(NBC) The total debt shouldered by Americans has hit another record high, rising to $13.5 trillion in the last quarter, while an unusual jump in student-loan delinquencies could provide another signal that the nation’s economic expansion is growing old. Flows of student debt into serious delinquency — of 90 or more days — rose to…

(NBC) Smoke from the Camp Fire continued to smother the Bay Area on Friday and dropped the air quality in Northern California to the worst in the world, according to PurpleAir, an air quality monitoring app. The poor air prompted most public school districts in the Bay Area to close their campuses Friday. A Winter…

(CAMPUS REFORM) Georgia Southern University will mandate that “all students” take “diversity and inclusion” courses. Under the new curriculum, all first and second-year students will be required to take the yet-to-be-announced courses, according to the student newspaper The George-Anne. This move is a result of diversity and inclusion resolution, passed by the GSU Student Government…

(POLITICO) Add one more name to the growing list of Democrats preparing to run for president in 2020: Marianne Williamson — pal of Oprah, spirituality guru and fixture of Hollywood’s New Age community. Williamson, a best-selling author of a dozen books on spirituality including “A Return to Love,” announced on Friday that she’s forming a…

(REUTERS) In April 2008, former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez dispatched Justice Ministry officials to visit counterparts in the Chinese technology hub of Shenzhen. Their mission, according to a member of the Venezuela delegation, was to learn the workings of China’s national identity card program. Chávez, a decade into his self-styled socialist revolution, wanted help to…

(CHRISTIAN NEWS) A Christian apologetics group at the University of Colorado has filed a federal lawsuit against the institution after officials rejected the group’s application for registration because it requires its leaders to be Christians. According to the lawsuit, the Colorado Springs chapter of Ratio Christi “seeks to advance a biblical worldview, explaining how the…

(GUARDIAN) Researchers have used a neural network to generate artificial fingerprints that work as a “master key” for biometric identification systems and prove fake fingerprints can be created. According to a paper presented at a security conference in Los Angeles, the artificially generated fingerprints, dubbed “DeepMasterPrints” by the researchers from New York University, were able…

(ZERO HEDGE) A recent article in Biometric Update. com (BU) reveals that retail stores have a master plan to convince Americans to accept facial biometrics. BU interviewed four facial biometric company CEO’s and what they revealed is frightening. The article starts off innocuously enough by telling us that U.S. retail biometrics is used primarily in…

(VARIETY) Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed during a press call Thursday that he wasn’t aware of the company’s relationship with Defenders, a Washington D.C.-based consulting and PR company that was doing crisis PR work on behalf of Facebook in response to Russia’s disinformation campaign. “I learned about this relationship when I read this New York…

(JP POST) Ilhan Omar, the newly elected congresswoman from Minnesota, said after being elected that she supported the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel, after saying during her campaign that it was “counteractive” and prevents dialogue. Omar’s comment came in response to a website called Muslim Girl, which pressed her on her appearance during…