In the news

Real news is difficult to find. Not here. No distracting diversionary sleight-of-hand misdirection. Just reporting what is actually going on.

Friday, April 5th, 2024

ACP

Reports compiled from multiple reliable sources. Today’s sources are; The Washington Times & The Christian Institute

Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

Isaiah 41:10

Inside the Kremlin’s vast AI surveillance of dissidents

Russia is deploying an artificial intelligence-powered surveillance operation using facial recognition to identify those opposed to the government at public events, according to an analysis of leaked Kremlin documents obtained by Estonian journalists.

Aspects of the new system were reportedly used to assist in the arrests of people attending the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s funeral and were previously tested on fans attending soccer’s World Cup in Russia in 2018.

National Security Tech Correspondent Ryan Lovelace reports that President Vladimir Putin’s administration intends to spend more than $121 million on the AI system’s continued development from 2024 through 2026, according to leaked documents reviewed by the central European-based VSquare and international investigators.

Revelations about the Kremlin’s use of the technology come as the European Union prepares to implement bloc-wide rules that ban AI applications involving emotion recognition, “scraping” of facial images for surveillance and the manipulation of human behavior.

U.S. Marines training for Taiwan combat?

U.S. Marines are running high-altitude training missions in the snow-packed Sierra Nevada to be ready to fight battles in places near China, Russia or the Arctic. National Security Correspondent Bill Gertz spent time on the ground at the Marine Mountain Warfare Training Center, witnessing one recent exercise that saw Marines conduct a simulated shore landing from ships to a mountainous island.

They were then instructed to fight across heavily forested mountains, in some places covered in snow up to 6 feet deep, toward an objective on the other side of the island about 9 miles away. The goal of the carefully planned operation was to seize an airport.

Marine leaders won’t say it, but the mountain island scenario plays out exactly the way an amphibious landing would go on the east coast of Taiwan, one of the most mountainous islands in the world and an announced target of the Chinese government and its People’s Liberation Army.

Congress still eying U.S. based firm tied to Wuhan lab

The president of New York-based EcoHealth Alliance, which used U.S. taxpayer money to fund research at the Wuhan virus lab in China, will appear before Congress next month to once again defend his firm’s work.

House Republicans who announced the meeting said Dr. Peter Daszak needs to clear up “inconsistent” information he had given about EcoHealth’s role in the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s work, which many experts now believe may have played a role in spawning the coronavirus pandemic. They contend his statements in a November appearance behind closed doors don’t match documents that the committees have seen.

EcoHealth funneled U.S. government grant money to the lab to help finance coronavirus research. But there is a disagreement over whether that money funded what’s known as “gain of function research,” which is where viruses are pushed to develop new features, including ones that might make them deadlier, to understand how they might evolve.

Chinese weapons found in Gaza, report claims

Putin works to get China, North Korea to view U.S. as an enemy

Rishi Sunak: “People should not be criminalised for upholding biological sex”

Columnist exposes elite disdain for Christianity

I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears.

Psalm 34:4

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.

John 14:27