Netgear announced its latest mobile hotspot today, the Nighthawk 5G M7, which will be available in January, along with a new mobile app and an eSIM marketplace where you can purchase local SIM cards for more than 140 countries. The M7 comes unlocked for $499.99, making it a more affordable alternative to the unlocked version of Netgear’s premium M6 Pro hotspot. 

The M7 features Wi-Fi 7 with speeds of up to 3.6Gbps and support for up to 32 connected devices, which you can also connect wired via USB-C or with an ethernet adapter. It also includes a firewall, WPA3 encryption, and automatic firmware updates, along with Netgear’s Advanced Router Protection, which helps detect and block attacks on your router and allows for live security patches. Additionally, you have the option to use either physical SIM cards or eSIMs. 

The M7 offers up to 10 hours of continuous connectivity per charge and can also function as a power bank. That’s a few hours less battery life than the advertised 13 hours you get with the M7 Pro, but it should be enough to tide you over in a pinch until you find an outlet. 

The eSIM marketplace is the biggest upgrade over previous Netgear hotspots. From the Netgear app, you can view, buy, and activate local data plans for the M7 — a feature that could come in handy for anyone who frequently travels internationally. Data plans in the marketplace will range from 3GB to 20GB, and you’ll be able to view real-time usage from the app.

On December 11th, 2010, Jeffrey Epstein was fretting about what came up if you Googled him. By this time Epstein had already pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution with a child and was a registered sex offender, and just a few days earlier he had been photographed in Central Park taking a stroll with Prince Andrew.

Epstein emailed an associate to complain. "the google page is not good," Epstein wrote, according to documents released last week by the House Oversight Committee. He also took issue with tens of thousands of dollars of payments, which appear to have been made to "clean up" results. "I have yet to have a complete breakdown of …

Read the full story at The Verge.

A small Missouri town will pay $500,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by a man whose 13-pound blind and deaf shih tzu dog was shot and killed by a police officer. It is one of the largest settlements of its kind, an animal rights group says.

Nicholas Hunter filed a lawsuit last year against the City of Sturgeon, Missouri, and former Sturgeon police officer Myron Woodson, alleging his Fourth Amendment rights were violated when Woodson killed his dog Teddy shortly after finding it wandering in a neighbor's yard on May 19, 2024.

The Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF), an animal rights advocacy group, provided a grant to help cover costs for the lawsuit and announced the settlement last Friday in a press release.

"Mr. Hunter is relieved this matter is concluded but nothing can ever bring his Teddy back," Hunter's attorneys, Daniel J. Kolde and Eric C. Crinnian, said in the release. "Teddy was a good dog who did not deserve this. We hope that other departments will learn from this and train their officers better in the future so events like this don't happen again. We also are grateful to the ALDF for their support and efforts to bring light to tragedies like Teddy and encourage better training and more responsible police behavior towards beloved family pets."

Teddy's shooting was a particularly egregious example of a common phenomena: police needlessly shooting family dogs. (There have been so many cases over the years that we have a "puppycide" tag for stories on the Reason website.) No one knows exactly how many dogs police shoot around the country, but every year, there are more cases of wanton killings that, besides terrorizing owners, generate huge lawsuits, viral outrage, and sometimes result in officers being fired or facing trial, such as in the case of a New Orleans officer who shot and killed a puppy.

The trouble in Sturgeon started on May 19, 2024, when Teddy escaped from Hunter's backyard while Hunter was out at dinner. Hunter's neighbor called a county dispatch center to report that the dog had wandered into their yard. According to Hunter's lawsuit, the caller responded, "No, not at all," when asked if the dog was aggressive.

The town of Sturgeon's official Facebook page posted an alert on May 19 about the missing dog, along with photos of Teddy: "Do you know this doggie? Joint communications has been notified. The doggie seems in need of medical attention."

Hunter had been called about the Facebook post and was on his way to pick up Teddy. Instead, Woodson beat him to the scene, and a few minutes later, the officer shot the dog twice, killing it.

The city of Sturgeon posted on Facebook about the incident the next day, defending Woodson's decision: "Based on the behavior exhibited by the dog, believing the dog to be severely injured or infected with rabies, and as the officer feared being bitten and being infected with rabies, the SPD [Sturgeon Police Department] officer felt that his only option was to put the animal down," the city wrote. "It was later learned that the animal's behavior was because the animal was blind. Unfortunately, the animal's lack of a collar or tags influenced the SPD Officer's decision to put the animal down due to his belief that the animal was injured, sick and abandoned."

But when the local news outlet ABC 17 obtained Woodson's body camera footage, it showed that Teddy was never aggressive and didn't bark or growl. Woodson tried to lasso Teddy with a catch pole—a common tool used in animal control—but the dog simply shook its head free of the rope and trotted away. After fumbling the catch pole several times, Woodson drew his gun and killed Teddy. ABC 17 reported that Woodson's entire encounter with Teddy, from exiting his car to putting two bullets in the animal, lasted three minutes and six seconds.

Yet after body camera footage was released, Sturgeon doubled down: "The City believes that the officer acted within his authority based on the information available to him at the time to protect against possible injury to citizens from what appeared to be an injured, sick, and abandoned dog," Sturgeon posted in a follow-up Facebook post.

Hunter filed a federal lawsuit within a week of the shooting.

In a deposition, Woodson testified that he destroyed the animal because "I believed the dog was seriously injured and suffering."

Sturgeon city officials suspended Woodson and promised to conduct an investigation, but according to Hunter's lawsuit, that investigation never occurred. The city allegedly instead paid Woodson a $16,000 settlement regarding his suspension.

Woodson no longer works for the SPD and is apparently a process server. ABC 17 reported last week that Woodson was charged with trespassing for allegedly refusing police officers' orders to leave a retirement home where he was attempting to serve papers.

Chris Green, executive director of the ALDF, said in a statement that the settlement is "one of the largest of its kind for the police shooting of a beloved family dog."

The typical size of these settlements has grown substantially since a court ruling in the early 2000s established that the Fourth Amendment protects pets from unreasonable "seizures"—that is, killings. In 2018, a Maryland jury awarded $1.26 million to a family whose dog was shot and killed by police. As Reason reported that year, these settlements and the intense public backlash has caught police departments' attention; they've started to incorporate training for officers to recognize dog behaviors and respond with non-lethal methods first. It's a step that animal rights groups say is long overdue.

"These horrendous tragedies are completely unnecessary and preventable with simple, adequate training," Green continued. "I hope this half-million-dollar amount sends a message to other police departments that if your officers needlessly harm an animal, you will pay."

The City of Sturgeon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The post Missouri Town Will Pay $500K To Settle Lawsuit Over Deputy Shooting Blind and Deaf Dog appeared first on Reason.com.

When President Donald Trump ordered a whopping 39 percent tariff on all imports from Switzerland earlier this year, he did so, of course, by claiming there was a national emergency.

Officially, Trump's executive order pointed to "large and persistent annual U.S. goods trade deficits" that, the president claims, "constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and economy of the United States." Because this was part of Trump's push for what he called "reciprocal" tariffs, the executive order also pointed toward "foreign trading partners' disparate tariff rates" that were supposedly to blame for the trade imbalance.

Right from the start, that didn't make a whole lot of sense.

For one, Switzerland had minuscule tariffs (an average rate of 0.2 percent) on American imports. As I pointed out at the time, if Trump were seeking "reciprocal" tariffs with the Swiss, he would have to lower America's tariffs rather than raise them.

For another: The very existence of a U.S. trade deficit with Switzerland (which totaled $38.3 billion last year) seemed to undermine the entire logic behind Trump's trade war. If having higher tariffs than your trading partner was the secret to ending trade deficits, as the Trump administration seems to believe, then why did America have a trade deficit with a country like Switzerland in the first place?

Still, possibly the most confusing part of this announcement was the premise that imported chocolate, pharmaceutical drugs, and fancy watches somehow constitute an emergency requiring a huge (and possibly unlawful) expansion of executive power. If Americans want to buy things from people and businesses in Switzerland, that doesn't seem like it should be any of the president's business.

Good news: That emergency is now over!

The White House announced over the weekend that tariffs on imports from Switzerland would be cut from 39 percent to 15 percent—the same level charged to goods from the European Union. "President Trump's unmatched dealmaking continues to deliver for the American people," gushed U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer in an official statement announcing new deals with Switzerland and its tiny neighbor, Liechtenstein.

"This framework tears down longstanding trade barriers that have held U.S. exporters back," Greer continued. Finally, America's blue-collar workers will be free from Liechtensteiner oppression.

But has the emergency actually been resolved? Through July, America had posted a $55 billion trade deficit with Switzerland this year, according to Census Bureau data. More recent data are not yet available, but the White House is claiming that Trump's newly inked trade deals with a variety of countries, including Switzerland, have achieved "reciprocal trade" amid other "historic wins" for the American people.

We'll have to wait a few more months to find out if that is true, or if the president simply decided that the trade deficit with Switzerland was no longer an urgent national emergency.

Cynical observers might note that Trump's decision to reduce the tariffs on Swiss goods came just days after a Swiss delegation lavished the president with a variety of expensive gifts. Trump reportedly received a gold Rolex watch and an engraved gold bar estimated to be worth $130,000. It is illegal for U.S. presidents to accept gifts worth more than $480, but the White House says Trump accepted the gifts on behalf of his presidential library, which likely makes them legal.

It wouldn't be the first time Trump responded favorably after receiving some luxurious enticements. In August, Trump granted Apple a special exemption from huge tariffs targeting high-end computer chips made in other countries just days after Apple CEO Tim Cook made a special trip to the White House and left behind a 24-karat gold tchotchke for the president.

There are two possibilities here. You can believe that the vaguely defined economic emergency that required such huge tariffs on Swiss imports is already over, just a few months after those tariffs were imposed and despite the trade deficit seemingly growing rather than shrinking. If so, then you have to accept that Americans peacefully exchanging their money for chocolates, drugs, and watches were somehow undermining America's economic security for years—but that those exact same transactions are now totally fine, because of the higher tariffs that no longer exist.

The other possibility is that no such emergency ever actually existed, and that the president's idea of what constitutes an emergency depends largely on who is paying him homage and what gifts they might leave behind. If so, then you'd have to question the entire rationale behind all of Trump's so-called reciprocal tariffs, many of which make no more sense than the ones imposed on Swiss goods.

And you'd have to wonder whether Trump's trade war is really aimed at benefitting the country—or reducing the trade deficit, or promoting manufacturing jobs, or whatever rationale the White House is trotting out today. As it stands, the stakes appear to be significantly more personal.

The post The 'Emergency' That Demanded Huge Tariffs on Swiss Imports Is Now Over. So What Was the Emergency? appeared first on Reason.com.

Tesla reported three more crashes involving its Robotaxis in Austin, Texas – now bringing the total to 7 incidents despite low mileage and in-car supervisors preventing more accidents.

The U.S. Department of Justice sued California on Monday to block newly passed laws that prohibit law enforcement officials, including federal immigration agents, from wearing masks and that require them to identify themselves.