| New York attorney general unveils investigation into Trump company's finances Posted: 24 Aug 2020 03:33 PM PDT  Court documents made public on Monday reveal that the New York attorney general's office is conducting a wide-ranging investigation into alleged financial improprieties at President Trump's real estate company and is accusing the business of trying to stall the probe.
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| Jacob Blake moved to Kenosha, Wisconsin, because it was 'safer.' Now he's paralyzed from the waist down after police shot him 7 times in the back. Posted: 25 Aug 2020 03:13 AM PDT  Pictures of Jacob Blake, who was shot in the back by the police in Wisconsin, have emerged, along with details from his family and other loved ones.
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| Sydney Sutherland: Suspect in death knew victim and joined search party Facebook group Posted: 24 Aug 2020 02:40 PM PDT  The farmer accused of killing Arkansas resident Sydney Sutherland was known to the victim and joined a Facebook group dedicated to finding her after she went missing.Sutherland was last seen running on State Highway 18, near Newport, Arkansas, on Wednesday, and the 25-year-old's body was found on Friday following a two day search involving helicopters and K-9 units, according to the Daily Mail.
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| Jerry Falwell Jr. resigns from Liberty University after day of confusing back-and-forth amid sex scandal Posted: 24 Aug 2020 10:04 PM PDT  Jerry Falwell Jr. told ABC News late Monday that he has officially resigned from Liberty University, the conservative evangelical Christian school founded by his father, hours after flatly denying reports that he had stepped down. Earlier Monday night, Liberty University said Falwell had agreed to "resign immediately as president of Liberty University today but then instructed his attorneys to not tender the letter for immediate resignation." Falwell had been on indefinite paid leave since Aug. 7, after he posted to Instagram then deleted a mildly racy photo from a yacht costume party.His formal resignation Monday comes amid a much more salacious scandal. On Sunday night, Falwell told The Washington Examiner that his wife, Becki Falwell, had an extramarital affair with a much younger business partner, identified elsewhere as Giancarlo Granda. He said in his statement that he "was not involved" in his wife's "inappropriate personal relationship" and claimed Granda was extorting him. Then on Monday, Reuters reported that Granda had produced evidence that Falwell was involved in his seven-year affair with Becki Falwell, in a voyeuristic capacity."Becki and I developed an intimate relationship and Jerry enjoyed watching from the corner of the room," Granda told Reuters. He shared emails, text messages, and other evidence he said backs up his version of events. Granda, now 29, said he met the Falwells when he was a pool attendant at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach hotel in March 2012, and he started having sex with Becki Falwell that month, the affair lasting until 2018. Jerry Falwell is 58 and Becki Falwell, a conservative political figure in her own right, is 53.Granda told Reuters that the relationship soured because he tried to break things off — the opposite of Jerry Falwell's version — and said he now thinks the Falwells exploited his "immaturity, naïveté, instability, or a combination thereof" when they decided he "was the ideal target for their sexual escapades" at age 20.Liberty University has a strict code of ethics for its students, including the rule that "sexual relations outside of a biblically ordained marriage between a natural-born man and a natural-born woman are not permissible at Liberty University."More stories from theweek.com Biden campaign tries to dunk on the Republican National Convention by parodying Simon & Garfunkel Black Monday for the religious right Donald Trump Jr. reportedly thinks his dad is going to lose in November
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| Every 4th-grader in Mississippi school district must quarantine amid new COVID-19 cases Posted: 24 Aug 2020 08:25 AM PDT  In all, the district has reported 10 positive cases.
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| Trove of 1,000-year-old gold coins unearthed in Israel Posted: 24 Aug 2020 01:36 AM PDT  Israeli youths have unearthed hundreds of gold coins stashed away in a clay vessel for more than a thousand years. The treasure was discovered on Aug. 18, the Israel Antiquities Authority said on Monday, by teenagers volunteering at an excavation in central Israel where a new neighbourhood is planned to be built.
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| New Hubble image captures comet Neowise after journey around sun Posted: 25 Aug 2020 12:15 PM PDT  Most comets break apart under the intense heat of the sun — but Neowise remained intact.
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| More than 100 nudists test positive for the coronavirus after visiting France's 'Naked City' Posted: 25 Aug 2020 10:21 AM PDT  Ninety-five nudists tested positive at nudist resort Cap d'Agde in France and an additional 50 tested positive after returning home.
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| Pompeo shattering precedent, sparking fury with RNC speech Posted: 24 Aug 2020 09:42 AM PDT  Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sent a cable to all U.S. diplomatic missions last month warning American diplomats that under federal law they should not take overt sides in the presidential campaign. On Tuesday, he plans to ignore his own warning by speaking to the Republican National Convention endorsing President Donald Trump for a second term. Pompeo's message to State Department employees reminding them of restrictions on political activity under the Hatch Act was not unusual.
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| Scott Peterson death penalty overturned by California Supreme Court Posted: 24 Aug 2020 01:55 PM PDT  The justices said the trial judge "made a series of ... errors" in Peterson's high-profile 2004 trial for killing his pregnant wife, Laci Peterson.
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| Donna Brazile accuses Fox News pundit of ignoring ‘400 years’ of racism in tense exchange about 2020 election Posted: 25 Aug 2020 04:02 PM PDT  Former Democratic National Committee chair Donna Brazile accused conservative commentator Tammy Bruce of ignoring "400 years" of racism in the US, during a tense exchange about November's presidential election.The pair were being interviewed about the first night of the Republican National Convention by host Brian Kilmeade during Fox and Friends on Tuesday, when the conservative pundit praised president Donald Trump.
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| Wife of Miami police officer dies after being trapped in his patrol car for hours Posted: 25 Aug 2020 11:35 AM PDT  A Miami police officer's wife died after becoming trapped in the back of his patrol vehicle for several hours during a hot afternoon, police said Monday.
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| 20,000 coronavirus cases in Boston stemmed from a single conference in February, researchers say Posted: 25 Aug 2020 11:46 AM PDT  Researchers have connected a "viral forest fire" in Boston to a single biotechnology conference back in February, The Boston Globe reports.Scientists originally attributed 99 coronavirus cases in the Boston area to meeting of international biotech leaders at Biogen's annual conference. But in new research released Tuesday that has yet to be peer reviewed, three scientists revised their estimates to suggest 20,000 cases in the Boston area actually came from the event at a Marriott hotel.Three scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, along with more than 50 other researchers, isolated coronavirus cases from 772 local patients to track where they came from. Of those patients, 289, or more than a third, had a strain of virus traceable to the conference. From there, the scientists extrapolated that "tens of thousands" of people were likely infected after people from around the world mixed at the late February conference. And as of July 1, the conference would've been responsible for 40 percent of coronavirus cases in the Boston area, WBUR notes.The study doesn't mention Biogen by name, but Biogen still responded to the study with a statement and did not dispute its findings. "We never would have knowingly put anyone at risk," Biogen said, noting that the conference happened before much was known about the coronavirus, and saying it "took steps to limit the spread" even before knowing if workers who got sick had COVID-19.More stories from theweek.com Biden campaign tries to dunk on the Republican National Convention by parodying Simon & Garfunkel Black Monday for the religious right Donald Trump Jr. reportedly thinks his dad is going to lose in November
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| 'I'd Like to Punch You in the Mouth.' Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro Enraged by Reporter's Question About Payments to His Wife Posted: 25 Aug 2020 02:33 AM PDT  Yet despite mounting scandals, polls suggest right-wing leader's popularity is on the rise
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| China protests at U.S. spy plane watching drills Posted: 25 Aug 2020 06:47 AM PDT |
| 6 days after reopening, the University of Alabama has over 500 coronavirus cases. Now the student newspaper is telling the administration: 'We won't be your PR.' Posted: 25 Aug 2020 12:11 PM PDT  Since the first day of class on August 19, the University of Alabama campuses have reported 566 cases for students, faculty, and staff.
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| Most college students ‘absolutely certain’ they’ll vote, report finds. But for whom? Posted: 24 Aug 2020 01:17 PM PDT  The poll surveyed 4,000 full-time four-year students.
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| Immigration services cancels plans to furlough two-thirds of workforce amid COVID-19 Posted: 25 Aug 2020 02:39 PM PDT  The plan to furlough about two-thirds of USCIS workers would have effectively brought the nation's immigration system to a standstill.
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| Marco collapses after making landfall, but threat looms from Laura Posted: 24 Aug 2020 09:05 PM PDT  Ahead of Laura, hurricane and storm surge watches were issued for parts of the Gulf Coast. Marco made landfall but was expected to weaken further.
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| A white man shot at a group of Black Lives Matter activists on a 730-mile march from Wisconsin to DC. One protester was hospitalized and demonstrators refused to leave him behind. Posted: 25 Aug 2020 12:19 PM PDT  Frank Nitty, of Milwaukee, has been walking to Washington, DC for the 57th anniversary of the "I Have a Dream" speech. On Monday a supporter was shot.
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| Clinesmith Guilty Plea: Using a ‘Digraph’ to Conceal a Massive Deception of the Court Posted: 25 Aug 2020 03:30 AM PDT  Author's Note: This is the second of a three-part series (see Part 1).Kevin Clinesmith's lies and document doctoring, which resulted in his guilty plea to a felony false-statement charge last week, were prompted by what turned out to be the worst-case scenario, for both him and the FBI.To recap, we are focusing on June 2017, when the FBI was preparing to submit an application for a fourth 90-day warrant to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The "SSA," a supervisory special agent at FBI headquarters whom we met in Part 1, was to be the affiant on that application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). Not assigned to Crossfire Hurricane until December 2016, the SSA had not been involved in the investigation when the bureau opened it five months earlier. He was personally unaware that, months before the first Page FISA warrant was sought in October 2016, the CIA had informed the FBI about Page's years of work as a CIA informant, authorized by the agency for "operational contact" with Russians. Though the SSA was not on the investigative team, he had been the headquarters official assigned to swear to the truth of the renewal warrant applications in January and April 2017. He thus knew that the bureau heavily relied on Page's prior years of contact with Russians in portraying Page to the FISC as a clandestine agent of Moscow, at the center of a suspected Trump-Russia espionage conspiracy.The SSA became alarmed when Page, while vehemently denying that he was a spy for Russia, publicly claimed that he'd been a U.S. government intelligence source against Russia. The SSA realized that if Page was telling the truth, it would "seriously impact the predication of our entire investigation."That was not the half of it. When the SSA asked Kevin Clinesmith, the bureau's point man for contact with the CIA, to check on Page's claims, Clinesmith faced the worst-case scenario, not only because Page was telling the truth, but because the FBI had every reason to know -- before it began seeking surveillance warrants from the FISC eight months earlier -- that Page had indeed been a CIA informant. Moreover, Clinesmith, a lawyer in the FBI branch that reviewed FISA applications, had been involved from the start.The Clinesmith case is the story of how, despite being alerted that it had peddled falsehoods under oath to a federal court, the bureau mendaciously doubled down, obtaining a fourth FISA warrant by concealing from the court Page's status as a CIA informant.The 'Digraph'In his false-statement charge against Clinesmith, Connecticut U.S. attorney John Durham does not allege that the former bureau lawyer was personally aware, prior to the first FISA warrant application, that Page had been a CIA informant. But Clinesmith certainly was told about it in June 2017, before the FBI applied for the fourth warrant. He was also told that the CIA had informed the FBI about Page's status back in August 2016. Despite having that information, the bureau's investigative team had never disclosed it to the FISC in applying for the first three warrants. Disclosing it now -- while mulishly seeking a fourth warrant against Page -- would be humiliating.But that was the dilemma: Either admit that corruption or incompetence explained an inexcusable concealment of information from the FISA court, or try to concoct some rationalization that could harmonize the FBI's representations with the contradictory CIA information, even if that required obfuscation. Sadly, when one studies the inexcusable conduct of the Trump-Russia probe, it is not surprising that Clinesmith went with the second option. The bureau, abetted by the Justice Department, desperately wanted to convince itself that there was no need to make an embarrassing disclosure. In that mindset, silence (i.e., doing nothing) is orders of magnitude easier to rationalize than a confession of inexplicable error that one knows will be met with condemnation."But wait a second," you're saying to yourself. "I've read about the case. As I understand it, the CIA told Clinesmith in an email that Page was a CIA source, and then Clinesmith altered the email to say Page was not a CIA source. There's no way to rationalize that. It's a black-and-white lie."Alas, things are never that straightforward. When intelligence agencies interact, opaque code is standard fare. And where there is coded language, which two different agencies might claim to construe slightly differently, there is opportunity for mischief -- especially if a lawyer is involved. Clinesmith and his superiors exploited that opportunity.And Clinesmith reprised the sleight of hand in last week's "I did it, but I didn't do it" guilty plea.Your Rosetta Stone for this legerdemain is the term "digraph." It refers to a two-letter designation that denotes some kind of status. A good example of a well-known digraph is CI, which means "confidential informant" in law-enforcement parlance.In connection with Clinesmith's case, we're talking about a digraph that the CIA uses in its intelligence reports. The digraph remains classified. We are not told what the two letters are in either the criminal information against Clinesmith or the DOJ inspector general's FISA abuse report (where most of the Clinesmith story is related at pages 247–56, with the SSA referred to as "SSA 2"). We are informed only that the digraph denotes an American who has been approved by the CIA for "operational contact" with a foreign power.When you encounter "[digraph]," then, understand that it is a CIA term, defined as an American who is tasked by the CIA to have contact with certain foreigners and who wittingly reports the resulting intel back to the CIA. To understand the game that Clinesmith is playing, it is vital to remember this definition of digraph. The key to his defense is to feign confusion about the term's meaning -- conflating it, as we shall see, with nonvoluntary sources who unwittingly give information to the CIA.Was Page a Source 'in Any Capacity'?In June 2017, the SSA asked Clinesmith to find out whether Page was a CIA "source." The government's published allegations do not say whether the SSA and Clinesmith discussed the digraph, at least initially. There is reason to believe that, in the days that followed, the SSA reviewed the classified documents about Page that the CIA had provided to the bureau in August 2016. As we shall see in due course, the SSA and Clinesmith eventually discussed the digraph in an important instant-message exchange.Before emailing the CIA, did Clinesmith consult with his superiors at the FBI General Counsel's Office, or with the Crossfire Hurricane investigative team, which would have had access to the classified documents about Page previously provided by the CIA? The government's published allegations do not tell us. But we do know that, by the time he sent his June 15, 2017, email to the CIA official who was his point of contact at the agency (the CIA "liaison"), Clinesmith had at least heard of the digraph. That's because, in that email, Clinesmith wrote that the bureau needed "some clarification on Carter Page" because there "is an indication that he may be a '[digraph]' source."After noting that this could be something the FBI would need to explain to the FISC when applying for the next renewal of the Page FISA warrant, Clinesmith went on to pose two questions to the CIA liaison (my italics):> 1) Source Check / Is Page a source in any capacity? …> > 2) If he is, what is a "[digraph]" source (or whatever type of source he is)?Clinesmith's second question created the opening for him to claim, in the false-statement case brought by Durham, that he, and the FBI generally, were in the dark about the digraph's meaning. It is based on this sowing of confusion that he now claims not to have intended to deceive anyone.The CIA liaison's email in response to Clinesmith is not a model of clarity. It is clear enough for us to grasp that Clinesmith is now lying, but not so clear that Clinesmith would think it futile to kick some dust in our eyes. The liaison wrote that the CIA uses> the [digraph] to show that the encrypted individual . . . is a [U.S. person]. We encrypt the [U.S. persons] when they provide reporting to us. My recollection is that Page was or is . . . [digraph] but the [documents previously provided by the CIA] will explain the details. If you need a formal definition for the FISA, please let me know and we'll work up some language and get it cleared for use. [Emphasis added.]The Game: Conflating Digraph with Encryption and Incidental SurveillanceNote that Clinesmith did not ask about encryption; the CIA liaison raised it. We know, however, that the FBI uses encryption in intelligence reporting. That's because we've been through the great unmasking controversy.As I've detailed, "masking" involves what's known as incidental surveillance. That is when an American citizen unwittingly stumbles into an intelligence-collection operation by interacting with either a covert informant who reports intelligence to the FBI, or a suspected foreign agent whom the FBI is monitoring (often under FISA). As a result of such interactions, the FBI acquires information from the American citizen, even though the American citizen is not the target and is not wittingly providing information to U.S. intelligence. To protect the American's privacy (because the American is not a suspect and there was no court order targeting the American's communications), the FBI and other intelligence agencies mask -- conceal -- the American's identity. To do that, instead of using the American's name, they substitute some designation -- it could be a phrase (such as "U.S. Person 1") or a symbol (such as a digraph).In that sense, the concealment of the identity of an American who unwittingly passes information to U.S. intelligence agencies could be likened to encryption.Now, can you see what happened here?The last thing Clinesmith wanted was to be told by the liaison that Page was a witting CIA source. He was looking for some reason, any reason, to avoid learning that -- a concept the law refers to as conscious avoidance, or willful blindness. Probably without realizing she was doing it, the liaison gave Clinesmith the out he was looking for by using the word encrypt. Clinesmith proceeded to seize on encryption as a rationale for interpreting the digraph as an analogy to the FBI's masking situation -- where the bureau, in writing reports, encrypts the identity of an American who is incidentally monitored and does not intentionally provide information to the U.S. government.Manifestly, this is not an honest reading of what the CIA liaison said. And Clinesmith knows it. The liaison was not talking about all circumstances in which the CIA encrypts an American's identity; she was referring to the very specific situation when the CIA uses the digraph in question -- the digraph that Clinesmith expressly asked about. She said the CIA uses this digraph when those Americans "provide reporting to us."Let's be clear on that. The liaison did not say the CIA uses the digraph "when we incidentally get information from an unwitting American who is communicating with a target we're surveilling." She said the CIA uses the digraph when these Americans "provide reporting to us." The commonsense inference is the direct, intentional transmission of information to the agency.But the liaison did not leave it at that. To ensure that she was communicating the concept accurately, she added two other things. First, she told Clinesmith to consult the documents the CIA had already given the FBI months earlier, which laid out that Page was a witting source authorized for operational contact with Russians. And second, the liaison offered to provide Clinesmith a definition of digraph so the term could be conveyed accurately to the FISC.But again, that was the last thing Clinesmith was interested in. In writing back, he basically tells the liaison: Never mind, we've got this. He was not going to give the liaison a chance to correct his distortion of the word encrypt, his studied obtuseness. Instead, Clinesmith claimed that the FBI was digging into the CIA documents (though he later conceded to the IG that he did not do so -- he assumed that someone would dig into them). More significantly, he stated, "I think the definition of the [digraph] answers our questions." He was talking, of course, about the way he chose to construe what the liaison said about "digraph," not what she actually said.Holes in Clinesmith's StoryIt is not clear with whom at the FBI, if anyone, Clinesmith consulted to come up with his story. He admitted that he shared the CIA liaison's email -- without first tampering with it -- with one of the Crossfire Hurricane case agents and a different supervisory agent (not the SSA) assigned to the Mueller special-counsel team. But in doing so, Clinesmith provided no context or comment. The case agent apparently took it as a request to pull the CIA documents (which Clinesmith claims not to recall reviewing).Clinesmith also sent an instant message to his direct supervisor (the chief of the national-security branch of the FBI General Counsel's Office), claiming he'd been informed by the CIA that Page was a "U.S. subsource of a source" -- i.e., an American who was not a witting informant but who was in incidental contact with (and thus a source of information for) a witting informant.This is the same tale that Clinesmith told the Justice Department's inspector general. Naturally, given that the email from the CIA liaison neither stated nor conveyed the impression that Page had been an unwitting source of a CIA informant, the IG asked Clinesmith where that explanation came from. Apparently flustered, Clinesmith said he couldn't be sure, but thought it might have come from phone conversations with the liaison -- conveniently unrecorded, of course.Yet, the liaison did not recall having any phone conversations with Clinesmith. Nor is there any reason to believe there was such a conversation: The email exchange shows that, although the liaison offered to discuss the matter further, Clinesmith demurred -- having calculated that he could sow confusion about the digraph by exploiting the liaison's use of the word encrypt. Most significantly, according to the IG, the liaison says she never told Clinesmith that Page was an unwitting source; indeed, she maintained that "her email stated just the opposite."In any event, Clinesmith had come up with his story to conceal Page's status as a CIA informant. But would he be able to get it past the SSA?End of Part 2.
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| Lovecraft Country Is Packed With Supernatural Symbolism Posted: 25 Aug 2020 02:56 PM PDT |
| Portland protesters burn Maga hats and guillotine giant teddy bear on eve of Trump convention Posted: 24 Aug 2020 08:04 AM PDT  Violence and rioting exploded again in Portland this weekend as the shooting of another unarmed black man – this time in Wisconsin – fired up Black Lives Matter and anti-police protesters across the US.The city is still tense after more than three months of angry demonstrations, which have seen police and federal troops using force against protesters – some of whom have in turn escalated their actions, setting fire to police property and using violence themselves.
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| Jerry Falwell Jr. says he was blackmailed because of wife's affair Posted: 24 Aug 2020 09:28 AM PDT  Jerry Falwell Jr., currently on a leave of absence as the leader of evangelical Liberty University, has released a statement saying that he is seeking help for the "emotional toll" from an affair his wife had with a man who he says later threatened his family.
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| TikTok users review-bombed Trump's campaign app so hard that Apple had to reset its star-rating Posted: 24 Aug 2020 04:52 AM PDT  TikTok fans began review-bombing the Trump 2020 app on Apple's App Store in July after Trump signed an executive order targeting ByteDance.
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| The Trump campaign: Re-elect the president because he is presiding over hellish chaos Posted: 24 Aug 2020 07:22 PM PDT  During the first night of the Republican National Convention, the party leaned heavily into apocalyptic scaremongering about a future Biden presidency. "They'll disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home, and invite MS-13 to live next door," said Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.). The Democrats have run Baltimore "into the ground," said Kim Klacik, a GOP nominee for Congress in Maryland. "Abandoned buildings, liquor stores on the corner, drug addicts, guns on the street, that's the normal in many neighborhoods," she added.Now, it is true there has been a moderate uptick in murders in some big American cities. The New York Times found that as of July they were up 16 percent relative to 2019 in a selection of 25 cities — though violent crime overall was down 2 percent, and overall crime was down 5.3 percent. This probably has something to do with the coronavirus pandemic, and the fact that, in many cities, police departments appear to be conducting a de facto work slowdown as collective punishment for being criticized by protesters.But the logic of the Trump campaign argument here makes no sense at all. It is true that Democrats run local governments in many big cities, but the president is the most powerful elected official in the country. It is his ostensible job to preserve law and order, and he has sweeping powers to do so. Instead, he has deliberately chosen to inflame the violence in cities like Washington, D.C. and Portland, Oregon with racist rhetoric and by siccing federal law enforcement on unarmed protesters.Effectively, the Trump campaign is simultaneously hysterically exaggerating the scale of the violence problem in American cities that is happening on his watch, and arguing that he should be re-elected to fight it. It's almost as though the argument is not made in good faith.More stories from theweek.com Biden campaign tries to dunk on the Republican National Convention by parodying Simon & Garfunkel Black Monday for the religious right Donald Trump Jr. reportedly thinks his dad is going to lose in November
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| Ghislaine Maxwell loses bid to be moved into general population at U.S. jail Posted: 25 Aug 2020 10:50 AM PDT  A U.S. judge rejected Ghislaine Maxwell's request to be moved into the general population at the Brooklyn jail where she is awaiting trial on charges she aided the late financier Jeffrey Epstein's sexual abuse of girls. Maxwell had objected to being treated worse than other pretrial inmates at the Metropolitan Detention Center, citing "onerous" conditions including round-the-clock surveillance, numerous body scans, and being isolated in her cell most of the time.
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| Three workers trapped 20 feet underground die in sewer manhole, Indiana officials say Posted: 25 Aug 2020 12:50 PM PDT  The men were working at a school facility, officials say.
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| Redwoods survive wildfire at California's oldest state park Posted: 24 Aug 2020 04:19 PM PDT  When a massive wildfire swept through California's oldest state park last week it was feared many trees in a grove of old-growth redwoods, some of them 2,000 years old and among the tallest living things on Earth, may finally have succumbed. Among the survivors is one dubbed Mother of the Forest. "That is such good news, I can't tell you how much that gives me peace of mind," said Laura McLendon, conservation director for the Sempervirens Fund, an environmental group dedicated to the protection of redwoods and their habitats.
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| Falwell Jr resigns from Liberty after former pool attendant alleges love triangle with wife: reports Posted: 24 Aug 2020 04:56 PM PDT  The affair would be a violation of the honor code of Liberty University, which Falwell has led for 13 years
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| Guam needs Aegis Ashore Posted: 25 Aug 2020 02:00 AM PDT  Aegis Ashore is not a perfect solution, but it provides the best hope for addressing urgent threats and creating the space for the additional capabilities that will undoubtedly be necessary.
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| 'Obvious lie after obvious lie': Biden campaign blasts RNC as 'incoherent charade' Posted: 25 Aug 2020 03:10 PM PDT  The Democratic nominee shared media fact-checks on the GOP convention on health care, crime and COVID-19.
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| A Florida man who thought the coronavirus was 'blown out of proportion' lost his wife to it Posted: 25 Aug 2020 07:38 AM PDT  Brian Lee Hitchens said he and his wife, Erin, had believed false claims circulating on social media that downplayed the disease COVID-19.
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| 'Secret weapon': How Trump is counting on Melania's RNC speech four years after she crashed and burned in plagiarism row Posted: 25 Aug 2020 11:02 AM PDT  She is the first lady and the Trump campaign hopes Melania Trump won't be the administration's last with a 'secret weapon' speech on Tuesday that they are hoping will win over suburban women voters.Ms Trump's prime time pitch, expected to focus on her husband's female empowerment credentials, comes after a 2016 campaign speech that failed the inspire the same enthusiasm as the 2008 Michelle Obama address it was accused of plagiarising.
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| 15-year-old was ‘passed off’ to men in sex-trafficking case, Kentucky police say Posted: 25 Aug 2020 12:23 PM PDT  In exchange for sex, the girl received money and pets, police said.
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| North Korean leader Kim calls for prevention efforts against coronavirus, looming typhoon: KCNA Posted: 25 Aug 2020 03:35 PM PDT  North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has called for prevention efforts against the novel coronavirus and a typhoon, state news agency KCNA said on Wednesday. An enlarged meeting of the politburo of the Workers Party took place amid a pandemic that is putting additional pressure on the North Korean economy, battered by recent border closures and flood damage. The meeting assessed "some defects in the state emergency anti-epidemic work for checking the inroads of the malignant virus", KCNA said in a statement.
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| Chicago COVID-19 update; Dr. Arwady speaks on removal of Wisconsin from travel order Posted: 25 Aug 2020 09:56 AM PDT  Chicago public health officials will provide an update to the city's COVID-19 travel quarantine order Tuesday.
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| A Saudi dissident suing Twitter over a massive 2016 hack says the platform's incompetence got multiple whistleblowers killed Posted: 25 Aug 2020 06:42 AM PDT  Ali al-Ahmed told Business Insider that his sources in were exposed when Saudi spies unwittingly employed by Twitter accessed his account.
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| Judge won’t dismiss Lee statue lawsuit; case heads for trial Posted: 25 Aug 2020 01:33 PM PDT  A lawsuit seeking to prevent Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam's administration from removing an enormous statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee can proceed, a judge ruled Tuesday, clearing the way for a trial in the fall. Richmond Circuit Court Judge W. Reilly Marchant rejected much of the state's motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a group of property owners along the residential boulevard where the statue is situated. The decision at least further delays Northam's plan, which he announced in early June, citing the pain felt across the country about the death of George Floyd, a Black man who died under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer as he struggled to breathe.
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| Facebook blocks Thai access to group critical of monarchy Posted: 24 Aug 2020 11:45 PM PDT  The social media giant says it's preparing legal action after being ordered to block access in Thailand.
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| Hurricane Laura could undergo 'rapid intensification' before landfall. Here's why that could be so dangerous Posted: 25 Aug 2020 12:09 PM PDT  Rapid intensification is typically defined to be a tropical cyclone intensifying by at least 35 mph in a 24-hour period,
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| Just Like Your Pup, This Dog Gear is Ready for Adventure Posted: 25 Aug 2020 03:44 PM PDT |
| Biden Campaign Hopping Mad at CBS and ABC for Gifting Trump Bonus Airtime Posted: 24 Aug 2020 05:25 PM PDT  When two of the major broadcast networks—CBS and ABC—broke into their regular programming Monday to carry live portions of President Donald Trump's largely false musings after his official nomination, departing from their announced policy of giving only a hour of daily airtime to each party's political convention, the Biden-Harris campaign was not amused.Indeed, operatives for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were fuming Monday about a perceived lack of fairness in which the nation's major television outlets permitted Trump—in an ominous echo of the 2016 campaign in which the former reality-TV star received an estimated $2 billion of free airtime—to manipulate the media to his advantage."It did not go unnoticed," Biden-Harris campaign spokesman T.J. Ducklo said in a relatively diplomatic statement to The Daily Beast. "Last week, the networks broadcast roughly half of the DNC's programming. If they plan on using the public airwaves to give the RNC more airtime, I hope they'll explain to the public why that is."Ducklo registered his complaint even though not all Democratic activists, both inside and outside the Biden-Harris campaign, believe that the more Trump appears on television, the worse off he'll be as Election Day approaches.> CBS News on DNC2020: We will limit coverage to one hour in primetime, then not actually air anything but a couple speeches. > > CBS News on RNC2020: We will interrupt daytime schedules to let Trump speak unfiltered because live speeches are news but taped content is propaganda.> > — TVMoJoe (@TVMoJoe) August 24, 2020New York Magazine's West Coast Vulture correspondent Joe Adalian summarized the objection in a tweet: "CBS News on DNC2020: We will limit coverage to one hour in primetime, then not actually air anything but a couple speeches. CBS News on RNC2020: We will interrupt daytime schedules to let Trump speak unfiltered because live speeches are news but taped content is propaganda."Neither CBS, which broadcast around 20 minutes of Trump's 53-minute venomous and lie-filled stream-of-consciousness, nor ABC, which aired around 7 minutes of the president's rant, were willing to respond to Ducklo's demand. NBC, meanwhile, carried a live snippet of the delegate roll call that put Trump over the top, but not his speech in which he spun fact-fee fantasies about the alleged fraudulence of mail-in ballots, a rigged election, and fake news, among other egregious whoppers. (Separately, both networks did carry Biden's speech announcing Harris as his running mate, which constituted free airtime before the conventions.)While CBS offered a soupcon of fact-checking by CBS Evening News anchor Norah O'Donnell and chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett before signing off, ABC did zero fact-checking; instead anchor Diane Macedo let Republican consultant Alex Castellanos spin his on-air take on Trump's "need to put the spotlight on the Democrats [and] go back and redefine Joe Biden."The cable networks were generally sharper and more critical. While Fox News was true to form, airing Trump's rant without much pushback, CNN and MSNBC were withering.CNN's Anderson Cooper cut away after around 20 minutes, telling viewers that Trump "Started off falsely attacking mail-in voting… He also criticized the media for airing [Postmaster General Louis DeJoy's] hearing instead of his roll call. He falsely accused Democrats of wanting to shut down the country to hurt the economy and somehow help them at the ballot box. Unclear how angering the entire country by shutting down would help them at the ballot box."MSNBC's Chuck Todd, after his outlet aired the whole rant, said: "What we have just heard from the president was a grievance-filled informal acceptance speech that was filled with so many made-up problems with mail-in voting that if we were to air just the truthful parts we could probably only air maybe a sentence." > Chuck Todd after MSNBC aired Trump's *entire* lie filled speech > > A "speech filled with so many made-up problems about mail-in voting that **if we were to air just the truthful parts we could probably only air maybe a sentence** ... We need to kick off with a massive fact-check" pic.twitter.com/DTnjzmpYQz> > — Lis Power (@LisPower1) August 24, 2020A highly-placed insider in the Biden-Harris campaign—which, 71 days before Election Day, has consistently been polling ahead of Trump both nationally and in battleground states—told The Daily Beast: "We're in a comfortable place and I don't think we expect them [the networks] not to take him, but we expect them to do it in a responsible way. However, if networks are expanding their coverage from the one hour in prime time they gave to Democrats last week, we would have an extremely serious problem with that."This operative added, however, that the demand for parity in airtime is not the same as saying that more airtime for Trump will necessarily advantage him over Biden.Unlike in 2016, when the cable networks, especially CNN, aired Trump's rallies live as a ratings-grabbing if occasionally toxic confection of politics and entertainment, "the formula of more Trump equaling a good outcome for him is not accurate this time around," this operative said. "Networks took his coronavirus briefings in March and April that were filled with misinformation and bluster, and his support began to plummet. There's plenty of evidence to suggest that the more people hear his unhinged chaos, the less people like it."This view echoed that of President Barack Obama's former campaign manager David Plouffe, who tweeted on Monday: "Give him all the airtime he wants. 24/7 would be ok. Rarely has someone done that much political damage to themselves just by opening their own trap."> Give him all the airtime he wants. 24/7 would be ok. Rarely has someone done that much political damage to themselves just by opening their own trap.> > — David Plouffe (@davidplouffe) August 24, 2020Former Bill Clinton strategist James Carville, meanwhile, called Trump's speech "the 24,092nd data point that he's crazy. He's desperate. He's seeing that he's going down; he doesn't have confidence in anybody and he thinks he can talk his way back into it. He's just a desperate guy who thinks he can talk his way out of the gallows."A prominent cable-news staffer predicted that "there will be more uncomfortable moments of awkwardness" for executives and producers as the Republican convention unfolds this week, while a top executive told The Daily Beast: "We're between a rock and hard place when the president of the United States" speaks, outlets worry that not airing his remarks live will miss something newsmaking.However, this person did predict that Trump "is going to try from now until Election Day, for the next 71 days in a row, to be in front of live cameras as often as possible—with nobody really knowing what the plan is or what he's up to. And what we should do is not take it. We'll see."Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Bahamas Paradise settles, will pay crew $875,000 for months of work without wages Posted: 25 Aug 2020 09:06 AM PDT  Bahamas Paradise Cruise Line crew members may finally get paid after months of working without wages on the company's Florida-based ships.
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