[FoxNews] Joseph Emerson, who tried to disable a passenger jet’s engines mid-flight after taking psychedelic mushrooms, was sentenced to supervised release and credit for time served
A former Alaska Airlines pilot who attempted to disable the engines of a 2023 passenger flight while riding off duty in the cockpit after taking psychedelic mushrooms will not serve any prison time after he was released by a judge Monday.
U.S. District Court Judge Amy Baggio sentenced Joseph Emerson to credit for time served and supervised release for three years at a hearing in Portland, Oregon. Emerson pleaded guilty to the charges against him in September as part of a deal with state and federal prosecutors. Federal prosecutors had asked a judge to impose a one-year prison sentence.
"Pilots are not perfect. They are human," the judge said. "They are people and all people need help sometimes."
Before hearing his sentence, Emerson spoke, saying he regretted his actions.
"I’m not a victim. I am here as a direct result of my actions," he told the court. "I can tell you that this very tragic event has forced me to grow as an individual."
Emerson was a passenger on the Oct. 22, 2023 Horizon Air flight from Everett, Washington, to San Francisco when he was subdued by the flight crew.
He was sitting in an extra seat in the cockpit at the time aboard Flight 2059, which was carrying 84 people. The plane was eventually diverted to Portland, where it landed safely with more than 80 people on board.
At the time, Emerson, a California resident, told authorities that he was grieving a friend's death and had taken psychedelic mushrooms around two days earlier. In addition, he said he had gone more than 40 hours without sleep.
#2
People on mushrooms should not fly, evidently. Seems like a bad drug to take if you are disabling plane engines two days later. Did he take a bushel?
Posted by: Super Hose ||
11/18/2025 7:24 Comments ||
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[FoxNews] Charlotte, North Carolina, serves as trafficking hub, experts warn
A startling rise in human trafficking cases throughout one of the nation’s most populous states is putting both experts and parents on alert, with data indicating that criminals are targeting children in unprecedented numbers.
North Carolina is ranked ninth in the country for human trafficking, according to data from the National Human Trafficking Hotline. In 2024, the state identified 301 cases of human trafficking involving 580 victims, the Hotline indicated.
These cases involve instances of sex trafficking, labor trafficking and additional types of exploitation that may not be specified or remain unknown, according to the Hotline. In North Carolina, data indicates that in 2024, there were 145 reported cases of sex trafficking, 73 cases of labor trafficking and 38 cases of both sex and labor trafficking.
Hannah Arrowood, executive director of Present Age Ministries, spearheads a partnership with the Charlotte Metro Human Trafficking Task Force in an attempt to understand and combat the rise in cases.
"It really is kind of like a perfect storm," Arrowood told Fox News Digital. "There are a lot of variables. One of the things that we have to know is that trafficking happens everywhere. It happens in every city and every town, whether you're rural [or in a] city – it really doesn't matter. But for Charlotte, one thing is that we have a lot of factors that attract demand."
The eye-watering number of cases is best explained by North Carolina’s sweeping interstate highway system, high demand for inexpensive labor throughout its agricultural industry and increased amount of gang activity, experts said.
"Part of the reason why Charlotte is such a huge trafficking hub is because of the highway system," Toby Braun, founder of American Special Investigative Group, told Fox News Digital. "A lot of these traffickers are running victims and may start in South Florida. From South Florida, they go to Atlanta, and from Atlanta, they pass through Charlotte. Oftentimes there, they may put them in safe houses."
According to Braun, victims will then be transported to other major cities throughout the country – like New York or Houston – after passing through Charlotte.
"Charlotte is kind of like a central hub, or an epicenter," Braun said. "For the most part, it’s kind of a pit stop."
The number of Charlotte residents falling victim to trafficking can partially be attributed to the prevalence of gang activity within the city, with criminal organizations maintaining a firm grip on the area’s network, according to experts.
"The Bloods have a huge stronghold in human trafficking," Braun said. "They're one of the primary organized crime groups responsible for trafficking [in Charlotte]. For the most part, these are criminal networks. And that also makes it tougher, because of the kind of resources that they have and the ability to traffic people around, hide them in places and really stay undetected."
While many victims can be from out of state, Arrowood emphasizes that many of the individuals being trafficked are coming from within the Charlotte area, with perpetrators targeting school-aged children within the city.
According to data from the Charlotte Metro Human Trafficking Task Force, 48% of trafficking cases in 2024 involved minors aged 15 or younger.
From 2020 to 2024, Charlotte saw a 76% increase in reported cases of minor trafficking, according to the task force.
"We do see every ethnicity affected – every socioeconomic class," Arrowood said. "The pathway or grooming might look different if someone has housing insecurity or food insecurity, versus living in a middle-to-upper class, two-parent home, right? The method might look different, the coercion might look different, but we do see it across the board."
Of the reported cases, residence-based commercial sex and domestic work were the leading venues for sex and labor trafficking, respectively. Additionally, 214 victims were female, 63 were men, and four included gender minorities, according to the Hotline.
In 2024, data provided by the task force revealed that authorities identified 106 minors within the Charlotte area who were confirmed or suspected victims of trafficking. The number is primarily attributed to criminals using newer, more creative methods to recruit their victims.
"The primary way is through online [platforms]," Arrowood said. "They are connecting in some way or somehow, whether it's through social media, a gaming app, [or] through a dating app. Then there usually is a meet in-person, right? We call it digital grooming. They're grooming them, building trust – a lot of times they're presenting as boyfriend, so [victims] are thinking they're in a relationship with this person."
However, due to the nature of trafficking crimes, most cases go unreported. Arrowood also points to a backlog of cases piling up for local law enforcement, who may not have the resources needed to fully investigate each case.
"Agencies are just always at limited capacity in terms of the amount of work, or the amount of people and manpower they have to manage the amount of referrals that are coming in," Arrowood told Fox News Digital.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department declined Fox News Digital’s request for an interview and request for comment.
As the city continues to see a startling rise in trafficking throughout the area, particularly involving minors, Braun urges parents to take steps to keep their children safe.
"People think that these traffickers are these monsters – and they are," Braun said. "They can be boyfriends or classmates. We've seen cases with coaches and people that you would never really expect, and I think that's what makes them dangerous – the fact that they can be individuals that are hiding in plain sight."
[Investors] CEO Ted Decker noted that the Dow Jones retailer missed its expectations primarily due to the lack of storms during the third quarter, which resulted in greater pressure in certain categories. Decker added that underlying demand was relatively stable from last quarter, but an anticipated increase in demand for Q3 did not materialize.
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Home Depot has a store in Jamaica, NY but not in Jamaica West Indies where Hurricane Melissa did enormous damage.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
11/18/2025 09:30 ||
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Link ||
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] Signs of a new increase in solar flare activity are being detected on the Sun. This was reported on November 17 by the press service of the Solar Astronomy Laboratory of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Solar Terrestrial Physics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
According to scientists, flare activity remained at a relatively elevated level over the past 24 hours and posed no risk to Earth. The geomagnetic environment was calm with only minor disturbances.
However, the situation may change within the next 24 hours: solar wind parameters remain unstable, resulting in weak geomagnetic disturbances. Experts are noting the first signs of a renewed increase in flares, but their intensity remains low and does not affect the operation of satellites or ground-based systems.
The laboratory emphasized that current processes are within normal limits for this period of the solar cycle, and no dangerous phenomena are currently predicted.
On November 14, scientists detected a very large X-class flare. The X4.05 flare occurred in the Sun's northern hemisphere and was one of the strongest of 2025, triggering a powerful magnetic storm observed from November 11 to 13. Scientists clarified that activity in this region began several weeks earlier, when it was on the far side of the Sun, and could have affected the motion of the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] Following the Japanese-American exercises, the United States removed the Typhon missile systems from the Iwakuni military base in Japan, which had caused concern to Russia. This was reported by the Kyodo news agency on November 17.
The publication noted that the complexes stationed in Iwakuni are used, among other things, to launch American long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles.
The Japanese Ministry of Defense notified the city administration of the systems' removal. The mobile ground-based systems were supposed to be removed after the completion of the maneuvers on September 25. However, as of November 10, they were still at the military base. The reasons for the delay have not been reported.
The systems were deployed at the US Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni as part of the large-scale US-Japanese military exercises Resolute Dragon, held from September 11 to 25. In August, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova called the deployment of the US Typhon system, capable of launching intermediate- and shorter-range missiles, a destabilizing move in Japan. According to the diplomat, such actions by the US would have detrimental consequences for regional and global stability, including dangerously fueling tensions between nuclear powers.
Also in September, the official representative of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs demanded that Washington immediately remove Typhon systems from East Asia.
On November 15, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi spoke in favor of the deployment of American nuclear weapons in the country. According to the Mainichi newspaper, she intends to initiate a discussion on revising the three non-nuclear principles that have long defined Japan's security policy: not possessing, not producing, and not deploying nuclear weapons on Japanese soil. Takaichi believes that the existing ban on the import of such weapons could weaken the effectiveness of the nuclear deterrent provided by the United States.
On November 13, Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov stated that Russia is concerned about Japan's uncertain position regarding maintaining its non-nuclear status.
Text taken from the Telegram channel of china3army
Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin is in italics.
See the link for phototas of the ships mentioned in this posting.
[ColonelCassad] Two Chinese aircraft carriers, the Shandong and the newest Fujian, are conducting joint exercises. They are not yet equipped with full-fledged strike groups, the ships for which are also being built in parallel with the aircraft carrier construction program.
China plans to have four strike groups by the 2030s. Three aircraft carriers already exist: the Liaoning, Shandong, and Fujian. Construction of the fourth is just beginning. They are to be escorted by Type-52D and Type-55 destroyers, as well as Type-54 frigates.
In the future, each strike group should be assigned a nuclear submarine (like the Americans). The strike groups will play a vital role in the highly probable event of war in Taiwan.
To put this into perspective, it's about a third larger than our cruisers Varyag and Marshal Ustinov (around 12,000-13,000 tons).
Meanwhile, the Chinese already have eight of them, all in the fleet. All entered service after 2020. And to top it all off, the new Chinese amphibious assault ship Sichuan (Type 076) has begun sea trials. This is in addition to the already built series of four Type 075 amphibious assault ships. Those were 35,000-40,000 tons each.
This one is almost 50,000 tons. Overall, China is currently doing roughly the same thing the USSR did under Admiral Gorshkov – building a blue-water navy. They have the money, so they can afford it.
Cloudfare admits their outage was caused by a bug which appeared in their own network. See details below.
Moved to non-WOT
[TheRegister] Outage leaves users staring at error pages while recovery crawls along
Breaking Internet services provider Cloudflare is suffering a major outage that has knocked chunks of the web offline – including The Register.
The company acknowledged problems at 1148 UTC on November 18, stating: "Some services may be intermittently impacted." After a long half-hour, it reckoned systems were returning to normal, but "customers may continue to observe higher-than-normal error rates" as engineers continue to investigate and fix the underlying issue.
Cloudflare provides security and infrastructure for a substantial chunk of websites. As such, X (formerly Twitter) and even El Reg were either knocked offline or malfunctioned as the outage continued. Even that stalwart of system uptime, Downdetector, reported "Please unblock challenges.cloudflare.com to proceed" at one point.
The company has yet to confirm the cause of the outage – we will issue an update when it does – but it follows hot on the heels of problems at AWS and Azure, and is a reminder for enterprises that a service is only as good as the weakest link in the chain... and that weakest link might not reveal itself until it breaks.
The problem appears to be global, and the company was forced to do the equivalent of turning off and on its WARP access in London as engineers worked to deal with the problem. WARP is similar to a VPN, except it routes traffic through Cloudflare's network. If the network is having a bad day, turning off WARP seems a sensible option.
At 1309 UTC, Cloudflare announced that it had identified the problem and that a fix was being implemented. It did not, however, give an estimate for when sites would stop becoming available and then become unavailable again, seemingly at random.
A Cloudflare spokesperson told The Register: "We saw a spike in unusual traffic to one of Cloudflare's services beginning at 1120 UTC. That caused some traffic passing through Cloudflare's network to experience errors.
"We do not yet know the cause of the spike in unusual traffic. We are all hands on deck to make sure all traffic is served without errors. After that, we will turn our attention to investigating the cause of the unusual spike in traffic."
This is an evolving situation, and this article will be updated. Hopefully, you'll be able to read it. More from the register.com:
Updated to add at 1555 UTC, November 18
A Cloudflare spokesperson told The Register that the incident began at 1120 UTC and was fully resolved at 1430. They said: "The root cause of the outage was a configuration file that is automatically generated to manage threat traffic. The file grew beyond an expected size of entries and triggered a crash in the software system that handles traffic for a number of Cloudflare's services.
"To be clear, there is no evidence that this was the result of an attack or caused by malicious activity.
"We expect that some Cloudflare services will be briefly degraded as traffic naturally spikes post incident but we expect all services to return to normal in the next few hours.
"Given the importance of Cloudflare's services, any outage is unacceptable. We apologize to our customers and the internet in general for letting you down today. We will learn from today's incident and improve."
#1
"We do not yet know the cause of the spike in unusual traffic.
Probably nothing to do with our visitor from interstellar space.
Somewhat amusing that Cloudflare, whose main job is preventing mischief like Denial of Service attacks, has crashed and is effectively causing a giant Denial of Service attack.
The Word of the Day is: Single Point of Failure
#4
Like others in ITSEC.
I am seriously starting to wonder if the tin hats are right again, and we are in for an I.T. E-War in the coming weeks. ... maybe time to dust off my old RT modems ;-)
#7
We do not yet know the cause of the spike in unusual traffic.
Check your logs. You must keep an eye on those logs. I'd offer a guess even without the logs...(cough, cough) China. Sounds like a denial of service attack. I would think a major corporation with as much at stake as Cloudfare would have people to monitor those servers all day every day and software that would automatically drop the malicious IP addresses into the firewall's database.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
11/18/2025 13:31 Comments ||
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#8
I would also concur with KBK. DARPA designed the Internet to be decentralized for resiliency. Too big to fail only makes the failures worse.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
11/18/2025 13:35 Comments ||
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Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
11/18/2025 13:48 Comments ||
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#12
I would think a major corporation with as much at stake as Cloudfare would have peopleAI to monitor those servers all day every day and software that would automatically drop the malicious IP addresses into the firewall's database.
#13
Call it AI if you want but it's really just software. A rose by any other name, you know. I said people and software. You don't just leave all those machines to themselves.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
11/18/2025 18:54 Comments ||
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#14
Software might be jazzier if it retrieves its data from the Internet instead of a magnetic tape. Call it highly sophisticated software or next generation software and I won't argue but it's still just ones and zeros arranged in a hopefully logical manner and it's still only as good as the people who program it.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
11/18/2025 19:10 Comments ||
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Will they also be investing in power plants to supply their increased needs? Because Texas is already underinvested in electricity generation.
[FoxBusinessNews] Investment spans Armstrong County and Haskell County as AI competition intensifies
Alphabet's Google is investing $40 billion to build new data centers in two Texas counties.
The announcement, made Friday, said one of the new data centers will be in Armstrong County, in the Texas Panhandle, and the other two in Haskell County, a stretch of West Texas near Abilene.
"This investment will create thousands of jobs, provide skills training to college students and electrical apprentices, and accelerate energy affordability initiatives throughout Texas," Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said in a statement obtained by Reuters.
Google has been in the Lone Star State for 15 years, and the investment, which will be made through 2027, underscores the intensifying competition among artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud service providers to build infrastructure capable of supporting advanced AI models.
"Google's $40 billion investment makes Texas Google's largest investment in any state in the country and supports energy efficiency and workforce development in our state," Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement.
[Montgomery Advertiser] An apparel manufacturing plant in Alabama will be shutting down its operations just after Christmas, leaving hundreds of Alabamians laid off.
Renfro Brands, a company that designs and manufactures socks, legwear and other apparel, internally announced to its workforce that their operations at their Fort Payne, Alabama, plant — which specifically handles knitting and finishing operations — will be closing by the end of the year.
The Fort Payne location's 455 employees will be laid off following the closure.
A spokesperson for the company said that all of the company's manufacturing endeavors will be consolidated in Cleveland, Tennessee, over the "next several months" for efficiency purposes.
[FoxNews] Annual index from DoorDash ranks most affordable burger cities across 100 largest US metropolitan areas.
The average cheeseburger meal increased about 3.8% — from $17.90 to $18.58 — between September 2024 and September 2025, according to the Cheeseburger Index.
After analyzing the cost of cheeseburgers across the 100 largest cities in the U.S., analysts found that the most affordable ones were spread across the Midwest, Southwest and Southeast.
The least affordable cities include Anchorage, Alaska, where a cheeseburger meal can cost roughly $25.55.
Here are the cities where you can expect to find a full cheeseburger meal — with fries, a soda and the works — for less than $15.
#6
I remember 15 cent hamburger, fries and soda in the 60s paid in silver coin/note. Let check what that would be in today's economy. It's not that things are more expensive as much as our currency is worthless, see 37 trillion dollars of debt.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Illinois homeowners are facing more than just strong winds — they're weathering a financial storm.
New national data released this week showed 36,766 foreclosure filings in October alone — up 19 percent year-on-year — but a deeper dive reveals one unexpected Midwestern state has become ground zero for the crisis.
Foreclosures are usually concentrated in Sun Belt trouble spots like Florida, California and Nevada.
But analysts were stunned to see Illinois emerge as one of the worst-hit states last month.
In October, one in every 2,570 Illinois homes had a foreclosure filing — a total of 2,118 properties. That includes 1,252 foreclosure starts (when the paperwork is first began) and 187 completed repossessions (when the foreclosure process is completed).
Illinois saw fewer than 1,900 filings in September, and just 1,597 last October.
'We've definitely noticed an uptick,' said Jason Merel, a realtor covering Chicago and the northern suburbs.
'Illinois tends to show higher numbers because we're a judicial foreclosure state. The process takes longer, so the backlog looks bigger.'
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Donald Trump has ousted FEMA director David Richardson, a longtime loyalist of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, as he plans sweeping cuts to the agency.
During Richardson's six-month tenure leading the nation's disaster response agency, employees described him as being absence during the early hours of the flood disaster in Texas over the Summer.
Richardson, moreover, reportedly avoided operation meetings and the day-to-day responsibilities in his role. The ousted FEMA chief also told fellow DHS staffers that he did not expect to have his job after Thanksgiving, according to the Washington Post. He was right.
He wasn’t the right man for the job of shutting down the agency. Firing him is the right answer.
Richardson was appointed to lead FEMA after his predecessor, Cameron Hamilton, was fired in May for opposing the administration's desire to reduce the scope of the disaster response agency.
Noem fired Hamilton for publicly contradicting Trump's desire to introduce massive cuts to FEMA.
Richardson is a longtime personal friend of Corey Lewandowski, Noem’s chief adviser, who has been described as wielding unchecked power throughout the department.
His appointment was marred with criticism due to Richardson's lack of experience regarding disaster management. Richardson reportedly told staffers during a June meeting that he was unaware the US was in the midst of hurricane season
During the Texas floods in July, Richardson was on a weekend trip with his two sons and did not respond to the ongoing disaster until Sunday evening, almost 48 hours after entire communities had been flooded and killed at least 130 people.
[FoxNews] Over 8,000 service members were separated after refusing vaccine under Biden administration
A major policy shift could restore education benefits to thousands of veterans who were separated from military service for refusing the COVID vaccine during the Biden administration, according to The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).
The move follows President Donald Trump’s January executive order — Executive Order 14184 – Reinstating Service Members Discharged Under the Military’s COVID Vaccination Mandate.
This directed federal agencies to identify service members affected by the former vaccine requirement and to take steps to reinstate or restore certain benefits.
In response, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth went on to instruct military departments to facilitate discharge upgrades for those who were involuntarily separated because they declined the COVID vaccine and received a characterization of service that affected their benefits.
According to the VA, more than 8,000 service members were separated after Biden's Department of Defense implemented the vaccination mandate.
Over half reportedly received discharges classified as less than fully honorable, a status that can limit eligibility for education benefits under the GI Bill.
After conducting initial reviews, the Department of War found that 899 veterans from this group now meet eligibility requirements for GI Bill benefits as a result of their upgraded discharge status.
Officials said the number could grow as more cases are reviewed under the guidelines set by Trump's executive order.
In September, the VA began notifying veterans whose discharges had already been upgraded, telling them that they may now qualify for education assistance.
The agency is now urging any veteran discharged for refusing the vaccine to apply for a discharge review and, if upgraded, to submit an application for GI Bill benefits.
"The Biden administration’s COVID mandates upended the lives and livelihoods of thousands of service members and veterans," VA Secretary Doug Collins said in a statement provided to Fox News Digital.
"We are proud to help implement President Trump’s executive order and make these Veterans whole again."
Hegseth also offered support for the effort and said the reinstatement of benefits is an important step toward rebuilding trust among those affected.
"One of the most atrocious attacks on our military by the previous administration was the discharging and targeting of perfectly healthy warfighters who refused to take an experimental vaccine implemented by an illegal mandate," he said.
"We must never let that happen again, and we must also right the wrongs of the past in order to restore trust," he added. "We at the Department of War and the VA are grateful for President Trump's Executive Order reinstating GI Bill benefits for those veterans who were targeted for refusing the illegal COVID-19 vaccine mandate."
Veterans seeking more information on discharge upgrades or GI Bill eligibility can contact the VA or their respective military department’s review board.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Scientists have unveiled the most detailed map of the brain ever created. Human brain, not Democrat
The fascinating chart represents almost 10 million neurons, 26 billion synapses and 86 interconnected brain regions.
It was created with Fugaku, Japan's ultra—fast supercomputer, which is capable of quadrillions of calculations per second.
Scientists will use their digital copy to answer questions about what happens in a disease, how brain waves shape mental focus and how seizures spread in the brain.
Until now, these questions could only be answered using real brain tissue, one experiment at a time.
Dr Anton Arkhipov, an investigator at the Allen Institute in Seattle who worked on the project, called the map a 'technical milestone'.
'With this kind of computational power, the goal of a full, biophysically accurate brain model isn't just science fiction anymore,' he said.
'Scientists are in a new frontier where understanding the brain means, quite literally, being able to build one.'
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
