Aggregator

"Stud Or Dud" Dating App Launches A Platform For Background Checking Prospective Matches

The Daejon Love story is already having an impact on the dating world...

And singles who want to know more about a match before agreeing to a date now have another option besides scrolling through social media and playing amateur detective, according to the NY Post.

Stud or Dud, a new platform from public-records company PeopleFinders, is designed to gather publicly available information about a potential partner in one place. The service can surface details such as past addresses, bankruptcies and other records, while also organizing some of the findings into easier-to-read red- and green-flag categories.

The tool is aimed at a familiar modern dating problem: online profiles can create a convincing picture without proving that the person behind them is being truthful. A seemingly normal Instagram account, polished dating bio or professional-looking LinkedIn page may still leave major gaps about someone’s identity or history.

PeopleFinders CEO Amber Higgins said that distinction is important. “Records give you context, not certainty,” she said, describing background information as another layer of verification rather than definitive proof that someone is trustworthy.

The Post writes that the launch also comes as romance fraud and fake online identities remain a concern for daters. According to survey figures cited in the article, one-quarter of Americans said they had interacted with a fake profile or AI bot, and 15% reported losing money through an online dating or romance scam.

Stud or Dud is meant to streamline work that many singles already do before meeting someone: searching names online, checking employment claims, reviewing tagged photos or asking friends to investigate. Instead of relying heavily on material that a person can curate themselves, the platform emphasizes public records that may be harder to manipulate.

Still, a background search cannot replace judgment. Higgins pointed to behavior as another important warning system, including refusing video calls, changing details about work or location, pushing a relationship ahead unusually quickly or introducing financial problems early in the conversation.

Money requests are an especially significant warning sign. “If money comes up before you’ve met in person, that’s a moment to pause, not lean in.”

The broader idea behind the service is to make basic vetting a routine part of online dating rather than something people do only after becoming suspicious. For users already accustomed to checking a match before meeting, Stud or Dud essentially packages that research into a faster, more centralized process.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/11/2026 - 21:20

UCLA disgraced itself this week by hosting a symposium on terrorism on the 25th anniversary of 9/11 that featured radical critics of US counterterror policy, and a lawyer for al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

"Mother Monster" became engaged to Michael Polansky in 2024.

"Mother Monster" became engaged to Michael Polansky in 2024.

Zac Thornton understands the Yankees still are playing for the American League East title, so he carries a responsibility. 

Shiona McCallum meets mums and hospital staff trialling a new assisted birth innovation.

“It wasn’t me.” That’s Karen Bass’ unofficial motto as she runs for reelection this November.

Prosecutors In Huawei Criminal Trial Allege Company 'Cultivated Culture Of Crime And Corruption'

Authored by Nicholas Zifcak via The Epoch Times,

NEW YORK CITY - Prosecutors in the criminal trial against Chinese telecoms firm Huawei alleged that the company used lies, theft, cover-up, and a criminal conspiracy in its efforts to dominate the global telecommunications market.

A worker stands in the window of a Huawei store in a commercial area in Beijing on Nov. 5, 2024. Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

In opening remarks at a federal court in the Brooklyn borough of New York City on Sept. 9, Assistant U.S. Attorney Taylor Stout said that Huawei "engaged in a pattern of criminal activity to expand its business empire." He alleged that its two subsidiaries in the United States, Huawei Device USA and Futurewei Technologies, served as outposts to steal technology.

The trial covers 20 years of Huawei business activity in the United States and around the globe.

The prosecution said it will present evidence against Huawei in three categories: alleged theft of trade secrets from competitors, alleged bank and wire fraud in relation to efforts to skirt sanctions against Iran, and Huawei's alleged cover-up and efforts to block law enforcement from investigating its business activities.

A subsidiary of Huawei, Skycom, provided Iran's government with tools to spy on its own citizens, specifically during 2009 protests in Tehran, according to the U.S. government. Huawei employees falsely claimed that Skycom was not owned by Huawei.

Prosecutors allege that Huawei used confidentiality agreements, competitors' employees, and third parties to acquire trade secrets on technology for routers, storage, and wireless technology.

Huawei "cultivated a culture of crime and corruption," said Stout, such that employees who stole from competitors were just "following company practice." Stout alleged that an engineer who stole from New York state-based Quintel, which develops cellular antennae technology, received a bonus for the information obtained.

Huawei defense attorney Brian Heberlig portrayed Huawei as a global player serving underserved and remote communities. He said the government is relying on five incidents that happened over the course of 20 years.

Heberlig argued that the prosecution's witnesses are unreliable, as many were involved in civil litigation over commercial disputes with Huawei, including Cisco, T-Mobile, and Quintel. He also claimed that the government cherry-picked incidents to support racketeering charges but won't be able to prove a broad overarching conspiracy.

He challenged the government narrative that Huawei fostered a culture of stealing trade secrets, saying that when such activity was discovered, "Huawei acted appropriately in all three incidents," including by firing the employee caught taking pictures of a Fujitsu device at a conference.

Heberlig said that to prove a racketeering conspiracy, the government must prove that the "same people agreed to carry out the same criminal plan." He said the incidents cited by the government are isolated and insufficient to prove that there was some "blueprint for a criminal conspiracy."

The government also alleges that Huawei violated U.S. sanctions by involving the U.S. financial system in its business dealings with Iran and North Korea.

Heberlig contested prosecutors' narrative that Huawei knowingly violated U.S. sanctions, arguing that Huawei had no intention to violate U.S. laws but that the banks it was using in its business with Iran caused the funds to route through the U.S. financial system.

Prosecutors allege that Huawei misrepresented to banks its connection with Skycom, a subsidiary that was doing business with Iran, which prosecutors say received instructions to remove all Huawei logos from hardware sold to Iran.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/11/2026 - 20:55

The women’s Grand Slam season will end Saturday the same way it started. With Aryna Sabalenka taking on Elena Rybakina for a title. 

A violent Southern California rock-thrower was slapped with three years behind bars on Friday after assaulting an officer during an anti-ICE riot.

Austrian media have dubbed the case as "Pelicot 2.0," likening it to the horrific case of Frenchwoman Gisèle Pelicot, whose ex-husband, Dominique Pelicot, was convicted of drugging her and inviting dozens of strangers to rape her in their home over nearly a decade.

The pop superstar and her partner were spotted for the first time since Page Six confirmed they recently welcomed their first child.

Page Six confirmed Friday that the singer and her partner recently welcomed their first child.

The BBC's Tom Gerken plays the hotly anticipated superhero game from Spider-Man makers Insomniac.

On the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the baseball world centered around The Bronx, where the Yankees hosted the Mets to open the Subway Series. 

A new generation born after Sept. 11, 2001, read the names of nearly 3,000 victims at Ground Zero to mark the 25th anniversary of the attacks.

ICE Hits Legal Wall On Two Fronts As Denver Targets Polling-Place Enforcement And Appeals Court Curbs Detention Power

The Trump administration's immigration crackdown ran into two separate legal challenges Thursday, as Denver sued to keep armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents away from polling places while a federal appeals court rejected the government's attempt to subject millions of illegal immigrants already living inside the United States to mandatory detention without bond hearings.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents walk outside the Ventura County Government Center in Ventura, California, on July 27, 2026. Blake Fagan/AFP via Getty Images

The disputes involve different statutes and different courts, but the underlying fight is increasingly the same: how far can the executive branch push immigration enforcement under existing federal law before judges conclude that Congress never gave it the authority being claimed?

On one front, Denver and several national advocacy groups filed suit in federal court in Washington seeking to stop ICE officers from carrying out immigration enforcement at voting locations ahead of November's midterm elections.

On the other, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that immigrants who have been living inside the United States for years - even if they originally entered illegally - cannot automatically be placed into mandatory detention under the provision the administration has been invoking.

Together, the cases put fresh judicial pressure on one of the administration's signature second-term policies.

Denver Takes ICE To Court Over The Polls

The City and County of Denver joined the League of United Latin American Citizens, Common Cause and UnidosUS in challenging what the plaintiffs characterize as a federal policy permitting armed ICE officers to conduct enforcement operations at polling locations.

The lawsuit, filed Sept. 10 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, invokes a rarely litigated Civil War-era federal statute, 18 U.S.C. § 592, that generally prohibits federal officials from bringing "troops or armed men" to places where elections are being conducted, except when needed to repel armed enemies of the United States.

The plaintiffs argue that even the prospect of armed immigration officers appearing at voting sites could deter voters, disrupt election workers and force municipalities to divert resources toward preparing for confrontations with federal agents. Denver officials are already training election personnel on how to identify federal agents, document encounters and de-escalate potential conflicts, according to the complaint.

The complaint also alleges that armed agents have already appeared at polling locations in San Antonio, Ventura County, California, and Syracuse, New York.

The lawsuit follows comments by Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who said ICE would not patrol polling places but would not exclude them from normal enforcement activity.

Mullin said agents could enter a voting location if there were a security threat or if officers were serving a warrant on a person they had been tracking, while the administration's position is not that polling places are enforcement targets. It is that they are not automatically enforcement-free zones either.

DHS has similarly said ICE is not planning operations targeting polling sites, while maintaining that officers could make an arrest there if an active public-safety threat or targeted enforcement action required it.

That distinction is now headed for federal court - where the plaintiffs want a judge to declare the policy unlawful and prevent armed federal immigration officers from carrying out enforcement at polling locations and other places where votes are collected. The case arrives as election officials around the country prepare for a midterm season already saturated with litigation over voting rules, federal-state authority and election administration.

Fourth Circuit Rejects ICE Detention Theory

Hours away from the political fight over polling sites, the Fourth Circuit delivered a more immediate legal setback for the administration's detention policy.

In Lopez Garcia v. Guadian, a divided three-judge panel held that two immigrants who had lived in the United States for years could not be mandatorily detained without an opportunity to seek release on bond.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detain an illegal immigrant after a court hearing in Stamford, Conn., on July 3, 2025. John Moore/Getty Images

The dispute centers on two sections of federal immigration law.

The administration contends that immigrants who entered the country without being legally admitted remain "applicants for admission" under Section 1225 of the Immigration and Nationality Act and therefore can be detained without bond while removal proceedings play out. The detainees argued - and the Fourth Circuit majority agreed - that immigrants already established inside the United States instead fall under Section 1226, which generally allows for bond consideration.

Judge Nicole Berner, joined by Senior Judge Barbara Keenan, said the latter interpretation better fits the text, structure and historical application of the statute. The court noted that Section 1226 had for decades generally governed detention of noncitizens already inside the country, while Section 1225 had traditionally been associated with people seeking admission at the border. 

Berner warned that accepting the government's interpretation could expose millions of people to mandatory detention without bond and said such a reading would imply Congress quietly authorized an unprecedented expansion of immigration detention when it rewrote immigration law in 1996.

The majority eventually compared the implications to some of the darkest chapters of American detention policy, including the confinement of Chinese immigrants in the late 19th century and the internment of roughly 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry during World War II.

The court ultimately affirmed habeas relief for Oscar Enrique Lopez Garcia and Juan Jose Rivera, ruling that both had to be given an opportunity to argue for release at a bond hearing.

The Dissent: Congress Meant What It Wrote

Judge Allison Jones Rushing rejected the majority's reasoning - with her dissent focusing heavily on the wording Congress adopted in its sweeping 1996 immigration overhaul. Earlier immigration laws explicitly referred to "arriving" immigrants, ports of arrival and people attempting to enter the country. Congress removed much of that language in 1996 and instead defined a broader category of "applicants for admission."

If Congress intended mandatory detention to remain limited to people physically arriving at the border, she argued, lawmakers could simply have retained the older language. Instead, Congress deliberately adopted terminology broad enough to include people physically present in the United States who had never been lawfully admitted. The statute treats anyone present without admission as an applicant for admission, and an applicant is by definition seeking admission, she wrote. "It's that simple."

The majority, she added, "clearly has strong views about what it considers the 'moral implications'" of denying bond, but those views do not rewrite the text.

That statutory disagreement is no longer confined to one court - meanwhile, the Fourth Circuit has now joined the First, Second, Third, Sixth, Seventh, Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Circuits on the side of bond eligibility for immigrants already living inside the country.

The Fifth and Eighth Circuits have taken the opposite view, concluding that the government's mandatory-detention interpretation is consistent with the statute.

That 9-2 split puts the issue squarely in territory the Supreme Court often steps in to resolve.

ICE's Next Battle May Be At The Supreme Court

The two developments illustrate the rapidly expanding legal front surrounding the administration's immigration agenda. Denver's lawsuit asks whether federal immigration officers can carry their normal enforcement authority into one of the most legally protected environments in American civic life: the polling place.

The Fourth Circuit case asks a different but potentially far larger question - whether the government can automatically detain broad categories of immigrants already living in the country without first giving them access to a bond hearing.

DHS maintains that the administration is enforcing immigration law as Congress wrote it. The Fourth Circuit majority says the government is attempting to extract sweeping detention powers from statutory language that does not clearly provide them.

And Denver is effectively making the same structural argument from another direction: whatever authority ICE may have to execute immigration law, Congress imposed special limits around elections. So while the administration continues expanding immigration enforcement on the ground, the courts are increasingly being asked to define the perimeter.

For ICE, that means the next phase of the immigration fight may be determined less by how many agents Washington deploys - and more by how the Supreme Court ultimately reads statutes Congress wrote decades ago.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/11/2026 - 20:30

Former Mets prospect and AL Rookie of the Year Michael Fulmer is now a Yankees reliever, aiming for his first career playoff run this October.

Bullet fragments struck an on-duty NYPD officer and a straphanger after a uniformed cop accidentally fired her service weapon inside a Brooklyn subway station on Thursday afternoon, authorities said.

The couple allegedly fled their Montecito home in August so abruptly that their children's school was left in the dark on their move back to the UK.