pelespirit

Some probationary employees have been called to meet at a location away from the agency’s Langley, Virginia, headquarters and to surrender their security credentials, sources told the New York Times. The layoffs are part of a wider Department of Government Efficiency-led effort to shrink the federal workforce.

A CIA spokesperson confirmed to the outlet that some officers hired in the last two years have been laid off.

It’s not immediately clear how many spies have been terminated, but the spokesperson said not all probationary employees would be fired. The Independent has reached out to the agency for more information.

Everett-based nuclear fusion power company Helion announced last week that it’s looking to develop a 50-megawatt fusion power plant on land in Malaga owned by Chelan Public Utility District.

Helion has a purchase agreement with Microsoft to provide 50 megawatts of power to the software company, which is building data centers in the valley.

Kirk Hudson, Chelan PUD general manager, said the energy industry is “exponentially” changing, so the PUD needs to “stay on top of the pace of change.”

No agreement had been signed, but any use of PUD land for this project will likely include a lease for the land, said Rachel Hansen, Chelan PUD spokesperson.

Jessie Barton, Helion communications director, also confirmed no agreements for the land had been signed but that the company was ready to open the conversation up to the public.

County commissioners approved a 287(g) agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that allows Miami-Dade to assign some Corrections Department officers to serve federal warrants for deportation on inmates booked into local jails.

It’s not clear if that will make deportation more likely for people brought to Miami-Dade’s jail system, which has been turning over inmates to ICE since President Donald Trump first took office in 2017. But the new agreement authorizes county officers to serve the deportation orders that they previously had to wait for ICE agents to deliver in person.

Thursday's preliminary injunction is the second by a federal court blocking the spending freeze. The order marks a victory for Democratic attorneys general from 22 states and the District of Columbia, who filed suit against the Trump administration over its efforts to pause trillions of dollars in government spending in order to evaluate whether those programs aligned with President Trump's policy goals.

In his ruling, U.S. District Judge John McConnell Jr. said the spending freeze "fundamentally undermines the distinct constitutional roles of each branch of our government."

The biggest barrier, according to an OPM official, congressional staffers, VA employees and veterans' organizations is that human resources officials across the federal government can no longer access their own new hire records without approval from senior leadership at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

OPM has effectively locked federal agencies out of a government HR software program called USA Staffing. The agency has been taken over by allies of billionaire Elon Musk, who's guiding the Department of Government Efficiency effort from within the White House. The DOGE team has engineered the mass firing of tens of thousands of federal workers since President Trump took office in January.

But Cavazos’ salary looks far more modest in publicly posted records that are supposed to provide transparency to taxpayers. That’s because Valere excludes most of his bonuses from its reports to the state and on its own website, instead only sharing his base pay of about $300,000.

Texas lawmakers have filed legislation that would cap public school superintendents’ annual salaries, but most bills would not restrict bonuses. Those bills also don’t apply to private schools that stand to receive an influx of taxpayer dollars if lawmakers pass legislation this session approving education savings accounts, a type of voucher program. Private schools wouldn’t be subject to the same level of state oversight as public schools.

To fill these gaps in our knowledge, we have created an open source project called Rayhunter.1 It is developed to run on an Orbic mobile hotspot (Amazon, Ebay) which is available for $20 or less at the time of this writing. We have tried to make Rayhunter as easy as possible to install and use, regardless of your level of technical knowledge. We hope that activists, journalists, and others will run these devices all over the world and help us collect data about the usage and capabilities of cell-site simulators (please see our legal disclaimer.)

Rayhunter works by intercepting, storing, and analyzing the control traffic (but not user traffic, such as web requests) between the mobile hotspot Rayhunter runs on and the cell tower to which it’s connected. Rayhunter analyzes the traffic in real-time and looks for suspicious events, which could include unusual requests like the base station (cell tower) trying to downgrade your connection to 2G which is vulnerable to further attacks, or the base station requesting your IMSI under suspicious circumstances.

The state Senate voted 23-12 to approve the bill, which previously passed the House, and sent it to Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden for his signature or veto. He declined to state his position on the bill during recent press conferences. His spokeswoman issued a statement Tuesday in response to a question from South Dakota Searchlight.

The legislation would prohibit carbon pipeline companies from acquiring land by eminent domain. That’s the right to access private property for projects that benefit the public, with just compensation determined by a court. Eminent domain is commonly used for projects such as electrical power lines, water pipelines, oil pipelines and highways.

To fill these gaps in our knowledge, we have created an open source project called Rayhunter.1 It is developed to run on an Orbic mobile hotspot (Amazon, Ebay) which is available for $20 or less at the time of this writing. We have tried to make Rayhunter as easy as possible to install and use, regardless of your level of technical knowledge. We hope that activists, journalists, and others will run these devices all over the world and help us collect data about the usage and capabilities of cell-site simulators (please see our legal disclaimer.)

Rayhunter works by intercepting, storing, and analyzing the control traffic (but not user traffic, such as web requests) between the mobile hotspot Rayhunter runs on and the cell tower to which it’s connected. Rayhunter analyzes the traffic in real-time and looks for suspicious events, which could include unusual requests like the base station (cell tower) trying to downgrade your connection to 2G which is vulnerable to further attacks, or the base station requesting your IMSI under suspicious circumstances.

As Trump described his electoral victory in November, to the cheers of House Republicans, Green stood up and shook his cane at the president, yelling, "no mandate."

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, asked Green to sit down, and when he did not, ordered the House Sergeant at Arms to remove him.

As he was led out of the House chamber, Green, an 11-term congressman who represents southwest Houston, continued to shout at the president.

Democrats around him stayed seated, holdings signs that read "false" and "stop Musk" — in reference to Texas billionaire Elon Musk's mass firings of federal employees.

On Tuesday, an unknown number of CDC staff began receiving emails stating that their letters of termination were being rescinded, according to emails reviewed by NPR and interviews with more than half a dozen sources at the agency who were not authorized to speak publicly.

"As a result, your physical and logical access has been restored and you are cleared to return to work on Wednesday, March 5, 2025" the email states. "We apologize for any disruption that this may have caused."