368 Arrested, 131 Rescued In California Sex Trafficking Operation

 by Jack Bradley via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Authorities arrested 368 people and rescued 131 victims involved in human trafficking in a weeklong statewide multi-agency task force, announced Feb. 1.

“We know that the sex trade is a prolific one that exists throughout this state and throughout our nation,” said Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Chief Michel Moore . “It’s an ugly scar against this great country that exists too oftentimes in plain sight.”

Operation Reclaim and Rebuild was conducted between Jan. 22 and Jan. 28 in nine counties, including Los Angeles, Orange, and San Bernardino, Moore said at a news conference at the department’s Elysian Park Academy.

Numerous federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies were involved in the effort, including the LAPD, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, and the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.

The victims’ ages ranged from 13 to 52, including six children, and the average age was the mid-20s, Moore said.

Investigators worked with victim advocacy groups in providing services and resources “to help [victims] escape from this life-threatening environment,” he said.

Investigators responded to various advertisements offering sexual services and went to massage parlors suspected of being involved in trafficking. Among the arrestees were pimps and panderers, along with customers of such services, Moore said.

The victims are being exploited by “threat of death” or coercion, or threats against their family, while some are kidnapped and isolated from their former support to become dependent on the trafficker, according to Moore.

Moore noted that “in the old days,” the victims of human traffickers were often regarded by law enforcement as criminals, but a more modern attitude is to regard them as having been exploited by criminals—many of them having been kidnapped and held against their will.

Authorities stressed that the seven-day task force is only a part of law enforcement agencies’ everyday effort to combat sex trafficking.

Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore speaks during a vigil with members of professional associations and the interfaith community at Los Angeles Police Department headquarters in Los Angeles, on June 5, 2020. (Mark J. Terrill/File/AP Photo)

Victims are sometimes brought in from other states or countries, said David Cox, COO for ZOE International, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that helps victims recover once rescued locally and internationally.

Cox said his organization, partnering with a similar Los Angeles-based nonprofit Saving Innocents, has cared for 489 youth victims of sex trafficking this past year, with some as young as 11.

“In our city, kids are being raped 20 to 30 times a day,” he said.

Journey Out, another LA-based nonproft combating human trafficking, cared for 256 adult victims last year, Cox said.

He said sex trade is a violent industry, as some of these victims have been pistol-whipped, jumped out of moving vehicles to escape, chased down and beaten, gone missing, or lost their lives.

“Traffickers are master predators. They’re on the hunt for vulnerable kids and adults,” he said.

City News Service contributed to this report.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/368-arrested-131-rescued-california-sex-trafficking-operation

'Smart diaper’ sends phone alerts when babies need changing

Parents will soon know when a diaper needs to be changed — before all the crying starts.

Scientists from Penn State University have created a “smart diaper” — a nappy with a built-in sensor that will send an alert to a phone once it gets wet.

The diaper is made out of paper that has been pre-treated with sodium chloride (salt) and has an outline of a circuit board on it that is traced over with a pencil to transfer graphite to the surface with a tiny lithium battery attached.

Researchers embedded four of the sensors between the layers of a diaper in order to create the “smart diaper,” as detailed in the journal Nano Letters.

Once the diaper gets wet, the graphite reacts with the liquid and sodium chloride and, as it’s absorbed by the paper, electrons will flow to the graphite to set off a sensor.

The sensor can even alert the phone about how wet the diaper is, which could inform parents if the diaper needs to be changed immediately.

Getty Images

Researchers embedded four of the sensors between the layers of a diaper in order to create the “smart diaper.”

Huanyu âLarryâ Cheng/Penn State

The sensor will send a message to a phone, alerting the person that the baby’s diaper needs to be changed.

It can even provide information about how wet the diaper is, which could let parents decide if the diaper needs to be changed immediately.

“That application was actually born out of personal experience,” lead author Dr. Huanyu Cheng, who is the father to two young children, said. “There’s no easy way to know how wet is wet, and that information could be really valuable for parents.”

The nappy is made out of paper that has been pre-treated with sodium chloride (salt) and has an outline of a circuit board on it.

Huanyu âLarryâ Cheng/Penn State

The sensor can also be used in hospitals or nursing homes — and can even help discover some major health concerns such as cardiac arrest or pneumonia. 

“The sensor can provide data in the short-term, to alert for diaper changes, but also in the long-term, to show patterns that can inform parents about the overall health of their child,” Huanyu said.

Researchers also tested the device in a face mask and found that it could determine three breathing states — deep, regular and rapid — and could potentially provide data that could detect the onset of a heart attack or when someone stops breathing.

It can also sense humidity changes in the air as part of a non-contact switch with the presence of a finger, without the finger actually touching the device.

Once the diaper gets wet, the graphite reacts with the liquid and sodium chloride and, as it’s absorbed by the paper, electrons will flow to the graphite and set off a sensor.

Huanyu âLarryâ Cheng/Penn State
“The atoms on the finger don’t need to touch the button, they only need to be near the surface to diffuse the water molecules and trigger the sensor,” Huanyu explained. “When we think about what we learned from the pandemic about the need to limit the body’s contact with shared surfaces, a sensor like this could be an important tool to stop potential contamination.”

While the device and phone app are both still in the developmental stage, the scientists hope the smart diaper will soon be made available to the public.

https://nypost.com/2023/02/03/smart-diaper-sends-phone-alerts-when-babies-need-changing/

Chinese money flooding American higher education — with little transparency

 China, like many of our global adversaries, is attempting nothing short of espionage via America’s colleges and universities — buying its way into influencing teaching, stealing our intellectual property and manipulating US foreign policy.

This issue came further into focus when it was revealed the University of Pennsylvania received millions of dollars in secretive Chinese and foreign donations — even as the university’s Biden Center for Foreign Policy was home to scores of mishandled classified documents.

Since President Biden’s inauguration, Penn has received more than $50 million in foreign funding, including more than $14 million in anonymous gifts from China and Hong Kong. That’s on top of the more than $60 million Penn received since the Biden Center launched in 2017.

Concurrently, the Biden Center became home to what some have called a “national-security-council-in-waiting.”

Biden’s secretary of state, Antony Blinken, was the center’s director from 2017 to 2019. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl and White House counselor Steven Ricchetti both served as managing directors. Biden appointed Amy Gutmann, former Penn president, his ambassador to Germany. And the list goes on.

It’s unknown how much of the Chinese donations made it to the Biden Center or what influence that money had. But there can be little doubt the Chinese Communist Party must find a lot to like about the Biden team’s decision-making.

Consider the Biden Department of Justice decision to end the “China Initiative” — a program the Trump administration launched to counter national-security threats China poses to the United States. Among other key revelations and outcomes, the initiative led to the arrest of Charles Lieber, the Harvard chemistry department chair whose work the CCP secretly funded and who is accused of academic espionage.

As the Defense of Freedom Institute has detailed, the Biden team also scaled back enforcement of the federal law that requires colleges and universities to report any foreign money or contract worth more than $250,000 to the Department of Education.

Despite being on the books for 50 years, this simple transparency requirement has often been ignored. Reviews of just 12 higher-ed institutions conducted while I was secretary revealed more than $6.5 billion in previously unreported foreign contributions.

The University of Pennsylvania received over $50 million in Chinese donations.

AFP via Getty Images

That’s likely just scratching the surface of how much undisclosed foreign money has been injected into American academia. An earlier Senate report found that nearly 70% of schools that were home to a Confucius Institute — the Chinese government-funded propaganda machines masquerading as educational outposts — failed to properly report their Chinese-government funding.

While there’s nothing inherently inappropriate about foreign-sourced gifts, there is a significant reason for concern if these gifts are not disclosed, as required by law.

Unfortunately, the higher-ed lobby has made it no secret it opposes true transparency. The American Council on Education — the lobbying organization for colleges and universities — praised the Biden administration in an open letter for ending the investigations we launched into schools that were skirting the law and failing to report sources of foreign money.

One major cause for concern is the high correlation between foreign gifts, especially from our geopolitical adversaries, and American universities that are home to major research laboratories, including those with Department of Defense contracts.

Fortunately, Congress shared this concern and included a provision in the recently passed CHIPS and Science Act that would require more stringent disclosures from foreign-funded researchers. Notably, the Biden White House made no mention of this bipartisan transparency provision in its fact sheet about the law.

To all these problems, the solution is clear: greater transparency and accountability. Universities, especially those that are publicly funded, should make crystal clear what foreign funding they accept and what, if any, strings or expectations are attached.

The president should demand the University of Pennsylvania set the standard by releasing details of its entanglements with China without delay. And the American people should continue to question why adversarial foreign countries are so heavily invested in American universities and why our schools are so eager to accept foreign funds.

Betsy DeVos served as the 11th US secretary of education and is the author of “Hostages No More: The Fight for Education Freedom and the Future of the American Child.”

https://nypost.com/2023/02/03/chinese-money-is-flooding-into-american-higher-education-with-little-transparency/

China denies using suspected spy balloon over US for spying, Canada reports another incident

 China on Friday tried to play off the suspected spy balloon flying over the US as a weather instrument blown way off course — as Canada said it was also monitoring “a potential second incident.”

The Chinese Foreign Ministry made the dubious claim after US officials confirmed they had “communicated” the “seriousness with which we take this issue.”

Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning initially said Beijing was “verifying” the balloon, stressing that China hopes “that both sides can handle this together calmly and carefully.”

“China is a responsible country and has always strictly abided by international laws, and China has no intention of violating the territory and airspace of any sovereign country,” Mao told a daily briefing Friday.

The ministry later released a statement claiming the balloon was a harmless civilian airship used mainly for meteorological research that had “deviated far from its planned course” because of winds.

“The Chinese side regrets the unintended entry of the airship into U.S. airspace due to force majeure,” the statement said, citing a legal term used to refer to events beyond one’s control.

The feared spy balloon spotted in US skies.

CHASE DOAK/AFP via Getty Images

A top Pentagon official had earlier maintained that the US intelligence community has “very high confidence” that the balloon — about as long as three buses — belongs to China, with US fighter jets prepped to shoot it down.

For the last two days it has been flying over sensitive sites, including Montana, home to one of the US’ three nuclear missile silo fields at Malmstrom Air Force Base.

As China called for calm, Canada’s Defense Ministry said it was monitoring a “potential second incident.”

China said it hopes “both sides can handle this together calmly and carefully.”

AFP via Getty Images

“A high-altitude surveillance balloon was detected and its movements are being actively tracked by” the North American Aerospace Defense Command, the department said.

“Canadians are safe and Canada is taking steps to ensure the security of its airspace, including the monitoring of a potential second incident,” it said, without detailing the exact location.

“Canada’s intelligence agencies are working with American partners and continue to take all necessary measures to safeguard Canada’s sensitive information from foreign intelligence threats.

“We remain in frequent contact with our American allies as the situation develops,” the department stressed.

The news came as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was expected to make his first trip to Beijing this weekend, the highest-ranking member of President Biden’s administration to visit.

The visit has not been formally announced, and it was not immediately clear if the balloon’s discovery would affect his travel plans.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) was among those calling for Blinken to cancel his trip.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the spy balloon was “alarming but not surprising.”

“The level of espionage aimed at our country by Beijing has grown dramatically more intense & brazen over the last 5 years,” Rubio said on Twitter.

Balloons are one of the oldest forms of surveillance technology, with their slow speeds allowing them to easily loiter over sensitive sites while gathering information.

They are also popular because they seem so harmless, experts say.

“Beijing is probably trying to signal to Washington: ‘While we want to improve ties, we are also ever ready for sustained competition, using any means necessary,’ without severely inflaming tensions,” air-power analyst He Yuan Ming told the BBC.

“And what better tool for this than a seemingly innocuous balloon.”

Others suggest China could be testing the water before using more sophisticated surveillance technology at its disposal.

“The balloon was to send a signal to the Americans, and also to see how the Americans would react,” China expert Benjamin Ho told the outlet.

Arthur Holland Michel from the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs suggested that China could even been sending a clear message rather than trying to sneak the balloon into US skies.

“It’s possible that being spotted was the whole point,” he said.

“China might be using the balloon to demonstrate that it has a sophisticated technological capability to penetrate US airspace without risking a serious escalation.

“In this regard, a balloon is a pretty ideal choice.”

https://nypost.com/2023/02/03/china-responds-to-suspected-spy-balloon-over-us-skies/