The amount of data this thing collects is staggering. It logs where, when, how, and for how long you use the TV. It sets tracking cookies and beacons designed to detect “when you have viewed particular content or a particular email message.” It records “the apps you use, the websites you visit, and how you interact with content.” It ignores “do-not-track” requests as a considered matter of policy. MORE

Kuroda is an evil genius. He has single-handedly driven the Japanese stock market up 1,000 points in 7 hours and ignited stock markets around the world. The world is saved. He has proven that the world can be saved by printing trillions in new fiat currency and using it to buy stocks and bonds. Why didn’t we think of that? What could possibly go wrong? MORE

Parents of a boy enrolled in Manhattan Beach Middle School are pulling their son out of class because the school is teaching children the tents of Islam, Los Angeles news station KTLA reports.  MORE

A Mexican judge tonight ordered the immediate release of a jailed U.S. Marine veteran, eight months after he was jailed for crossing the border with loaded guns.

He had been imprisoned for 241 days after getting lost on the freeway and finding himself with no way back into the United States. MORE

Isaiah Marin of Stillwater was charged Thursday with first-degree murder in the attack that killed 19-year-old Jacob Andrew Crockett a day earlier.

The two had been playing cards with a third pal, Marin’s brother, when Marin removed the ‘large black sword’ from its sheath and began swinging it around, court records obtained by MailOnline show. MORE

Bloody zombies lumbered alongside superheroes, cowboys shared the road with villains and marchers in hazardous-materials garb evoked the Ebola crisis as the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade made its freewheeling way through downtown Manhattan on Friday night.

Creativity was on display and current events were on marchers’ minds as a costumed crowd of thousands flowed up Sixth Avenue on a windy Halloween night. MORE

Lake Michigan waves neared record territory Friday as gale-force winds churned the waters into massive breakers on shorelines around the state.

The southern buoy, located in the middle of the lake due west of Holland, recorded a 21.7-foot wave height earlier this afternoon. That mark ties for the second tallest height ever recorded for that buoy, according to the National Weather Service in Chicago. MORE

It’s the burning question of the day: “Will the state of the U.S. economy affect your Halloween plans?” asks a National Retail Federation survey to some 6,300 respondents.

The answer: 81 percent said dismal financial reports would not deter them from whooping it up on Friday and throughout the weekend. The practical translation: Americans will spend $7.4 billion on Halloween this year, the industry group says — that includes $350 million that will go towards pet costumes. MORE

Cardinal Burke, why didn’t you tell this to Paul VI? You’re 50 years too late!

Cardinal Raymond Burke, prefect of the highest court in the Catholic Church, has said that despite recent murmurs that the Church’s views about marriage and divorce are evolving, the Pope does not have the authority to reinterpret Christ’s teachings against divorce. MORE

Indian security forces poured in, beginning a face-off last month that grew to involve more than 1,000 troops on each side at an altitude of roughly 15,000 feet, according to Indian officials, making it the biggest border confrontation between the two nations in decades.

The mountain standoff lasted weeks and at times involved tense shoving-and-shouting matches, according to Indian border-patrol troopers who participated. Both armies called in helicopters. The scale and duration of the clash are signs of mounting friction between the world’s two most-populous countries. MORE

No NATO countries are more worried about Kremlin aggression than the Baltic states, with their small militaries and lack of strategic depth — countries that are frankly indefensible in any conventional sense without significant and timely Alliance assistance.

But Poland is the real issue when it comes to defending NATO’s exposed Eastern frontier from Russian aggression. MORE

Most people in the English-speaking parts of the world missed Putin’s speech at the Valdai conference in Sochi a few days ago, and, chances are, those of you who have heard of the speech didn’t get a chance to read it, and missed its importance. (For your convenience, I am posting in the full transcript of his speech below.) Western media did their best to ignore it or to twist its meaning. MORE