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One of the Bay Area’s most prominent radical activists of the era, Richard Masato Aoki was known as a fierce militant who touted his street-fighting abilities. He was a member of several radical groups before joining and arming the Panthers, whose members received international notoriety for brandishing weapons during patrols of the Oakland police and a protest at the state Capitol.

Aoki went on to work for 25 years as a teacher, counselor and administrator at the Peralta Community College District, and after his suicide in 2009, he was revered as a fearless radical.

But unbeknownst to his fellow activists, Aoki had served as an FBI intelligence informant, covertly filing reports on a wide range of Bay Area political groups, according to the bureau agent who recruited him.

That agent, Burney Threadgill Jr., recalled that he approached Aoki in the late 1950s, about the time Aoki was graduating from Berkeley High School. He asked Aoki if he would join left-wing groups and report to the FBI.

The software, developed by Mirco Musolesi, Manlio Domenico, and Antonio Lima, combines movement tracking with data from the people in your phone book. By looking at how someone’s movements correlate with those of other people that they know, the algorithm can make guesses about where that person is going, even if it’s a major change from their usual routine.

Previously, algorithms have successfully modelled an individual’s regular movement patterns, but haven’t coped well with breaks in that routine. By adding data from a user’s social graph, the Birmingham team was able to overcome this, yielding an impressive accuracy level of 20 metres or so.

During House of Lords debates, it was disclosed that a government application for a court to sit in secret – with the public, the media and even the claimant and their lawyers being excluded – could itself remain completely secret under the proposals.

The admission drew immediate comparisons with so-called superinjunctions, which not only prevent the media from publishing information said to be confidential or private, but also ban publication of the fact that the injunction exists.

The secrecy proposals, contained in the government’s justice and security bill, allow government ministers to apply for special courtroom measures known as closed material procedure (CMP) whenever the government or its intelligence agencies are being sued in the UK courts.

Based on the police report, obtained by the IDG News Service, here’s how they did it.

The burglary took place while the Jobs family home, in a leafy and quiet area of Palo Alto, was being renovated and was unoccupied. Sometime between the construction crew leaving the site at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, July 17, and arriving just before 8 a.m. the next morning, someone entered the house and stole several personal effects and Apple gadgets.

Within several days, the Palo Alto Police Department had enlisted the help of the Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team, a San Jose-based organization formed by local, state and federal law enforcement agencies that specializes in computer-related crimes. Local police wanted assistance tracking down the Apple computers and iPads that were reported stolen from the house.

Witness the factory of Tesla Motors, which recently began manufacturing the Tesla S, a luxury sedan, in Fremont, Calif., on the edge of Silicon Valley.

More than half of the building is shuttered, called “the dark side.” It still houses a dingy, unused Toyota Corolla assembly line on which an army of workers once turned out half a million cars annually.

The Tesla assembly line is a stark contrast, brilliantly lighted. Its fast-moving robots, bright Tesla red, each has a single arm with multiple joints. Most of them are imposing, 8 to 10 feet tall, giving them a slightly menacing “Terminator” quality.

Daniel Pirron, a partner in Delloite’s key General Counsel’s office in New York, was found dead in a car park near his home in Trumbull, Connecticut.

On August 6, Deloitte was accused by the New York Department of Financial Services of aiding Standard Chartered in its “deception” over billions of dollars’ worth of trades involving Iran.

Mr Pirron apparently took his own life seven days later.

Deloitte denies the DFS allegations that have led to Standard Chartered agreeing to pay a fine of $340m.

Speaking publicly for the first time about the incident, Mr Pirron’s brother, Mike, said the family believed the two events were connected and that Daniel Pirron had warned his daughters the day before his death that there was “big trouble” ahead.

“My brother didn’t discuss the case but he told me they were in big trouble with this case in London,” he said.

“He was clearly apprehensive about a case that was about to come out. It is just extraordinary, when he was fine, that somebody would take his life.”

Asked directly if he believed the two events were connected, Mr Pirron said: “The circumstances are just too much of a coincidence.

“He was in the legal department and I think he was in London. It had to be work related. He told me the company was under pressure over this.”

The local Fairfield Police have launched an investigation into Mr Pirron’s death and his office in New York has been sealed off.

Mr Pirron, a leading businessman who owns a construction company in Chicago, said his brother had been acting strangely the day before he shot himself. “He was with his daughter on Sunday and she said he was acting very apprehensive. He kept going to the newsstands, looking for an important story to come out to do with Deloitte,” he said.

While analysts say the US should survive this year without major blackouts, more frequent droughts and increased population size will continue to strain power generation in the future.

Power plants are a hidden casualty of droughts, says Barbara Carney of the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) in Morgantown, West Virginia, because they are completely dependent on water for cooling and make up about half the water usage in the US. That makes them vulnerable in a heat wave. If water levels in the rivers that cool them drop too low, the power plant – already overworked from the heat – won’t be able to draw in enough water. In addition, if the cooling water discharged from a plant raises already-hot river temperatures above certain thresholds, environmental regulations require the plant to shut down.

One nuclear plant in Connecticut recently had to shut down because the sea water used for cooling was too warm. Nationwide, nuclear generation is at its lowest in a decade, with the plants operating at only 93 per cent of capacity.

The expert in practical ethics said that we should actively give parents the choice to screen out personality flaws in their children as it meant they were then less likely to “harm themselves and others”.

The academic, who is also editor-in-chief of the Journal of Medical Ethics, made his comments in an article in the latest edition of Reader’s Digest.

At Mayfield’s United Livestock Commodities, owner Joseph Watson is tweaking the recipe for success.

“Just to be able to survive, we have to look for other sources of nutrition,” he said.