A new document from the trove of NSA leaker Edward Snowden shows that the British intelligence services used webcams of Yahoo users to spy on them including taking nude pictures of users.
The GCHQ ran a program called Optic Nerve between 2008 and 2010 that collected images from Yahoo webcam chats and stored them even if the users in the chats were not considered targets of intelligence operations.
In one six month period over 1.8 million Yahoo users were spied on worldwide.
When the Guardian newspaper contacted Yahoo, officials were furious to find out they had been targeted by intelligence services. The company termed the action “a whole new level of violation of our users’ privacy.”
There are no restrictions in British law that would keep them from tracking Americans and storing information about them without an individual warrant.
A panel of public policy experts has said that the most important issue facing Christians today is how the government is undercutting religious freedom.
The discussion at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention featured many nationally known experts on law such as Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice, NRB Chief Legal Counsel Craig Parshall and Rafael Cruz, father of Texas Senator Ted Cruz.
Parshall pointed to the current Hobby Lobby case against the Affordable Care Act as a major example of the government trying to strip away the rights of a Christian to own and operate their businesses in a manner consistent with their Christian values.
Jay Sekulow said that Christians and conservatives need to be careful about putting all their eggs in the Supreme Court’s basket. He pointed to the decision regarding the allowance of the Affordable Care Act by a 5-4 decision where Chief Justice John Roberts, who conservatives believed would follow conservative values, voted with the liberal wing of the Court to give President Obama his signature legislation.
They also discussed the wave of intolerance in much of the major media. Fox News reporter Todd Starnes shared the blessing of working at Fox where Christians are welcome and can openly write about their faith.
“I’ve found those who preach tolerance and diversity are many times the most intolerant. I love those opportunities when I can write a story how a life has been changed by the blood of Jesus Christ,” Starnes said.
Pastor Cruz, who was a Cuban immigrant in 1957 who came to the U.S. with only $100, said that he blames pastors for the loss of religious liberty in America.
“If I can blame anyone for our loss of religious liberty in America, I blame our pastors,” said Cruz. “They are hiding behind their pulpits and 501(c)(3)’s. It’s about time we become biblically correct instead of being politically correct. I would rather go to jail than violate what God is telling me to do.”
A woman who ordered two prints online of Bible verses for her Bible study from her local Walgreens was told she couldn’t print them because Bible verses violated copyright law.
After a clerk told Kelly Taylor that they would not print her order, she received an e-mail that told her to contact a photo team associate. When she called the number, she was told that printing Scripture violated copyright law.
She was given prints of the Bible verses after Fox News obtained copies of the e-mails between Taylor and store officials and provided them to Walgreens’ corporate offices.
A Walgreens spokesman then sent a statement to Fox News that the employee who rejected the printing of the verses was not acting on behalf of the company.
He went on to say the employee may have had concerns that graphic designs behind the verses could fall under copyright protection and that the whole situation could be resolved by Taylor signing a waiver of copyright law.
Taylor said she hopes the incident will be a teachable moment for Walgreens and that in the future Christians won’t be denied the opportunity to print Scripture verses.
Doctors are calling a “miracle” a maintenance worker’s discovery of a baby in a trash dumpster.
Carlos Michel said that he thought he was hearing the sound of an animal dying in a dumpster at the Reverse at Windmill Lakes apartment complex. He decided to investigate and discovered a newborn boy, with the umbilical cord still attached, inside a plastic garbage bag.
Michel immediately checked for breath sounds and found the child was still alive. He placed him inside his heated truck and warmed the boy until he began to react like a normal baby. He kept him safe until emergency personnel arrived on the scene.
Doctors say he saved the child’s life.
Police investigators found a 16-year-old woman in a nearby apartment who admitted bagging up the baby and throwing it in the dumpster. Police gave no details why the teen abandoned her baby in that manner but said she was taken to a local hospital.
Child Protective Services will care for the baby. The Harris County District Attorney’s office has not said if they will be filing charges against the mother.
If you have ever told a friend that you are craving sugar and you can’t seem to be able to stop eating it, then you may actually be addicted to sugar.
Dr. Mark Hyman told CBS “This Morning” that in animal studies they found that rats go for sugar in a manner that was eight times more addictive than cocaine. Hyman said that Americans are addicted to sugar and that most don’t know it because they see sugary food and drinks as part of their daily diet.
Hyman says that sugary foods are “deadly” to the body. He said that sugar is a direct cause of diabetes and obesity.
Hyman told the New York Daily News that the average American eats 152 pounds of sugar a year.
In a diet study conducted by Hyman that encouraged healthier eating habits and helped people cut their sugar dependence, the average person found their blood pressure falling by about 10 points.
A copy of the Message translation of the Bible was more than a spiritual lifesaver for a Dayton, Ohio bus driver.
49-year-old Rickey Waggoner, a driver for the Dayton Regional Transit Authority, had been working on his bus when he was approached by three youths. The youths shot Waggoner in the chest at point blank range.
However, a copy of the Message Bible that Waggoner had in his pocket stopped both of the bullets. Police say the Bible saved Waggoner’s life.
While not specifically attributing the act to divine will, a Dayton police officer said there had to be something special that happened for the bus driver.
“There was obviously some kind of intervention involved in this incident because he should probably not be here,” Dayton Police Sergeant Michael Pauley told the Dayton Daily News.
Police believe the attack was a gang initiation because Waggoner reported one of the youths said “if you want to be all the way in the club” to the one who pulled the trigger.
The man who created the Message translation, Eugene Peterson, said that he had heard of similar incidents in World War II where Bibles stopped bullets.
“It’s good to be in the club,” Peterson told Fox News.
A new research study from Columbia University shows that fatal car accidents involving marijuana have tripled in the last ten years.
One of the co-authors of the study, Dr. Guohua Li, said that currently one in nine drivers involved in fatal crashes would test positive for marijuana.
“If this trend continues, in five or six years non-alcohol drugs will overtake alcohol to become the most common substance involved in deaths related to impaired driving,” Dr. Li said.
The study comes on the heels of states such as Colorado legalizing marijuana for use by the public. Alcohol related traffic fatalities held steady at 40 percent throughout the decade but drug related deaths climbed from 16 percent in 1999 to 28 percent in 2010. The scientists fear more legalization could continue to drive up the rate of drug related crashes.
“If a driver is under the influence of alcohol, their risk of a fatal crash is 13 times higher than the risk of the driver who is not under the influence of alcohol,” Li told Breitbart. “But if the driver is under the influence of both alcohol and marijuana, their risk increases to 24 times that of a sober person.”
If you packed away your winter coat, dig it back out.
Meteorologists say the polar vortex, which has wreaked so much havoc on temperatures and winter storms, is coming back for at least one more round before the winter is over.
The National Weather Service reports that record cold temperatures are possible for the Upper Midwest, Great Lakes and High Plains areas of the country. Minneapolis, Chicago, Buffalo and other northern cities could face temperatures as much as 40 degrees lower than normal this week.
The Climate Prediction Center says the frigid temperatures could last through the first week of March.
Two western states are looking to fight the health battle by raising the age for legally smoking.
Utah and Colorado has both voted for proposals that essentially treat tobacco the same way they treat alcohol.
The new laws are being proposed because a new study showed that many people develop their addictions to tobacco during their teenage years. A study from the Annals of Internal Medicine says that 9 out of 10 daily smokers had their first cigarette by 19 years of age and that 90 percent of cigarettes bought for minors are bought by 18 to 20-year-olds.
“By raising the age limit, it puts them in a situation where they’re not going to pick it up until a much later age,” Marla Brannum of Utah told legislators.
New York City rose the age for cigarettes to 21 last year. Several other states are considering 21-for-tobacco bills including Hawaii and New Jersey.
A woman who was forced to spend a night in jail after recording a police officer on her phone has filed suit over wrongful imprisonment.
Brandy Berning, 33, was stopped for driving in the HOV lane at the wrong time and then began to record Lt. William O’Brien as he approached her vehicle. When Berning said that she was recording the stop, O’Brien said she had committed a felony and demanded the phone.
The officer then argued with the woman over the next few minutes before reaching into the car to take the phone and spraining her wrist.
In Florida, both sides of a conversation are required to know that a conversation is being recorded. It is legal for third parties to record a law enforcement officer performing duties.
The ACLU says it’s very likely the law will be on Berning’s side in the lawsuit.