Alec Baldwin Turns Over iPhone in Probe of Fatal ‘Rust’ Shooting One Month After Search Warrant Issued For Device

Alec Baldwin finally turned over his iPhone to authorities one month after a search warrant was issued for the device.

Last month Santa Fe police issued a search warrant for Alec Baldwin’s iPhone as part of their investigation into the fatal shooting on the movie set of ‘Rust.’

Alec Baldwin fatally shot 42-year-old cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injured 48-year-old Joel Souza on the movie set in Santa Fe, Mexico in October.

Baldwin had been communicating with Santa Fe detectives but he refused to turn over his phone so law enforcement issue a warrant in December.

“Any suggestion that I am not complying with requests or orders, or search warrants about my phone, that’s bullshit. That’s a lie,” Baldwin said in a bizarre Instagram rant last week.

The Santa Fe District Attorney’s Office told ABC News it now has Baldwin’s iPhone… ONE MONTH after the warrant was issued.

ABC News reported:

Alec Baldwin has turned his cellphone over to New Mexico authorities a month after a search warrant for the device was issued as a part of the investigation into the fatal shooting on the “Rust” movie set, officials said.

The Santa Fe District Attorney’s Office told ABC News Friday it now has the actor’s cellphone.

Authorities said they want to look at text messages sent from the phone as part of its investigation into the on-set shooting in Santa Fe last year that killed the film’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, and wounded its director, Joel Souza.

Investigators are also seeking to seize photos and videos, emails, internet browser histories, GPS data and more, according to the warrant.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/01/alec-baldwin-turns-iphone-probe-fatal-rust-shooting-one-month-search-warrant-issued-device/

'Pharma bro' Martin Shkreli banned from drug industry for life, ordered to pay back $64 million in profits

A federal judge in Manhattan on Friday handed down a harsh punishment to notorious "Pharma Bro" Martin Shkreli, the former hedge fund manager who infamously hiked the price of a life-saving drug by more than 5,000% overnight, CNBC reported.

As a penalty for his monopolistic behavior, Judge Denise Cot banned Shkreli from the drug industry for life and ordered him to pay back more than $64 million of the profits he earned after hiking the cost of anti-parasitic drug Daraprim from $13.50 a pill to an eye-popping $750 per pill in 2015.

At the time, Daraprim was the only federally approved treatment for toxoplasmosis, a parasitic infection that can cause serious or even life-threatening problems for pregnant women, their babies, and people with compromised immune systems — such as some cancer or HIV/AIDS patients. Generic versions of the drug didn't reach the market until 2020.

Shkreli, who quickly became the most hated man in America after his firm exclusively purchased the rights to the drug only to ratchet up its cost, was found guilty of violating federal and state anti-competitive conduct laws in a federal court in the Southern District of New York.

“Americans can rest easy because Martin Shkreli is a pharma bro no more,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement following the ruling.

According to Fox News, James and the Federal Trade Commission sued Shkreli, his former company Vyera Pharmaceuticals, and a former business partner named Kevin Mulleady for "illegally monopolizing" the drug. The lawsuit, filed two years ago, was later joined by several other states.

Shkreli's former company Vyera was previously ordered to pay a $40 million settlement as a result of the lawsuit. And Mulleady was banned for seven years from the drug industry.

Shkreli is currently serving a seven-year federal prison sentence for securities fraud crimes unrelated to his actions involving Daraprim.

In her 135-page ruling, Cote concluded that "Shkreli’s egregious, deliberate, repetitive, long-running, and ultimately dangerous illegal conduct warrants imposition of an injunction of this scope," in reference to the lifetime ban.

Cote added that Shkreli in 2015 "initiated a scheme to block the entry of generic drug competition so that he could reap the profits from Daraprim sales for as long as possible."

"Through his tight control of the distribution of Daraprim, Shkreli prevented generic drug companies from getting access to the quantity of Daraprim they needed to conduct testing demanded by the Food and Drug Administration," she added. "Through exclusive supply agreements, Shkreli also blocked off access to the two most important manufacturers of the active pharmaceutical ingredient."

https://www.theblaze.com/news/martin-skrelli-banned-for-life

Leftist writer calls for parenthood to be abolished to achieve equity, says your children should be given to 'homeless neighbors' or to the state

A writer is proposing that California abolish parenthood so that the state can "achieve true equity."

The outlandish proposal was presented in an article published in the "opinion" section of the Ventura County Star – a daily newspaper published in California. The publication is owned by Gannett – the largest newspaper company in the United States. The article titled "California should abolish parenthood, in the name of equity" was also republished by Yahoo in its "news" section.

The author of the piece is Joe Mathews – a co-president of the Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy, which is "dedicated to those active on issues of direct democracy, participation and citizens' rights around the world."

To combat this perceived inequity, Mathew presents a "solution" of "making raising your own children illegal."

The radical proposal calls for wealthy parents to "trade" kids with poor families and vice-versa. Mathews – who describes himself as a "dad" in his Twitter profile – even suggests, "Homeowners might swap children with their homeless neighbors."

"Now, I recognize that some naysayers will dismiss such a policy as ghastly, even totalitarian. But my proposal is quite modest, a fusion of traditional philosophy and today’s most common political obsessions," Mathews writes.

Some commenters hypothesize that in that sentence, the writer is channeling his inner Jonathan Swift – an Irish satirist who wrote a satirical essay titled "A Modest Proposal" that explored impoverished families selling their children as food to the wealthy.

Mathews writes, "The left’s introduction of anti-racism and gender identity in schools faces a bitter backlash from parents." His answer to parents being against leftist ideologies being taught in schools: "Ending parenthood would end the backlash, helping dismantle white supremacy and outdated gender norms."

The leftist writer explains how abolishing parenthood would benefit Democrats.

"Democrats also would have the opportunity to build a new pillar of the safety net — a child-raising system called 'Foster Care for All,'" he says.

The writer vilifies Republicans, claiming they "take immigrant children from their parents and put them in border concentration camps." He asserts that abolishing parenthood is the same as separating children from illegal immigrants at the border, and suggests that Republicans will be on board with his universal orphanage proposal.

Mathews mocks Justice Amy Coney Barrett for her anti-abortion stance, and simply suggests that instead of aborting children to hand them over to the state.

Universal orphanhood also dovetails nicely with the pro-life campaign to end abortion rights. In fact, a suggestion from Justice Amy Coney Barrett, during a recent case that could overturn Roe, inspired this column. She posited that abortion rights are no longer necessary because all 50 states now have “safe haven” laws allowing women to turn their babies over to authorities after birth. My proposal would merely make mandatory such handovers of babies to the state.

Mathews acknowledges that some people may see his radical ideas as "dystopian," but adds, "Don’t pay those critics any mind. Because they just can’t see how our relentless pursuit of equity might birth a brave new world."

https://www.theblaze.com/news/leftist-writer-abolish-parenthood-for-equity

COVID relief funds diverted to NY CRT-style K-12 training via Biden American Rescue Plan

U.S. taxpayers are subsidizing New York's Culturally Responsive Sustaining Education Framework, which "portrays America as a structurally biased and oppressive nation in need of fundamental transformation," warns scholar/commentator Stanley Kurtz.

The New York State Education Department is diverting federal pandemic relief funds to a controversial curriculum critics argue is steeped in critical race theory, which will train students to identify inequities and biases supposedly deeply embedded in the country and in their own lives and to plumb the "root causes of inequity."

New York's public schools have been awarded a total of nearly $9 billion in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief aid from federal pandemic relief programs through the U.S. Department of Education, the bulk of it funded by President Biden's American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion bill sold as a COVID-19 relief and economic recovery measure.

One of NYSED's three spending priorities for ESSER funding will be its Culturally Responsive Sustaining Education Framework, which purports to empower students to "learn using aspects of their race, social class, gender, language, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, or ability."

Critics denounce CRSE as a variant of critical race theory, a racially deterministic creed condemning American life and history as pervasively racist that has made inroads into public K-12 education, provoking a grassroots parental backlash in school districts across the country.

"New York's CRSE Framework is steeped in Critical Race Theory and its associated pedagogies," said Stanley Kurtz, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. "CRSE gives the lie to those who claim that CRT isn't used in K-12."

The idea of "'culturally responsible education' was created by education theorist Gloria Ladson-Billings, who was also the first writer to apply critical race theory to the field of education," according to Kurtz.

"Culturally Responsive Education and Critical Race Theory are overlapping and mutually reinforcing pedagogies," Kurtz told Just the News. "The term Critical Race Theory is rightly applied to a number of educational approaches: 'anti-racism,' 'diversity, equity and inclusion,' 'culturally responsive teaching' and the like. They are all close variations on Critical Race Theory."

New York's CRSE program details teachers' and students' roles in eliminating the racism and privilege it teaches is inextricably bound up with the country's history. Students will be taught to continually reflect upon their own "implicit biases," which will help in turn to "dismantle systems of biases and inequities rooted in our country's history, culture, and institutions."

Students will also be conditioned to "challenge power and privilege where present, or absent" and learn to be more "inclusive."

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/education/satbillionsfor-covidrelief-diverted-tocrt-style-education-new-york-biden

Monsanto Scientist Pleads Guilty To Stealing Secrets For China.

A former scientist employed by American agricultural giant Monsanto pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit economic espionage on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party against the U.S.

Xiang Haitao, 44, a Chinese national formerly residing in Chesterfield, Missouri, admitted to stealing trade secrets from Monsanto and its subsidiary, The Climate Corporation, from 2008 to 2017 where he worked as an imaging scientist.

“Despite Xiang’s agreements to protect Monsanto’s intellectual property and repeated training on his obligations to do so, Xiang has now admitted that he stole a trade secret from Monsanto, transferred it to a memory card and attempted to take it to the People’s Republic of China for the benefit of the Chinese government,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.

The stolen technology was a digital, online farming software platform that could collect, store and visualize critical agricultural field data and increase and improve agricultural productivity for farmers. A critical feature of the platform was a proprietary predictive algorithm referred to as the Nutrient Optimizer, which Monsanto and The Climate Corporation describe as a “valuable trade secret.”

In June 2017, the day after leaving Monsanto and The Climate Corporation, Xiang returned to China. While leaving the U.S., officials discovered his devices contained copies of the Nutrient Optimizer, which would have been useful to Xiang’s new employer: the Chinese Academy of Science’s Institute of Soil Science

https://thenationalpulse.com/2022/01/14/monsanto-scientists-pleads-guilty-to-stealing-for-china/

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chinese-national-pleads-guilty-economic-espionage-conspiracy