state issued cryptocurrency cannot be mined and will be issued and controlled and maintained only by the authorities. The CryptoRubles can be exchanged for regular Rubles at any time, though if the holder is unable to explain where the CryptoRubles came from, a 13 percent tax will be levied. The same tax will be applied to any earned difference between the price of the purchase of the token and the price of the sale."

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Who’s ‘the Harvey Weinstein of’ Sex Work? The Police

"Every week brings a new story of police officers abusing their power to extort sex from women, especially women whom they've known to engage in prostitution. Since the start of October, at least five cops and a police dispatcher have made headlines for prostitution offenses, sometimes with underage women. And of course these are only the ones getting caught."

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Cops Claim Teen Consented to Sex — While Handcuffed In Custody

"After their DNA was found on 18-year-old 'Anna Chambers' in September, the two Brooklyn narcotics officers who she accused of raping her admitted to sex with the young woman. But they claimed the contact—which occured after police pulled over Chambers on a traffic stop, found loose prescription pills in her bag, and took her into their custody—was consensual. Now they're trying to discredit her by pointing prosecutors to her 'provocative' social-media selfies and to tweets where she lashes out at someone accusing her of lying."

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She’s a Mom and a Sex Offender for Life

"Shawna is a 35-year-old woman who is legally prohibited from taking her kids to the park. That's because she's a sex offender. Years earlier, on her 19th birthday, Shawna and her friends were drinking and celebrating. A teen boy expressed interest in her, and they slept together. He turned out to be 14 years old. His mother notified the authorities. Now Shawna is spending the rest of her life on the sex offender registry, even though the mother of two is obviously no threat to children."

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Feds ‘Rescue’ Women From Their Freedom, Money In Sting Operations

"Everyone will ignore the real victims of Operation Cross Country: the vulnerable women and girls tricked, frightened, robbed, detained, arrested, incarcerated, and otherwise mistreated by police and federal agents as part of this sick charade that claims to help them."

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Boycott Israel & you won’t get aid donations, Hurricane Harvey victims told

"The city of Dickinson, Texas, told individuals and businesses on Monday that they are now accepting applications for 'grants from the fund generously donated to the Dickinson Harvey Relief Fund' for storm damage repair. In order to apply for the grant, however, applicants must agree to a number of clauses, one of which is asserting that they do not boycott Israel. The clause stems from a Texas law passed in May, which became effective on September 1, that requires all state contractors to verify in writing that they are not participating in boycotts of Israel."

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Researchers: Government shouldn’t use AI if it can’t explain decisions

"Government institutions are already blindly following the direction the algorithms give. A report by ProPublica found that an algorithmic system for criminal sentencing was biased against black people—not by understanding the color of their skin but by using flawed data correlated with race. Teachers in Texas recently won a case where their job performance was being evaluated by an algorithm—a circuit court found that the unexplainable software violated the teachers’ 14th amendment rights to due process."

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Wrong Facebook translation gets man arrested for posting ‘good morning’

"Facebook has apologized after a Palestinian man was arrested by Israeli police for a post saying 'good morning' that its automatic-translation service erroneously translated as 'attack them' in Hebrew and 'hurt them' in English."

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New Measures Impose Interviews On Travelers Returning To The US

"If you’re traveling back to the US on or after Thursday, expect a broad range of new measures, including short interviews. According to Airlines for America, the new policies will affect 325,000 airline passengers on about 2,000 commercial flights arriving daily in the US. Those figures include flights on 180 airlines from 280 airports in 105 countries. That’s a whole lot of people on a significant number of flights, so be aware that you may experience more delays than usual. Lufthansa said that travelers could expect to encounter short interviews at check-in or at the gate, and passengers on Lufthansa’s Swiss should check-in at least 90 minutes before departure."

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