[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] A judge in Texas didn't hold back as she sentenced a teenager to 25 years in prison over an attack on a convenience store clerk while carrying a gun during an attempted holdup.
Caden Fontenette, 18, of Port Arthur, had pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery in connection with a violent holdup and assault of a clerk at Bulldog Convenience Store in Nederland on October 10, but his plea was not part of any deal.
The shocking attack was caught on camera, showing Fontenette and two juveniles attacking the clerk while brandishing an assault-style weapon early that morning, prosecutors said.
In handing down her ruling on March 10, Judge Raquel West cited the violent nature of the robbery.
'Mr Fontenette, there was a time some years ago there wasn't really a question. Everyone, State's Attorneys, were recommending youthful offenders probation. Give everybody an opportunity. Things have just changed in such an incredibly dangerous way with young people doing what I just saw you do on that screen,' she said, according to KDFM.
'I cannot imagine the fear that person had that was working in that store. Just trying to go to work, make a living and go home,' she continued.
'He has three people come in and not just grab a quick something and run out, but terrorize him for quite some time - pulling him around, yanking him around, putting guns in his face. All three of you.'
The judge also noted that Fontenette has been fighting and 'jumping people' while in prison.
'So it makes it very difficult for me to go, "This is somebody that's going to get out and behave, who can follow the rules," because you can't even follow the rules in jail.
'The pre-sentence report shows you're at a high-risk level. That tells me that after they looked at everything, that you don't unfortunately have a good likelihood of being successful if I were to put you on probation.'
Mr. Fontenette and his friends are the 20% that does 80% of the crimes, with the likelihood of graduating to 10%/90% as his skills improve.
As she then ruled that Fontenette would be sentenced to 25 years in prison, a family member started shouting in the back of the courtroom, and bailiffs quickly escorted the family members out.
Once the family members were clear, Judge West concluded her sentencing.
'Mr Fontenette, I understand that this is harsh, and I know you believe that this is harsh, but I think that this is necessary,' she said.
'You're still going to be young and you can make your life better,' the judge continued. 'That's going to be up to you.'
West's sentence came after lead prosecutor Tommy Coleman made an impassioned plea, recounting the chaotic shooting and other violent crimes that have plagued the community.
He said they have seen such violence in the community 'all too often.'
'Prayer vigils and advisory committees, all that stuff is fine, but you, Judge, are where the rubber meets the road,' Coleman said.
'You are that person who can protect the community from somebody like the defendant. You are that person that can either let him out of this courtroom on probation with a piece of paper and conditions and promises that he won't resort to this kind of violence that you saw on that video, or you can ensure that the community is safe by putting him behind steel bars, concrete walls, a razor wire fence.
'Judge, I'm not in the habit of begging, but on behalf of the community, I'm begging that you sentence this defendant to prison,' he pleaded.
'The message that needs to be sent to this defendant and his circle of friends and anybody who would want to be like this defendant, is that if you pick up a gun with the intent to commit violence, you're going to pick up a 15, 20, 25-year prison sentence.
'Judge, I'm asking that you do this on behalf of the people who just want to live in peace. People who just want to go take a walk at Rogers Park and not be robbed, and somebody that wants to stop at the Speedy Mart convenience store and pick up some snacks, without becoming the victim of a robbery,' he concluded.
The judge ultimately concurred with Coleman, telling Fontenette: 'We're tired of it and there's got to be something done.'
Fontenette will now have to serve at least half of the sentence before he is eligible for parole, as he used a deadly weapon in the commission of the crime.
[NYP] A recently promoted college dean who volunteered with local youth groups allegedly paid a teenage boy for sex — and was busted when he was lured to the victim’s New Jersey home on Friday.
James Hadley, 65, had a bottle of lubricant and $200 when he tried to slip inside his victim’s Pleasantville home on Friday, according to an affidavit obtained by BreakingAC.
Hadley and the 13-year-old boy had at least two earlier encounters where the disgraced professor paid him $200 for sex, as referenced in encrypted messages the pair exchanged, the affidavit said.
The boy’s mother came across the messages and a collection of explicit photographs on his phone. She immediately turned it over to police on Thursday.
From there, detectives started impersonating the victim in messages to Hadley, eventually luring him back to the Pleasantville home where he was apprehended less than a day later, according to the affidavit.
Abu Uluque submitted the same article. His inlines are in yellow, below.
[DM] The CIA?? I thought it was Da Jooos? I always thought it was just another conspiracy theory. But with LBJ involved...I just dunno. I wouldn't put anything past that guy.
Once top-secret CIA files have detailed America's plans to control the world by manipulating the weather.
The documents, declassified in 2003, discussed the controversial topic of weather modification, the tactic of launching rockets or using planes to dump chemicals into the atmosphere that alter the climate and local storm systems.
Although the resurfaced documents from 1965 did not mention the specific chemicals used in the experiments, they did discuss the need for more funding of the weather modification projects that would soon be used as a weapon of war.
In fact, the memos noted that federal funding for the secret program was set to be four times higher in 1967 - the same year the US began spraying toxins over Vietnam to cause floods and landslides.
One post on X claimed: 'The CIA has been poisoning the sky and controlling the weather since 1965!'
The 18-page report was recently shared by conspiracy theorists, years after it was quietly placed into the CIA's public archives, including a letter praising the classified operation from US President Lyndon B Johnson. Johnson was a big frickin' johnson.
Johnson's endorsement of the CIA's weather modification project came just three years after he gave an ominous speech on the future of America and the work to create 'weather satellites' with the power to strengthen storms.
While giving the commencement address at Southwest Texas State University in May 1962, then-Vice President Johnson said: 'He who controls the weather will control the world.'
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/19/2026 11:42 ||
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Link ||
[1788 views]
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#1
I thought I clicked the "Tomorrow" button before I clicked the "Submit" button. Well, I thought I did.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/19/2026 13:37 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Frank’s was published first, so yours was marked Duplicate in the hopper, Abu Uluque. I just wanted to preserve your comments and image captures for our readers. :-)
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited
[Regnum] Surveillance cameras in several US states captured the fall of a meteor. According to NASA, it exploded in the sky with the force of 250 tons of TNT.
The phenomenon was observed on March 17 in the states of Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, the District of Columbia, and the Canadian province of Ontario. The meteor was 1.8 meters in diameter and weighed approximately 7 tons. It entered the Earth's atmosphere at a speed of 72,400 km/h (45,000 mph). The celestial body traveled 55 km (34 mi) through the upper atmosphere before exploding.
"When the asteroid broke apart, it released energy equivalent to 250 tons of TNT, creating a shock wave that traveled to the ground, causing explosions and booms that many people heard," NASA's website says.
The footage shows a meteor in the sky emitting two flashes before disappearing.
[MLQ.ai] Encyclopedia Britannica Inc. and its subsidiary Merriam-Webster Inc. filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against OpenAI in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on March 13, 2026. The complaint accuses OpenAI of using nearly 100,000 articles and dictionary entries without authorization to train ChatGPT, resulting in outputs that reproduce the content and compete with the publishers' platforms.
DETAILS OF THE ALLEGATIONS
The lawsuit claims OpenAI scraped and copied plaintiffs' copyrighted content from their websites to train large language models including GPT-4 and subsequent versions, as well as for retrieval-augmented generation systems.
ChatGPT generates responses containing full or partial verbatim reproductions, paraphrases, summaries, or mimics of Britannica's articles and Merriam-Webster's definitions, steering users away from the official sites.
The publishers fund their content through subscriptions and advertising, serving over 150 million students in 150 countries.
Additionally, the suit alleges trademark infringement under the Lanham Act, as ChatGPT cites Britannica in inaccurate 'hallucinations,' creating confusion about endorsement.
OPENAI'S POSITION AND BROADER CONTEXT
OpenAI maintains that its models rely on publicly available data under fair use principles, transforming material into new outputs rather than direct reproductions.
This case joins a series of U.S. copyright lawsuits against AI firms by authors, news organizations, and publishers.
Britannica previously sued Perplexity AI in a separate pending action
The plaintiffs seek monetary damages, profits from the infringement, and a court order to halt OpenAI's use of their content.
BUSINESS IMPACT ON PUBLISHERS
Britannica and Merriam-Webster argue that OpenAI's practices undermine their investment in human-created, fact-checked content without compensation, harming revenue as AI substitutes for their subscription-based services.
The complaint describes OpenAI's actions as systematic disregard for intellectual property rights, with the true extent of copying known only to defendants.
FAIR USE BOUNDARIES
The lawsuit highlights tensions between traditional reference publishers and AI developers over training data practices. Britannica and Merriam-Webster position their curated, fact-checked content as core intellectual property, emphasizing human effort in creation and editing that AI exploits without payment.
OpenAI's alleged scraping of nearly 100,000 articles underscores scale, potentially setting precedents for how much verbatim reproduction in outputs qualifies as infringement versus transformative use.
Trademark claims add complexity, as false citations in hallucinations could dilute brand trust, a concern for authoritative sources like dictionaries and encyclopedias.
This case differs from prior suits by targeting reference materials directly competing with ChatGPT's informational role, amplifying direct substitution arguments over mere data ingestion.
The involvement of subscription-funded platforms strengthens harm claims compared to ad-supported media.
LITIGATION PRECEDENTS
Court rulings on fair use in AI training will shape data access norms, with this case testing boundaries for high-value reference content. A win for plaintiffs could force licensing deals, raising costs for OpenAI and slowing model development, while favoring defendants might validate web-wide scraping similar ongoing suits, including Britannica's against Perplexity, signal accelerating litigation.
Resolution may take years, but interim discovery could reveal OpenAI's exact training datasets, influencing settlements or broader industry negotiations.
Publishers may push for legislative clarity on AI data use, as unresolved disputes risk eroding incentives for quality content creation amid AI competition. OpenAI's response will indicate strategy amid mounting legal pressures.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/19/2026 00:00 ||
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[1767 views]
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#1
They're going to have to explain how different AI is different from humans reading their materials, processing it, and then creating written materials aka output.
#2
I thought those two institutions were too busy trying to turn six, seven into a closed compound word so the mouth breather button pushers could use it during auto-scrabble?
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited
[Regnum] The US national debt has surpassed $39 trillion for the first time in history, according to data released by the US Treasury Department on March 18. Ugly. But has the rate of growth slowed as fraud is rooted out and federal staffing shrunk?
According to official figures, US sovereign debt to creditors has reached $38.9 trillion. However, the online US debt tracker usdebtclock.org puts the figure at $39.004 trillion, and it continues to rise.
The previous all-time high of $38 trillion was passed in October 2025. Thus, it took about 150 days for the US debt to increase by $1 trillion.
Earlier, on February 6, entrepreneur Elon Musk stated that Americans understand that the country's economy is in free fall and the national debt is rapidly growing. He also expressed the opinion that only robots and artificial intelligence technologies will save the US from inevitable bankruptcy. According to him, the US national debt is accumulating "like crazy," and the interest payments on it exceed the country's military budget.
Russian IMF experts believe that US national debt will reach unprecedented levels by 2031. To resolve the situation, Washington needs a clear and targeted fiscal consolidation plan. According to Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, by 2029, global government debt will exceed the size of the global economy.
#2
The DC SWAMP has increased the debt limit
78 times since 1960.
BTW: Watch out for math using Non-Inflation adjusted numbers over this 65-year cycle. eg. $1T in 1960 Adjusted for inflation is equal to $10.73T in 2025.
#1
The Health Ministry has warned against the direct oral suction method and multiple rabbinic opinions support the that warning. Use of sterile equipment is the recommended practice.
Notwithstanding this, I'm pretty sure there is a lot of the direct method practiced.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
03/19/2026 12:28 Comments ||
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[News Nation via The Hill] Using cannabis vape cartridges could lead to faster-developing symptoms of an increasingly common marijuana-related disorder, according to a recent study.
Cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome (CHS) causes recurring bouts of severe stomach pain, nausea and vomiting in some long-time chronic cannabis users.
What did the study reveal about vaping and CHS?
In research published on March 5 in Sage Journals, more than 1,000 participants suspected of having or diagnosed with CHS were surveyed.
Those who exclusively vape reported developing symptoms of CHS sooner — and smoked more frequently — than those who exclusively smoked marijuana.
About 96 percent of respondents reported using cannabis daily, and 45 percent reported using six or more times a day, around the time they started to develop CHS symptoms, supporting the notion that long-term, frequent use of cannabis is a key contributor to CHS.
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.
[News Nation via The Hill] Using cannabis vape cartridges could lead to faster-developing symptoms of an increasingly common marijuana-related disorder, according to a recent study.
