Gps

It's strange how "scandal" gets defined these days in Washington. At the moment, everyone is screaming about the "scandal" of the Internal Revenue Service scrutinizing conservative nonprofits before granting them tax-exempt status. Here are the genuine scandals in this affair: Political organizations are being allowed to masquerade as charities to avoid taxes and keep their donors secret, and the IRS has allowed them to do this for years. The bottom line first: The IRS hasn't done nearly enough over the years to rein in the subversion of the tax law by political groups claiming a tax exemption that is not legally permitted for campaign activity.

A pared-down bill that would send sex offenders who repeatedly remove their GPS tracking devices back to state prison cleared its first legislative committee Tuesday, making progress where broader measures failed. In a deal struck with Democratic leaders who seek to protect Gov. Jerry Brown's prison realignment plan, Sen. Ted Lieu amended his GPS-tampering bill to make first offenses punishable by a mandatory 180 days in county jail, the maximum penalty currently on the books. Second offenses would require a year in county jail, and on the third offense, the parolee would be required to be returned to prison.

LAS VEGAS -- When it comes to munitions, Raytheon Co. usually thinks big. Multi-ton bunker-busting bombs. Jet engine-powered cruise missiles. GPS-guided 500-pound bombs. Now the Waltham, Mass., defense giant believes it has something small to offer. After developing a 13.5-pound "smart bomb" for four years, Raytheon has carried out a successful test flight at the Army's Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona.  The bomb, called Pyros, was dropped from a drone flying at 7,000 feet and hit the designated bull's-eye on a target that lay below.

The first buyers of Google Glass are starting to get the smartglasses in the mail, letting them shoot hands-free video, pull up GPS directions in the corner of their eye and even hold video chats with their friends while they walk. But they won't be allowed to let anyone else enjoy the device and its features. In its terms of service for the early "Explorer Edition" of the device, Google says it has the right to deactivate any device if it has been sold or lent to someone else.

A little more than a year ago, California quietly began conducting tests on the GPS monitoring devices that track the movements of thousands of sex offenders. The results were alarming. Corrections officials found the devices used in half the state were so inaccurate and unreliable that the public was "in imminent danger. " Batteries died early, cases cracked, reported locations were off by as much as three miles. Officials also found that tampering alerts failed and offenders were able to disappear by covering the devices with foil, deploying illegal GPS jammers or ducking into cars or buildings.

Sunset Strip bookie Charlie Katz suspected the feds had bugged his apartment, so he would amble over to a pay phone outside where Carney's hot dog joint now stands to call in his bets to Boston and Miami. It was 1965, a time when phone booths had four glass walls and a folding door, allowing Katz to seal himself off from eavesdroppers. Or so he thought. FBI agents planted a recording device at the booth and taped his dealings, leading to his conviction on eight illegal wagering charges.

Thousands of paroled sex offenders are removing or disarming their court-ordered GPS tracking device ALSO: Photo gallery: Ted Rall cartoons Why liberals should love Justice Scalia For conservative Catholics, one pope too many Follow Ted Rall on Twitter @TedRall

"Marooned" (June 15) left me marooned. An insert map indicating proximity to the other Channel Islands and mainland as well as the overall size of the island would have helped the reader put into perspective the hardship of not only living on the island, but rescuing attempts as well. Bill Waters Coto de Caza

What's the most intriguing aspect of the all-new Rolls Royce Wraith coupe that debuted this week at the Geneva Motor Show? It's not that it's the fastest, most powerful car Rolls Royce has ever made. It's not the roughly $320,000 asking price. It's not the two automatically closing, rear-hinged doors. It's the transmission. PHOTOS: Rolls Royce Wraith debuts in Geneva Specifically, it's how the Wraith's eight-speed automatic transmission is linked to a GPS receiver.

There are those who are ready to follow the GPS in their car to the ends of the earth  - literally. A man intently following the instructions of his GPS after leaving a ferry early Thursday made a sharp right turn and drove into the harbor in Whittier, Alaska, submerging his car up to the antenna, police said. The man, who was not seriously injured, was rescued by another ferry passenger and taken by ambulance to a hospital in Anchorage. “We're aghast, actually,” harbor master Sue Miller told the Los Angeles Times . “It's never happened before, let's put it that way.” Whittier, a town of about 200 year-round residents on Alaska's scenic Prince William Sound, has a reputation for being a bit weird.

Google this week began shipping its Glass smart eyewear to app developers. The company also revealed that the widely anticipated device will not be fully functional when paired with an iPhone. The smartglasses, which some buyers have already received, connects to Wi-Fi networks or Bluetooth-enabled smartphones to access the Internet. This allows Glass wearers to make calls, do Google searches or even hold video chats with friends using Google+. The device can also let users send their friends text messages and retrieve directions using GPS. But a sentence at the bottom of the webpage describing the specs for the glasses says the device, or at least the early "Explorer Edition" being shipped to developers, must be connected to an Android phone running the MyGlass app to send text messages and use GPS. QUIZ: How much do you know about Google?

The increase in fugitive sex offenders in California since the state changed key prison policies is more than double that previously believed, according to data released Wednesday by corrections officials. The data show a 65% rise from October 2011 to Jan. 1 of this year in warrants issued for paroled sex offenders who were tracked by GPS units and went missing. Previous state reports showed about a 30% climb for that period. Almost 5,000 warrants were issued during that time, according to the new figures, far more than the 3,251 the department reported in March.

Forget about learning the state capitals, at least, as the sum total of your knowledge of geography. "Geography is about meaning, not knowing place names and memorizing lists - that was school geography," said Daniel Edelson, vice president for education programs at the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C. Say hello to the new geography. It runs your GPS unit, takes you on mobile-device-guided tours, helps you find and see hotel rooms before you book them. Want to calculate your estimated time of arrival, locate a nearby gluten-free restaurant, or find out whether it's raining in Río?

A California teenager accused of being drunk when his SUV crashed into a van, killing five members of one family, is being held with bail set at $3.5 million. He remained in a Las Vegas detention center. Authorities said beer bottles were found inside the vehicle of Jean Soriano, 18, who Sunday was charged with several counts including DUI. The accident occurred on Interstate 15 in southeastern Nevada early Saturday morning when Soriano's Dodge Durango crashed into the back of a Chevy Astro van. There were seven people in the van, which spun around and overturned.

When California corrections officials found what they described as alarming defects in half of the GPS monitors worn by sex offenders and other parolees statewide, they moved immediately to break the contract with the company that supplied them.  A Sacramento judge said their concerns justified refusing to give the company more work, but he also ruled the state should not have given its existing work to a firm without competitive bidding....

The electronic ankle monitors California used for several years to monitor more than 4,000 high-risk sex offenders and gang members were so inaccurate and unreliable that corrections officials said that the public was “in imminent danger.” A little more than a year ago, California quietly began conducting tests on the GPS devices that track the movements of thousands of sex offenders. Officials found that batteries died early, cases cracked and reported locations were off by as much as three miles.

Should the police be allowed to affix an electronic tracking device to a suspect's car without a warrant and follow his every movement for a month? That was the question at an oral argument at the Supreme Court on Tuesday. The justices expressed unease with such pervasive surveillance, with one comparing it to George Orwell's "1984. " Their misgivings reflect a sense on the part of many Americans, including this editorial board, that there's something creepy about round-the-clock electronic surveillance.

A national obsession with cellphone jamming was ignited last week when a Philadelphia bus rider identified only as "Eric" admitted to carrying a cellphone jammer and using it to interfere with the cellphone signals of his fellow bus riders if he felt they were being too disruptive. "A lot of people are extremely loud, no sense of just privacy or anything," he told NBC10, a local news station that broke the story . "When it becomes a bother, that's when I screw on the antenna and flip the switch.

A little more than a year ago, California quietly began conducting tests on the GPS monitoring devices that track the movements of thousands of sex offenders. The results were alarming. Corrections officials found the devices used in half the state were so inaccurate and unreliable that the public was "in imminent danger. " Batteries died early, cases cracked, reported locations were off by as much as three miles. Officials also found that tampering alerts failed and offenders were able to disappear by covering the devices with foil, deploying illegal GPS jammers or ducking into cars or buildings.

KAMA, Afghanistan - For more than two years, he was part of a secret, CIA-trained advance team for America's shadow war in Afghanistan, helping to collect intelligence that led to the killing or capture of Taliban suspects. Then, last September, having quit the team because of Taliban threats, the young stonemason and his family tragically found themselves on the wrong end of that intelligence. Shrapnel from a U.S. drone strike on two insurgent leaders struck and killed his younger sister on their small farm in eastern Afghanistan.