1016: Bong Rip

You now have anycollusion.com forwarding to noagendashow.com

Regards,

Ned Jeffery

Dude named Ned, Knight of the convict broadcasts.

Just booked a business class ticket

with Austrian Airlines - system said 5 free seats. Go to select seats - only 2

available.

Call up - they say, Yes, the other

seats are blocked for passengers with pets! (not that any had booked yet).

Seriously? Oh yes. Did I hear you

correctly? Yes, you did.

I argued with them and they kindly

booked the seat I wanted.

(actually they were great - quick to

answer and agent gave me her name since I needed to call back after I completed

the booking so she could do it, and called back and was again quickly answered

and immediately transferred back to her).

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 14:49

By Peter Balonon-Rosen and Kimberly Adams March 09, 2018 | 11:39 AM

Embed CodeAccording to the latest Marketplace-Edison Research Poll, about 14 percent of men have personally experienced sexual harassment in the workplace. - Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images Embed CodeEventually, it just became another part of his job.

If Paul Burns' boss told him he looked handsome that day, he knew how the day would end. If she told him to bring some papers to her house after work, he knew how the day would end. If she told him to pick up her dry cleaning, he knew how the day would end.

He was 18, going on 19, in an entry-level job at a mortgage company in Orange County, California. She was management. And that gave her power.

"I mean, I didn't want to lose my job," said Burns, now in his late thirties. "So I complied."

According to the latest Marketplace-Edison Research Poll, about 14 percent of men '-- nearly one in seven '-- have personally experienced sexual harassment in the workplace. In 2017, 17 percent '-- nearly one in five '-- of all sexual harassment allegations filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission came from men.

While the vast majority of workplace sexual harassment cases are brought by women, men too experience sexual harassment and abuse in the workplace. It's an issue, surrounded by a culture of stigma and silence, that lawyers and advocates say often goes unnoticed and underreported.

A cycle of coercion

Burns was being groomed. He says it started small, with requests to bring paperwork left at the office to her house. Then she'd ask him to stay for a bit. Then came requests for massages and shoulder rubs. Eventually more.

"It got physical," Burns said. "There was intimate contact."

And it was ongoing. Requests to "bring over dry cleaning," code for sexual acts, soon became more and more persistent. Burns says he became trapped in a cycle of physical coercion.

"I would be spending the night, leaving early, going home to shower and change, and then going back to work," Burns said. "And she knew that I had to do it."

She was his boss, in a position to make or break his career, and he was scared he'd be fired if he didn't meet her demands. Plus, she told him nobody would believe him if he told them about it.

"The statement that she made was something along the nature of 'I'm a successful, attractive woman,'" Burns said. "'Who's really going to believe you?'"

Stigma, gender norms affect how men report sexual harassment

For men, stigma attached to sexual harassment can be a barrier to reporting it.

"The biggest factor is that men are embarrassed," said Todd Harrison, a partner at a California law-firm that specializes in employment law and sexual harassment cases. "They have pride that gets in the way, they don't want to complain about it, especially to their male co-workers."

Harrison's firm, Perona, Langer, Beck, Serbin and Harrison, has worked with male clients filing sexual harassment allegations who have been teased by male colleagues.

"You know 'who doesn't want a woman flirting with you?' or 'who doesn't want to have sex with their boss?'" Harrison said. "That kind of thing."

Men can be reluctant to come forward due to societal norms that say sexual harassment is not a male issue or because they don't want others to know.

"The more that men come forward, the easier it will be for other men," Harrison said.

But men are hardly alone in being reluctant to report, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission estimates that most people who have experienced harassment, regardless of gender, never file a formal complaint about it.

While in recent months, a number of high profile cases have come to light in which men sexually harassed other men in the workplace, n either the Marketplace-Edison poll nor the data available from the EEOC collected information on who did the harassing '-- a woman or another man.

Regardless of gender, "in almost all [cases], you're always going to see the power difference," Harrison said. "It becomes about domination, about demeaning the other person."

"She was just my boss"

Paul Burns eventually brought the matter to his company's human resources department. He says the representative did not take him seriously, no matter how explicit he became.

"When I tried to explain it, it was almost like he thought I was talking about a fantasy I wanted to have and that it was wishful thinking," Burns recalled. "The only response, it was like a, 'You should be so lucky.'"

People at work thought he was making a bad a joke. No one thought it was real. Burns turned to his girlfriend at the time, to share what he was being forced to do. She broke up with him, thinking he was confessing to cheating.

"I was being forced to do this," Burns said. "I mean she wasn't my girlfriend or someone I was in a relationship with or that I had entertained being in a relationship with '-- she was just my boss."

According to Burns, the boss told him she had been sexually harassed earlier in her career and told him he was lucky, because when it happened to her it was with someone unattractive.

"And that since she's not, I should just be dealing with it," Burns said. "I went to management so many times about it and it just got rebuffed away."

There was no way to make it stop. So he quit.

What can workplaces do?

Workplaces can take steps to create an environment where employees feel comfortable coming forward with concerns about sexual harassment. It can come down to training about appropriate language and requests, the role of power and clear steps that management will take following an allegation, according to Harrison, the lawyer.

"A lot of employees are under the misguided belief that human resources is their friend," Harrison said. "Human resources is there to protect the company."

Harrison recommends that people document any instances of harassment or abuse and then fax, email or certify mail that to human resources.

"A lot of employers will say, 'They never complained,'" Harrison said. "'We never knew about it.'"

A resolution

Five years later, Burns had a new job at a call center.

There, according to Burns, one of the floor leads made a comment of a sexual nature about his ethnicity. "Plus, other comments sexualizing me in a way that I didn't want," Burns said.

Again, in the workplace. Again, coming from a female supervisor. Burns quickly took the matter to human resources.

"I think it had to do with my previous experience," Burns said. "I didn't want to relive something like that again."

This time the matter was immediately resolved. The floor lead was removed from his unit and he never had to interact with her again.

Burns was relieved. He had been nervous to come forward.

"Other men need to come forward and say 'this happened to me' and 'this bothered me,'" Burns said. "If we don't do that, this social stigma is just going to continue on."

Follow Peter Balonon-Rosen at @pbalonon_rosen.

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 14:49

The World Health Organisation has added a mysterious ''Disease X'' to a list of viruses it fears could cause a global pandemic in the future.

The organisation released a list of diseases it considers pose a high risk to the public due to their potential to spark an epidemic and the limited treatment available to combat them.

Virus such as Ebola, Zika, Lassa fever and severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars), which have all seen outbreaks in recent years are included as serious threats.

However, the WHO has included the ominous-sounding Disease X to its priority list for the first time this year after a review by health experts in February.

Disease X is in fact not a newly-discovered threat in itself, but a hypothetical virus, which could emerge in the future and cause widespread infection across the globe.

''Disease X represents the knowledge that a serious international epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently unknown to cause human disease'', the WHO said in a statement.

It added healthcare officials were planning for a currently unidentified threat now to ensure: ''research and development preparedness that is relevant for an unknown Disease X as far as possible.''

''History tells us that it is likely the next big outbreak will be something we have not seen before'', John-Arne Rottingen, chief executive of the Research Council of Norway and a scientific adviser to the WHO committee told The Telegraph.

''It may seem strange to be adding an 'X' but the point is to make sure we prepare and plan flexibly in terms of vaccines and diagnostic tests.

''We want to see 'plug and play' platforms developed which will work for any, or a wide number of diseases; systems that will allow us to create countermeasures at speed.''

Mr Rottingen said Disease X could come from a variety of sources, although it was most likely developed through zoonotic transmission, where an infectious disease which usually afflicts animals jumps to humans.

Ebola and salmonella infection are both zoonoses, as is HIV, which is thought to have been transferred to humans from chimpanzees other and monkeys in the early 20th Century.

''As the ecosystem and human habitats change there is always the risk of disease jumping from animals to humans'', he added.

''It's a natural process and it is vital that we are aware and prepare. It is probably the greatest risk.''

The WHO said several other groups of diseases, such as haemorrhagic fevers and emergent non-polio enteroviruses, were omitted from its priority list.

It did however say these pathogens did post a serious risk to public health and need to be ''watched carefully'' and potentially considered for inclusion next year.

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 14:41

The CDC lab in Atlanta '' responsible for storing and studying some of the world's most dangerous pathogens such as smallpox and Ebola '' is showing worrying signs of wear and tear decades earlier than planned, the agency says.

The 13-year-old site is already wearing down, sparking an official request for a new building to host some of the world's deadliest microbes including the latest, most lethal mutations of the flu and the almost-untreatable Marburg virus. ''The concerns are that the facility we've been in now is beginning to show signs of age,'' said Dr. Inger Damon, head of the division of high consequence pathogens and pathology at the facility, on Friday as cited by Stat News.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is asking the US Congress for $400 million to build a new, and hopefully improved, high security laboratory. Approximately $350 million will be spent on the facility itself while the additional $50 million will go towards related work.

The current facility, a 400,000-sq-ft concrete building located on the CDC's main campus on the outskirts of Atlanta, cost $214 million to build and was opened in 2005. HDR Inc., the architecture firm behind the project reportedly estimated the building would boast a 50-year lifespan. That bold prediction appears to have fallen 32 years short, as current estimates indicate the building needs to be replaced by 2023.

Former CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden said that ''the longer it takes [to replace the facility], the more likely there will be a failure. And if there's a failure, we lose an essential line of defense'' against disease threats.

The CDC Laboratory is one of 13 operational or planned maximum security, Biosafety Level-4 (BSL-4) labs in the US. BSL-4 labs handle the deadliest microbes known to man and therefore require the most stringent security measures possible. These labs have to be housed in a separate or extremely isolated structure from other labs, and must have a dedicated air supply and exhaust system as well as multiple, comprehensive decontamination systems throughout. The lab uses eye-scanners to give employees access to the labyrinthine decontamination facilities.

As with the lower level BSL-3 labs, the exits at BSL-4 facilities have two sets of automatically-closing and locking doors, and an air flow system that directs air from clean areas to potentially contaminated areas only '' never vice-versa. In addition, staff must wear lab coats, gloves and face shields and have to at times work in full body, air-supplied pressure suits within biological safety cabinets.

Worryingly, the current facilities reportedly experienced a decontamination shower failure in 2009 and a fire in a low-risk lab in 2015. Construction on the new facility will take four years.

''We've always tried to maintain that continuity. I think there's just too much that's unpredictable,'' Damon added, speaking to Stat news. ''When you need that facility '... you want to have it available. You don't know when the next SARS is going to happen, or the next large Ebola outbreak.''

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University of Wisconsin experts are leading a $3 million effort to create as many as 1000 doses of an experimental Ebola vaccine that will be tested during clinical trials in Japan mid-2019.

Ebola is a severe and often fatal human pathogen. There are periodic outbreaks of this disease in sub-Saharan Africa, including the epidemic that occurred between 2013 and 2016 in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, according to a Waisman Center press release.

Within humans, Ebola can be spread through close and direct physical contact with vomit, feces and bodily fluids from someone who is infected with the virus. It can also be transmitted from eating meat from non-domesticated mammals, reptiles, amphibians and birds, contact with surfaces and materials contaminated with these fluids, and from the usage of contaminated needles and syringes.

Madison-based company will test 'revolutionary' universal flu vaccine this spring FluGen, a Madison company founded by globally recognized virus researchers, will test their universal influenza vaccine on 100 volunteers this Read'...

The effort to bring this vaccine to the clinic is being led by School of Veterinary Medicine professor and global expert on Ebola and influenza Yoshihiro Kawaoka, with experts from Waisman Biomanufacturing.

Normally, an Ebola virus has seven genes that are needed to replicate. The work Kawaoka and Waisman Biomanufacturing is doing comes from the discovery of Delta VP30, a form of the Ebola virus that isn't infectious and is safe to work within laboratory conditions.

Delta VP30 was discovered by Peter Halfmann, a scientist in Kawaoka's lab, more than a decade ago. Delta in genomics basically means deletion, so Delta VP30 is a Ebola virus without the VP30 gene, Halfmann said.

''Delta VP30 is just like an authentic Ebola virus, except that I was able to pluck out one gene,'' Halfmann said. ''That one gene [that I took out] was VP30.''

Because Delta VP30 is missing one gene, it cannot replicate or infect other cells. Halfmann then developed cell lines with the Delta VP30 gene in monkeys, which resulted in Delta VP30 being present to compliment the replication-defective virus, in turn making the body naturally create a defense for the virus. The vaccine has already been proven to be effective when tested on monkeys.

Though the research was done on monkeys, Halfmann expects the results to be the same with humans.

''When applied to humans, it's just a vaccine,'' Halfmann said. ''It won't replicate or do anything. It'll just give all the proteins to the immune system, so they could make antibodies in an efficient response.''

UW scientist says 'zero evidence' to support link between vaccination, autism As a part of the ''Wednesday Nite @ the Lab'' series, University of Wisconsin assistant scientist Malia Jones talked about Read'...

Since vaccines work by exposing our immune system to a virus or parts of it, Delta VP30 effectiveness comes from the fact that it is a whole-virus vaccine, Halfmann said.

This means unlike other Ebola vaccine candidates who use vector viruses to ferry a single Ebola protein '-- a surface antigen '-- in order to strengthen the immune system, Delta VP30 presents all the viral proteins to the immune system, Halfmann said. This can result in increased and broadened immune responses compared to vaccines that only use a single viral antigen, he added.

Both Kawaoka and Halfmann went to Sierra Leone in December 2014, where they were able to see the frightening effects of Ebola. In Sierra Leone, they had a lab in Freetown and access to a military hospital with 12 treatment beds. Because of this, they were able to continuously keep up with the patients and study the disease.

Bill would prevent child vaccination opt-outs for personal reasons Wisconsin parents would no longer be able to cite ''personal conviction'' for a reason to exempt their children from required vaccinations Read'...

Being able to study the disease in person lead to Kawaoka determining his goal, which is to produce a safe and effective vaccine against Ebola virus for people.

In order to do so, Waisman Biomanufacturing, a specialized facility whose goal is to help translate scientific discoveries into early-stage clinical trials, will be working on producing the vaccine, the facility's managing director Carl Ross said.

Ross stressed how Waisman Biomanufacturing's goal is to help create the vaccine quickly, efficiently and cost effectively so it can move into clinical trials. Ross also hopes this experience will foster a relationship between Waisman Biomanufacturing and UW, so more work can be done together in the future.

''Right now, [the Waisman Center is] making the cell bank to produce the virus, as well as doing the process development to make the clinical product and develop quality control assays to release the product for human use.''

There is a scheduled meeting in April 2019 to talk about possibly starting human clinical trials for this vaccine in the U.S.

The trials in the U.S. are tentatively set for late 2019 or early 2020.

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 14:35

From the State Department to Capitol HillBy Patrick Martin9 March 2018

PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE

This is the third part of a three-part article. Thefirst partwas posted on March 7, thesecond parton March 8.

Candidates from a military-intelligence background are seeking the Democratic Party nomination in 40 percent of the congressional districts targeted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in the 2018 elections. They make up the largest single occupational group running in the Democratic primaries. If the Democratic military-intelligence candidates won all 44 of the districts in which they are running'--which is theoretically possible, if very unlikely'--they would constitute, as a bloc, ten percent of the membership of the House of Representatives.

From the State Department to Capitol HillThe final category of military-intelligence candidates consists of veterans of the US State Department during the Obama years, most of them former aides to Hillary Clinton. These are among the best financed and most publicized of the likely Democratic nominees. In the event of a Democratic ''wave'' in November, most would find themselves with seats in Congress.

Tom Malinowski, a former congressional aide and Clinton administration official, headed the Washington office of Human Rights Watch for 13 years before joining the Obama administration under Secretary of State John Kerry as assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor. He is seeking the Democratic nomination in New Jersey's 7th Congressional District against incumbent Republican Leonard Lance.

Lauren Baer was a legal adviser to both Secretaries Clinton and Kerry, as well as US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power. She is now seeking the Democratic nomination in the 18th District of Florida, where her principal opponent is Pam Keith, a former judge advocate general in the US Navy and now general counsel to Florida Power & Light. Both women push additional buttons for identity politics, as Baer is openly gay and Keith is African-American.

Nancy Soderberg is a longtime US foreign policy figure going back to the Clinton administration, first at the National Security Council, then as deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs, then as an alternate US representative at the UN Security Council with the rank of ambassador. She has spent much of her time since then heading private overseas operations like the International Crisis Group, while playing a prominent role in the Florida Democratic Party. She is effectively unchallenged for the Democratic nomination in Florida's 6th Congressional District (Daytona Beach), where the incumbent Republican Ron DeSantis is running for governor.

Edward Meier was a senior adviser to the State Department. According to his campaign website, he ''was responsible for coordinating the military-to-civilian transition in Iraq'--ensuring our diplomats and aid workers would be safe and secure after the withdrawal of US troops. In this role, he traveled to Iraq on multiple official trips working closely with the US military and the Iraqi government. '...'' He went on to be director of policy outreach for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. Meier fell short Tuesday in his bid for the Democratic nomination in the 32nd District of Texas, finishing fourth out of five Democrats running against incumbent Republican Pete Sessions in a suburban Dallas district Clinton carried over Donald Trump, even though he spent the most money.

Sara Jacobs is another State Department official turned Clinton campaign aide, working on ''conflict zones in East and West Africa,'' particularly the campaign against Boko Haram in Nigeria, and helping to ''spearhead President Obama's efforts to improve governance in the security sector of our counterterrorism partners,'' according to her campaign website. She was a foreign policy adviser to the Clinton campaign and is now seeking the Democratic nomination in California's 49th District, where incumbent Darrell Issa is retiring.

Jacobs is the best-financed Democrat in the race, as befits the granddaughter of Qualcomm founder Irwin Jacobs, but at age 29 she would be the youngest congresswoman ever, and she has been snubbed in favor of several more experienced rivals by recent Democratic Party caucuses. One of her opponents is Douglas Applegate, a career Marine Corps judge advocate general with combat tours in Fallujah, Baghdad and Ramadi, who narrowly lost the 2016 race to Issa.

Talley Sergent, yet another State Department official turned Clinton campaign aide, is running in West Virginia's 2nd Congressional District, which includes Charleston, against two-term incumbent Republican Alex Mooney. A former aide to Senator Jay Rockefeller, Sergent worked on slavery and sex trafficking at the State Department, then managed Clinton's disastrous campaign in West Virginia before becoming a public relations executive for The Coca-Cola Co.

Challenging her for the Democratic nomination is Aaron Scheinberg, West Point graduate and Iraq War veteran, deployed first as a platoon leader in the 4th Infantry Division, then as a civil affairs officer in Haswah, Iraq. Scheinberg is now executive director of The Mission Continues, a nonprofit promoting the employment of veterans, whose board of directors includes such figures as Michele Flournoy, Pentagon undersecretary in the Obama administration; Meghan O'Sullivan, Iraq director for the National Security Council under George W. Bush; and retired General Ray S. Odierno, former commander of US forces in Iraq.

Jessica Morse was Iraq country coordinator for the State Department in the course of ''over a decade as a national security strategist,'' according to her website. She worked for the US Agency for International Development, a longtime CIA front, then as adviser to the US Pacific Command, where she ''strengthened the US-India defense relationship '... and worked to counter terrorist threats in South Asia.'' Her opponent for the Democratic nomination in the 4th District of California, to face Republican incumbent Tom McClintock, is another former State Department officer, Regina Bateson, who was a vice-consul in Guatemala and ''studied terrorist travel and border security,'' according to her campaign website.

A stealth candidate'--and some celebritiesThe American corporate media has been slow to comment on the extraordinary influx of military and intelligence officers into the Democratic Party's 2018 congressional campaign. The media prefers to cover the campaign from the standpoint of secondary characteristics, focusing on the great number of women running for office, mainly as Democrats, supposedly in response to Trump's misogyny.

An exception to this pattern was the article February 8 by the Capitol Hill publication Roll Call, under the headline, ''Active-Duty Candidates Can Run'--But Can They Campaign?'' The article profiled a Tennessee Democratic congressional candidate, Matt Reel, who was called up from his reserve status for a five-month deployment with the 20th Special Forces Group (Green Berets). According to the article, ''Even Matt Reel's staff doesn't know where he's deployed.''

Matt Reel Reel announced his campaign for the 7th District seat shortly after incumbent Republican Marsha Blackburn announced that she was leaving the House of Representatives to run for the US Senate seat from Tennessee currently held by Bob Corker, who is retiring. Because of the late announcements, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has not yet targeted the district and Reel is not included in the figures cited earlier in this article.

The unusual situation for Reel is that, under Pentagon rules, he cannot direct his own campaign while he is on active duty. His aides and supporters can continue to campaign, but he is barred communicating with them in any way. Reel is not even allowed to tell them where he is, since the military deployment is covert. This truly ''dark horse" candidate left his campaign having shot a few commercials and other video material, and will return a month or so before the August 2 primary.

Reel is one more example of a candidate from the ''black ops'' section of the military running as a Democrat. In his case, the two cannot be separated: he has been a Democratic Party functionary and a Green Beret since completing college. A former chief of staff to Alabama Representative Terri Sewell, his most recent position was deputy staff director for the Democrats on the House Veterans Affairs Committee.

While Reel is considered an extreme long-shot as a candidate, running in a district won by the Republicans in 2016 by a 3-1 margin, the DCCC is heavily promoting a number of career military candidates, most of them women, as star recruits for the most competitive districts in 2018, those where a switch from Republican to Democratic control is most likely. These candidates have access to funding far beyond what would be expected for first-time candidates without huge personal resources.

Running in the 31st District of Texas is Mary Jane Hegar, a helicopter pilot and certified military celebrity'--Angelina Jolie is cast to play her in a biographical film based on her memoir, Shoot Like a Girl: One Woman's Dramatic Fight in Afghanistan and on the Home Front. Hegar came to prominence through a lawsuit against the Pentagon policy of barring women from combat. Opposing her for the nomination to face incumbent Republican John Carter is Kent Lester, a West Point graduate and career military officer who retired as a lieutenant colonel after deployments to Panama and Bosnia, among other locations.

Shoot Like A Girl In Virginia's 2nd District, which encompasses the Norfolk-Hampton Roads area with its complex of naval bases and shipyards, the DCCC has promoted Elaine Luria, one of the first Navy women to serve as an officer on a nuclear-powered ship, as its favored candidate under the ''Red-to-Blue'' program. Luria has ''deployed six times to the Middle East and Western Pacific as a nuclear-trained surface warfare officer.'' She was second-in-command of a guided missile cruiser and commanded assault craft supporting a Marine Corps deployment.

Other military candidates who had already raked in more than one million dollars in campaign funds in 2017, the year before the election, and have been widely publicized in local media in their districts, include:

Mikie Sherrill, a career Navy helicopter pilot, with ten years' active service in Europe and the Middle East, now a federal prosecutor. She reported raising $1,230,000 by December 31, 2017 for her campaign for the Democratic nomination in New Jersey's 11th Congressional District, where incumbent Republican Rodney Freylingheusen is retiring.

Chrissy Houlahan, a former US Air Force captain, has raised $1,228,000 for her campaign in Pennsylvania's 6th Congressional District, against incumbent Republican Ryan Costello.

Amy McGrath, a career Marine fighter pilot with 89 missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, has raised $1,133,000 for her campaign in Kentucky's 6th Congressional District against incumbent Republican Andy Barr.

Some political conclusionsThere is growing popular hostility to the Trump administration, but within the political straitjacket of the two-party system, it is trapped without any genuine outlet. In November 2016, faced with the choice of equally repugnant ruling class figures'--Hillary Clinton, the longtime stooge of Wall Street and the Pentagon, and Donald Trump, the corrupt billionaire from the financial underworld of real estate swindling and casino gambling'--millions refused to vote. But disappointment and anger over the bankrupt, right-wing policies of the Obama administration led a sufficient number of working people to vote for Trump, particularly in devastated industrial states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, that he could eke out an Electoral College victory despite losing the popular vote.

The 2018 elections could well see a similar process, but in reverse. Angered by the tax cuts for the wealthy and big business, the gutting of social programs like Medicaid and food stamps, the attacks on immigrants and democratic rights more generally, and Trump's threats of military violence and even nuclear war, millions of working people, however reluctantly, will go to the polls to cast their ballots for the official ''opposition,'' the Democratic Party, which does not actually oppose Trump at all.

It is by no means certain that the Democrats will win control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterm election on November 6. But the details presented in this report demonstrate that a Democratic victory would in no sense represent a shift to the left in capitalist politics.

In a sense, the Democratic Party's promotion of a large number of military-intelligence candidates for competitive districts represents an insurance policy for the US ruling elite. In the event of a major swing to the Democrats, the House of Representatives will receive an influx of new members drawn primarily from the national security apparatus, trusted servants of American imperialism.

Parenthetically, it should be noted that there would be no comparable influx of Bernie Sanders supporters or other ''left''-talking candidates in the event of a Democratic landslide. Only five of the 221 candidates reviewed in this study had links to Sanders or billed themselves as ''progressive.'' None is likely to win the primary, let alone the general election.

When the dust clears after November 6, 2018, there will almost certainly be more former CIA agents in the Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives than former Sanders activists. It is the military-intelligence operatives who constitute the spine of the Democratic Party, not the Sanders ''Our Revolution'' group. This is a devastating verdict on the claims of the Vermont senator, backed by various pseudo-left groups, that it is possible to reform the Democratic Party and push it to the left.

The preponderance of national security operatives in the Democratic primaries sheds additional light on the nature of the Obama administration. Far from representing a resurgence of liberal reformism, as apologists for the Democrats like the International Socialist Organization claimed at the time of his election, Obama's eight years in office marked the further ascendancy of the military-intelligence apparatus within the Democratic Party.

This is demonstrated by the subsequent role of his top personnel. Among the former Obama civilian officials who are running in the Democratic primaries for seats in the House of Representatives, 16 served in the State Department, Pentagon, Department of Homeland Security or National Security Council, while only five served in domestic agencies. One of those, Haley Stevens, was chief of staff for the Obama auto industry task force, which imposed 50 percent wage cuts on newly hired auto workers. Among the five, only Stevens is considered a likely winner in the primary.

The Democratic Party has always been a party of the American capitalist class, and that means, from the dawn of the 20th century on, it has been a party of imperialism and imperialist war, whatever the occasional ''peace'' noises made by its candidates for the purpose of diverting and derailing mass antiwar sentiment among the American people.

For more than a century, a major political task of the Marxist movement in the United States has been to combat illusions in the Democratic Party, particularly those engendered by its comparatively brief periods of reformist politics, under President Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s, and again during the Kennedy-Johnson years of the 1960s. The struggle against the Democratic Party, as well as the Republicans, remains the main focus of the effort to establish the political independence of the working class.

But the 2018 campaign represents something qualitatively different. Neither party offers any credible prospect of significant social reform. Both offer right-wing nostrums, laced with militarism, while seeking to split the working class along the lines of race, gender and national origin.

The campaign takes place in the wake of more than a year of unrelenting focus by the Democrats on the anti-Russian campaign, a narrative claiming that Trump's victory in the presidential election was the result of Russian interference and that Trump is, for all practical purposes, a Russian stooge in the White House.

Not a shred of evidence has been provided either of Russian interference or of collusion with Russia on the part of the Trump campaign. Nor is there any suggestion that there was any significant element of fraud in either the vote or its tabulation by local and state governments.

But the Democratic Party has deliberately sought to whip up and appeal to the most right-wing, McCarthyite, chauvinist sentiments. It denounces Trump not for his right-wing policies, his immigrant baiting, his consorting with fascists and white supremacists, or his tax cut bonanza for the wealthy, but because he is allegedly insufficiently committed to confronting Russia militarily in the Middle East, Central Asia, Ukraine, Eastern Europe and the Baltic.

Clinton ran in 2016 as the favored candidate of the military-intelligence apparatus, amassing hundreds of endorsements by retired generals, admirals and spymasters, and criticizing Trump as unqualified to be the commander-in-chief.

This political orientation has developed and deepened in 2018. The Democratic Party is running in the congressional elections not only as the party that takes a tougher line on Russia, but as the party that enlists as its candidates and representatives those who have been directly responsible for waging war, both overt and covert, on behalf of American imperialism. It is seeking to be not only the party for the Pentagon and CIA, but the party of the Pentagon and CIA.

This is not merely a result of the political psychology or even the career paths of those who make up the upper echelon of the Democratic Party. It has a social and class character. The Democratic Party has long abandoned even a limited role as a party pledging social reforms in the interests of working people as a whole, in favor of the promotion of privileges for sections of the upper-middle class, doled out on the basis of identity politics.

The Democrat Party proposes a certain redistribution of wealth and power within the most privileged layer of the population, while leaving the essential social structure unchanged, with society divided between the super-rich at the top, a privileged upper-middle class, perhaps ten percent or less, and below them, the vast majority of working people, whose conditions of life continue to deteriorate as the economic ''recovery'' from the 2008 Wall Street crash approaches its tenth year.

The upper-middle-class layer that provides the ''mass'' base of the Democratic Party has moved drastically to the right over the past four decades, enriched by the stock market boom, consciously hostile to the working class, and enthusiastically supportive of the military-intelligence apparatus which, in the final analysis, guarantees its own social position against potential threats, both foreign and domestic. It is this social evolution that now finds expression on the surface of capitalist politics, in the rise of the military-intelligence ''faction'' to the leadership of the Democratic Party.

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Agents and war commandersBy Patrick Martin8 March 2018

PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE

This is the second part of a three-part article. The first part was posted on March 7.

There are 57 candidates for the Democratic nomination in 44 congressional districts who boast as their major credential their years of service in intelligence, in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, at the State Department, or some combination of all three. They make up the largest single occupational group running in the Democratic primaries that began March 6 in Texas and extend through mid-September, selecting the candidates who will appear on the general election ballot on November 6.

Aside from their sheer number, and the fact that more than 40 percent, 24 of the 57, are women, there are other aspects worth considering.

Agents, but no longer secretFirst: The number of candidates who openly proclaim their role in the CIA or military intelligence. In years past, such activities would be considered confidential, if not scandalous for a figure seeking public office. Not only would the candidates want to disguise their connections to the spy apparatus, the CIA itself would insist on it, particularly for those who worked in operations rather than analysis, since exposure, even long after leaving the agency, could be portrayed as compromising ''sources and methods.''

This is no longer the case. The 2018 candidates drawn from this shadow world of espionage, drone murders and other forms of assassination positively glory in their records. And the CIA and Pentagon have clearly placed no obstacles in the way.

We've already reviewed the cases of Elissa Slotkin, running in Michigan's 8th District, who served three tours with the CIA in Baghdad, and Gina Ortiz Jones, an Air Force intelligence officer in Iraq, running for the Democratic nomination in the 23rd District of Texas. There are many others.

Abigail Spanberger, seeking the Democratic nomination in a district in the suburbs of Richmond, Virginia, has the following declaration at the top of her campaign website: ''After nearly a decade serving in the CIA, I'm running for Congress in Virginia's 7th District to fight for opportunity, equality and security for all Americans. My previous service as a law enforcement officer, a CIA officer, and a community volunteer has taught me the value of listening.'' Indeed!

Abigail Spanberger's campaign website Spanberger worked for the CIA as an operations officer, in which capacity, ''She traveled and lived abroad collecting intelligence, managing assets, and overseeing high-profile programs in service to the United States.'' Her opponent for the Democratic nomination is a career Marine Corps pilot, Dan Ward, in one of nearly a dozen contests involving multiple military-intelligence candidates.

Jesse Colvin, running in the 1st District of Maryland, spent six years in Army intelligence, including four combat deployments to Afghanistan and a year near the Demilitarized Zone between North Korea and South Korea. According to his campaign biography, ''I am a proud graduate of the US Army's Ranger Course, the premier leadership school in the military. I am even more honored to have served in the 75th Ranger Regiment'--the Army Rangers. Rangers lead in many key roles throughout the Special Operations Forces' (SOF) community, and I am lucky to have served and led with men and women of this caliber.''

His biography continues: ''As a Ranger, my four combat deployments in Afghanistan took place within a Joint Special Operations Task Force. I led intelligence teams whose work facilitated capture/kill missions of Taliban, al-Qaeda and other terrorist leaders. I managed a lethal drone program. I ran human intelligence sources. Every day, my team and I made dozens of decisions whose outcomes carried life and death consequences for my fellow Rangers, our Afghan partners, and Afghan civilians.''

Jesse Colvin (front right) with his unit in Afghanistan Jeffrey Beals, seeking the Democratic nomination in the 19th District of New York, is now a school teacher, but writes on his website, ''After beginning my career as a CIA intelligence officer, I joined the State Department '... I answered the call to help our country in Iraq in 2004 and became one of the longest serving US diplomats of the Iraq War. Fluent in Arabic, I faced down insurgents to set up the first diplomatic talks between our ambassador, our generals and the insurgency. I helped bring warring factions together to create a constitution for Iraq and was decorated by both the US Army and the State Department.''

Unfortunately for Beals, his fundraising, $174,000 by December 31, 2017, is dwarfed by that of another military-intelligence rival for the nomination, Patrick Ryan, a West Point graduate with two tours of duty in Iraq, ''including a tour as the lead intelligence officer for an infantry battalion of 1,000 soldiers and officers responsible for ground operations in Mosul,'' according to his campaign website. Ryan had raised $906,000 by December 31, and two other candidates in that district, a politically connected lawyer and a medical device manufacturer, had raised more than one million dollars each, all seeking to challenge two-term Republican incumbent John Faso in the Hudson Valley district.

Jonathan Ebel, running in the 13th District of Illinois, served four years as a naval intelligence officer, including on the staff of the US European Command in Stuttgart, Germany during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He now teaches religion at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Then there is Shelly Chauncey, seeking the Democratic nomination in the 5th District of Pennsylvania, in the Philadelphia suburbs. Her website strikes a feminist note:

''Shelly served her nation for more than a decade with the Central Intelligence Agency. She began her career as a secretary and worked her way up to become a counter-intelligence officer. Shelly served as an undercover officer with the CIA in Latin America, East Asia and throughout the United States, providing logistical and counter-intelligence support to operatives abroad.''

The reference to undercover operations ''throughout the United States'' underscores the role of the intelligence apparatus in spying on the American people, although the CIA is, by law, prohibited from such activity.

Another campaign website touches on the domestic operations of the US spy machine. Omar Siddiqui, running in California's 48th District, describes his background as follows: ''On the front lines of national defense, Mr. Siddiqui serves as a private advisor and consultant to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on issues of national security and counter-terrorism and was formerly an advisor and community partner with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Mr. Siddiqui is presently director of special projects of the FBI National Citizens Academy Alumni Association'...''

Commanders and planners of the Iraq WarBarack Obama won the Democratic presidential nomination and the 2008 election in large measure by presenting himself as an opponent of the war in Iraq launched under George W. Bush. Once in office, however, he retained Bush's defense secretary, former CIA Director Robert Gates, and continued the war for another three years, as well as escalating the long-running US war in Afghanistan.

It is noteworthy in this context that so many of the military-intelligence candidates for Democratic congressional nominations boast of their roles in the war in Iraq and even, in some cases, present it as the high point of their professional and even personal lives.

Thus Elissa Slotkin, already referred to above, met her future husband, the pilot of an Apache helicopter gunship, while working as a CIA agent in Baghdad. Dan McCready, a Marine Corps veteran turned ''clean energy'' multi-millionaire, backed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for the Democratic nomination in the 9th District of North Carolina, even claims to have found Jesus in Iraq, where he was baptized in water from the Euphrates River.

The Iraq War veterans are either officers, giving them command responsibility in one of the great crimes of the 21st century, or served in special forces units like the Army Rangers and the Navy SEALs, engaging in covert operations that were among the bloodiest and most brutal of the war, or had high-level responsibility at the Pentagon or the National Security Council.

Daniel Helmer, running in Virginia's 10th Congressional District against five other well-financed candidates'--including former State Department official Alison Friedman, who has already topped the $1 million mark'--says remarkably little about what he did in Afghanistan and Iraq, although his photograph in military fatigues is on the front page of his website. But Helmer boasts perhaps the most extensive list of endorsements by retired national security officials of any candidate in the country, including eight generals and admirals, two former deputy directors of the CIA, Avril Haines and David Cohen, and Michele Flournoy, former under secretary of defense for policy. What he did to earn their support is left to the imagination.

Richard Ojeda, elected as a West Virginia state senator in 2016, is now seeking the Democratic nomination in the 3rd Congressional District, covering the southern third of the state. As the WSWS has reported, Ojeda has based his political career on more than two decades in the US Army Airborne, including repeated tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he reached the rank of major. His last post was as executive director of Army recruiting in Beckley, seeking to convince youth in West Virginia and Virginia to become cannon fodder for the Pentagon.

Josh Butner, running in the 50th District of California against Republican Duncan Hunter, Jr., ''served for 23 years in the United States Navy where he saw multiple combat deployments, most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan.'' The career Navy SEAL says almost nothing about what he actually did in the top military assassination unit, but that is to be expected. His campaign website features the slogan ''Service, Country, Leadership,'' alongside a photograph of Butner in desert fatigues.

Dan Feehan is running to succeed incumbent Democrat Tim Walz in the 1st Congressional District of Minnesota, after Walz announced his candidacy for governor of that state. From 2005 to 2009, according to his campaign biography, Feehan ''served as an active duty soldier and completed two combat tours of duty as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom.'' He then joined the Obama administration, first as a White House aide, then as an acting assistant secretary of defense in the Pentagon.

Andy Kim, running in the 3rd District of New Jersey, has actually raised more money than the incumbent Republican, Tom MacArthur. Kim worked at the Pentagon and as a strategic adviser to generals David Petraeus and John Allen while they were in command of US forces in Afghanistan. He then moved to the National Security Council, where he was Obama's director for Iraq for two years.

Maura Sullivan, seeking the Democratic nomination in New Hampshire's 2nd District, where incumbent Democrat Carol Shea-Porter is retiring, was a Marine Corps officer, rising to the rank of captain and deploying to Fallujah, Iraq, scene of some of the bloodiest battles and most horrific US war crimes of that war. She too joined the Obama administration as a civilian administrator at both the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Pentagon.

Jason Crow is running in Colorado's 6th Congressional District against incumbent Republican Mike Coffman, where he was selected by the DCCC as one of its top candidates in the ''Red-to-Blue'' program. He is a veteran of the 82nd Airborne Division, leading a paratrooper platoon during the invasion of Iraq. He then joined the Army Rangers and served two tours in Afghanistan ''as part of the Joint Special Operations Task Force,'' where he rose to the rank of captain.

Matthew Morgan had a 20-year career in the Marine Corps ''where I would deploy routinely overseas, culminating in several senior staff roles where I'd provide counsel to numerous military leaders, including the secretary of defense.'' He did two tours in Iraq and also worked in counterterrorism on the Horn of Africa. Now he is the unopposed candidate for the Democratic nomination in Michigan's 1st Congressional District, which has switched back and forth between the two big business parties and is currently held by first-term Republican Jack Bergman.

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IntroductionBy Patrick Martin7 March 2018

PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE

An extraordinary number of former intelligence and military operatives from the CIA, Pentagon, National Security Council and State Department are seeking nomination as Democratic candidates for Congress in the 2018 midterm elections. The potential influx of military-intelligence personnel into the legislature has no precedent in US political history.

If the Democrats capture a majority in the House of Representatives on November 6, as widely predicted, candidates drawn from the military-intelligence apparatus will comprise as many as half of the new Democratic members of Congress. They will hold the balance of power in the lower chamber of Congress.

Both push and pull are at work here. Democratic Party leaders are actively recruiting candidates with a military or intelligence background for competitive seats where there is the best chance of ousting an incumbent Republican or filling a vacancy, frequently clearing the field for a favored ''star'' recruit.

A case in point is Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA operative with three tours in Iraq, who worked as Iraq director for the National Security Council in the Obama White House and as a top aide to John Negroponte, the first director of national intelligence. After her deep involvement in US war crimes in Iraq, Slotkin moved to the Pentagon, where, as a principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, her areas of responsibility included drone warfare, ''homeland defense'' and cyber warfare.

Elissa Slotkin The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has designated Slotkin as one of its top candidates, part of the so-called ''Red to Blue'' program targeting the most vulnerable Republican-held seats'--in this case, the Eighth Congressional District of Michigan, which includes Lansing and Brighton. The House seat for the district is now held by two-term Republican Representative Mike Bishop.

The Democratic leaders are promoting CIA agents and Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. At the same time, such people are choosing the Democratic Party as their preferred political vehicle. There are far more former spies and soldiers seeking the nomination of the Democratic Party than of the Republican Party. There are so many that there is a subset of Democratic primary campaigns that, with a nod to Mad magazine, one might call ''spy vs. spy.''

The 23rd Congressional District in Texas, which includes a vast swathe of the US-Mexico border along the Rio Grande, features a contest for the Democratic nomination between Gina Ortiz Jones, an Air Force intelligence officer in Iraq, who subsequently served as an adviser for US interventions in South Sudan and Libya, and Jay Hulings. The latter's website describes him as a former national security aide on Capitol Hill and federal prosecutor, whose father and mother were both career undercover CIA agents. The incumbent Republican congressman, Will Hurd, is himself a former CIA agent, so any voter in that district will have his or her choice of intelligence agency loyalists in both the Democratic primary and the general election.

CNN's ''State of the Union'' program on March 4 included a profile of Jones as one of many female candidates seeking nomination as a Democrat in Tuesday's primary in Texas. The network described her discreetly as a ''career civil servant.'' However, the Jones for Congress website positively shouts about her role as a spy, noting that after graduating from college, ''Gina entered the US Air Force as an intelligence officer, where she deployed to Iraq and served under the US military's 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy'' (the last phrase signaling to those interested in such matters that Jones is gay).

According to her campaign biography, Ortiz Jones was subsequently detailed to a position as ''senior advisor for trade enforcement,'' a post President Obama created by executive order in 2012. She would later be invited to serve as a director for investment at the Office of the US Trade Representative, where she led the portfolio that reviewed foreign investments to ensure they did not pose national security risks. With that background, if she fails to win election, she can surely enlist in the trade war efforts of the Trump administration.

How this article was preparedThe House of Representatives is currently controlled by the Republicans, with a majority of 238 compared to 193 Democrats. There are four vacancies, one previously held by the Democrats. To reach a majority of 218 seats in the next Congress, the Democrats must have a net gain of 24 seats.

The DCCC has designated 102 seats as priority or competitive, including 22 seats where the incumbents are not running again (five Democrats and 17 Republicans), and 80 seats where Republican incumbents could be defeated for reelection in the event that polls predicting a sizeable swing to the Democrats in November prove accurate.

The World Socialist Web Site has reviewed Federal Election Commission reports filed by all the Democratic candidates in these 102 competitive districts, focusing on those candidates who reported by the latest filing date, December 31, 2017, that they had raised at least $100,000 for their campaigns, giving them a financial war chest sufficient to run in a competitive primary contest. In addition, there a few cases where a candidate had less than the $100,000 cutoff, but was unchallenged for the nomination, or where last-minute retirement or resignation has led to late entry of high-profile candidates without an FEC report on file. These have also been included.

The total of such candidates for the Democratic nomination in the 102 districts is 221. Each has a website that gives biographical details, which we have collected and reviewed for this report. It is notable that those candidates with a record in the military-intelligence apparatus, as well as civilian work for the State Department, Pentagon or National Security Council, do not hide their involvement, particularly in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They clearly regard working as a CIA agent in Baghdad, an Army special ops assassin in Afghanistan, or a planner for drone missile warfare in the White House or Pentagon as a star on their r(C)sum(C), rather than something to conceal.

One quarter of all the Democratic challengers in competitive House districts have military-intelligence, State Department or NSC backgrounds. This is by far the largest subcategory of Democratic candidates. National security operatives (57) outnumber state and local government officials (45), lawyers (35), corporate executives, businessmen and wealthy individuals (30) and other professionals (19) among the candidates for Democratic congressional nominations.

Of the 102 primary elections to choose the Democratic nominees in these competitive districts, 44 involve candidates with a military-intelligence or State Department background, with 11 districts having two such candidates, and one district having three. In the majority of contests, the military-intelligence candidates seem likely to win the Democratic nomination, and, if the Democrats win in the general election, would enter Congress as new members of the House of Representatives.

There are some regional differences. In the Northeast, 21 of the 31 seats targeted by the Democrats have military-intelligence candidates. This area, not the South or Midwest, has the highest proportion of military-intelligence candidates seeking Democratic nominations.

In the West, only 7 of the 23 targeted seats have military-intelligence candidates, while in a half dozen seats the leading candidates are self-funded millionaires, mainly from the IT industry. There has been a wave of Republican retirements in California and wealthy people are bidding for these seats.

The military-intelligence candidates are disproportionately favored by the party apparatus, encouraged to run in districts that are the most likely takeover targets. Military-intelligence candidates account for 10 of the 22 districts selected for the most high-profile attention as part of the ''red-to-blue'' program, or nearly half. In some cases, military-intelligence candidates have amassed huge campaign war chests that effectively shut out any potential rivals, an indication that the financial backers of the Democratic Party have lined up behind them.

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Some advertising-technology companies have cut ties with Newsweek Media Group over concerns about allegedly fake website traffic, moves that threaten to exacerbate the company's financial difficulties as it contends with a wider fraud investigation.

AppNexus, one of the vendors NMG used to sell online ads, and SpotX, an ad-tech company that helps sell video ads, each said they have ended their relationships with the company. They cited concerns over invalid traffic on the publisher's International Business Times websites.

Meanwhile, DoubleVerify, a company that offers software for advertisers and ad vendors to authenticate the quality of the locations where their ads appear, has flagged four

IBTimes sites and Newsweek.co.uk as having invalid traffic. The warnings signal marketers that the sites are risky to buy ads on.

NMG said Wednesday it had fired two employees connected with the ad issue, but the developments nevertheless have the potential to scare off advertisers and add to the turmoil surrounding the parent company of the storied Newsweek magazine brand. The company already faces a wide-ranging investigation led by the Manhattan district attorney's office into suspected bank fraud, ties with a bible college in California and alleged advertising abuses, The Wall Street Journal has reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

NMG has declined to discuss details of the district attorney's probe or the company's financial situation.

How much of an impact the invalid-traffic allegations will have on NMG's advertising revenue isn't clear. Like most publishers, the company works with a range of vendors to sell ad inventory across its sites using automated software. It retains relationships with several other ad-tech partners.

Beginning almost a year ago, DoubleVerify's fraud lab started spotting patterns of invalid traffic on IBTimes.co.uk, said DoubleVerify Chief Executive Wayne Gattinella, and Matt McLaughlin, its chief operating officer.

Code running on the sites made it appear to measurement companies that browser tabs in the background that had Newsweek or IBTimes content were visible to website visitors when they actually weren't, according to DoubleVerify.

The technique could be used to artificially inflate the performance of a website's ads, leading advertisers to pay more, according to DoubleVerify.

NMG issued a statement Tuesday saying it had removed the codes from its website. Mr. McLaughlin said that as of Wednesday morning, DoubleVerify was still observing a similar code across some NMG sites, although it wasn't clear how often it was being activated.

''DoubleVerify has never observed a legitimate reason for a publisher to implement'' such a code, Mr. McLaughlin said.

On Wednesday, an NMG spokesman said: ''Two of the engineers who were linked to this code issue have been let go,'' adding that the company was conducting a thorough review of all of its sites to ensure they were free of potentially malicious code.

The spokesman added that its latest report from the ad-verification company Moat, conducted between Feb. 28 and March 6, found the latest invalid traffic rate across its websites, at 1.52%, was below the 3.1% industry average. The company soon plans to regularly publish its invalid-traffic numbers on its corporate site that have been verified by partners accredited by the Media Rating Council.

The spokesman said the company has ''full confidence in the quality of our traffic and takes it very seriously.''

DoubleVerify has given IBTimes.com, IBTimes.co.uk, IBTimes.co.in, IBTimes.sg and Newsweek.co.uk its ''Sophisticated Invalid Traffic Sites'' designation. The label is a red flag for ad-tech vendors, who can choose whether to block those sites. DoubleVerify automatically prevents its advertiser customers from appearing on such sites

DoubleVerify says the classification isn't an assessment of whether the site was aware of or participated in invalid-traffic practices.

SpotX, a video-ad-selling platform owned by RTL Group, and Teads, a video ad tech company owned by Altice, both stopped selling IBTimes traffic because of DoubleVerify's identification of abnormal traffic, the companies said.

DoubleVerify's findings add to allegations that NMG defrauded advertisers.

A February report from ad-monitoring consultancy Social Puncher alleged NMG had inflated its audience numbers by purchasing low-quality web traffic. In its response last month, the publisher said it didn't engage in any kind of ''traffic gaming techniques.''

AppNexus says an internal team had spotted a pattern of suspect traffic on and suspended the account ''several weeks'' before BuzzFeed reported on the Social Puncher study. After it was published, AppNexus says it terminated the account altogether and blacklisted other IBTimes properties.

On Tuesday, NMG announced it was splitting its IBTimes and Newsweek brands into separate operating entities, although the full scope of the restructuring wasn't clear. Over the past year, the company has shifted resources from IBTimes to the Newsweek brand, and changed its name to Newsweek Media Group from IBT Media.

The company also began laying off some editorial staff this week at its IBTimes operation in India, two people familiar with the matter said. NMG's spokesman declined to comment when asked whether layoffs had taken place.

Write to Lara O'Reilly at lara.o'reilly@wsj.com and Lukas I. Alpert at lukas.alpert@wsj.com

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Over a year after a group of House Democrats cut ties with a number of part-time IT workers amid questions about illegal activity on Congressional data networks, few public answers have emerged from the government's investigation of whether Imran Awan and his family members did anything criminal during their employment on Capitol Hill, as unrelated charges of bank fraud leveled against Awan and his wife continue to languish in a Washington, D.C. federal court.

Thursday was supposed to be the date of a status hearing in federal court on the case against Awan and his wife Hina Alvi, which centers on fraud involving a home equity loan. That status hearing was delayed from January 8, which had been rescheduled from November 30, after being delayed on November 20.

The next scheduled status conference for Awan and his wife '' if it happens '' is now set for May 4.

Court documents filed in recent months have given almost no clues about the case; in October, there was a reference by the feds to ''voluminous discovery'' in the Awan investigation, and a note about ''an attorney-client privilege issue'' raised by Awan.

Awan '' who has been working as an Uber driver '' is no longer being required to have a curfew or go through a federal drug testing program '' but he still must wear a GPS monitoring device, and can't go more than 150 miles away from his home.

The delays, the lack of action on what is supposedly just about bank fraud '' and the lack of any additional charges from investigators about why Awan and his family members were fired from their jobs in the first place '' have led to an almost endless stream of internet theories.

Among them: Awan and his family were stealing data and emails from Congress. Links to terrorism. Espionage involving Pakistan. Ties to hacking at the DNC. A weird car dealership angle. The theft of IT equipment from Capitol Hill. Do a few social media searches and you're guaranteed to find you even more.

But, as of this point, the investigations by the U.S. Capitol Police and the FBI have produced nothing new in terms of charges to go along with the original criminal complaint in the case '' dealing just with bank fraud.

''We do not comment on ongoing investigations,'' a Capitol Police spokeswoman says in response to questions.

It was in February 2017 that a group of House Democrats suddenly cut ties with Awan, his wife, and several other relatives who were doing IT work on a part-time basis for the offices.

''An internal investigation determined that a number of House policies and procedures had been violated,'' Rep. Gregg Harper (R-MS), the Chairman of the House Administration Committee said in a written statement '' but no details were offered.

In fact, that's been the only public statement issued by the panel, which is charged with overseeing daily operations in the House.

Last summer, with many of the same questions swirling about what was really going on in the case, Imran Awan was arrested on July 24 at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C., ready to fly to Pakistan to see his wife and family.

His wife, Hina Alvi, had left a few months earlier with the couple's three young children '' in what law enforcement felt was a rush '' but she returned to Virginia in the fall, and agreed to face federal charges, along with her husband.

Lawyers for the couple '' who are both U.S. citizens '' say Awan and Alvi were ''unjustly fired,'' that they were never fleeing authorities in the U.S.

The Awans, along with other family relatives, had found computer work on Capitol Hill by working part-time for a series of different Democratic lawmaker offices in the U.S. House, including Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL), who at the time was the head of the Democratic National Committee.

For example, House spending records from 2016 show Imran Awan was a shared employee for thirteen different House members, earning in the third quarter of that year anywhere from as little as $300 from a pair of Democrats to $6,624.99 from another lawmaker.

Awan's wife, Hina Alvi, worked for seven Democrats, plus the House Democratic Caucus, earning close to $44,000 in the third quarter of 2016.

Records also showed two relatives of Awan's on the Congressional payroll: Abid Awan worked for eight different House Democrats, while Jamal Awan worked for eight others '' all as 'shared' employees.

None of the other Awan family relatives currently face any charges related to their work, even though all of them were basically 'fired' back in 2017 for some kind of procedural violations.

What those details are '' and whether they were criminal in nature '' remain a mystery.

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For the first time, the Defense Department will begin moving classified data and applications to Amazon Web Services' Secret Region'--the same cloud environment developed for the CIA and intelligence community several years ago.

U.S. Transportation Command'--the part of the department responsible for moving troops and equipment around the globe'--announced its intent to make use of AWS' Classified Secret Commercial Cloud Services in December after the company expanded its capabilities and availability to non-intelligence agencies.

The Defense Department's sole-source decision'--a contract awarded without a full and open competition'--was protested by Microsoft, which itself offers a variety of cloud services to the federal government. The company withdrew its protest March 8, allowing TRANSCOM to begin migrating data to the AWS Secret Region. In a statement to Nextgov, Microsoft said it withdrew its protest ''because the issues involved were resolved'' to the company's satisfaction.

Microsoft and AWS are considered two of the front-runners for a different cloud contract, the Defense Department's Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure. JEDI would supply the whole Defense Department with cloud infrastructure around the world at all levels of classification, including warfighters in remote areas, Defense officials explained at a recent industry day. Market analysts say such a contract could be worth as much as $10 billion over 10 years.

But while those companies position themselves to bid on that contract sometime later this year, TRANSCOM's use of AWS' Secret Region is an important immediate development in the battle for cloud supremacy across the government.

TRANSCOM is designated as the ''pathfinder,'' a model for other Defense agencies that want to migrate to a classified commercial cloud computing environment, according to its sole-source justification. If its early efforts prove successful, other Defense agencies are likely to follow suit, which could mean big business for AWS. The Defense Department spends about $40 billion annually on information technology.

TRANSCOM's sole-source justification indicates AWS is the only game in town for classified commercial cloud services. While a few commercial cloud companies can host the Defense Department's sensitive unclassified data, it appears only AWS can host classified data that otherwise travels through a system of computers managed by the Defense and State departments called the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, or SIPRNet.

''Amazon is currently the only cloud provider with CS2S clearance,'' the justification states. ''Without AWS, [TRANSCOM] cannot migrate its SIPR applications into a commercial cloud environment.''

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 13:43

Strictly heterosexual people don't exist, according to a psychologist who claims more and more men are better defined as 'mostly straight'.

While most societies promote heterosexuality as the 'norm', a leading researcher at Cornell University has found most of us get aroused by both genders.

The paper brings into question strict definitions of sexuality, and posits that instead of categories we should see it as a spectrum.

Lead author Ritch C Savin-Williams, a psychologist specializing in gender studies, warns we still struggle with the concept of bisexuality - particularly when it comes to men.

Absolute heterosexuality is not the 'norm', a researcher at Cornell University has found. He says we all get aroused by both and he is seeing a surge in men he calls 'mostly straight'

Savin-Williams' new book Mostly Straight: Sexual Fluidity Among Men finds younger generations are increasingly open to 'looser boundaries', and interviews 40 men who insist they are 'straight' but dabble in liaisons with other men.

It builds on his study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Savin-Williams examined volunteers who identified as either male or female.

They showed them each porn involving men, and porn involving women, and measured the dilation of their pupils - an indicator of sexual arousal.

Women's eyes dilated watching men with women, and watching women with women.

Men's eyes dilated watching women masturbate, and watching men masturbate - regardless of their stated sexual preference.

'We used to think [bisexuality] was only a female phenomenon,' he told Broadly. His research assessing both men and women shows that is hardly the case.

In a previous study, Savin-Williams found between two and 11 percent of adults had reported experiencing homosexual feelings.

However, he believes that figure woefully understates the fluidity of sexual arousal among all people.

He warns our strong cultural narrative that women can be sexually fluid, and not men, means most males fear expressing those feelings.

'Men have gotten so much cultural c**p put on them that even if a man does have some sexual attraction to guys, they would never say it,' he told Broadly.

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 13:41

The Spring Statement of the British Government, also known as the "mini-budget", is one of the two statements HM Treasury makes each year to Parliament upon publication of economic forecasts. The other taking place the year before as the Autumn Budget. In 2016, it was decided the budget would move to the autumn, with a spring statement taking place the following year. both usually involve speeches in the House of Commons by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Spring Statement for 2018 is expected in March 2018.

History [ edit] The duty to publish two annual economic forecasts was created by the Industry Act 1975, with the first such publication occurring in December 1976.[1] The first Autumn Statement combined the announcement of this publication with any announced changes to national insurance contributions and the Government's announcement of its spending plans (and publication of the Red Book)[citation needed ],[2] both of which were also made at approximately the same time in the parliamentary year.

In 1993, Conservative Chancellor Kenneth Clarke combined the announcement of spending with the Budget, merging tax and spending announcements. Doing so moved the Budget to November. To fulfill the legal obligation to make two statements, Clarke began the practice of making a Summer Statement focusing on economic growth forecasts.[3][4] Unlike the Autumn Statements preceding them and the Pre-Budget Reports that replaced them, Summer Statements took the form of debate on a motion "that this House welcomes the publication of the Government's latest economic forecast, which..." rather than as a statement to the House of Commons.[5][6][7]

In 1997, Labour's new Chancellor, Gordon Brown, moved the Budget back to spring and replaced the second statement with the Pre-Budget Report (PBR). According to the "Code for Fiscal Stability", published by HM Treasury in November 1998, the PBR was intended to "encourage debate on the proposals under consideration for the Budget". The PBR included a report on progress since the Budget, an update on the state of the national economy and the Government's finances, and announcements of proposed new tax measures and consultation papers.[4]

Conservative Chancellor George Osborne replaced the PBR and its policy announcements in 2010 with a new Autumn Statement focusing on economic growth and government finances as projected by the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR).[8] Osborne's 2015 statement on 25 November was a joint Autumn Statement and Spending Review, and included a new forecast by the OBR.[9]

In 2016, Conservative Chancellor Philip Hammond announced his intention to end the Autumn Statement: instead of a Budget in the Spring, and an Autumn Statement, there will instead be a Budget in the Autumn, and a Spring Statement, with the first on 13 March 2018.[10]

List of statements [ edit] Previous statements [ edit] The statement has been held in the past during different seasons and with alternate names:

Autumn Statement (1976''1992, 2010''2016)Summer Statement (1993''1996)Pre-Budget Report (1997''2009),References [ edit] ^ "Economic Prospects (Hansard, 15 December 1976)". ^ ab "The Economy (Hansard, 8 November 1982)". ^ "Politics A''Z: Autumn Statement". BBC Online. 9 August 2001. Retrieved 25 November 2010 . ^ ab "Briefing Guides: Pre-Budget Report". politics.co.uk. 28 August 2008. Retrieved 25 November 2010 . ^ ab "The Economy (Hansard, 18 July 1994)". ^ ab "The Economy (Hansard, 12 July 1995)". ^ ab "The Economy (Hansard, 17 July 1996)". ^ Duncan, Hugo (7 September 2010). "Osborne axes Pre-Budget report". Daily Mail. London. Retrieved 25 November 2010 . ^ Osboure, George (2015-09-08). "Letter to Chairman of the Treasury Committee"(pdf) . HM Treasury. Retrieved 2015-09-23 . ^ "Spring Statement 2018 date confirmed - GOV.UK". www.gov.uk. Retrieved 21 February 2018 . ^ "The Economy (Hansard, 17 November 1983)". ^ "The Economy (Hansard, 12 November 1984)". ^ "Autumn Statement (Hansard, 12 November 1985)". ^ "Autumn Statement (Hansard, 6 November 1986)". ^ "Autumn Statement (Hansard, 3 November 1987)". ^ "Autumn Statement (Hansard, 1 November 1988)". ^ "Autumn Statement (Hansard, 15 November 1989)". ^ "Autumn Statement (Hansard, 8 November 1990)". ^ "Autumn Statement (Hansard, 6 November 1991)". ^ "Autumn Statement (Hansard, 12 November 1992)". ^ "Pre-Budget Statement (Hansard, 25 November 1997)". ^ "Pre-Budget Statement (Hansard, 3 November 1998)". ^ "Pre-Budget Statement (Hansard, 9 November 1999)". ^ "Pre-Budget Statement (Hansard, 8 November 2000)". ^ "Pre-Budget Report (Hansard, 27 November 2001)". ^ "Pre-Budget Report (Hansard, 27 November 2002)". ^ "Pre-Budget Report (Hansard, 10 December 2003)". ^ Westminster, Department of the Official Report (Hansard), House of Commons,. "House of Commons Hansard Debates for 2 Dec 2004 (pt 6)". ^ Westminster, Department of the Official Report (Hansard), House of Commons,. "House of Commons Hansard Debates for 5 Dec 2005 (pt 6)". ^ Westminster, Department of the Official Report (Hansard), House of Commons,. "House of Commons Hansard Debates for 06 Dec 2006 (pt 0003)". ^ Westminster, Department of the Official Report (Hansard), House of Commons,. "House of Commons Hansard Debates for 09 Oct 2007 (pt 0004)". ^ Westminster, Department of the Official Report (Hansard), House of Commons,. "House of Commons Hansard Debates for 24 Nov 2008 (pt 0004)". ^ Westminster, Department of the Official Report (Hansard), House of Commons,. "House of Commons Hansard Debates for 09 Dec 2009 (pt 0004)". ^ Westminster, Department of the Official Report (Hansard), House of Commons,. "House of Commons Hansard Debates for 29 Nov 2010 (pt 0001)". ^ Westminster, Department of the Official Report (Hansard), House of Commons,. "House of Commons Hansard Debates for 29 Nov 2011 (pt 0001)". ^ Westminster, Department of the Official Report (Hansard), House of Commons,. "House of Commons Hansard Debates for 05 Dec 2012 (pt 0001)". ^ Westminster, Department of the Official Report (Hansard), House of Commons,. "House of Commons Hansard Debates for 05 Dec 2013 (pt 0001)". ^ Westminster, Department of the Official Report (Hansard), House of Commons,. "House of Commons Hansard Debates for 03 Dec 2014 (pt 0001)". ^ Westminster, Department of the Official Report (Hansard), House of Commons,. "House of Commons Hansard Debates for 25 Nov 2015 (pt 0001)". ^ "House of Commons Hansard Debates for 23 Nov 2016". External links [ edit]

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 13:41

Large cash payments to tradesmen could be banned in a crackdown on the black economy.

Plumbers, builders and even child-minders could be barred from receiving sizable payments to ensure they pay the full tax for the work they carry out.

The proposals, published in the Spring Statement yesterday, are a bid to rake in as much as £3.5billion a year in tax from the UK's hidden economy.

Any income received for work - even babysitting - should be taxed at someone's individual tax rate

Another suggestion is that receipts could be made compulsory across Britain '' forcing workmen to write down any payments received.

But business experts warned that the Government must not launch measures that would see innocent businesses unable to use cash when needed.

Cash-in-hand payments are considered a scourge by tax officials, who believe some workers are flouting the system.

Any income received for work carried out should be taxed at someone's individual tax rate '' even babysitting.

But it is common for many tradesman to accept a cash payment for a certain amount of the work they carry out in exchange for a slightly cheaper deal. This suits the customers, as they get money off, but also the tradesman who can avoid tax.

In 2015, former shadow chancellor Ed Balls came under fire for suggesting people should get a written receipt for all transactions.

The Labour politician said he always asked for a written record because it was the 'right thing to do'.

Ed Balls came under fire for suggesting people should get receipts for all transactions

Now the Treasury is considering whether to follow the example of other countries and introduce a maximum limit on cash transactions.

France, Belgium and Spain have imposed limits of up to £13,000. Such a limit would bar crooks from being able to move huge sums of cash without being detected.

Ministers have previously warned that businesses where transactions are regularly conducted in cash '' such as scrap metal wholesalers, nail bars, takeaways and storage warehouses '' represent 'particularly attractive' opportunities for criminals.

But last night experts cautioned the Government to ensure its crackdown did not hit innocent businesses and consumers by snaring them with red tape or barring them from using cash when needed.

Chas Roy-Chowdhury, head of taxation at accountancy trade body ACCA, said: 'The Government should have no truck with tax avoiders but we must be cognizant that we don't want to things to become unnecessarily bureaucratic, for instance having to issue receipts for everything.'

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 13:19

One of Brussels' most controversial EU officials received an unexpected promotion on Wednesday, putting him in charge of the entire EU civil service.

Martin Selmayr, who has made a name for himself as chief of cabinet to president Jean-Claude Juncker since 2014, was confirmed as the new European Commission Director General at a meeting of the college of commissioners on Wednesday morning.

Sometimes affectionately nicknamed ''the Monster'' by colleagues because of his fearsome reputation, Mr Selmayr replaces Alexander Italianer, who had announced he would be stepping down after three years in the job.

''We needed to have as secretary general somebody who really knows how the EU works and has connections in Europe and beyond,'' Mr Juncker said ''As a result there will be no political break.''

''The next 20 months will be decisive in fully delivering on a Europe that protects, empowers and defends. I need the best team in place. This is why I want Martin Selmayr as the new Secretary-General to steer the talented and hard-working administration of our institution.''

Mr Selmayr, a German lawyer by training, has been described by British newspaper as the ''Raspuin of Brussels'' because of his reputation as the power behind the Junker throne.

He most recently came to prominence in the UK after he was widely accused of leaking the details of talks between Mr Juncker and Theresa May to a German newspaper at a crucial time.

When the same newspaper obtained similar leaks for a second time running Mr Selmayr denied being the source of the accounts, and said the leaks were an attempt to ''frame'' the EU side and ''undermine talks''.

The new director general divides opinion in Brussels, where some see him as reinforcing German domination of the EU institutions. Marking the appointment, German European Commissioner G¼nther Oettinger denied this version of events, stating that ''some in Berlin don't see him as a representative of German interests''.

His appointment drew a critical response from some MEPs. Syed Kamall , Co-chairman of the Tories' European Conservatives and Reformists Group, said: "How does the Commission expect people to believe that the EU is capable of change and listening to the voters when the process for appointing to top positions is so opaque.

"The Commission should be looking at ways to make Brussels more transparent and democratic, yet this appointment resembles nothing more than jobs for the boys.

"Perhaps the most worrying thing is that the Commission doesn't seem to even realise why this is a problem."

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 13:18

Brussels Sketch

Commission's top civil servant loves the EU. Too bad his methods are so destructive.

By Tim King

3/12/18, 4:05 AM CET

Updated 3/14/18, 2:59 PM CET

New Secretary-General of the European Commission, German Martin Selmayr | Olivier Hoslet/EPA-EFE

New Secretary-General of the European Commission, German Martin Selmayr | Olivier Hoslet/EPA-EFE

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 13:03

As recently as 2016 Dr Robin Black, Head of the Detection Laboratory at the UK's only chemical weapons facility at Porton Down, a former colleague of Dr David Kelly, published in an extremely prestigious scientific journal that the evidence for the existence of Novichoks was scant and their composition unknown.

In recent years, there has been much speculation that a fourth generation of nerve agents, 'Novichoks' (newcomer), was developed in Russia, beginning in the 1970s as part of the 'Foliant' programme, with the aim of finding agents that would compromise defensive countermeasures. Information on these compounds has been sparse in the public domain, mostly originating from a dissident Russian military chemist, Vil Mirzayanov. No independent confirmation of the structures or the properties of such compounds has been published. (Black, 2016)

Robin Black. (2016) Development, Historical Use and Properties of Chemical Warfare Agents. Royal Society of Chemistry

Yet now, the British Government is claiming to be able instantly to identify a substance which its only biological weapons research centre has never seen before and was unsure of its existence. Worse, it claims to be able not only to identify it, but to pinpoint its origin. Given Dr Black's publication, it is plain that claim cannot be true.

The world's international chemical weapons experts share Dr Black's opinion. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is a UN body based in the Hague. In 2013 this was the report of its Scientific Advisory Board, which included US, French, German and Russian government representatives and on which Dr Black was the UK representative:

[The SAB] emphasised that the definition of toxic chemicals in the Convention would cover all potential candidate chemicals that might be utilised as chemical weapons. Regarding new toxic chemicals not listed in the Annex on Chemicals but which may nevertheless pose a risk to the Convention, the SAB makes reference to ''Novichoks''. The name ''Novichok'' is used in a publication of a former Soviet scientist who reported investigating a new class of nerve agents suitable for use as binary chemical weapons. The SAB states that it has insufficient information to comment on the existence or properties of ''Novichoks''. (OPCW, 2013)

OPCW: Report of the Scientific Advisory Board on developments in science and technology for the Third Review Conference 27 March 2013

Indeed the OPCW was so sceptical of the viability of ''novichoks'' that it decided '' with US and UK agreement '' not to add them nor their alleged precursors to its banned list. In short, the scientific community broadly accepts Mirzayanov was working on ''novichoks'' but doubts he succeeded.

Given that the OPCW has taken the view the evidence for the existence of ''Novichoks'' is dubious, if the UK actually has a sample of one it is extremely important the UK presents that sample to the OPCW. Indeed the UK has a binding treaty obligation to present that sample to OPCW. Russa has '' unreported by the corporate media '' entered a demand at the OPCW that Britain submit a sample of the Salisbury material for international analysis.

Yet Britain refuses to submit it to the OPCW.

Why?

A second part of May's accusation is that ''Novichoks'' could only be made in certain military installations. But that is also demonstrably untrue. If they exist at all, Novichoks were allegedly designed to be able to be made at bench level in any commercial chemical facility '' that was a major point of them. The only real evidence for the existence of Novichoks was the testimony of the ex-Soviet scientist Mizayanov. And this is what Mirzayanov actually wrote.

One should be mindful that the chemical components or precursors of A-232 or its binary version novichok-5 are ordinary organophosphates that can be made at commercial chemical companies that manufacture such products as fertilizers and pesticides.

Vil S. Mirzayanov, ''Dismantling the Soviet/Russian Chemical Weapons Complex: An Insider's View,'' in Amy E. Smithson, Dr. Vil S. Mirzayanov, Gen Roland Lajoie, and Michael Krepon, Chemical Weapons Disarmament in Russia: Problems and Prospects, Stimson Report No. 17, October 1995, p. 21.

It is a scientific impossibility for Porton Down to have been able to test for Russian novichoks if they have never possessed a Russian sample to compare them to. They can analyse a sample as conforming to a Mirzayanov formula, but as he published those to the world twenty years ago, that is no proof of Russian origin. If Porton Down can synthesise it, so can many others, not just the Russians.

And finally '' Mirzayanov is an Uzbek name and the novichok programme, assuming it existed, was in the Soviet Union but far away from modern Russia, at Nukus in modern Uzbekistan. I have visited the Nukus chemical weapons site myself. It was dismantled and made safe and all the stocks destroyed and the equipment removed by the American government, as I recall finishing while I was Ambassador there. There has in fact never been any evidence that any ''novichok'' ever existed in Russia itself.

To summarise:

1) Porton Down has acknowledged in publications it has never seen any Russian ''novichoks''. The UK government has absolutely no ''fingerprint'' information such as impurities that can safely attribute this substance to Russia.

2) Until now, neither Porton Down nor the world's experts at the Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) were convinced ''Novichoks'' even exist.

3) The UK is refusing to provide a sample to the OPCW.

4) ''Novichoks'' were specifically designed to be able to be manufactured from common ingredients on any scientific bench. The Americans dismantled and studied the facility that allegedly developed them. It is completely untrue only the Russians could make them, if anybody can.

5) The ''Novichok'' programme was in Uzbekistan not in Russia. Its legacy was inherited by the Americans during their alliance with Karimov, not by the Russians.

With a great many thanks to sources who cannot be named at this moment.

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 12:59

Image: Martti Kainulainen / Lehtikuva The World Happiness Report, published Wednesday, ranks 156 countries by happiness levels, based on factors such as life expectancy, social support and levels of corruption.

The Nordic countries have dominated the index since it first was produced in 2012. Rounding out the Top 10 this year are Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden and Australia.

Unlike past years, the annual report published by the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network also evaluated 117 countries by the happiness and well-being of their immigrants.

Last year, Finland placed fifth in the ranking.

14.3.

14.3.

14.3.

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 11:58

SEASIDE '-- A teacher at high school accidentally fired his gun inside a classroom, causing minor injuries to three students, but kept teaching while the students sat there, the mother of one of the students said Wednesday.

Dennis Alexander, a reserve police officer, was pointing the gun at the ceiling Tuesday to make sure it was not loaded when it discharged inside his classroom at Seaside High School, police said.

Police said no one sustained serious injuries.

Alexander was not authorized to have a gun on campus, Monterey Peninsula Unified School District spokeswoman Marci McFadden said.

District policy says only school resource officers '-- active law enforcement personnel employed as armed security at schools '-- can carry guns on campuses.

Authorities were investigating why Alexander had the gun and if officials were aware that he intended to bring it to school, McFadden said.

Fermin Gonzales, 17, was injured when bullet fragments lodged in his neck, his mother Crystal Gonzales, told The Associated Press.

''I'm still really upset no one called a nurse or a paramedic to come check on the students,'' Gonzales said. ''They just sat there until the bell rang.''

The accidental shooting came amid a national debate over whether to arm teachers in the aftermath of a mass school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 students and staff members.

On Wednesday, thousands of high school students walked out of classrooms across the nation to protest gun violence in schools.

A law that took effect in California on Jan. 1 halted the ability of school districts to allow non-security employees to carry guns on campus.

Gonzales said the incident in Seaside happened Tuesday at 10:30 a.m. and that she did not hear about it until her son called her hours later when the class ended and he went to a relative's home.

Alexander was teaching a gun safety lesson in an administration of justice class and was about to show the students how to disarm someone, Gonzales said.

She said no officials contacted parents to let them know what happened and that she was shocked when her son returned home with blood on his shirt and bullet fragments in his neck. As the boy's parents rushed him to a hospital for X-rays, she said the school's principal called her cellphone to apologize.

The teen is fine, though he's still shaken up and stayed home Wednesday, his mother said.

Gonzales said police didn't arrive at the school to investigate until three hours later and the family filed a police report.

Alexander was placed on administrative leave from his teaching job and he was also placed on administrative leave at the Sand City Police Department, police and school officials said. Efforts to reach Alexander were not immediately successful.

The school district sent a letter to parents saying its human resources department, the high school administrators and the Seaside Police Department ''immediately began investigating the incident, including interviewing students in the class.''

It said counseling was made available to students and that it could not release any other details ''due to the nature of this personnel incident.''

Associated Press Writer Jocelyn Gecker contributed to this report.

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 11:57

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was fired by President Donald Trump, according to White House officials' statements on Tuesday morning.

He was in office for a little over a year, one of the shortest tenures in modern history '-- and it was not, experts say, a distinguished one.

''Tillerson would be at or near the bottom of the list of secretaries of state, not just in the post-Second World War world but in the record of US secretaries of state,'' says Paul Musgrave, a scholar of US foreign policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

The former Exxon Mobil CEO, whose nomination was initially greeted warmly by prominent foreign policy hands, will leave office without any major accomplishments. This is largely because he failed to wield any significant influence in internal administration debates over issues like North Korea or Russia, and in fact actively alienated the president during several key policy debates.

His push to slash ''inefficiencies'' in the State Department and seeming disinterest in working closely with longtime staff were even more damaging. Under Tillerson's watch, 60 percent of State's top-ranking career diplomats resigned and new applications to join the foreign service fell by half, according to a November count by the American Foreign Service Association.

This hollowing-out of the foreign service, combined with Tillerson's inability to appoint people to vital positions like ambassador to South Korea, delayed American responses to major crises and weakened the State Department for a ''generation,'' according to George Washington University's Elizabeth Saunders.

This can't all be blamed on Tillerson: Even a skilled and experienced diplomat would have had trouble maintaining influence in the chaotic Trump White House, a place where foreign policy is often made over Twitter. As if to underscore the point, Trump announced Tillerson's departure in a tweet '-- before the secretary himself could make a statement.

Yet scholars and foreign policy practitioners across the political spectrum agree that he deserves much of the blame.

"I think he really will go down as one of the worst secretaries of State we've had," Eliot Cohen, counselor to the State Department under President George W. Bush, told Axios's Jonathan Swan. ''He will go down as the worst Secretary of State in history,'' tweeted Ilan Goldenberg, an Obama-era State Department official.

Many expected Tillerson to be one of the ''adults in the room,'' helping Secretary of Defense James Mattis rein in some of Trump's wildest ideas. His attempts to play that role backfired '-- his ham-handed attempts to manage Trump alienated the president, who has reportedly complained about his ''totally establishment'' views on foreign policy.

When you combine the lack of influence over Trump with Tillerson's dismantling of the State Department's staff '-- he made more of a mess of the department in a shorter amount of time than any other secretary of state in history '-- you have a truly disastrous tenure in Foggy Bottom.

''He took the job and made it smaller,'' Musgrave says.

Tillerson failed at the thing he was supposed to be good at

Leon Neal/Getty Images When Trump announced Tillerson as his pick for secretary of state, back in December 2016, the foreign policy community was split on the appointment.

As CEO of Exxon Mobil, one of the world's largest corporations, Tillerson seemed to be more than qualified to effectively manage a sprawling bureaucracy like the State Department. Mainstream GOP foreign policy experts like former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and former National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley all praised the pick.

"He would bring to the position vast knowledge, experience, and success in dealing with dozens of governments and leaders in every corner of the world,'' Gates said in a statement. "He is a person of great integrity whose only goal in office would be to protect and advance the interests of the United States.''

Critics, though, worried about Tillerson's close relationship with Vladimir Putin and Exxon's willingness to strike deals with corrupt foreign dictators and history of lobbying against climate change (though the corporation now says it accepts climate science). During his January confirmation hearings, senators grilled him about both Russia and climate change, with Democrats clearly unsatisfied by his answers.

"Do you lack the knowledge to answer my question, or refuse to answer my question?" Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) puffed after Tillerson repeatedly stonewalled his questions about Exxon funding climate change denial. "A little of both,'' Tillerson replied.

Tillerson was confirmed in late January 2017 nonetheless, in a vote that basically fell along party lines. Quickly, he set about upending everyone's views about him. As soon as March, it had become clear that the conventional wisdom was 100 percent wrong. The fears about Tillerson's policy views had proven overblown, mostly because he had been completely overshadowed in internal White House deliberations over issues like Syria and Russia.

''More than a month after he became America's top diplomat, Rex Tillerson is like no other modern secretary of State: he's largely invisible,'' the LA Times's Tracy Wilkinson reported at the time. ''His influence at the White House is difficult to discern. He appears to be competing with Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, and Stephen Bannon, the president's chief strategist, both of whom have Trump's ear on foreign policy.''

The optimism about Tillerson's management acumen, by contrast, had clearly been misplaced. Tillerson failed to place political appointees in a number of vital leadership positions, failed to spend a lot of time with his own employees, and pushed out longtime employees without clear replacements in mind. Morale inside the organization collapsed.

''I used to love my job,'' one State Department staffer told the Atlantic's Julia Ioffe at the time. ''Now, it feels like coming to the hospital to take care of a terminally ill family member. You come in every day, you bring flowers, you brush their hair, paint their nails, even though you know there's no point. But you do it out of love.''

What was true in March remained true for the rest of Tillerson's brief tenure. On issue after issue, Tillerson proved to be out of touch with the president's foreign policy positions.

The US bombed Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in early April '-- just days after Tillerson suggested the administration would be fine with Assad staying in power. On June 9, Tillerson called on Saudi Arabia and its allies to end their isolation of Qatar; less than two hours later, Trump sided with the Saudis by labeling Qatar ''a funder of terrorism at a very high level.''

On July 20, after a meeting in which the president reportedly asked for a major expansion of America's nuclear arsenal, Tillerson told aides that the president was a moron '-- or, according to some reports, a ''fucking moron.'' One time, Tillerson tried to open the door to negotiations with North Korea '-- and Trump slapped him down in a tweet.

The staffing problem at the State Department remained bad throughout Tillerson's tenure and in some ways got even worse. Only 64 out of 153 political appointees were confirmed by the Senate, according to a count by the Washington Post and Partnership for Public Service. He had not nominated anyone to be the assistant secretary supervising vital regions like Asia and the Middle East, nor did he nominate ambassadors for countries as important as Saudi Arabia and South Korea.

These kinds of vacancies can be devastating.

Political appointees are necessary to shape policy, as they serve as a conduit between the administration and foreign governments. Without people in these positions, career diplomats fill in as best as they can, but they have a hard time making new decisions or formulating new policy. It's near unprecedented to go this long with this many vacancies, because it cripples America's ability to develop diplomatic stances on vital issues.

''When I was assistant secretary, I was sworn in early April [of the first year],'' says Hank Cohen, the assistant secretary of state for Africa under George H.W. Bush. Under Tillerson, this position has still not officially been filled. ''It's a big problem,'' Cohen said.

In addition to that, it's not like the past year has been uneventful. During Tillerson's tenure, tensions over North Korea's nuclear program got so bad that war started to seem like a real possibility '-- and then President Trump decided to sit down with Kim Jong Un for the first direct negotiations ever between Washington and Pyongyang. One US ally in the Gulf (Saudi Arabia) laid economic siege to another (Qatar). Russia apparently poisoned a double agent on British soil.

And even the career staff suffered under Tillerson. He eliminated entire segments of the department, like the department that tracked war crimes. He imposed limits on transfers inside the organization, typically a way the State Department deals with staffing shortages, in late June.

He publicly defended a Trump administration proposal to cut his department's budget by 30 percent and has repeatedly pushed for staffing cuts despite repeated rebukes from Congress. He also cut off the department from vital recruiting sources, like the Presidential Management Fellows program.

''Secretary Tillerson's term has led to widespread demoralization in the foreign service, the dismissal or resignation of people with expertise that individually may not be irreplaceable but as a cohort certainly becomes so,'' Musgrave says. ''That hinders the State Department's ability to enhance US interests through diplomacy.''

The State Department's personnel shortfalls have long-term effects on everything ranging from the South China Sea to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict '-- you can't negotiate very well if you don't have people who know how to do it. Saunders analogizes the US under Tillerson's emaciated State Department to a person who doesn't have health insurance. ''Your life is probably fine '-- up until the point you get sick,'' she says.

The source of Tillerson's failures is both Trump and his own choices

Tillerson (L), Trump, and Mattis. Michael Reynolds-Pool/Getty Images Why did things go so wrong for Tillerson?

Some of the blame has to be laid at his boss's feet. Trump is running a chaotic administration that has nominated a shockingly low number of political appointees across practically every department. The White House shot down so many of Tillerson's picks for top deputies that he actually screamed at a group of White House aides during a meeting.

Trump personally displayed little to no interest in learning from the expertise of State Department personnel, preferring instead to push his pet priorities like weakening the Iran deal and withdrawing from the Paris climate accord.

''It may be that in a Trump administration, the structural realities of the way the White House works, you can only choose among varieties of failure,'' Musgrave says.

But that excuse only goes so far. Defense Secretary Mattis hasn't been immune to Trump's bizarre management style '-- he was blindsided, most notably, by Trump's proposal to ban transgender people from serving in the military '-- but on the whole, he has been far more effective at advocating for his department's interests and gaining influence over the president's decision-making.

You could say this is because Trump has more respect for generals than diplomats, and that's partially true. Mattis also seems better at handling Trump's mercurial nature; according to the New York Times, Tillerson frequently annoyed the president in meetings by (among other things) saying, ''It's your deal,'' whenever Trump overruled him.

But a third and vital part of it, experts say, is that Mattis '-- a career military professional and former general '-- is substantially better at working in Washington. In particular, Mattis understood that working closely with his staff in the Pentagon allowed him to advance policy ideas through the bureaucracy.

''Mattis is drawing on the expertise of his building. Some of that is a product of [his own] experience,'' Saunders says. ''Tillerson is not a creature of his building, nor is he a creature of government at all.''

By most accounts, Tillerson failed to build relationships with people in Foggy Bottom, relying instead on an insular inner circle made up of a few longtime confidants. This decision ''constitutes the core of his failure,'' according to Musgrave: It made it hard for Tillerson to garner influence inside the White House and to understand what his staff could do and how to deploy them effectively.

''Tillerson had a half-dozen, maybe a dozen aides who are not familiar with Washington and especially not familiar with the State Department,'' Musgrave says. ''But he seems to rely on these people who are loyal to him, known to him, at the expense of building relationships with the people in the building.''

Perhaps if Tillerson had developed closer relationships with State's career staff, he would have understood that supporting budget cuts to his own department and downsizing staff would demoralize them. Perhaps he would have been able to develop new ideas that would have gotten the president's ear. Perhaps he would have been more able to convince the White House to trust his judgment on political appointees.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. But the truth is we won't know because Tillerson, to a degree nearly unprecedented in State's history, failed to even try to work with his own department.

All of which invites the question: Why did this multimillionaire leave his cushy job at the head of one of the world's largest corporations and then take a job at a government bureaucracy he didn't understand and seemingly didn't respect?

It's a question only Tillerson can answer. And right now, it doesn't seem like he's in the mood for a lot of talking.

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 11:56

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By Anne Applebaum

March 13, 2018 at 2:23 PM

Police officers maintain a cordon near the home of Sergei Skripal on March 13 in Salisbury, England. (Jack Taylor/Getty Images)Add a new word to your vocabulary: Novichok. It's a chemical weapon developed in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, a nerve agent reportedly 10 times more potent than its better-known predecessors. A Russian scientist who was accidentally exposed to a small amount reported seeing ''brilliant colors and hallucinations''; he died about five years later.

Larger doses may lead to immediate paralysis of the entire nervous system; that's what the British government now believes happened to Sergei Skripal, a Russian defense intelligence officer who spied for Britain, as well as his daughter, Yulia, when they were exposed to Novichok in Salisbury, a provincial English market town best known for its lovely cathedral. The contrast between the sinister Russian poison and the middle-class, middle-England backdrop of Salisbury '-- also home to a well-preserved copy of Magna Carta, the foundational document of the British legal system '-- is part of what has made the story so sensational in the United Kingdom.

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia would consider helping in the death of Sergei Skripal if asked. Skripal was former Russian double agent. (Reuters)Vladimir Putin, a man whom most Britons know as a semi-fictional bad guy who sometimes appears on the evening news, has suddenly insinuated himself into ordinary life. One British policeman fell gravely ill after being exposed to the Skripals; 12 others were hospitalized; hundreds of others have been warned as well. That makes it difficult to dismiss this story '-- ''Russians killing Russians, and why should we care?'' '-- as many Britons did when Alexander Litvinenko, another Russian ex-spy, was murdered with radioactive polonium, another rare, highly classified poison, in central London in 2006.

But while Litvinenko's assassins might have expected to go undetected, the Skripals' would-be murderers had to know that Novichok would quickly be linked to the Russian government. On many levels, this assassination attempt represents whole new levels of defiance. It broke the rules of spy swaps: Skripal had been pardoned by then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in 2010 and traded for a bevy of Russian spies. It showed no concern for bystanders. It follows a long series of other mysterious deaths, including that of Nikolai Glushkov, a Putin opponent, in London on Monday. It showed no concern for bystanders. It has been accompanied by a loud and arrogant disinformation campaign. Since the story broke, Russian state television has alternately issued warnings to ''traitors'' and blamed British secret services, Georgia and Ukraine. A Russian politician appeared on the BBC ranting about a new Reichstag fire and comparing the British prime minister, Theresa May, to Hitler. The Russian Foreign Ministry and the Russian Embassy have been openly mocking Britain, tweeting photographs of James Bond and laughing at the evidence.

But why are they doing this? Speaking to British politicians and officials over the past week, I've heard a range of explanations. Just like the attack on the journalist Anna Politkovskaya more than a decade ago, the hit may have been meant as a warning to other potential double agents: You don't have to murder every journalist, or every spy, to frighten the rest. Alternatively, it may have been designed, in line with the old Soviet tradition of ''active measures,'' to provoke an angry response: In advance of the preordained Russian election next week, Putin can increase sluggish turnout by shouting about ''Russophobia'' in the United Kingdom.

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On March 14, British Prime Minister Theresa May announced her country would expel 23 Russian diplomats in retaliation for the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal. (The Washington Post)More ominously, it may have been designed to expose Britain's new isolation: Now that it is leaving the European Union, the United Kingdom no longer has a set of allies it can rely upon to help craft a response. It has no favors it can draw upon either: For the past year, British diplomacy has been focused on Brexit to the exclusion of all else. As if to underline this weakness, even the White House was stunningly opaque, condemning the attack but repeatedly refusing to mention Russia. The American president, so quick to insult Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin, has yet to tweet a single syllable.

So extraordinary does this failure seem to the British '-- does the American president believe their government, or the Russian Embassy? '-- that here in London, many are asking whether Trump fired Rex Tillerson because the State Department's statement on the Skripal poisonings used the word ''Russia,'' and offered more support than the president himself.

If the point was to expose British isolation, it has succeeded: There is no obvious, fast response that the United Kingdom can make, by itself, that really damages Putin. Bar some more senior Russian politicians from Britain? That hardly matters to the Russian president. Boycott the soccer World Cup? No one will mind if a few members of the royal family don't show up, or if the English team drops out.

The responses that might really matter are much more difficult. The British government could initiate a cyberattack or reveal some hacked information, and there are rumors that it will. It could reinforce its troops on the Russian border, in the Baltic states. It could also decide on much more revolutionary financial actions, make full use of its own new laws on ''unexplained wealth'' and begin immediate investigations into properties such as 4 Whitehall Court, where the Russian first deputy prime minister is believed to own two apartments worth a total of $15 million, and freezing the assets of any Russian officials in Britain. It could pass new laws making it difficult or impossible for anonymous shell companies to own British property or indeed to function in the United Kingdom at all.

That would cut down on Russian money-laundering, and indeed international money-laundering, and would slowly drive the Russian oligarchs out of London. But it would also cut down on the profits of the real estate agents, yacht salesmen, couturiers, lawyers and accountants who make their living off the international rich who have found the city so welcoming. For two decades, successive British governments put profits over security and underestimated the danger of hosting unscrupulous kleptocrats in their country. The appearance of Novichok in a quiet English town exposes the risks of that policy '-- just at a moment when Brexit Britain will find it most painful to abandon.

Anne Applebaum writes a weekly foreign affairs column for The Washington Post.

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 11:55

Mar. 14, 2018 at 8:24 AM

If you skipped watching the results of the special election in Pennsylvania's 18th Congressional District last night to catch an action movie or read a crime thriller instead, you picked the less exciting activity. Democrat Conor Lamb and Republican Rick Saccone ran neck and neck for most of the evening (at one point, they were separated by only 95 votes), and even The Associated Press went to bed without calling the race. As of 8 a.m. Wednesday, with 100 percent of precincts reporting, Lamb led by 641 votes, or 0.28 percentage points. And he and Democrats had claimed victory.

The exact margin will likely change, but it's going to be very difficult for Saccone to make up that deficit. The only votes left to be counted are around 200 absentee ballots in Greene County (expected to be announced on Wednesday) as well as a handful of provisional and overseas ballots, which may take days to finalize. There may not even be 641 ballots left to count.

Nor is a recount likely to change the final result. Although it would be pretty easy for Republicans to request a recount should they want one, recounts typically don't shift election margins by that much. That's especially true in Pennsylvania, where most voting is done on electronic touchscreens; a recount would only reveal errors in the small population of paper ballots.

But as we've told you from the beginning, for those of us who don't live in the Pennsylvania 18th, it doesn't really matter who wins if what you're mainly interested in is the 2018 midterms. The takeaway for November's elections will be the same no matter whether Lamb wins by a fraction of a percentage point or Saccone wins by a fraction of a percentage point: Tuesday represented yet another huge Democratic overperformance in a Trump-era special election.

The Democratic overperformance in Pennsylvania 18Special elections this cycle, by the constituency's partisan lean and final vote margin

YearDateSeatPartisan LeanVote marginDem. Swing2017April 4California 34th' D+69D+87+18April 11Kansas 4thR+29R+6+23May 25Montana At-LargeR+21R+6+16June 20Georgia 6thR+9R+4+6June 20South Carolina 5thR+19R+3+16Nov. 7Utah 3rdR+35R+32+3Dec. 12Alabama U.S. SenateR+29D+2+312018March 13Pennsylvania 18thR+210*+22Partisan lean is the average difference between how the constituency voted and how the country voted overall in the last two presidential elections, with 2016 weighted 75 percent and 2012 weighted 25 percent.

* Unofficial.

' Primary results used because both general-election candidates were from the same party. Primary included multiple Democratic candidates, and results show vote share for all Democratic candidates combined.

Source: Daily Kos Elections, secretaries of state

One special election is not enough to draw midterm conclusions from, but when it fits so clearly into an existing pattern, it's safe to say something's going on. Counting Tuesday's result, Democratic candidates in federal special elections have now outperformed the normal partisan leans of their state or district by an average of 17 percentage points. In recent midterm election cycles, that number has tracked closely with the eventual national popular vote for the U.S. House.

Special elections have tended to predict midterm outcomesSwing in average special congressional election from weighted presidential lean vs. the national House vote margin in the next midterm since 1994

CycleAverage SwingNational House MarginDifference2014R+4R+622010R+6R+712006D+15D+8720020R+551998D+1R+121994R+9R+72Average3The swing compares the district's Democratic lean in the previous two presidential elections vs. the special election result. The Democratic lean compares the district's voting patterns to the nation. For each cycle, the previous presidential election is weighted 75 percent and the one before is weighted 25 percent.

Sources: DAILY KOS ELECTIONS, Polidata, SWING STATE PROJECT, Ourcampaigns

In other words, the result in Pennsylvania 18 is just the latest indication that Republicans are in trouble. The best predictors of midterm strength we have '-- President Trump's approval rating, the generic ballot, congressional retirements and special elections '-- all are saying the same thing. In fact, of those, special election results may suggest the rosiest future for Democrats.

Does the Pennsylvania 18 result tell us anything else about the national political environment? That gets a little tricky, and I'd be cautious. But the pattern of Lamb's overperformance may conceal other clues. For example, it's still up for debate which political map represents America's true baseline: the Obama-era 2012 map or the Trump-remade 2016 map, under which the white, working-class Midwest turned red and well-educated suburbs trended more Democratic. Perhaps counterintuitively, the Pennsylvania special election suggests that the 2016 map has some staying power. Lamb outperformed Hillary Clinton's margins by a nearly identical 19 points in white-collar Allegheny County and in Trump-loving, blue-collar Washington and Westmoreland counties. However, Lamb outperformed then-President Obama's 2012 margin by 23 points in Allegheny while doing so by only 9 to 12 points in the district's other three counties. Perhaps because Lamb assumed some socially conservative positions and cozied up to blue-collar workers, the Pennsylvania 18th is often portrayed as just another Midwestern working-class district. In fact, though, it is both wealthier and better-educated than the nation as a whole. As the numbers show, Lamb won this election not in ''Trump country,'' but in the Allegheny County suburbs.

Finally, Pennsylvania 18 was yet another example of a Democratic turnout advantage '-- the telltale sign of an enthusiasm gap '-- helping the party do better than expected in special elections. The number of votes Lamb received was 80 percent of the number of votes Clinton received in this district in 2016 '-- but Saccone got just 53 percent of the number of votes Trump got. Anecdotally, turnout was also much higher in Democratic precincts than it was in Republican precincts. But, crucially for Democrats, the results hinted that maybe that Democratic turnout advantage is transferable to the higher-turnout environment of a midterm election. The 228,177 votes cast in the special election exceeded the 214,912 votes the 18th District cast in Pennsylvania's 2014 gubernatorial election. In other words, turnout on Tuesday was even higher than it was in the last midterm.

Now we're digging pretty deep into the numbers, a depth at which you can fall victim to the trap of overinterpreting the results of one special election. The big-picture takeaway is this: If Democrats can win districts like Pennsylvania 18, they won't need to stretch and scrape together a House majority. According to FiveThirtyEight's partisan lean measure, 118 Republican-held districts nationwide are less red than the Pennsylvania 18th is. Of course, the entire country is unlikely to shift 22 points to the left in November the way the 18th did '-- and the country may not even shift the full 17 points implied by the aggregate of special-election results '-- but Republicans should still be very worried.

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 11:54

Donald Trump in the Oval Office with members of his Cabinet last March.

This column is adapted from the current issue of Truth and Consequences, Michael A. Cohen's weekly online newsletter. To subscribe, click here.

Earlier this week, it was reported that Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, who has a net worth of approximately $29 million, spent $31,000 in taxpayer money on a dining set for his private office. This is the second time in recent months that Carson has been in ethical trouble. Earlier this year he was forced to request an inspector general investigation of his son, Ben Carson Jr., for his involvement in a HUD listening tour that represented a potential conflict of interest.

Carson's bad behavior would, in most presidential administrations, stand out. In Trump's Washington, we call it Tuesday. After all, in just 13 months since Trump took office, his Cabinet has produced a stunning compilation of malfeasance, nest feathering, sleaziness, and drinking from the public trough. Here's a partial list.

Late last year, HHS Secretary Tom Price was forced to resign over reports that he charged taxpayers $400,000 for official travel on military and private jets. Charging taxpayers for plane rides that officials previously conducted on cheaper, commercial flights has become practically de rigueur in the Trump Cabinet.

For example, last month The Washington Post reported that EPA administrator Scott Pruitt regularly flies first class or uses military jets. The EPA said he did so because of security concerns and claimed that he has a blanket waiver from the department to fly first class. He doesn't.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who has a net worth of close to $300 million, charged the government $800,000 for travel on military jets and even requested military transport to go on his honeymoon last year.

Related LinksTrump's Cabinet: Gilded with taxpayer goldAt least we finally know what Ben Carson has been up to: Shopping!

The chief of staff to Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin was forced to resign after an inspector general report found that she doctored an e-mail and made false statements to ethics officials regarding official travel for Shulkin and his wife. She was seeking to create a pretext for the agency to foot a $4,300 bill for Shulkin's wife to join him on a 10-day junket to Europe last year, which included tickets to Wimbledon and trips to tourist destinations in the United Kingdom and Denmark.

Then there are the sins of omission. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross failed to reveal in his confirmation hearings that he has a significant investment in a shipping company with close business ties to both a Russian oligarch and the son-in-law of Russia's president, Vladimir Putin.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions hasn't engaged in financial wrongdoing, but it seems clear that he may have perjured himself on multiple occasions during his confirmation hearing to become the nation's highest ranking law enforcement official.

We can also give a shout-out to Education Secretary Betsy Devos, who instead of using the department's in-house security has tasked US marshals with protecting her '-- at a cost to taxpayers of approximately a half-million dollars a month.

But the granddaddy of them all is Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. Like other Trump Cabinet secretaries he's charged taxpayers for trips on private planes. He's also attended political fund-raisers as part of his official travel, reportedly used funds set aside for wildfire preparedness to take a helicopter trip to Nevada, which was unrelated to wildfire preparedness; and allegedly threatened Alaska's two senators, Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, to withhold Interior support for Alaska before the Senate vote on repealing Obamacare. Finally, Zinke has the staff at the headquarters of the Interior Department raise and lower a flag depending on whether he's in the building '-- which is less an example of corruption and more just a useful piece of insight into how Trump's Cabinet members view the humbling responsibilities of public service.

An honorable mention must also be given to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who has avoided enriching himself and instead has been content in eviscerating the State Department's bureaucracy since he took over the agency last year.

These are just the Cabinet officials. There's also the former national security adviser, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI; the White House staff secretary credibly charged with domestic abuse; and the head of the Centers for Disease Control, who was caught trading stocks in companies that had business before her agency and was forced to resign. Finally, there is Jared Kushner, the White House senior adviser/son-in-law who not only lacks a full security clearance but who also received $500 million in loans from two investors not long after they met with him in the White House.

Of course there's also the president of the United States, who is personally profiting from being president '-- and likely violating the Constitution in the process.

This kind of venality at the highest levels of the US government has little modern precedent. Indeed, in eight years of the Obama presidency there's not one scandal that rises to the level of any of the ones mentioned here.

The irony of all this is that, during the 2016 campaign, Trump ran around the country telling voters that he'd drain the swamp when he got to Washington. Instead, he's stocked it with a new roster of creatures '-- few of whom seem to have any compunction about taking advantage of their positions of power, wasting taxpayer dollars and raiding the public treasury for their own personal benefit. In Trump's America, power corrupts and Trump corrupts absolutely.

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Michael A. Cohen takes on the absurdities and hypocrisies of the current political moment.

Michael A. Cohen's column appears regularly in the Globe. Follow him on Twitter @speechboy71.

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 11:52

Stormy Daniels last week filed suit in state court in Los Angeles, seeking to have the nondisclosure agreement tossed out because Donald Trump never signed it. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images

BuzzFeed may have found a legal opening to allow the porn actress Stormy Daniels to discuss her alleged relationship with President Donald Trump and a $130,000 payment she received just before the 2016 election as part of a nondisclosure agreement she is now trying to void.

The same Trump attorney who brokered the deal with Daniels, Michael Cohen, filed a libel suit in January against BuzzFeed and four of its staffers over publication of the so-called dossier compiling accurate, inaccurate and unproven allegations about Trump's relationship with Russia.

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Now, BuzzFeed is using Cohen's libel suit as a vehicle to demand that Daniels preserve all records relating to her relationship with Trump, as well as her dealings with Cohen and the payment he has acknowledged arranging in 2016.

On Tuesday, BuzzFeed's lawyer wrote to Daniels' attorney asking that the adult film actress, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, preserve various categories of documents. Such preservation letters are often a prelude to a subpoena. If Daniels' testimony is formally demanded in a deposition, the nondisclosure agreement would likely be no obstacle, legal experts said.

The letter from BuzzFeed's attorney, obtained by POLITICO, argues that Cohen's role in paying Daniels is similar to allegations in the dossier about Cohen. The dossier alleges that Cohen met Russian legal officials and legislators in Prague in August 2016 in a bid to ''sweep '... under the carpet'' details of the relationship between Russia and Trump campaign officials like Paul Manafort and Rick Gates. Cohen has flatly denied the claim.

''Mr. Cohen's role in President Trump's 2016 campaign, including but not limited to any payments he made or facilitated to third parties during or in connection with the campaign, is therefore directly relevant to'' Cohen's suit, BuzzFeed lawyer Katherine Bolger wrote.

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Bolger asked Daniels to preserve all records of negotiations, agreements and payments involving Cohen, but also for more direct proof of Daniels' alleged connection with Trump, including ''any and all documents or communications about any relationship and/or sexual encounter(s) Ms. Clifford had and/or was alleged to have had, with President Trump.''

Daniels' lawyer, Michael Avenatti, confirmed on Wednesday that he'd received the letter from BuzzFeed. Asked how Daniels would respond, he said, ''We don't have a position as of yet.'' He declined further comment.

Last week, Daniels filed suit in state court in Los Angeles, seeking to have the nondisclosure agreement tossed out because Trump never signed it.

The preservation notice sent to Daniels' attorney was one of more than a dozen such letters BuzzFeed's legal team sent this week to a number of high-profile players in the Trump orbit, including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Manafort's former deputy Rick Gates, former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, former White House adviser Steve Bannon, current White House adviser Kellyanne Conway and former Trump bodyguard Keith Schiller, as well as Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and Trump's son Donald Trump Jr.

A deposition by Daniels is probably some months away. It would not typically take place in public, but lawyers for either side would be free to release it or related documents unless a judge forbade it.

Cohen's attorney in the libel suit against BuzzFeed, David Schwartz, said on Wednesday he was aware of the preservation letters and would probably object to any attempt by the news outlet to dig into the Daniels episode or other matters not referred to directly in the dossier.

''Certainly at the appropriate time there'll be a fight in court as to limitations in discovery in this case,'' Schwartz told POLITICO. ''We want a very narrow view of discovery for many different reasons. '... I think those recipients [of the letters] are going to be irrelevant to the case at hand.''

Schwartz said he expected to be buried in paperwork from the law firms representing BuzzFeed and Fusion GPS, the private investigation firm that commissioned the dossier. Cohen sued Fusion in a separate, parallel libel case in January.

''They're going to try to wipe us out with demands on every unrelated issue under the sun,'' the attorney for Cohen said. ''I believe when you know something is fake and you still post it as if it were real, where no other news organization would do such a thing, I think you're committing an intentional act and they're going to be liable for defamation.''

A spokesman for BuzzFeed suggested that since the libel suit seeks compensation for damage to Cohen's reputation, episodes affecting his public standing are fair game for discovery.

''Mr. Cohen's personal reputation, and his actions on Donald Trump's behalf, are directly relevant to this case,'' spokesman Matt Mittenthal said. ''We look forward to defending our First Amendment rights in court.''

Lorraine Woellert contributed to this report.

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I have friends who find the above (now long-standing) feature of the Slog extreme and offensive. They tell me it is a classic of Little Englander bigotry and outdated thinking. In the light of the events of the last week or so, I wonder what they think now .

___________________________________________________________________________________________

Let's just do a brief catch-up on two stories that are, in reality, one: the poisoning of a Russian former spy (perhaps double-agent) in Britain, and the abrupt dismissal of Rex Tillerson. The UK government and its philandering, pro-Singapore neoliberal drunkard Foreign Secretary have suddenly decided to get angry about Russian espionage activities on British soil. If you know anything at all about the real world of 'spying' and cyber/chemical warfare, then you will see both the act itself and British reaction to it as standard behaviour.

Putin's chaps regularly bump off MI6 recruits and off-message oligarchal psychos in this manner. It's regrettable, but given our species, normal. I'm not excusing it: I'm just calling out the reaction to it as hypocritical in the extreme.

The idea that British spooks and diplomats would start an argument with Moscow in the absence of Washington/State/Pentagon permission is beyond silly: we manufactured (along with the French) a coup against Nasser in 1956, and were told by Eisenhower to withdraw forthwith. That was a long-ago action against a 3rd division nation: this is 2018, and Russia is the sole nuclear power competing with the US. Grow up.

Theresa May's government has turned to sabre-rattling over this event '' still, I might add, a matter of frenzied conjecture '' 90% because the US State Department told it to, but 10% because the Brexit-embattled Mayflower crew badly needs a distraction and the Remains need a boost.

36 hours ago, the last civilian geopolitical heavy-hitter in the Trump White House was abruptly told to spend more time with his family. His place was taken by Mike Pompeo '' a CIA lifer and military behind-the-lines agitator in league with the nutjob Koch brothers of serial infamy.

Again, it is not my intention to demonise these players as uniquely twisted: they are no better or worse than the monsters around Putin. However, we need to get some perspective here: the civilian FBI was out to get Trump, and the military CIA is now almost certainly controlling Trump'....whether he realises it or not. Pompeo's appointment not only neuters the FBI as a potential force for the Rule of Law in the US: it confirms that what I call ''CIA Texas Pentagon'' is the real ruling force in the American Republic.

It is, as so often, a question of munnneeeee and oooeeeeuuurrrl.

Vlad the Lad knows he is sitting on a treasure chest of oil, but both windows are limited: in the short term, NATO will have its way and secure the Syria-route pipeline that threatens to nix Putin's monopoly of supply; and in the medium term, oil consumption will fall in the west as hybrid, electric and fusion cars come on stream. But for now, all is uncertainty because, as always, neither British politicians nor EU bureaucrats have planned for a post-oil world'....and the Americans won't think past oil because the AltState was founded by oilmen who first of all infiltrated the CIA, and then bought Congress. Now '' for the third time '' they own the White House as well.

The context is as clear as a bell for those who are awake and in possession of objective stereoscopic mind-eyes to see it. Putin has knocked back every US/EUNATO caper in the Ukraine and Syria with the consummate ease of a class-act chess player. But even he can't change the fact that the West aka CIA Texas Pentagon will have its oil pipeline and we will so have it, so up yours former Commie Russkie bastards.

And as ever, the US (C)lite's favourite British bumboys fall into line.

For Boris Johnson, of course, the canvas is smaller: with the gruesome avarice of all those who smell the scent of power in their nostrils, he grasps this apparent opportunity to become the sole Churchillian hero-figure in a government that seems spineless in its Brexit negotiations. For BoJo '' be in no doubt '' this is his last chance for a chancer's route to 10 Downing Street.

Boris is positively revelling in the diplomatic exclusion claptrap that was always going to be the outcome of this farrago: we're sending 23 of their spooks home, while they're deporting an as yet unspecified number of ours. Let us now steel ourselves and send more bicycles to the Polish border'...let's get the Ivans really quaking in their badly-manufactured boots.

Alternatively, for heaven's sake, think : if they know who our spies are and we know who theirs are, how is it tenable to suggest that this comes as a shock to the British Establishment? If we really do know who engineered the poisoning thing, why not just highlight those assholes who did it '' and then send them back to Mother Russia?

It stinks. But most of all, the odour of this ordure emanates from the long-decomposing corpse of that 1940s relic The Special Relationship. It demanded that first Thatcher and then Blair be fellow-travellers on the road to CIA r(C)gime change in Iraq. It insisted that Cameron do the same in Gadaffi's Libya. And only Westminster dissenters stopped Obama, Clinton and Cameron from synchronised bombing in Syria.

The ''United'' Kingdom engages in these costly and ill-considered foreign adventures because its political class refuses to accept our at best marginal importance in the drive towards American global hegemony over world affairs.

I say no to alliance with the EU (a flimsy veil for NATO to wear) and allegiance to the USA because I have long believed that our future lies in skillfully marketing uniquely British goods to the emerging nouveaux of the Third World. There is oil aplenty under the Mediterranean (if Texas won't invest in it, then the UK needs to find partners '' like Cyprus '' who will) but as always the Westminster solution is a diminishing-returns, ecologically dangerous short-term fix: fracking.

Once again, we are delivered unto deep doodoo by the political class and their neoliberal, fast-buck allies who just don't get investment.

The same fatties who took over the water supply sector and failed to repair the infrastructure are the same clowns desperate now to get American oilco's frantically digging more holes to screw up the supply yet further. The same vandals keen to saddle an underpaid nation with health insurance bills that will bankrupt them. But the price we're constantly asked to pay for our Special ReNATOnship seems to be (a) letting every carpetbagging US (or French or German) globalist in to shove out such manufacturing as we have left'.....and (b) developing an ever-more visceral hatred of the Russians.

Astonishingly, Labour supporters too won't hear a word said against NATO, won't hear a word said against an EU that illegally destroyed the Greek socialist government, and do swallow the Putin threat drivel in one mighty gulp. But perhaps they should ask themselves this: do they know anything about how this is affecting public opinion in the Russian Federation? And what sort of mentality is it breeding in the Kremlin towards the West'.....the same one as has been developed by the Arab world, perhaps?

Ordinary Russians I met over two months last year sneered at Britain for what it is: an American lapdog with pathetic pretensions to world ''power''. But '' whatever they think about Putin himself '' they resent the sanctions that followed Ukraine and Crimea, and feel threatened by having 27 Cubas on their borders. I don't blame them.

We are in fact giving nourishment to the more militarist nutters in the Russian Establishment who look to Putin and his successors to restore Russian pride and independence. This is precisely what CIA Texas Pentagon wants: enemies are good for business. The rest of us have to live in the real world.

Ultimately, things will turn very nasty indeed when the big geopolitical factors change from being rare earth minerals and fossil fuels to clean, drinking water and climate. When it comes to water drawn from Eastern Europe's water system, Russia has need of it both for health and 'weaponising' reasons. Putin is extremely sensitive to any NATO moves further reducing the RF's access to the Danube and its tributaries. The water modernisation programme initiated by Moscow in 2006 has been largely neglected since 2013 because of pressures on oil income during the world recession, NATO sanctions, and the uncertain value of the Rouble. But beneath the surface of a temporary threat to RF water purity, the Kremlin is rumoured to be looking at a future time when ambitious flow-change projects could cut large areas of Europe off from fresh water.

You see, silly sanctions lead to tensions, and tensions lead to consequences. As a nation, Britain needs to ask whether it really wants to fry in order to keep the Texan oil barons in clover. The bottom line really is that simple, and we Brits need to focus on it.

Join up all these dots '' and this is geopolitical fact, not conspiracy theory '' every month now it becomes clearer to me what former US contacts in New York, LA and Washington meant when they said five years ago, a propos the EU, ''John, come what may, the American Alt State will not allow you to leave'....there is too much at stake''.

You don't have to be of Mensa intelligence to see how ramping up the Russiaphobia could scare Leavers into preferring safety to freedom. Federica Mogherini will get her army'...and if we're ''in'' at that point, there will be no turning back.

In that context, observing UKIP falling apart like an MFI kitchen unit is beyond sad: it reflects a real and present danger to meaningful Brexit. This is our last chance to use our island status like the Swiss use their mountains: to keep us neutral, and create an orderly system of devolved cantonesque democracy. We mustn't blow it through cowardice, naivety and ignorance.

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 11:38

Source: iHeartRadio

IHeartMedia Inc filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Thursday as the largest U.S. radio station owner reached an in-principle agreement with creditors to restructure its overwhelming debt load.

The company, which filed for bankruptcy along with some of its units, said it reached the agreement with holders of more than $10 billion of its outstanding debt for a balance sheet restructuring, which would reduce its debt by more than $10 billion.

IHeartMedia, which has struggled with $20 billion of debt and falling revenue at its 858 radio stations, said cash on hand and cash generated from ongoing operations will be sufficient to fund the business during the bankruptcy process.

"The agreement ... is a significant accomplishment, as it allows us to definitively address the more than $20 billion in debt that has burdened our capital structure," Chief Executive Bob Pittman said.

The filing comes after John Malone's Liberty Media Corp proposed on Feb. 26 a deal to buy a 40 percent stake in a restructured iHeartMedia for $1.16 billion, uniting the company with Liberty's Sirius XM Holdings Inc satellite radio service.

Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings Inc, a subsidiary of iHeartMedia and one of the world's largest billboard companies, and its units did not commence Chapter 11 proceedings.

IHeartMedia skipped a $106 million interest payment on Feb. 1, triggering a 30-day grace period during which the company has tried to hammer out a deal with it bondholders.

The company disclosed on Monday it was still exchanging proposals with its creditors, but had yet to reach an agreement.

Its most recent proposal would have given holders of secured loans, who are owed nearly $13 billion, about $5.6 billion in new debt and 94 percent of the equity in a reorganized iHeartMedia. These creditors also would have received iHeartMedia's 89.5 percent stake in Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings.

Bain Capital LLC and Thomas H. Lee Partners LP control 68 percent of the voting stock of iHeartMedia, according to the company's most recent annual report.

The private equity firms led a $17.9 billion leveraged buyout of what was then Clear Channel Communications Inc in 2008, just as the buyout boom was fading and as the signs of the financial crisis began to emerge.

Shares of iHeartMedia lost three-quarters of their value in the second half of 2015 and have never recovered since then. On Monday, the pink sheet stock closed at 48 cents.

IHeartMedia traces its roots to the 1972 purchase of KEEZ-FM in San Antonio, Texas, where it is currently headquartered. It also produces syndicated radio programs that feature "American Idol" host Ryan Seacrest and political personalities Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

The company had 14,300 employees at the end of 2016, according to its most recent annual report.

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 10:20

Ford is recalling 1.4 million sedans across North America because the bolt that holds the steering wheel to the steering column can become loose over time and allow the wheel detach itself while the vehicles are being driven.

Ford Fusion and Lincoln MKZ cars from the 2014-2018 model years are covered by the safety action, with 1.3 million of them located in the United States.

Two crashes and one injury have been linked to the issue. Affected owners will be officially notified during the last week of April when parts to fix the cars are scheduled to be available. Ford hasn't told owners not to drive their vehicles in the meantime.

The Fusion is Ford's best-selling sedan. (Ford)

The recall comes about five months after the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation into steering wheels falling off of Fusions from the 2014 through 2016 model years.

The safety agency said in documents that it began the probe after receiving three complaints, including one from a driver from Georgia who reported that the steering wheel in a 2015 Fusion fell into their lap when turning into a gas station.

The Lincoln MKZ is built on the same platform and at the same factory as the Fusion. (Lincoln)

Two other people reported that the bolt attaching the wheel to the steering column came loose while driving and had to be retightened at a repair shop. At the time the agency had no reports of crashes or injuries.

Ford isn't the only manufacturer to issue a recall for steering wheels coming off. In February, Hyundai recalled 43,900 vehicles which were at risk of the steering wheel breaking away from the steering column. That recall affected the 2018 Santa Fe and Santa Fe Sport SUVs.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 10:19

>>London Mayor Sadiq Kahn read a list of half-dozen racist tweets about himself to a crowd at the annual SXSW festival in Austin, TX Monday.

"I say kill the mayor of London and you'll be rid of one Muslim terrorist," Khan quoted to the audience. "I'd pay for someone to execute Sadiq Khan."

Kahn, the first Muslim mayor of a Western capital, implored tech companies to censor "hate speech," - which has recently become a catchall from everything from death threats to opposing longstanding symbols of actual oppression, such as hijabs.

The London mayor said he didn't want to be "portrayed as a victim" or "ask for sympathy." Instead, he wants to tech companies to police people's feelings by going further in "making the internet free of hate speech."

"But ask yourself this: What happens when young boys and girls from minority backgrounds see this kind of thing on their timelines or experience this themselves?" said Khan.

Khan said that tweets like the ones addressed to him send a message to these children that if they don't look a certain way or subscribe to the same establishment beliefs, they will grow up thinking there's no path for them in high-profile careers.

"We simply must do more to protect people online," Khan said.

Khan urged companies like Facebook and Twitter to show "a stronger duty of care" so that "social-media platforms can live up to their promises to connect, unify, and democratize the sharing of information and be places where everyone feels welcomed and valued." -Business Insider

Too bad for those offended by mass censorship in the name of creating an all-encompassing safe space. European officials, meanwhile continue to turn a blind eye as migrants to rape, pillage and plunder with near impunity due to "cultural differences" (not hate).

Germany began enforcing strict "hate speech" laws on January 1, giving companies such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube 24 hours after a complaint to remove postings containing hate speech. Failure to remove the offending posts in time so will expose the platforms to fines of up to 50 million euros ($60 million USD).

The new law was passed last June and went into effect in October - however social media companies were given until January 1 to prepare to maintain an "effective and transparent procedure for dealing with complaints" which users can submit freely. Upon receiving a complaint, social media companies have 24 hours to block or remove "obviously illegal content" - and up to a week in "complex cases."

The new law isn't just for the big three (Facebook, YouTube and Twitter) either:

Social platform giants such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter were couched as the initial targets for the law, but Spiegal Online suggests the government is looking to apply the law more widely '-- including to content on networks such as Reddit, Tumblr, Flickr, Vimeo, VK and Gab. -TechCrunch

German lawmaker Beatrix von Storch's Twitter account was blocked in January after she lashed out at New Year's greetings sent by Cologne police in Arabic.

"What the hell is happening in this country? Why does an official police site tweet in Arabic," wrote the Alternative for Germany (AfD) conservative party member.

As we wrote in January, Social media giants face a gigantic task - which some might say is impossible. It is estimated that around 38.1 million Germans alone will use social media in 2018.

Now, consider that every single flagged post from millions of users must be evaluated before the post is removed or blocked. This will require Artificial Intelligence (AI) or some other sort of algo. And as algos begin to identify and remove "hate speech," people will adapt to the filters and begin to find ways around it - changing terms, spellings, and using coded language to communicate.

What if - bear with us - parents taught their children that sometimes mean people say mean things, and one simply needs to have the internal fortitude to overcome offensive statements instead of employing mass censorship?

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 10:15

Shaq says he would like to see 'police officers in schools, inner cities, private schools.' USATSI Shaquille O'Neal is a longtime friend of the police. He's running for sheriff in Georgia in 2020, he was named an honorary officer after completing an unofficial police academy program in 2016 and he's remained outspoken on police rights. With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that Shaq's answer to school shootings is to make schools safer by placing cops around them, not by banning guns.

"The government should give law enforcement more money," he said on WABC Radio on Wednesday, via ESPN. "Give more money, you recruit more people, and the guys that are not ready to go on the streets, you put them in front of the schools. You put 'em in front of the schools, you put 'em behind the schools, you put 'em inside the schools, and we need to pass information. ... I would like to see police officers in schools, inner cities, private schools."

O'Neal points out that the prevalence of weapons already on the street would make a ban counterproductive, and allow the black market to thrive.

"There's a lot of those weapons already on the streets," O'Neal said. "So it's not like, if you say, 'OK, these weapons are banned,' people are gonna go, 'Oh man, let me turn it in.' That's definitely not going to happen. [Because] once you ban 'em, now they're going to become a collector's item and you're going to have people underground, and they were $2,000. ... I'll give you $9,000 for that gun. So, you know, we just need to keep our eyes open."

The ban of semi-automatic weapons is one that has largely been supported by law enforcement, particularly after the shooting in Parkland, Florida on Valentine's Day. O'Neal, who lives in Fort Lauderdale, said that the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School -- which resulted in 17 deaths -- touched him close to home.

"You know it was a very, very sad incident," he said, per ESPN. "Close to my heart. I actually live in Fort Lauderdale. I actually knew the sheriff, called him and told him he did a wonderful job."

Students staged a walkout of schools on Wednesday to protest violence in schools, which O'Neal also supported.

"I wish I could join 'em, but you know, hopefully it sends a message to the powers that be," he said. "[Because] we have to stop this. ... I would like to see tougher background checks. If you can't protect our children in school, where are they safe?"

In response to the shooting, Florida Governor Rick Scott passed a bill that would lead to sweeping reform of gun laws, including banning sales to anyone under 21, a three-day waiting period for purchases, the ban of bump stocks, the confiscation of weapons by police and the arming of certain personnel in schools. It's a massive move from the Florida legislature.

O'Neal may not believe it's the right direction. For him, the guns aren't the problem. The wrong people carrying them are.

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 10:13

They bowed their heads in honor of the dead. They carried signs with messages like "Never again" and "Am I next?" They railed against the National Rifle Association and the politicians who support it.

And over and over, they repeated the message: Enough is enough.

In a wave of protests one historian called the largest of its kind in American history, tens of thousands of students walked out of their classrooms Wednesday to demand action on gun violence and school safety.

The demonstrations extended from Maine to Hawaii as students joined the youth-led surge of activism set off by the Feb. 14 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

"We're sick of it," said Maxwell Nardi, a senior at Douglas S. Freeman High School in Henrico, Virginia, just outside Richmond. "We're going to keep fighting, and we're not going to stop until Congress finally makes resolute changes."

Students around the nation left class at 10 a.m. local time for at least 17 minutes '-- one minute for each of the dead in the Florida shooting. Some led marches or rallied on football fields, while others gathered in school gyms or took a knee in the hallway.

At some schools, hundreds of students poured out. At others, just one or two walked out in defiance of administrators.

Classrooms across America were left almost barren as tens of thousands of students walked out of their classrooms Wednesday to demand action on gun violence and school safety. It was one of the biggest student protests since the Vietnam era. (March 14)

They lamented that too many young people have died and that they're tired of going to school afraid they will be killed.

"Enough is enough. People are done with being shot," said Iris Fosse-Ober, 18, a senior at Washburn High School in Minneapolis.

Some issued specific demands for lawmakers, including mandatory background checks for all gun sales and a ban on assault weapons like the one used in the Florida bloodbath.

While administrators and teachers at some schools applauded students for taking a stand '-- and some joined them '-- others threatened punishment for missing class.

As the demonstrations unfolded, the NRA responded by posting a photo on Twitter of a black rifle emblazoned with an American flag. The caption: "I'll control my own guns, thank you."

The protests took place at schools from the elementary level through college, including some that have witnessed their own mass shootings: About 300 students gathered on a soccer field at Colorado's Columbine High, while students who survived the Sandy Hook Elementary School attack in 2012 marched out of Newtown High School in Connecticut.

In the nation's capital, more than 2,000 high-school age protesters observed 17 minutes of silence while sitting on the ground with their backs turned to the White House. President Donald Trump was out of town.

The students carried signs with messages such as "Our Blood/Your Hands" and "Never Again" and chanted slogans against the NRA.

In New York City, they chanted, "Enough is enough!" In Salt Lake City, the signs read, "Protect kids not guns," ''Fear has no place in school" and "Am I next?"

At Eagle Rock High in Los Angeles, teenagers took a moment of silence as they gathered around a circle of 17 chairs labeled with the names of the Florida victims.

Stoneman Douglas High senior David Hogg, who has emerged as one of the leading student activists, livestreamed the walkout at the tragedy-stricken school on his YouTube channel. He said students couldn't be expected to stay in class while there was work to do to prevent gun violence.

"Every one of these individuals could have died that day. I could have died that day," he said.

In joining the protests, the students followed the example set by many of the survivors of the Florida shooting, who have become gun-control activists, leading rallies, lobbying legislators and giving TV interviews. Their efforts helped spur passage last week of a Florida law curbing access to assault rifles by young people.

Another protest against gun violence is scheduled in Washington on March 24, with organizers saying it is expected to draw hundreds of thousands.

But whether the students can make a difference on Capitol Hill remains to be seen.

Congress has shown little inclination to defy the powerful NRA and tighten gun laws, and Trump backed away from his initial support for raising the minimum age for buying an assault rifle to 21.

A spokeswoman for Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, newly appointed head of a federal panel on school safety, said DeVos "gives a lot credit to the students who are raising their voices and demanding change," and "their input will be valuable."

David Farber, a history professor at the University of Kansas who has studied social change movements, said it is too soon to know what effect the protests will have. But he said Wednesday's walkouts were without a doubt the largest protest led by high school students in the history of the U.S.

"Young people are that social media generation, and it's easy to mobilize them in a way that it probably hadn't been even 10 years ago," Farber said.

Wednesday's coordinated protests were organized by Empower, the youth wing of the Women's March, which brought thousands to Washington last year.

At Aztec High School in a rural, gun-friendly part of New Mexico where many enjoy hunting and shooting, students avoided gun politics and opted for a ceremony honoring students killed in shootings '-- including two who died in a December attack at Aztec.

"Our kids sit on both ends of the spectrum, and we have a diverse community when it comes to gun rights and gun control," Principal Warman Hall said.

In Brimfield, Ohio, 12-year-old Olivia Shane, an avid competitive trap shooter who has owned her own guns since she was about 7, skipped the gun protest and memorial held at her school.

"People want to take away our guns and it's a Second Amendment right of ours," she said. "If they want to take away our Second Amendment right, why can't we take away their amendment of freedom of speech?"

About 10 students left Ohio's West Liberty-Salem High School '-- which witnessed a shooting last year '-- despite a warning they could face detention or more serious discipline.

Police in the Atlanta suburb of Marietta patrolled Kell High, where students were threatened with unspecified consequences if they participated. Three students walked out anyway.

The walkouts drew support from companies such as media conglomerate Viacom, which paused programming on MTV, BET, Nickelodeon and its other networks for 17 minutes during the walkouts.

___

Associated Press writers Ken Thomas and Maria Danilova in Washington; Jeff Martin in Atlanta; Kantele Franko in Columbus, Ohio; Jonathan Drew in Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Mike Householder in Detroit; Denise Lavoie in Richmond, Virginia; Alanna Durkin Richer in Boston; Jeff Baenen in Minneapolis; Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico; and Krysta Fauria in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Follow Binkley on Twitter at @cbinkley

___

This story has been corrected to show that the Minneapolis student's last name is Fosse-Ober.

___

Find all of AP's coverage on the walkouts and the Parkland, Florida, shooting at https://apnews.com/tag/Floridaschoolshooting

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 10:09

| March 14, 2018 04:03 PM

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley speaks during a Security Council meeting on the situation between Britain and Russia at United Nations headquarters. Britain said Wednesday it would expel 23 Russian diplomats and sever high-level bilateral contacts after Russia ignored a deadline to explain how a Soviet-developed nerve agent was used against ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.Mary Altaffer/AP

New York City could be the next site of a chemical assassination attempt if world leaders fail to punish Russia for its alleged role in poisoning of a former spy in the United Kingdom, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley warned Wednesday.

''If we don't take immediate concrete measures to address this now, Salisbury will not be the last place we see chemical weapons used,'' Haley told the United Nations Security Council. ''They could be used here in New York, or in cities of any country that sits on this Council. This is a defining moment.''

Haley raised the specter of new attacks during an emergency council meeting, held at the request of British officials who have accused Russia of using ''a military-grade nerve agent'' to target a former military intelligence officer who committed treason. Russian diplomats have denied responsibility for the incident, but British investigators say they have identified the poison as a chemical weapon produced by the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

''Time and time again, member-states say they oppose the use of chemical weapons under any circumstance,'' Haley said. ''Now one member stands accused of using chemical weapons on the sovereign soil of another member. The credibility of this council will not survive if we fail to hold Russia accountable.''

Russia has denied responsibility for the March 4 incident, which left former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia hospitalized, and warned British Prime Minister Theresa May against considering a cyber-attack or other aggressive retaliation.

''A hysterical atmosphere is being created by London,'' Russian Ambassador Visaly Nebenzia told the Security Council. ''We would like to warn that this will not remain without reaction on our part.''

Russia faulted the United Kingdom for taking action before submitting to a formal investigation brokered by Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. ''Those experts will not be convinced by their argument,'' he predicted.

The British representative at the meeting countered that the United Kingdom has invited the OPCW to conduct an independent test, while faulting Russia for ignoring May's demand for an explanation earlier this week.

''We have received no meaningful response,'' deputy ambassador Jonathan Allen said during the meeting. ''This council should not fall for their attempt to muddy the waters.''

Haley, for her part, compared the Skripal attack to North Korea's use of a nerve agent to assassinate the half-brother of dictator Kim Jong-un '-- a murder that resulted in the designation of North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism. She linked the Salisbury incident to the increasingly-regular use of chemical weapons, especially in Syria, and urged Russia to ''come clean'' about the assassination attempt.

''The Russians complained recently that we criticize them too much,'' she said. ''If the Russian government stopped using chemical weapons to assassinate its enemies; and if the Russian government stopped helping its Syrian ally to use chemical weapons to kill Syrian children; and if Russia cooperated with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons by turning over all information related to this nerve agent, we would stop talking about them. We take no pleasure in having to constantly criticize Russia, but we need Russia to stop giving us so many reasons to do so.''

Nebenzia argued Russia had no reason to try to kill Skripal. He described the former double agent as ''a perfect victim'' for a plot to frame Russian President Vladimir Putin's government in the run-up to the March 18 presidential elections.

''[T]he most probable source origin for this chemical are the countries which have since the end of the 90s been carrying out intensive research on these kinds of weapons, including the UK,'' Nebenzia told the Security Council. ''If the UK is so firmly convinced this is a [Soviet-era] Novichok gas, then that means that they have the samples of this and they have the formula for this and they are capable of manufacturing it.''

Allen replied by citing Putin's past pledge to punish Russian traitors.

''Let me quote the Russian president, when we think about who benefits,'' Allen said. ''In 2010, [Putin] said, 'Traitors will kick the bucket, believe me. Those other folks betrayed their friends, their brothers-in-arms. Whatever they got in exchange for it, those 30 pieces of silver they were given, they will choke on it.''

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 10:06

Although Hillary's fake-feminist womb-productivity wish list would include doubled, refundable child tax credits for single moms and, possibly, the non-refundable type for dual-high-earner, married parents, too, she would never have been able to get those bigly womb-productivity presents into the Swampers' Santa bag.

She would not have gotten them passed, whether you are talking about the welfare-style, beach-trip-with-boyfriend-funding, refundable-child-tax-credit, womb-productivity pay outs for the single moms who don't pay income taxes, the ones working part time to stay below the earned-income limits for monthly welfare that covers their major household bills, like rent and groceries.

She would not have been able to get the non-refundable, trip-to-bed-and-breakfast-funding, child-tax-credit, womb-productivity presents for the married moms, dominating the part-time, low-wage office jobs in nicer, less dangerous areas of town to add keeping-up-with-the-Jones' money to an ample spousal income, the above-firing moms vanishing at 2:30 every day '-- and for weeks of baby travel soccer '-- leaving behind phones ringing off the hook with paying customers.

Hillary Glass-Ceiling Clinton would not have been able to snag the trip-to-Europe-financing, non-refundable, child-tax-credit tax cut to reward womb productivity for the dual-high-earner parents who keep two of the few good-paying jobs with benefits under fewer roofs via assortative mating.

No matter how hard she tried to represent the citizens of other countries who elected her, Hillary would not have been able to extend the bigly, refundable child tax credit for maximum womb productivity to the illegal alien households with a male breadwinner, getting free rent and free EBT groceries for multiple US-born children, to illegal aliens.

So, in terms of the most frivolous form of welfare '-- doubled, refundable, tax-cash-assistance infusions up to $6,444 on top of free food and free rent '-- it would be slightly less easy than it already is for moms, as one employer put it, ''with somethin' comin' in'' (from government, spouses or ex spouses) that covers their rent and groceries to accept low wages and part-time hours, undercutting women, like me, who must live on earned-only income in the many discriminatory sections of the office-job market ''voted best for moms.''

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 10:03

Eminem, Kehlani, N.E.R.D, G-Eazy Added to iHeartRadio Awards LineupAmong the music companies listed as creditors on the iHeart docket are Nielsen (owed $20 million); SoundExchange ($6.4 million); Warner Music Group ($3.9 million); Universal Music Group ($1.3 million); and Spotify ($2.1 million). Performance rights organizations ASCAP and BMI are each owed slightly over $1.4 million while Global Music Rights is looking at a $2 million debt.

While dramatic, the filing is not likely to have much noticeable effect on the company's day-to-day. ''They're not shutting down. They're going to pay their bills,'' Crystall says. ''If you were listening to iHeartRadio, or going to iHeart concerts, you will not even know the difference.''

The company, owned by Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital, has been in negotiations for nearly a year with its primary debtholders, led by Franklin Resources Group. In public term sheets, the equity holders offered a pre-packaged bankruptcy under which the creditors would get 89.5% of the equity. The equity holders would keep 5.25% of the company. The creditors' counteroffer sought a higher stake in the company '-- 94.75% '-- while offering the equity holders nothing.

On Feb. 1, iHeart announced that it had skipped a $106 million coupon payment on debt that matures in 2021. That set up a 30-day ''grace period'' before triggering a default, which forced the company to declare bankruptcy.

Late last month, John Malone's Liberty Media made a last-minute offer to take a 40% stake in the reorganized company for $1.1 billion. Liberty owns a majority stake in Sirius XM, and also has a sizable stake in Pandora, creating the possibility of synergies between the companies. The offer struck observers as a lowball price, and it came too late to avert bankruptcy, but Liberty may yet play a role in ongoing talks with the creditor group.

The radio business has struggled with flat advertising revenues over the last decade, as ad dollars have migrated to Google and Facebook. iHeart has sought to diversify its business with its digital offerings and its concert business. Once it emerges from bankruptcy, analysts say it has a chance to use its substantial cash flow to reinvest in the business, rather than make exorbitant interest payments.

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Wed, 14 Mar 2018 22:28

Apple's iOS 11.2.6 problems continue. On the surface, this is a seemingly minor update but it has caused a spate of issues and the strangest and potentially most serious one has now been topped'...

A deep dive from PiunikaWeb has found iOS 11.2.6 has problems with math. As such you shouldn't trust your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch to do important calculations. The problem also extends to Macs running the latest release MacOS 10.13.3.

Credit for spotting the issue first goes to former Apple employee Ryan Jones, who tweeted that calculations involving percentages are broken. He gives the example of asking: 100/20%. The answer should be 500, but instead Apple will tell you it's 0.05.

But PiunikaWeb's Aparajita Sharma found the situation gets more complicated. In iOS 11.2.6 asking the calculation from Siri gives the incorrect 0.05 answer, but doing it manually on the iOS calculator will give you 500. MacOS 10.13.3 is incorrect both in its native calculator and if you use Spotlight.

Read more '' Goodbye Lightning Connector? Apple Reveals iPhone Charging Changes

Interestingly, the same calculation on Google Calculator (Chrome OS and Android), Linux variants (CentOS and Ubuntu), Windows and Excel is correct. So is MacOS 10.12.6, which ties the fault to the upgrade.

It is unknown how many more calculations could be wrong in iOS 11.2.6 or MacOS 10.13.3. Obviously, there are an infinite number to test!

Aside from the obvious warning (be very careful doing important calculations with Apple software), the problem does reveal something interesting about Apple's long-term plans for MacOS and iOS. The company is quietly merging them ever closer together.

The benefits to this are clear, iOS and MacOS can benefit from broader functionality and closer integration. But it also poses an equally important question: will this compromise the famed stability of MacOS by tying it so closely to the ( never- ending ) problems of iOS?

Looks like the pressure on Apple's already-critical iOS 11.3 release , has cranked up another notch'...

___

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Wed, 14 Mar 2018 08:07

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Media caption Nick Higham looks back at Professor Stephen Hawking's lifeWorld renowned physicist Stephen Hawking has died at the age of 76.

He died peacefully at his home in Cambridge in the early hours of Wednesday, his family said.

The British scientist was famed for his work with black holes and relativity, and wrote several popular science books including A Brief History of Time.

At the age of 22 Prof Hawking was given only a few years to live after being diagnosed with a rare form of motor neurone disease.

The illness left him in a wheelchair and largely unable to speak except through a voice synthesiser.

Image copyright BBC/Richard Ansett In a statement his children, Lucy, Robert and Tim, said: "We are deeply saddened that our beloved father passed away today.

"He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years."

They praised his "courage and persistence" and said his "brilliance and humour" inspired people across the world.

"He once said, 'It would not be much of a universe if it wasn't home to the people you love.' We will miss him forever."

A book of condolence is due to be opened at Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge, where Prof Hawking was a fellow.

Image copyright BBC/PA Image caption Stephen Hawking was portrayed on TV and film by Benedict Cumberbatch and Eddie Redmayne Prof Hawking was the first to set out a theory of cosmology as a union of relativity and quantum mechanics.

He also discovered that black holes leak energy and fade to nothing - a phenomenon that would later become known as Hawking radiation.

Through his work with mathematician Sir Roger Penrose he demonstrated that Einstein's General Theory of Relativity implies space and time would have a beginning in the Big Bang and an end in black holes.

The scientist gained popularity outside the academic world and appeared in several TV shows including The Simpsons, Red Dwarf and The Big Bang Theory.

He was portrayed in both TV and film - recently by Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything, which charted his rise to fame and relationship with his first wife, Jane.

The actor paid tribute to him, saying: "We have lost a truly beautiful mind, an astonishing scientist and the funniest man I have ever had the pleasure to meet.

"My love and thoughts are with his extraordinary family."

Born 8 January 1942 in Oxford, EnglandEarned place at Oxford University to read natural science in 1959, before studying for his PhD at CambridgeBy 1963, was diagnosed with motor neurone disease and given two years to liveOutlined his theory that black holes emit "Hawking radiation" in 1974In 1979, he became the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the Cambridge - a post once held by Sir Isaac NewtonPublished his book A Brief History of Time in 1988, which has sold more than 10 million copiesIn the late 1990s, he was reportedly offered a knighthood, but 10 years later revealed he had turned it down over issues with the government's funding for scienceHis life story was the subject of the 2014 film The Theory of Everything, starring Eddie RedmayneTim Berners-Lee, inventor of the web, was one of the first people to pay tribute to Prof Hawking.

"We have lost a colossal mind and a wonderful spirit. Rest in peace, Stephen Hawking," he said.

The vice chancellor of the University of Cambridge - where Prof Hawking had studied and worked - Professor Stephen Toope, said he was a "unique individual" who would be remembered with "warmth and affection".

He added: "His exceptional contributions to scientific knowledge and the popularisation of science and mathematics have left an indelible legacy. His character was an inspiration to millions."

Prof James Hartle, who worked with him to create the Hartle-Hawking wavefunction to explain the Big Bang, said Prof Hawking had a "unique" ability to "see through all the clutter in physics" and get to the point.

He told BBC Radio Four's Today programme: "My memory of him would be'... first our work together as scientists and, second, as a human being whose whole story is a triumph over adversity [and] who inspired a lot of people, including me."

American astrophysicist Prof George Smoot, who knew and worked with Prof Hawking, described him as "very competitive".

He told Today: "Whenever I did something, he wanted to do it better.

"The one thing he was jealous of was I got the Nobel Prize before he did."

Prof Lord Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, who was at university with Prof Hawking when he was diagnosed, said his friend had "amazing willpower and determination".

"Even mere survival would have been a medical marvel, but of course he didn't just survive," he said. "He became one of the most famous scientists in the world."

The comedian and presenter of the BBC's Stargazing Live Dara O'Briain said the scientist had an "immeasurable life" and "one of the few people I would call a hero of mine".

He added: "His work elevated us to the extra-ordinary; his life pushed down a terrible, limiting disease so that he could enjoy the full joy of the ordinary. In both, he was a triumph of what we, as humans, can achieve."

British astronaut Tim Peake said Prof Hawking "inspired generations to look beyond our own blue planet and expand our understanding of the universe".

He added: "His personality and genius will be sorely missed. My thoughts are with his family."

Defence Minister Tobias Ellwood said Prof Hawking was "an inspiration to us all, whatever our station in life, to reach for the stars".

He tweeted: "RIP Sir. You epitomised true courage over adversity as you explained the wonders of the universe to the world. Your achievements symbolise the pwr (sic) of the human mind."

Local government minister Sajid Javid said: "One of most inspirational people throughout my life. A brief history on earth, an eternity in the stars."

Labour's Chuka Umunna tweeted: "What a wonderful and extraordinary man. A huge loss for the world, not just our country. Thinking of his family today."

Apple's co-founder Steve Wozniak said: "Stephen Hawking's integrity and scientific dedication placed him above pure brilliance,"

Satya Nadella, Microsoft chief executive, said: "We lost a great one today. Stephen Hawking will be remembered for his incredible contributions to science - making complex theories and concepts more accessible to the masses.

"He'll also be remembered for his spirit and unbounded pursuit to gain a complete understanding of the universe, despite the obstacles he faced."

Image copyright AFP/Getty Images Image caption Stephen Hawking arrives on the red carpet with former wife Jane Hawking (l) and daughter Lucy Hawking (r). In his 2013 memoir he described how he felt when first diagnosed with motor neurone disease.

"I felt it was very unfair - why should this happen to me," he wrote.

"At the time, I thought my life was over and that I would never realise the potential I felt I had. But now, 50 years later, I can be quietly satisfied with my life."

Speaking to the BBC in 2002, his mother, Isobelle, described him as a "very normal young man".

She said: "He liked parties. He liked pretty girls - only pretty ones. He liked adventure and he did, to some extent, like work."

Did you ever meet Stephen Hawking? Share your memories of him by emailing haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk .

Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist. You can also contact us in the following ways:

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Wed, 14 Mar 2018 08:04

Stephen Hawking, the brightest star in the firmament of science, whose insights shaped modern cosmology and inspired global audiences in the millions, has died aged 76.

His family released a statement in the early hours of Wednesday morning confirming his death at his home in Cambridge.

Hawking's children, Lucy, Robert and Tim, said in a statement: ''We are deeply saddened that our beloved father passed away today. He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years. His courage and persistence with his brilliance and humour inspired people across the world.

''He once said: 'It would not be much of a universe if it wasn't home to the people you love.' We will miss him for ever.''

For fellow scientists and loved ones, it was Hawking's intuition and wicked sense of humour that marked him out as much as the fierce intellect which, coupled with his illness, came to symbolise the unbounded possibilities of the human mind.

I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first

Stephen HawkingHawking was driven to Wagner, but not the bottle, when he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 1963 at the age of 21. Doctors expected him to live for only two more years. But Hawking had a form of the disease that progressed more slowly than usual. He survived for more than half a century.

Hawking once estimated he worked only 1,000 hours during his three undergraduate years at Oxford. In his finals, he came borderline between a first and second class degree. Convinced that he was seen as a difficult student, he told his viva examiners that if they gave him a first he would move to Cambridge to pursue his PhD. Award a second and he threatened to stay. They opted for a first.

Those who live in the shadow of death are often those who live most. For Hawking, the early diagnosis of his terminal disease, and witnessing the death from leukaemia of a boy he knew in hospital, ignited a fresh sense of purpose. ''Although there was a cloud hanging over my future, I found, to my surprise, that I was enjoying life in the present more than before. I began to make progress with my research,'' he once said. Embarking on his career in earnest, he declared: ''My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.''

He began to use crutches in the 1960s, but long fought the use of a wheelchair. When he finally relented, he became notorious for his wild driving along the streets of Cambridge, not to mention the intentional running over of students' toes and the occasional spin on the dance floor at college parties.

Hawking's first major breakthrough came in 1970, when he and Roger Penrose applied the mathematics of black holes to the universe and showed that a singularity, a region of infinite curvature in spacetime, lay in our distant past: the point from which came the big bang.

Penrose found he was able to talk with Hawking even as the latter's speech failed. Hawking, he said, had an absolute determination not to let anything get in his way. ''He thought he didn't have long to live, and he really wanted to get as much as he could done at that time.''

There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark

Stephen HawkingIn 1974 Hawking drew on quantum theory to declare that black holes should emit heat and eventually pop out of existence. For normal-sized black holes, the process is extremely slow, but miniature black holes would release heat at a spectacular rate, eventually exploding with the energy of a million one-megaton hydrogen bombs.

His proposal that black holes radiate heat stirred up one of the most passionate debates in modern cosmology. Hawking argued that if a black hole could evaporate, all the information that fell inside over its lifetime would be lost forever. It contradicted one of the most basic laws of quantum mechanics, and plenty of physicists disagreed. Hawking came round to believing the more common, if no less baffling, explanation that information is stored at a black hole's event horizon, and encoded back into radiation as the black hole radiates.

Marika Taylor, a former student of Hawking's and now professor of theoretical physics at Southampton University, remembers how Hawking announced his U-turn on the information paradox to his students. He was discussing their work with them in the pub when Taylor noticed he was turning his speech synthesiser up to the max. ''I'm coming out!'' he bellowed. The whole pub turned around and looked at the group before Hawking turned the volume down and clarified the statement: ''I'm coming out and admitting that maybe information loss doesn't occur.'' He had, Taylor said, ''a wicked sense of humour.''

Hawking's run of radical discoveries led to his election in 1974 to the Royal Society at the young age of 32. Five years later, he became the Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge, arguably Britain's most distinguished chair, and one formerly held by Isaac Newton, Charles Babbage and Paul Dirac, the latter one of the founding fathers of quantum mechanics.

Hawking's seminal contributions continued through the 1980s. The theory of cosmic inflation holds that the fledgling universe went through a period of terrific expansion. In 1982, Hawking was among the first to show how quantum fluctuations '' tiny variations in the distribution of matter '' might give rise through inflation to the spread of galaxies in the universe. In these tiny ripples lay the seeds of stars, planets and life as we know it.

But it was A Brief History of Time that rocketed Hawking to stardom. Published for the first time in 1988, the title made the Guinness Book of Records after it stayed on the Sunday Times bestsellers list for an unprecedented 237 weeks. It sold 10m copies and was translated into 40 different languages. Nevertheless, wags called it the greatest unread book in history.

Stephen Hawking's big ideas ... made simpleHawking married his college sweetheart, Jane Wilde, in 1965, two years after his diagnosis. She first set eyes on him in 1962, lolloping down the street in St Albans, his face down, covered by an unruly mass of brown hair. A friend warned her she was marrying into ''a mad, mad family''. With all the innocence of her 21 years, she trusted that Stephen would cherish her, she wrote in her 2013 book, Travelling to Infinity: My Life With Stephen.

In 1985, during a trip to Cern, Hawking was taken to hospital with an infection. He was so ill that doctors asked Jane if they should withdraw life support. She refused, and Hawking was flown back to Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge for a lifesaving tracheotomy. The operation saved his life but destroyed his voice. The couple had three children, but the marriage broke down in 1991. Hawking's progressive condition, his demands on Jane, and his refusal to discuss his illness, were destructive forces the relationship could not endure, she said. Jane wrote of him being ''a child possessed of a massive and fractious ego,'' and how husband and wife became ''master'' and ''slave''.

My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all

Stephen HawkingFour years later, Hawking married Elaine Mason, one of the nurses employed to give him round-the-clock care. The marriage lasted 11 years, during which Cambridgeshire police investigated a series of alleged assaults on Hawking. The physicist denied that Elaine was involved, and refused to cooperate with police, who dropped the investigation.

Hawking was not, perhaps, the greatest physicist of his time, but in cosmology he was a towering figure. There is no perfect proxy for scientific worth, but Hawking won the Albert Einstein Award, the Wolf Prize, the Copley Medal, and the Fundamental Physics Prize. The Nobel prize, however, eluded him.

He was fond of scientific wagers, despite a knack for losing them. In 1975, he bet the US physicist Kip Thorne a subscription to Penthouse that the cosmic x-ray source Cygnus X-1 was not a black hole. He lost in 1990. In 1997, Hawking and Thorne bet John Preskill an encyclopaedia that information must be lost in black holes. Hawking conceded in 2004. In 2012, Hawking lost $100 to Gordon Kane for betting that the Higgs boson would not be discovered.

He lectured at the White House during the Clinton administration '' his oblique references to the Monica Lewinsky episode evidently lost on those who screened his speech '' and returned in 2009 to receive the presidential medal of freedom from Barack Obama. His life was played out in biographies and documentaries, most recently The Theory of Everything, in which Eddie Redmayne played him. He appeared on The Simpsons and played poker with Einstein and Newton on Star Trek: The Next Generation. He delivered gorgeous put-downs on The Big Bang Theory. ''What do Sheldon Cooper and a black hole have in common?'' Hawking asked the fictional Caltech physicist whose IQ comfortably outstrips his social skills. After a pause, the answer came: ''They both suck.''

Hawking has argued that for humanity to survive it must spread out into space, and has warned against the worst applications of artificial intelligence, including autonomous weapons.

Hawking was happy to court controversy and was accused of being sexist and misogynist. He turned up at Stringfellows lap dancing club in 2003, and years later declared women ''a complete mystery''. In 2013, he boycotted a major conference in Israel on the advice of Palestinian academics.

Some of his most outspoken comments offended the religious. In his 2010 book, Grand Design, he declared that God was not needed to set the universe going, and in an interview with the Guardian a year later, dismissed the comforts of religious belief.

''I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark,'' he said.

He spoke also of death, an eventuality that sat on a more distant horizon than doctors thought. ''I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first,'' he said.

What astounded those around him was how much he did achieve. He leaves three children, Robert, Lucy and Timothy, from his first marriage to Jane Wilde, and three grandchildren.

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Wed, 14 Mar 2018 08:00

Harper Lee, the author of ''To Kill a Mockingbird,'' who died in 2016. Credit Rob Carr/Associated Press When the novelist Harper Lee died in her sleep two years ago, at 89, she left a trail of lingering questions about her life and work.

Why had she decided, in her final years, to publish a second novel, 55 years after her breakout success, ''To Kill a Mockingbird''? Were there other unknown works? Who would inherit her literary papers, sought by many universities, as well as her estate, estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars?

On Tuesday, an Alabama court unsealed Ms. Lee's will, but the mystery surrounding one of American literature's most cherished authors only deepened.

The will, signed on February 11, 2016, eight days before her death, directed that the bulk of her assets, including her literary properties, be transferred into a trust she formed in 2011.

Trust documents are private, so all questions about what will become of her literary papers and who beyond her closest relatives might benefit from her assets, will remain unanswered for now.

It is also unclear how the will differed from any prior document Ms. Lee may have created to distribute her assets.

The first page of the will that Ms. Lee signed eight days before she died. Ms. Lee never married or had children, and the court papers identified her heirs and closest living relatives as a niece and three nephews, who are expected to receive an undisclosed portion of the estate through the trust.

The will named Tonja B. Carter, Ms. Lee's longtime lawyer, as the executor, or personal representative, of the estate, and it provided her with wide-ranging powers to shepherd Ms. Lee's literary legacy and the rest of her assets.

Ms. Carter had gone to court in 2016 to successfully persuade Probate Judge Greg Norris of Monroe County to seal the will, citing Ms. Lee's desire for privacy. And while the estate had stressed in court papers that making the will public could lead to the ''potential harassment'' of individuals identified in it, the document itself is strikingly opaque.

It was unsealed Tuesday on the basis of a lawsuit filed by The New York Times seeking to review the document. Lawyers for The Times argued that wills filed in a probate court in Alabama are typically public records, and that Ms. Lee's privacy concerns were no different from those of others whose wills are processed through the court system.

''It's a public record, and the press and the public have a right to public records,'' said Archie Reeves, the lawyer who represented The Times.

Last week, as both sides prepared to depose witnesses, the estate withdrew its opposition to making the will public. It did not disclose its reasoning.

The document's lack of transparency will likely fuel skepticism among those who feel that Ms. Carter had amassed too much power over Ms. Lee's career and legacy. The will gives Ms. Carter substantial control over Ms. Lee's estate and her literary properties, which are assigned to the Mockingbird Trust, an entity that was formed in 2011. Ms. Carter served as one of its two trustees at the time.

''To Kill a Mockingbird'' alone sells more than a million copies a year worldwide, generating some $3 million in royalties for the copyright holder. Credit Melanie Stetson Freeman/The Christian Science Monitor, via Associated Press ''It is not an uncommon will, and it is typically what we term a pour-over will where anything in the estate goes over to the trust and they don't have to disclose the terms of the trust,'' said Sidney C. Summey, an estate and trusts lawyer in Birmingham.

''It is done quite often by people of means, people with notoriety and people who just want to be private,'' Mr. Summey said.

Ms. Lee's relatives had supported efforts to seal the will. Phone calls to reach several members of her family were unsuccessful.

As a personal representative, Ms. Carter is entitled to compensation for her work. The will allows the personal representative to earn additional fees as part of an organization, like a law firm, that does work for the estate.

Ms. Carter declined to discuss the will, citing Ms. Lee's penchant for privacy. ''I will not discuss her affairs,'' she said.

One of the two witnesses to the will, Cynthia McMillan, a former resident assistant who had helped care for Ms. Lee at a facility where she had lived, said in an interview that Ms. Lee seemed competent when she signed it. ''In my opinion, she was,'' Ms. McMillian said.

The estate was built largely on the outsize and enduring success of Ms. Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning debut novel, ''To Kill a Mockingbird,'' which since its publication in 1960, has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide and remains a staple on American school curriculums. In addition, ''Go Set a Watchman,'' her second novel, was the best-selling book of 2015 in the United States, and sold more than 1.6 million hardcover copies, according to NPD BookScan.

Harper Lee, whose first novel, ''To Kill a Mockingbird,'' about racial injustice in a small Alabama town, sold more than 40 million copies, died at the age of 89. Published On Feb. 19, 2016Credit Image by Donald Uhrbrock/The LIFE Images Collection, via Getty Images ''Mockingbird'' alone sells more than a million copies a year worldwide, generating some $3 million in royalties for the copyright holder, according to court documents.

Ms. Lee had always lived simply, despite her fame and mounting wealth, and long shared a modest brick home in Monroeville with her older sister, Alice, who died in 2014. Ms. Lee could be seen around town in sweatpants looking for bargains at a Dollar General Store, washing her clothes at a local Laundromat, drinking coffee at a McDonald's or eating at David's Catfish House, where her usual iced tea and a small plate of catfish would cost about $6.

Often miscast as reclusive, she was no hermit, but she was as ferociously private as she was famous, and shunned interviews.

She was thrust into the spotlight three years ago, when ''Watchman'' was released. Its publication sparked a debate about whether or not Ms. Lee had been pushed into publishing the novel, one that she had abandoned in the 1950s as an early effort at the story that would become ''Mockingbird.''

At the release of ''Watchman,'' there were already questions about Ms. Lee's vulnerability and her mental and physical condition. She had suffered a stroke in 2007, had severe vision and hearing problems and had moved into an assisted living facility. In 2013, in a copyright dispute that went to court, Ms. Lee's lawyers said she had been taken advantage of and coerced into signing away her copyright because she was ''an elderly woman with physical infirmities that made it difficult for her to read and see.''

The controversy surrounding ''Watchman'' divided Ms. Lee's hometown, pitting some of her longtime friends and acquaintances, who doubted she had approved of the publication, against Ms. Lee's lawyer, agent and publisher, generating the kind of public spectacle Ms. Lee abhorred. But an Alabama agency investigated whether Ms. Lee was a victim of elder abuse and financial fraud and determined that no abuse had occurred.

Some scholars and fans embraced ''Watchman'' as a long awaited sequel to Ms. Lee's debut work, while others dismissed it as an inferior rough draft, one that was eventually polished and reshaped into a masterpiece. Many fans were shocked to discover that Atticus Finch, the crusading lawyer who fights for racial equality in ''Mockingbird,'' is depicted in ''Watchman'' as an aging racist and segregationist who clashes with his daughter, a grown-up Scout, over her support for civil rights.

At the release of ''Go Set a Watchman,'' there were already questions about Ms. Lee's vulnerability and her mental and physical condition. Credit Erik S. Lesser/European Pressphoto Agency Ms. Carter emerged as polarizing figure in the debate. She was at first credited with recovering Ms. Lee's long lost novel, and recounted how she discovered the manuscript for ''Watchman'' in a safe deposit box in the summer of 2014. But others disputed that account and said Ms. Carter had been present when the manuscript was discovered in October 2011 during an appraisal by a rare books expert. The appraiser had come to inspect what was thought to be a ''Mockingbird'' manuscript, and Ms. Carter later said she had not realized at the time that actually a different manuscript had been reviewed.

Still, many viewed Ms. Carter as Ms. Lee's staunchest protector, and with a coterie of friends from the area, she is now helping to expand Ms. Lee's literary legacy.

Ms. Carter helps run a nonprofit, Mockingbird Company, that Ms. Lee created in 2015. It puts on a dramatization of ''Mockingbird'' in Monroeville each year.

A different production, drawn from the novel and scripted by Aaron Sorkin, is headed for Broadway this year. A ''Mockingbird'' graphic novel, adapted by Fred Fordham, was approved by Ms. Lee's estate and will be published in the fall. And there are new plans for the Harper Lee Trail, which local officials hope will attract hundreds of thousands of tourists a year to Monroeville. Planned attractions include a museum dedicated to Harper Lee and replications of characters' houses in ''To Kill a Mockingbird.''

How this all would have sat with Ms. Lee also remains a matter of debate. She took pains to protect her intellectual property and often scorned attempts to commercialize her novel. In 2013, she sued a local museum, arguing that it had infringed on her trademark by selling ''Mockingbird'' themed T-shirts and trinkets (the suit was settled in 2014).

And in a letter to a friend in 1993, she complained that Monroeville was turning into a ''Mockingbird'' tourist attraction. She expressed particular irritation at the strangers lingering in front of her house.

''They came in VANS,'' she wrote.

Jennifer Crossley Howard contributed reporting, and Susan Beachy provided research.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: 'Mockingbird' Author's Will Is Unsealed, but the Mystery of Her Life Only Deepens . Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe Site IndexnewsopinionartslivingmoreSite Information Navigation

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Tue, 13 Mar 2018 23:39

March 13, 2018 by Assistant Editor What Really Happened in Vegas on October 1st? Was ISIS involved?

By Wayne Allyn Root

The Vegas Massacre is clearly the new ''JFK Murder Conspiracy'' updated for the 21st century. The whole story stinks to high heaven. It's rancid. Clearly, our own government, FBI and Las Vegas police are involved in some sort of cover-up. The question is- what are they covering up?

Las Vegas is my home. I have the top radio talk show in this town. Many dozens of Vegas residents have gotten in touch with me to give me their take on the Vegas Massacre. Included in that group has been MGM employees, top MGM executives, survivors of the worst mass shooting in US history, as well as law enforcement and retired homicide detectives. From my own gut instincts, investigation and these interviews with key players, I've pieced together this story. It's not a pretty picture.

Like any good detective, I have lots of working theories. A good detective doesn't rule anything out. Maybe it really is as simple and clean as ''Stephen Paddock did it, case closed.'' But there are way too many unanswered questions, problems and mysteries with that storyline.

So here are my ''Top 20'' nagging questions, inconsistencies and theories about the Vegas Massacre'...

#1) RAMBO.

How did an overweight, out of shape, 60-year old, anonymous guy (on no one's radar) with no military training and no military or law enforcement history become Rambo overnight? He carried out this plot with no help? Got hundreds of pounds of weapons to his room? He broke open a hurricane-strength 800- pound window? Set up sniper-type guns? Pulled off worst mass shooting in America's history with no training, no help? Even though the one over-riding theme of every survivor/witness I've spoken to, or heard from is'...they saw or heard multiple shooters. Yet the FBI and Vegas police immediately discounted this theory. Why?

#2) The Constantly Changing Timeline.

Did guard Jesus Campos arrive before the shooting started, or after, or during? Why has the story changed so many times? Why can't anyone get it straight? It's telling how authorities finally settled on the one timeline most beneficial to MGM- the single biggest employer in a ''company town'' called Las Vegas. More on this under the Jesus Campos storyline.

#3) The Police Homicide Division isn't Investigating the worst mass shooting in U.S. history?

FACT. I had guest on my Vegas radio show from a recently retired Vegas homicide detective. The detective reported that the Vegas Sheriff did NOT give the case to a division of 30+ experienced Vegas homicide detectives who deal with murder all day, every day.

He gave the case to a short-handed division of Internal Affairs that investigates police officer's accidental discharge of a weapon. Huh? The Sheriff gave the worst mass shooting in US history to a small division of five cops who have never investigated a homicide? Why?

#4) The Vegas Sheriff.

Sheriff Joe Lombardo. In the interests of full disclosure, I was a fan. I supported the Sheriff in his election. I feel he is in very tough position here. MGM is biggest employer in this town and a huge donor to his past and future campaigns. During press conferences, it's clear Sheriff Lombardo is under restraint in what he can and cannot say. The Las Vegas FBI bureau chief stands right behind him in every press conference with a look that could kill. The FBI clearly doesn't want Sheriff Lombardi to reveal much. Why?

Since literally every Vegas Sheriff in history retires and goes to work as head of security for a large Vegas hotel for $250,000 per year (like MGM), and Vegas is a company town with MGM being the leading employer, and billions of dollars are on the line due to liability, insurance and tourism issues, it's easy to see why the Vegas Sheriff is in tough spot. This might well explain the lack of information forthcoming from the LVMPD (Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department). Everyone involved is in a difficult spot.

#5) Where's the video?

Vegas has video cameras everywhere. After NYC terror attacks we had videos on TV within hours. In this case'...in hotels covered by hundreds of videos'...6 months later we've never seen one video of the killer walking through the hotel. Why?

#6) The girlfriend.

Marilou Danley just happened to fly to Philippines a few days before her boyfriend carried out worst mass shooting in US history? Really? Great timing for her. And she just happens to admit her fingerprints could be on the ammo? And she just happened to erase her Facebook profile within an hour of the shooting'...even though no one had released the name of Stephen Paddock in the media. How did she know it was him? How did she know to erase her FB page?

Oh, and the Philippines just happens to be a ISIS Islamic terror hotspot. And Paddock just happened to wire her $100,000 in the Philippines days before the massacre.

And Paddock just happened to have child porn on his computer. And ISIS is known to make money through child sex trafficking and child slavery. More on this ''child porn'' connection later.

#7) Money laundering.

Paddock had no obvious huge income stream. Paddock himself bragged that he was ''one of the biggest High Roller video poker players in America.'' Really? He lived in a $300,000 home in Mesquite, Nevada. That's as middle class as you get. No one in his neighborhood could afford to gamble millions of dollars on video poker.

Sounds a lot like money laundering to me. What better way to mask money laundering than running millions through a Vegas casino. Who money launders? Terror groups like ISIS.

#8) Rich or ''Heavily in Debt?''

First, we were told by the media that Paddock was ''rich'' and ''a huge High Roller.'' Of late, the Vegas Sheriff changed the story to ''he was heavily in debt and may have had a grudge against casino for heavy losses.'' Which one is it? Why does the story keep changing? Paddock left an estate of about $5 million. Why would he be angry at MGM over a few losses in the past year? How was his $5 million fortune earned? Money laundering still fits the puzzle. Perhaps he made partners along the way with ISIS?

#9) Paddock Paid Off His Marker?

This has NEVER been mentioned in the media once. I got this inside scoop directly from Paddock's longtime Mandalay Bay casino host. Paddock owed MGM $100,000. On Friday night before the massacre Paddock won $100,000 playing video poker. If he was planning to die on Sunday he certainly would have blown it on hookers and cocaine. Or bought a Maserati and had it shipped to his girlfriend. Or gambled even higher amounts with the $100,000. But that's not what Paddock did.

Instead he took the $100K and paid off his $100K MGM marker. He paid off his debt in full? Why would a crazed killer do something so responsible? Why would a suicidal man do that?

He wouldn't. This was a man expecting to come back to MGM to enjoy many future free High Roller suites (provided by MGM). He clearly wanted MGM to keep giving him VIP treatment. This was not a man planning on mass murder and suicide within 48 hours.

#10) Child porn.

Police say they found child porn on Paddock's computer. But it was announced after the shooting, Paddock's hard drive was gone. Removed from his computer. Nowhere to be found.

So how did police find child porn? Not one journalist questioned this development. No one ever asked, ''Did the hard drive miraculous re-appear?'' Police never said a thing. First it was gone. Then they found child porn. Strange.

But if in fact child porn was found (on another computer removed from his home, or office) wouldn't it make sense to investigate the connection to ISIS and the Philippines, where child sex trafficking is a primary mode of funding for Islamic terror groups?

#11) Every single witness from that concert that I spoke to, or heard, claimed there were multiple shooters.

Some swore they saw multiple shooters. Some say they were being fired at from different directions and levels. Yet police and FBI have ruled that out. So, all the witnesses are wrong?

#12) Jesus Campos. The ''hero'' security guard. Did he show up before'...during'...or after the massacre? His timeline changed multiple times. Why? MGM coaching him on timeline to make their liability less severe?

Why would the ONLY witness to worst mass shooting in US history be allowed to leave the country days later?

Worse, HOW did he drive many hours to Mexico with a bullet hole in his leg'...only days after being seriously wounded? He needed a cane to appear on ''Ellen'' a month later. Yet he was fine 3 days after being shot? Does any of this make sense?

The amazing thing never mentioned by mainstream media was Ellen is not only a comedian, but she has multi-million-dollar partnership with MGM, with Ellen themed slot machines. So the only witness to the worst mass shooting in US history gave exactly one interview EVER. Ellen herself announced it would be his only interview ever. Yet it was arranged to be given exclusively to a comedian who is partners with MGM?

Where has Jesus disappeared to since? Never seen again? Is he living in a penthouse of a MGM property somewhere in world with millions in bank, courtesy of MGM? FBI and police don't find this odd?

Top security execs at MGM called my radio show. All of them said they never heard the name Jesus Campos in their lives before the shooting. How is this possible?

Was he even registered as a security guard with State of Nevada? Or with MGM? Friends of mine got into the MGM database and Campos name either was never there, or it was scrubbed from the system. Why? An investigative reporter friend of mine reports Campos name was never in the state of Nevada system.

#13) Terrible & faulty security at MGM.

I have written about this storyline in my Las Vegas newspaper column multiple times. Dozens of MGM employees have called my radio show, or emailed me, to tell me how terrible security was at all MGM properties. My newspaper columns lay out a condemnation of MGM and their pathetic CEO Jim Murren. See:

https://www.reviewjournal.com/opinion/opinion-columns/wayne-allyn-root/commentary-guards-paint-an-eye-opening-picture-of-mgm-security-policies/

Murren slashed the budget for security'...fired experienced guards'...hired part time guys with no experience our training'...he made the properties a gun free zone'...had inferior walkie-talkies with dead zones all over the hotel'...employees had no crisis training'...no one was prepared'...MGM had no rapid response SWAT team'...Mandalay Bay changed guards at the exact same time each night: 10 PM- which is why the shooting started at that time when security was most disorganized'...and worst of all'...MGM let High Rollers use freight elevators with no security present, or questions asked. MGM guards called me to say they could NEVER question High Rollers about anything, or they'd be fired. So, no one ever asked Paddock a thing.

Amazingly, nothing has changed. Today, months later, my spies report they got on a Mandalay Bay freight elevator and went up to infamous 32nd floor. No one stopped them. No one asked them a question.

CEO Jim Murren is a pathetic, bleeding-heart, liberal who believes in donating MGM shareholder money to organizations like CAIR (called a Muslim terror front for Hamas by even Democrat US Senator Chuck Schumer) and The Southern Poverty Law Center (who puts Christians on ''Hate Lists''). See two of my columns about MGM CEO Murren:

COMMENTARY: MGM's CEO risks angering many of his customers

COMMENTARY: Sun publisher's defense of Jim Murren comes up woefully short

Murren should certainly be under scrutiny for his incompetence and lack of proper security at Mandalay Bay, yet the liberal-biased mainstream media has protected him. They've never aimed the cannon at him once. Why? Are liberals protecting a ''fellow traveler?''

#14) The mysterious stock sales patterns of Jim Murren and top MGM execs and Board of Directors in the days before the Vegas Massacre.

See:

COMMENTARY: More questions surrounding the Las Vegas Strip shooting

Why hasn't media reported this? Is anyone aware by pure chance/coincidence the CEO of MGM sold most of his MGM shares in the weeks leading up to the massacre'...and so did his top executives and some of his top Board members. How strange is that timing? When does this EVER happen at a public company?

I've never heard of a CEO of a public company selling off every share in his own company. What a complete lack of confidence. Does anyone think this is strange? Has anyone in the media ever asked the CEO about this? His eye was certainly not on the ball. Knowing all of this, it's certainly not surprising that Paddock (or his partners in crime) chose a MGM property for the site of The Vegas Massacre.

Why has his MGM Board kept him employed? He's a CEO that sold most of his stock, then presided over the worst terror attack in US history. These issues don't concern the MGM Board? Bizarre.

#15) ISIS.

Here's the BILLION DOLLAR question no one wants to discuss. Why? Did the FBI miss an obvious sign again? Does MGM have serious insurance issues if this attack is declared ''terrorism''? Is Las Vegas worried about tying ISIS to Vegas and hurting tourism? Yet the signs were clear that there could be a connection to ISIS from the start.

First, ISIS promised in a video (covered in blood) in the Spring of 2017 to attack Vegas. See:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/isis-video-featuring-las-vegas-strip-viewed-credible-threat-article-1.3196042

Second, the Vegas Massacre had the M/O of several previous ISIS attacks. They seem to enjoy attacking concerts and hotels. See the Paris nightclub concert and Manchester Arianna Grande concert. Not to mention numerous hotels attacks throughout the world.

But this never occurred to the FBI?

And Paddock (or his partners in crime) just happened to pick a country music concert? A place filled with people hated by ISIS or any Islamic extremist group- whites, Christians, Trump-loving conservatives. Coincidence?

But this never occurred to the FBI?

Third, then ISIS took credit 4 times for the Vegas massacre.

Never before in history has ISIS ever taken credit four times for any terror attack.

The FBI immediately announced ISIS wasn't involved. How strange is that? ISIS promised to attack Vegas. A hotel and concert was attacked. ISIS claimed credit four times. The FBI took five minutes to rule them out as suspects.

The Islamic terror experts I interviewed on my radio show- to a man- all believed this had at least some Islamic terror fingerprints on it'...all believed ISIS has to be (at the very least) a leading suspect'...

and all agreed ISIS does NOT have a history of taking credit for attacks they aren't involved in. The ISIS experts I interviewed reported a false claim by ISIS only happened once- at a Philippines casino. And even that attack is in dispute. The Philippines government calls it a robbery. Many terror experts believe it was clearly ISIS coordinated.

In history, ISIS has never taken credit for any attack four times. Still the FBI ruled them out almost instantly. Why?

#16) Did CEO Murren & MGM pay for a terrorism insurance rider?

This is just an educated guess. I called several insurance experts. All reported that typical insurance policies for billion dollar hotels don't pay off for terror attacks. The company needs to purchase an expensive additional insurance rider specifically for terrorism. Yet MGM executives who have called me all claim that Murren is cheap and focused 24/7 on cutting costs.

If MGM had no insurance rider for terrorism, they desperately need this attack to be classified as ''murder by a madman'' versus ''terrorist attack.'' It's the difference between collecting a billion dollars (or more) from insurance'...or nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada. This could be why police, FBI, MGM and everyone involved is so desperate to not mention terrorism. MGM is the world's leading gaming company. Billions of dollars of stock investors, thousands of jobs and the economy of Las Vegas are all effected by the classification of this attack.

I made this guess publicly for the first time on my radio show when interviewing an attorney representing 50 of the survivors. He was in Vegas that day for a meeting of all the attorneys from across the country involved in this case. He was shocked at my educated guess. He stated live on the radio that this was exactly what his fellow attorneys suspect.

#17) The autopsies.

The Las Vegas coroner refused to release the autopsies. The media had to sue to get information released. The media won and the Nevada Supreme Court ruled the information had to be released to the public. See:

Nevada Supreme Court overturns Las Vegas shooting autopsies ruling

Yet at that point, the Vegas police demanded $500,000 to release mountains of their info on the Vegas Massacre to the media. Once again, a Nevada judge had to rule they have no right to do that. See:

https://legalinsurrection.com/2018/03/judge-rules-police-cant-charge-media-huge-fees-for-vegas-massacre-information/

Strange. Why are Vegas authorities so desperate to not release information on the Vegas Massacre to the public?

#18) Trump.

There is no biggest supporter or defender of President Trump than myself. I think he's the greatest conservative president in U.S. history. But he's been strangely silent on this high-profile incident. It's not just any incident. It's the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.

Even liberal Trump-haters have to agree on these points. President Trump loves controversy. Right? He loves to weigh in on every crisis or controversial issue, right? He doesn't care if he offends anyone, right? He loves to dominate headlines, right? Don't all liberals agree about that?

But the President has mysteriously steered clear of this story.

NEVER a peep from Trump about his theories on The Vegas Massacre. Nothing. Nada. Zero. Crickets. In the almost 6 months since this terrible event, the President has never said a word'...no theory'...never ventured even a guess. Isn't that strange? Out of character?

#19) To sum it all up'...

We're almost at the 6-month mark. And we know as little now as the day after the massacre.

How can this be? After every other mass shooting we know everything within hours. With this one, the most-high profile mass shooting in U.S. history, we know NOTHING. Zero. We're completely in the dark. Don't you find this strange?

But I'm not done yet'...

I've saved the best for last. Drumroll please'...

#20) Now here's my biggest theory/mystery of all'...

The Timeline:

A working theory of mine.

A highly suspicious/mysterious timeline, almost impossible it could be a coincidence'...

October 1- Vegas Massacre

October 25-29- Just days after Vegas Massacre, President Trump's son-in- law Jared Kushner makes secret unannounced trip to Saudi Arabia- as per ''Politico.''

Purpose? As announced by Politico- ''President Trump is asking for Saudi Arabia's help in ''combating terror financing.''

Media reporting on what they termed a ''secret trip.''

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/29/jared-kushner-saudi-arabia-244291

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/jared-kushner-took-secret-trip-to-saudi-arabia-report/article/2638933

http://www.newsweek.com/jared-kushner-trump-officials-made-secret-visit-saudi-arabia-695859

November 5- Only days later, the roundup begins by the King of Saudi Arabia and his security forces- they arrest, detain, interrogate and TORTURE over 300 billionaire Saudi Princes. These are the most wealthy and powerful men in Saudi Arabia. Why? Why does this happen only days after a last-minute, secret visit by Trump's son-in-law with an urgent diplomatic message from President Trump?

See media reports:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5108651/American-mercenaries-torturing-Saudi-princes.html

https://www.globalresearch.ca/american-mercenaries-torturing-saudi-elites-rounded-up-by-crown-prince-blackwater-is-allegedly-involved/5619654

http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/exclusive-senior-figures-tortured-and-beaten-saudi-purge-1489501498

Even more remarkable of a ''coincidence'''...

One specific Saudi prince who was arrested and tortured was Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who just happens to be the owner of Four Seasons hotel- on the top floors of Mandalay Bay.

Read a story on his torture:

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-23/alwaleed-bin-talal-hung-upside-down-and-beaten-us-mercenaries

See CNBC story on the arrest. CNBC compared it to arresting Bill Gates or Warren Buffett in the USA. See:

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/06/saudi-crackdown-would-be-like-the-us-arresting-warren-buffett.html

That specific Prince was then transferred to highest security prison in Saudi Arabia to be tortured. See comments from his business partner Bill Gates about the arrest:

https://www.albawaba.com/business/bill-gates-alwaleed-bin-talal-1054336

Civil Rights groups announced to the media how worried they were about the billionaire prince. See:

https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/saudi-arabia-alwaleed-prison-human-rights/2018/01/17/id/837776/

This doesn't seem more than a little strange? Could the timing of all of this be just a little coincidence?

A prince worth $15 to $20 billion'...partners with Bill Gates in owning the Las Vegas Four Seasons'...just happens to be arrested, tortured and imprisoned in highest security prison in Saudi Arabia?

All happening within days after Vegas Massacre, which happened to occur literally on his property (just floors below his hotel).

Meanwhile President Trump- who loves chaos, crisis and controversy- is strangely silent. Not one word about the Vegas Massacre in 6 months.

All a coincidence?

Or was the Vegas Massacre some kind of international incident involving Islamic terror cells either coming from Saudi Arabia'...or financed by Saudi billionaire princes sympathetic to the ISIS cause?

Were these 300+ arrests of billionaire princes by the new King of Saudi Arabia within days of getting an urgent diplomatic message from President Trump just a coincidence?

Or was all of this based on what happened in Vegas?

Have I put 2 + 2 together? Certainly, this storyline and timeline is worth exploring and asking questions. The mainstream media has never said a word. Crickets. Asleep at the switch.

As wild as all of these questions and scenarios are, they make far more sense than the story we've been told by FBI, police and our government.

The scenario I've laid out makes far more sense than the fact that we know nothing about the worst mass shooting 6 months after the fact.

We know nothing about the shooter, or his motive.

There are no videos.

There was no suicide note.

A 60-year old overweight nobody, with no military or law enforcement experience, became Rambo overnight, and without help, pulled off the worst mass shooting in US history?

If you believe that story, I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.

Was ISIS involved? Did the shooting involve Saudi Arabia, or the financing of some kind of terror cell by radical Saudi princes? Did Paddock act alone? Did MGM have the necessary terrorism insurance rider in place? Who the heck is Jesus Campos? Why is the FBI appear missing in action? Why are Vegas authorities so desperate to keep information out of the public's hands? These are all questions that need to be asked. The big question is'...

Why is no one asking them?

Wayne Allyn Root is the host of ''WAR Now: The Wayne Allyn Root Show'' on Newsmax TV, nightly at 8 PM ET, found on DirecTV channel 349, Dish TV channel 216, or at http://www.newsmaxtv.com/Shows/The-Wayne-Allyn-Root-Show He is also a nationally syndicated radio host of ''WAR Now: The Wayne Allyn Root Show'' found at http://usaradio.com/wayne-allyn-root/

Wayne Allyn Root speaks with Fox News' Jesse Watters about the Vegas massacre:

Watch highlights of Wayne Ally Root Show ''WAR Now'' on Newsmax TV:

http://www.newsmaxtv.com/Shows/The-Wayne-Allyn-Root-Show

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Tue, 13 Mar 2018 20:51

We can all agree that taxes are no fun. But taxes are also what fund public education so our kids can read good, and what keep firefighters employed so our houses don't burn down. And it's looking more and more likely that taxes could help our planet from burning down too, with something called a carbon tax. The simple premise: Pump out carbon dioxide, pay a fee.

''There's a long, long line of research that shows that carbon pricing is often between 5 to 10 times more efficient than the policies that we already do,'' says MIT economist Christopher Knittel. Things like fuel economy standards for cars, or renewable energy requirements for electricity companies.

So, great, let's do it! Except, even at the state level'--and the blue state level, at that'--a carbon tax is a tough sell. Earlier this month a bill to institute the nation's first carbon tax floundered in the Washington state senate, which is controlled by Democrats. But, a glimmer of hope: Universities are starting to show the politicians how it's done. It turns out that colleges provide a fantastic model for how to start thinking about a carbon tax on a state or even national level.

Consider Yale. In July of last year it deployed a clever charging scheme for its buildings, based on facilities' energy use relative to the campus as whole. ''If in any period an individual building does better compared to its historical period than Yale does compared to its historical period, then that building gets money back,'' says Casey Pickett, director of Yale's carbon charge project. ''If it does worse than Yale did, then it ends up paying money.''

By pitting individual buildings against their own historical energy usage, the system helps control for the different sizes and ages of the facilities'--a 50-year-old building can't compete against a brand new one, after all. It also adjusts for weather, since you don't want to be comparing your heat-blasting January usage against a less energetically costly April. All the while, the buildings are compared to the school as a whole.

One way not to do it would be what Yale toyed with in a pilot study: Targeted reductions, in this case just by 1 percent. ''If you hit that, you get money back, and if you don't you have to pay us,'' Pickett says. ''But in that case, if there's a cold winter everyone would do poorly and everyone would have a hard time hitting their target.''

So Yale has worked itself out a carbon charge system. That's not to say its program would work everywhere. Take Swarthmore College, which counts just 1,600 students. ''You could almost view our entire college like one department of Yale,'' says Aurora Winslade, the school's director of sustainability.

Unlike Yale, Swarthmore's departments don't take up whole buildings. So instead, Swarthmore's carbon charge comes in the form of a fee: about 1.25 percent of each department's operating budget, excluding salaries. Departments are also invited to voluntarily reduce some part of their budget to bump that carbon fee even higher.

But really, it's not just about the money. ''It's education, and it's engaging the community both on campus and off campus in a dialog about why we need to price carbon and how that will contribute to keeping fossil fuels in the ground,'' Winslade says.

Which is one of the reasons why colleges are uniquely positioned to lead the fight for carbon taxes around the world. ''The key advantage of a university doing this is it becomes a vehicle for learning and research,'' says Knittel, the MIT economist. Impose a carbon tax at the state level and you're liable to rile up anti-tax folks. Do it at the university level and you're liable to get academics thinking about ways a carbon tax does and doesn't work'--and how it might be improved.

Universities are also a fantastic physical stand-in for whole cities. They've got lots of different kinds of buildings of varying ages and energy requirements. Many, like Yale, even provide their own power. ''If you look at it as a city, then it also becomes transferrable to communities, urban environments and industries,'' says Julie Newman, director of MIT's Office of Sustainability.

But how would a carbon tax play out on a state or federal scale? Who'd get the money that, say, power plants would have to pay, or that would come attached to gasoline? One option would be to use it to subsidize green technologies like solar panels or electric cars'--though there are issues with that approach. ''What you're doing is you're taxing energy, which low-income consumers spend a higher percentage of their revenue on, and then you're giving that money to on average high-income consumers because that's who's putting panels on their roof and buying Teslas,'' Knittel says.

Another tack would be to use the revenue from a carbon tax'--considered a ''good'' tax'--to lower ''bad'' income or sales taxes. Indeed, this is the route that Washington considered with a 2016 ballot initiative, though the bill that floundered this month would not have cut other taxes.1

Whatever the method, it's hard to argue that some version of a carbon tax would be worse than doing nothing at all. ''Economists have known for over 100 years that that's the actual efficient way to fix pollution'--to put a price on the pollution that is equal to the damages,'' says Knittel.

So as politicians bicker over why or how or when to do a carbon tax, look to the universities to help lead the way. The kids, it seems, are indeed alright.

1Update 3/12/18, 7:45 pm ET: This story has been updated to reflect the fact that a previous carbon tax ballot initiative in Washington was designed to lower other taxes, but the recent bill would not have cut other taxes.

More climate changeHere, we've written a handy guide for you to learn everything you need to know about climate change.

A carbon tax isn't the only way to save humanity from itself. Maybe the stock market can help fight climate change too.

Let's tax the hell out of carbon, great. But a tricky problem with climate science remains: It's hard to predict exactly how it's going to play out.

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Tue, 13 Mar 2018 13:56

Homelessness is a difficulty that continues to plague first world nations as well as third world ones, and although the social welfare is far better in western Europe, more shelters have opened in Brussels to meet the growing need of beds for rough sleepers.

Homeless in BrusselsIt is estimated that 2,600 people sleep rough in the EU capital and 150 people at any given night. The contributing factors for homelessness are varied, and often misconceptions and uninformed stigma about the homeless can lead to placidity in public opinion. However, the fact is that reoccurring themes of poor mental health, substance addiction or no family support have got many of these people on the streets, and once in the cycle, getting back on their feet can be difficult.

Shelter for those in needOver 1,200 homeless shelters are available for the winter and an additional 300 recently opened after new legislation was made to address the growing demand. These shelters provide beds, showers, warm food and medical and psychiatric help available for those in attendance; giving them a chance to get back on their feet. Despite the great work organisations like Samusocial do in housing people throughout the rough months, some activists fear this may just be providing longevity to the problem rather than fixing it.

Freek Spinnewijn, director of the Brussels-based European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homeless, said: ''Homelessness is increasing fast in Brussels and street homelessness/rough sleeping rose sharply between 2010 and 2014.Crisis is an overused term at the EU level and yet what we are currently witnessing is nothing short of a social emergency.''

Contributing factorsIt's not clear what could have contributed to the rise of homeless in Brussels, but with Europe having undergone a recent migrant crisis, conjecture is that many from the recently demolished ''Jungle'' in Calais lead many people to Brussels.

This along with lack of awareness from Belgian officials has helped fostered a lack of concern on the issue-with a Flemish Politician, Theo Franken, even tweeting that the government should ''clean up the park''-referring to Maximillian park in Brussels where homeless refugees were sleeping.

A hope for rough sleepersWith the Flemish parliament acting to explore homelessness amongst teenagers and young people, and with projects like ORIG-AMI seeking to provide portable cardboard accommodation to the homeless of Brussels, steps are being taken to aid and alleviate the number of homeless sleepers, but whether these measures will be enough is yet to be seen.

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Tue, 13 Mar 2018 13:02

Gina Cheri Haspel (born October 1, 1956) is an American intelligence officer. She joined the Central Intelligence Agency in 1985.[1] In February 2017 she was appointed by President Donald Trump as Deputy Director of the CIA.[1][2][3] She is the "first female career CIA officer" to receive that appointment, although she is the second woman, as Avril Haines had been appointed by Barack Obama in 2013.[4][5] On March 13, 2018, Gina Haspel was nominated to be the Director of the CIA, the first woman ever to be so.

Service with CIA [ edit] Haspel ran a "black site" CIA prison located in Thailand in 2002.[6][7] The site was codenamed "Cat's Eye" and held suspected al Qaeda members Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah for a time. The Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture specifies that during their detention at the site they were waterboarded and interrogated using no longer authorized methods.[8][9] Declassified CIA cables specify that Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in a month, was sleep deprived, kept in a "large box", had his head slammed against a wall and he lost his left eye. Zubaydah was deemed, by the CIA interrogators, to not be in possession of any useful intelligence (Interrogation of Abu Zubaydah).[10]

Haspel later was the chief of staff to Jose Rodriguez, who headed the CIA's Counterterrorism Center. In his memoir, Rodriguez wrote that Haspel had "drafted a cable" in 2005 ordering the destruction of dozens of videotapes made at the black site in Thailand.[9]

In 2013, John Brennan, then the director of Central Intelligence, named Haspel as acting Deputy Director of the National Clandestine Service, which carries out covert operations around the globe.[11] However, she was denied the position permanently due to criticism about her involvement in the Rendition, Detention and Interrogation program.[12] Haspel has also served as the Deputy Director of the National Clandestine Service for Foreign Intelligence and Covert Action.[6]

Haspel is the recipient of the George H. W. Bush Award for excellence in counterterrorism, the Donovan Award, the Intelligence Medal of Merit and the Presidential Rank Award.[1]

On February 2, 2017, President Donald Trump appointed Haspel deputy director of the CIA. On February 8, 2017, several members of the Senateintelligence committee urged Trump to reconsider his appointment of Haspel as Deputy Director.[13] Senator Sheldon Whitehouse quoted colleagues Ron Wyden and Martin Heinrich who were on the committee:

I am especially concerned by reports that this individual was involved in the unauthorized destruction of CIA interrogation videotapes, which documented the CIA's use of torture against two CIA detainees. My colleagues Senators Wyden and Heinrich have stated that classified information details why the newly appointed Deputy Director is 'unsuitable' for the position and have requested that this information be declassified. I join their request.

On February 15, 2017, Spencer Ackerman reported on psychologists Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell, the architects of the enhanced interrogation program that was designed to break Zubaydah and was subsequently used on other detainees at the CIA's secret prisons around the world. Jessen and Mitchell are being sued by Sulaiman Abdulla Salim, Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud, and Obaid Ullah over torture designed by the psychologists. Jessen and Mitchell are seeking to compel Haspel, and her colleague James Cotsana, to testify on their behalf.[14][15]

On March 13th, 2018, President Donald J. Trump appointed Haspel as the first woman to serve as Director of the CIA.

Criminal charges [ edit] December 17, 2014 the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights pressed criminal charges against unknown CIA operatives, after the US Senate Select Committee published its report on torture by US intelligence agencies.

June 7, 2017 the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights called on the Public Prosecutor General of Germany to issue an arrest warrant against Haspel over claims she oversaw the torture of terrorism suspects. The complaint against her is centered on the case of Saudi national Abu Zubaydah.[16][17][18]

References [ edit] ^ abc "Gina Haspel Selected to be Deputy Director of CIA". Central Intelligence Agency. February 2, 2017. Archived from the original on 2017-02-03. Retrieved February 2, 2017 . Ms. Haspel is the first female career CIA officer to be named Deputy Director. ^ Glenn Greenwald (2017-02-02). "The CIA's New Deputy Director Ran a Black Site for Torture". The Intercept. Retrieved 2017-02-03 . That CIA official's name whose torture activities the Post described is Gina Haspel. Today, as BuzzFeed's Jason Leopold noted, CIA Director Mike Pompeo announced that Haspel was selected by Trump to be Deputy Director of the CIA. ^ "Gina Haspel becomes first female CIA deputy director". WDSU. 2017-02-02. Archived from the original on 2017-02-02. Retrieved 2017-02-03 . ^ Suman Varandani (2017-02-03). "Who Is Gina Haspel? 5 Facts About Trump's CIA Deputy Director Pick". International Business Times. Retrieved 2017-02-03 . Haspel joined the Central Intelligence Agency in 1985, and spent most of her career undercover. She has been part of several controversies, including her involvement in several torture programs conducted by the U.S. She also ran waterboarding and other interrogation techniques at some of CIA's "black sites" or secret prisons. She has not yet been indicted for war crimes. ^ Paul Handley (2017-02-02). "Woman tied to secret interrogations to be CIA No. 2". Washington DC: Yahoo News. Archived from the original on 2017-02-04. Retrieved 2017-02-03 . A longtime CIA clandestine operations official reportedly involved in its much-criticized "black site" interrogations after the 9/11 attacks was named number two at the US spy agency Thursday. ^ ab Riechmann, Deb (February 2, 2017). "Seasoned spymaster linked to waterboarding named CIA deputy". San Francisco Chronicle. AP. ^ Bonner, Raymond (February 22, 2017). "CIA Cables Detail Its New Deputy Director's Role in Torture". ProPublica. ^ Toosi, Nahal (February 2, 2017). "Trump taps former 'black site' prison operator for CIA deputy". Politico. ^ ab Miller, Greg (February 2, 2017). "CIA officer with ties to 'black sites' named deputy director". The Washington Post. Retrieved February 3, 2017 . ^ Sleight, David (February 22, 2017). "In Their Own Words: CIA Cables Document Agency's Torture of Abu Zubaydah". ProPublica. ^ Filkins, Dexter (3 February 2017). "The New CIA Deputy Chief's Black-Site Past". The New Yorker. ^ Miller, Greg (May 7, 2013). "National Security CIA selects new head of clandestine service, passing over female officer". Washington Post. ^ Katie Bo Williams (2017-02-08). "Third Dem urges removal of Trump's pick for top CIA deputy". The Hill. Retrieved 2017-02-14 . Trump's pick of 30-year veteran Gina Haspel to serve as deputy director of the CIA '-- which is not a Senate-confirmable position '-- has reinvigorated fears that the administration is weighing a return to the use of banned techniques now considered torture, such as waterboarding and sleep deprivation. [dead link ] ^ Spencer Ackerman (2017-02-15). "Deputy CIA director could face court deposition over post-9/11 role in torture". The Guardian. Retrieved 2017-02-15 . In a court filing on Tuesday, attorneys for two CIA contract psychologists who helped design the agency's brutal interrogations for terrorism suspects have asked a federal judge to order Gina Haspel, a career CIA officer recently appointed as the agency's No2 official, to provide a deposition discussing her allegedly pivotal involvement in an episode the CIA has tried repeatedly to put behind it. ^ Spencer Ackerman (2017-02-22). "DoJ moves to prevent CIA official from detailing role in Bush-era torture". New York City: The Guardian (UK). Retrieved 2017-03-27 . The government asked the court to permit it to formally submit on 8 March its state-secrets argument preventing them and another CIA witness, James Cotsana, from being deposed. It is believed to be the first assertion of the state secrets privilege under the Trump administration. ^ Ben Knight: NGO seeks arrest warrant for Donald Trump'²s deputy CIA director, Deutsche Welle, June 7, 2017 ^ US News/ AP: Rights Group Asks Germany to Arrest CIA Deputy Director, 7. June 2017 ^ Christian Fuchs: CIA: Trump's Darling, Die Zeit, 7. June 2017 (in English)

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Tue, 13 Mar 2018 11:30

More than 10,000 people have died in the Japanese tsunami and the survivors are cold and hungry. But the media concentrate on nuclear radiation from which no-one has died - and is unlikely to.

Image caption Modern reactors are better designed than those at Fukushima - tomorrow's may be better still Nuclear radiation at very high levels is dangerous, but the scale of concern that it evokes is misplaced. Nuclear technology cures countless cancer patients every day - and a radiation dose given for radiotherapy in hospital is no different in principle to a similar dose received in the environment.

What of Three Mile Island? There were no known deaths there.

And Chernobyl? The latest UN report published on 28 February confirms the known death toll - 28 fatalities among emergency workers, plus 15 fatal cases of child thyroid cancer - which would have been avoided if iodine tablets had been taken (as they have now in Japan). And in each case the numbers are minute compared with the 3,800 at Bhopal in 1984, who died as a result of a leak of chemicals from the Union Carbide pesticide plant.

Becquerels and SievertsA becquerel (Bq), named after French physicist Henri Becquerel, is a measure of radioactivityA quantity of radioactive material has an activity of 1Bq if one nucleus decays per second - and 1kBq if 1,000 nuclei decay per secondA sievert (Sv) is a measure of radiation absorbed by a person, named after Swedish medical physicist Rolf SievertA milli-sievert (mSv) is a 1,000th of a SievertQ&A: Health effects of radiation

Energy solution or evil curse?

So what of the radioactivity released at Fukushima? How does it compare with that at Chernobyl? Let's look at the measured count rates. The highest rate reported, at 1900 on 22 March, for any Japanese prefecture was 12 kBq per sq m (for the radioactive isotope of caesium, caesium-137).

A map of Chernobyl in the UN report shows regions shaded according to rate, up to 3,700 kBq per sq m - areas with less than 37 kBq per sq m are not shaded at all. In round terms, this suggests that the radioactive fallout at Fukushima is less than 1% of that at Chernobyl.

The other important radioisotope in fallout is iodine, which can cause child thyroid cancer.

This is only produced when the reactor is on and quickly decays once the reactor shuts down (it has a half life of eight days). The old fuel rods in storage at Fukushima, though radioactive, contain no iodine.

But at Chernobyl the full inventory of iodine and caesium was released in the initial explosion, so that at Fukushima any release of iodine should be much less than 1% of that at Chernobyl - with an effect reduced still further by iodine tablets.

Unfortunately, public authorities react by providing over-cautious guidance - and this simply escalates public concern.

Over-reactionOn the 16th anniversary of Chernobyl, the Swedish radiation authorities, writing in the Stockholm daily Dagens Nyheter, admitted over-reacting by setting the safety level too low and condemning 78% of all reindeer meat unnecessarily, and at great cost.

Image caption Bottled water was handed out in Tokyo this week to mothers of young babies Unfortunately, the Japanese seem to be repeating the mistake. On 23 March they advised that children should not drink tap water in Tokyo, where an activity of 200 Bq per litre had been measured the day before. Let's put this in perspective. The natural radioactivity in every human body is 50 Bq per litre - 200 Bq per litre is really not going to do much harm.

In the Cold War era most people were led to believe that nuclear radiation presents a quite exceptional danger understood only by "eggheads" working in secret military establishments.

To cope with the friendly fire of such nuclear propaganda on the home front, ever tighter radiation regulations were enacted in order to keep all contact with radiation As Low As Reasonably Achievable (ALARA), as the principle became known.

This attempt at reassurance is the basis of international radiation safety regulations today, which suggest an upper limit for the general public of 1 mSv per year above natural levels.

This very low figure is not a danger level, rather it's a small addition to the levels found in nature - a British person is exposed to 2.7 mSv per year, on average. My book Radiation and Reason argues that a responsible danger level based on current science would be 100 mSv per month, with a lifelong limit of 5,000 mSv, not 1 mSv per year.

New attitudePeople worry about radiation because they cannot feel it. However, nature has a solution - in recent years it has been found that living cells replace and mend themselves in various ways to recover from a dose of radiation.

These clever mechanisms kick in within hours and rarely fail, except when they are overloaded - as at Chernobyl, where most of the emergency workers who received a dose greater than 4,000 mSv over a few hours died within weeks.

Some might ask whether I would accept radioactive waste buried 100 metres under my own house?However, patients receiving a course of radiotherapy usually get a dose of more than 20,000 mSv to vital healthy tissue close to the treated tumour. This tissue survives only because the treatment is spread over many days giving healthy cells time for repair or replacement.

In this way, many patients get to enjoy further rewarding years of life, even after many vital organs have received the equivalent of more than 20,000 years' dose at the above internationally recommended annual limit - which makes this limit unreasonable.

A sea-change is needed in our attitude to radiation, starting with education and public information.

Then fresh safety standards should be drawn up, based not on how radiation can be excluded from our lives, but on how much we can receive without harm - mindful of the other dangers that beset us, such as climate change and loss of electric power. Perhaps a new acronym is needed to guide radiation safety - how about As High As Relatively Safe (AHARS)?

Modern reactors are better designed than those at Fukushima - tomorrow's may be better still, but we should not wait. Radioactive waste is nasty but the quantity is small, especially if re-processed. Anyway, it is not the intractable problem that many suppose.

Some might ask whether I would accept it if it were buried 100 metres under my own house? My answer would be: "Yes, why not?" More generally, we should stop running away from radiation.

Wade Allison is a nuclear and medical physicist at the University of Oxford, the author of Radiation and Reason (2009) and Fundamental Physics for Probing and Imaging (2006).

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Tue, 13 Mar 2018 11:28

With the arrival of its latest issue, National Geographic has preempted many an angry blog and tweet thread by officially acknowledging its racist past. In an article from the appropriately-titled Race Issue, published online today, the magazine's editor in chief Susan Goldberg wrote about the racist, often colonialist lens the magazine saw the world through for much of its 129-year history. Goldberg cited examples of articles that said Aboriginal Australians ''rank lowest in intelligence of all human beings,'' used racial slurs to describe African Americans, and glazed over the horrors of slavery in the U.S. The article also includes analysis of the archives from University of Virginia professor John Edwin Mason, who stated, ''National Geographic wasn't teaching as much as reinforcing messages they already received and doing so in a magazine that had tremendous authority '... National Geographic comes into existence at the height of colonialism, and the world was divided into the colonizers and the colonized. That was a color line, and National Geographic was reflecting that view of the world.''

The Race Issue National Geographic

In what is undoubtedly a landmark statement in the storied history of the magazine, this move echoes The New York Times' recent announcement of its ''Overlooked'' project, in which the paper will run belated obituaries for historic public figures whose deaths were previously ignored by the ''newspaper of record.'' Both ''The Race Issue'' and ''Overlooked'' mark rare admissions of vulnerability from publications that are as old as they are highly revered. It's not every day that we see major, canonical media outlets admit that their power had been wielded in ways that upheld racism and sexism. While National Geographic's statement may, to some, seem like pandering to a particular cultural moment, you can't deny that for a magazine that has otherized non-European and American cultures for decades, outright calling your past coverage ''racist'' '-- with no included caveats '-- is progress.

Indeed, it's in that no-holds barred call out that National Geographic's announcement edges out the New York Times's in terms of taking a stand. In writing about ''Overlooked,'' Obituaries editor William McDonald offered a more defensive critique of his predecessors:

With Overlooked, our new collection of obituaries for women and others who never got them, The Times is acknowledging that many worthy subjects were skipped for generations, for whatever reasons.

Conscious or unconscious bias? Could be. Perhaps my predecessors and I were never informed of the deaths. Maybe those who knew the deceased did not think we'd be interested. Maybe an editor passed for lack of interest, or maybe considered an obit but did not have a reporter available to write it. (A practical reality that bedevils us today.)

McDonald went on to write that the reason so many Times obituaries are about white men is that ''relatively few [women and people of color] were allowed to make such a mark on society in their own time.'' This, despite the fact that the point of ''Overlooked'' is to recognize women and people of color who did just that.

Overall, as more legacy publications seek to publish incisive, critical pieces on cultural and political power imbalances, their own long, white male-dominated histories become a liability. While some acknowledgements of these checkered pasts may seem more earnest than others, they do offer some hope that change is coming '-- at best because people really care, and at least because some media companies need to save face. Next, these outlets can put their money where their publish buttons are and greatly increase the number of women '-- particularly women of color '-- in their newsrooms.

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Sun, 11 Mar 2018 23:45

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Elon Musk says a colony on Mars is a pressing matter to ensure the survival of the human race Elon Musk, a man prone to ludicrous deadlines, has birthed another: test flights of his Mars spaceship next year.

"I think we'll be able to do short flights, up and down flights, some time in the first half of next year," he told an audience at the South by South West (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas.

He said it was vital humans reached the Red Planet before the next "probable" world war.

A Mars colony, he said, would reduce the chance of an extended new Dark Ages if a nuclear conflict was to wipe out life on Earth.

But, aware of his reputation, he added: "Sometimes my timelines are a little... y'know."

More pressing to Mr Musk, and the investors that enable him, might be the backlog of orders for the Model 3, Tesla's "affordable" new car. The company is still way behind on its production targets.

Life on Mars

But enough about reality.

Elon Musk is unquestionably the most interesting businessman in Silicon Valley - arguably the world - thanks to his almost single-handed reignition of the space race.

After a string of failed rockets - and near bankruptcy - SpaceX wowed the world with its latest flight, Falcon Heavy, in February.

A highlights reel of that event, soundtracked to David Bowie's Life on Mars, was shown to attendees at the festival.

The ultimate goal of the mission, of course, is a Mars colony. At the event, Mr Musk painted a picture of what he felt such a society would need to look like in order to be a success.

"I think most likely the form of government on Mars would be a direct democracy, where people vote directly on issues," he said.

"Everyone votes on every issue and that's how it goes."

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption SpaceX is building the BFR rocket to enable humans to go to Mars A Mars colony is a pressing matter, in Mr Musk's eyes, if we are to ensure the survival of the human race.

"I think it's unlikely that we'll never have a world war again," he said.

"This has been our pattern in the past."

On a lighter note, Mr Musk said he was excited about the potential for launching new industries from a complete fresh starting point.

Mars will need pizza joints, and one day people will drink at a Mars Bar, he said - congratulating himself on the Dad joke.

'Extremely important'

Repeating concerns he's made in the past with even more vigour, he said a bigger threat to human life was artificial intelligence - not nuclear war.

"AI is far more dangerous than nukes," he said, dismissing the pushback from AI experts who suggested Mr Musk was more interested in controversy than studying the work.

"I'm not normally an advocate of regulation and oversight," he added.

"This is a situation where you have a very serious danger to the public. There needs to be a public body that has insight and oversight so that everyone is delivering AI safely. This is extremely important.

"Nobody would suggest that we allow anyone to just build nuclear warheads if they want, that would be insane.

"My point was AI is far more dangerous than nukes. So why do we have no regulatory oversight? It's insane."

Your view on Elon Musk will likely depend on whether you believe his wild claims about life on Mars.

The prevailing mood here, of course, is that Mr Musk is a visionary of the highest order. And if he doesn't try and get us to Mars, who will?

Correction: An earlier version of this article said the test flights would be 'to Mars'. While Mr Musk eventually intends to reach the planet, next year's tests will involve trial runs of the ship into space.

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Sun, 11 Mar 2018 23:06

WASHINGTON '' Sen. Elizabeth Warren batted down calls for her to take a DNA test to prove her Native American heritage in an interview that aired Sunday.

''I know who I am. And never used it for anything. Never got any benefit from it anywhere,'' Warren said of her ancestry on NBC's ''Meet the Press.''

The Massachusetts Democrat has been under increased pressure to provide evidence of '‹her '‹Native American roots, with President Trump repeatedly mocking her as ''Pocahontas'' as recently as Saturday.

An editorial this month in Massachusetts's Berkshire Eagle urged Warren to buy a DNA test for $99 to resolve the issue once and for all.

''All the senator needs to do is spit into a tube, wait a few weeks and get her answer,'' the paper said.

Asked whether she'd take an ancestry test, Warren said she wants to hold onto the folklore of her parents' love story.

''My mother and daddy were born and raised in Oklahoma,'' Warren said. ''My daddy first saw my mother when they were both teenagers. He fell in love with this tall, quiet girl who played the piano. Head over heels. But his family was bitterly opposed to their relationship because she was part Native American. They eventually eloped.''

She said her parents survived the Great Depression and other hardships as they raised her and her three brothers.

''That's the story that my brothers and I all learned from our mom and our dad, from our grandparents,'' Warren said. ''It's a part of me and nobody's going to take that part of me away.''

But Warren's story has come under scrutiny for relying on family lore rather than official tribal documentation of Native American heritage.

As Trump continues to use a ''racial slur'' against her, she'll continue to use the opportunity to urge the federal government to put more resources to help tribes, including'‹ to combat'‹ sexual violence.

''This is a group that is being injured every single day,'' Warren said. ''We need to bring some attention to it and we need to put some resources on it.''

Also Sunday, Warren denied she intends to challenge Trump in 2020.

''I am not running for president of the United States,'' '‹she'‹ said.

Warren said she also is concerned Trump's lack of staffing and expertise at the State Department could undercut his planned meeting with North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un.

''I am very worried that they're going to take advantage of him,'' Warren said.

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 15:18

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 15:12

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 14:47

In SummaryThe Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has confirmed 353 Lassa cases since January 1, compared with 143 cases for the whole of 2017.

But the possible reasons for this surge are many, said NCDC director Chikwe Ihekweazu.

"The harder you look, the more you find," he said, citing a change in the virus's environment, viral mutation '-- and better reporting of cases by the public in response to awareness campaigns.

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Nigeria is battling on two fronts against an unprecedented outbreak of Lassa fever, a cousin of Ebola, that has already killed 110 people this year.

Even as doctors are grappling to contain the threat, health watchdogs are struggling to understand why the deadly virus has spread so dramatically.

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has confirmed 353 Lassa cases since January 1, compared with 143 cases for the whole of 2017.

But the possible reasons for this surge are many, said NCDC director Chikwe Ihekweazu.

"The harder you look, the more you find," he said, citing a change in the virus's environment, viral mutation '-- and better reporting of cases by the public in response to awareness campaigns.

Lassa fever is an acute viral haemorrhagic disease that can be transmitted to humans from infected rat faeces or urine.

Like the notorious Ebola '-- but thankfully somewhat less contagious '-- it can also be passed from one person to another via contact with infected bodily fluids.

Full protective gear for medical personnel is vital and isolation is essential.

A visit to the Lassa fever isolation ward at the Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital in southern Edo State '-- the only such unit in a country of 190 million people '-- provides a snapshot of the practical difficulties in tackling the peril.

Before the unit was built in 2008, suspect blood samples were sent to South Africa for an accurate diagnosis '-- but when the results came back it was already too late, doctors say.

Despite its unique status, the Lassa facility, staffed by a dozen Nigerian employees and a handful of European tropical medicine specialists, is struggling.

In normal times, it treats just a couple of dozen patients each year. But since the start of 2018, the unit has already admitted more than 150.

"Now we have just below 30 patients," said director Ephraim Ogbaini-Emovon. "We never recorded this (in previous years). Facilities are overstretched."

Dead rats in jars of formaldehyde decorated the corridors of the small clinic. Inside the isolation ward, the temperature was stifling at above 40°C (104°F) degrees.

Kevin Ousman, who specialises in combating viral risks at the World Health Organization (WHO), spends his days reminding people of basic protection.

"Change your gloves!" Ousmane orders. "Throw away this water! Don't put this bag on the floor."

In front of the hospital, surgical gloves and syringes spill out of the trash bins onto the grass.

"Given the situation we're living here, we are going right down to the basics," Ousmane tells AFP as doctors come and go clad from head to toe in protective suits.

A striking sight is that of relatives trying to care for their loved ones. Many come wearing just flip-flops and a simple facemask when they visit a patient in the isolation ward.

"It's a tradition in Africa for families to take care of their sick," a WHO employee remarks. "But we have to put a stop to that, it's much too risky."

Wilson Oherein had heard only vaguely of Lassa fever before his wife contracted the disease, to die of it a few days ago.

Their three-year-old daughter was also contaminated by Lassa fever and she was being cared for in the isolation ward at Irrua.

Oherein usually spends his days at his daughter's bedside and feeds her. He also takes her soiled garments and washes them in a bucket. But this afternoon, he is resting in a half-finished building behind the hospital, with other family members of patients.

He is lying, exhausted, on a mat on the floor. "I will be fine," he tries to convince himself, his forehead beaded with sweat. "I'm just anxious for my daughter and the mourning of my wife. It knocks me down."

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 14:27

President Trump told a crowd of U.S. Marines at Miramar Air Station in San Diego of a proposal to expand the U.S. military's reach into space in order to engage in warfare, which would require a, drumroll.... "space force."

The President also said we're going to Mars "very soon."

''We are finally going to lead again,'' Trump said. ''You see what's happening. You see the rockets going up left and right. You haven't seen that in a long time. Very soon we're going to Mars. You wouldn't have been going to Mars if my opponent won. That I can tell you. You wouldn't even be thinking about it. You wouldn't be thinking about it,'' he added.

''My new national strategy for space recognizes that space is a war-fighting domain, just like the land, air, and sea. We may even have a space force, develop another one''space force.''

.@POTUS: "My new national strategy for space recognizes that space is a war-fighting domain, just like the land, air and sea. We may even have a 'Space Force.'" pic.twitter.com/b0q8GUY7ta

'-- Fox News (@FoxNews) March 13, 2018''We have the air force. We will have a space force. We have the Army, Navy. I was saying at the other day because we are doing a tremendous amount of work in space. I said maybe we need a new force. We'll call it the space force, and I was not really serious and that I thought what a great idea, maybe we'll have to do that. That could happen. That could be the big breaking story,'' said Trump.

Proponents and critics have debated the merit of a dedicated "Space Corps" for decades, which would take over the Air Force's current operations in space.

Did someone say Space Force? pic.twitter.com/I5S5z9qmgM

'-- Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) March 13, 2018this is my friend, he died fighting with the space force, please retweet to show respect to the troops and honor his memory pic.twitter.com/WKjOfbnVDC

'-- TRILLIONAIREðŸ'° (@maltyhops) March 13, 2018And just like that. Space Force is trending...... ðŸ‚ðŸ‚ðŸ‚

Trump said fake news would pick it up and man is he right. pic.twitter.com/OFFQbsV9D3

'-- Kambree Kawahine Koa (@KamVTV) March 13, 2018Trump already has recruitment efforts started for his Space Force. pic.twitter.com/Obc76PXIMe

'-- Red T Raccoon (@RedTRaccoon) March 13, 2018

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 13:49

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 13:35

[See NewsBusters for more.] The journalists at CNN on Wednesday haughtily dismissed the hiring of Larry Kudlow as Donald Trump's new economic adviser, discarding the former Ronald Reagan official as simply a ''TV personality'' who encourages the President's ''TV feedback loop.'' CNN political director David Chalian condescended, ''The other thing, of course, to note here is this is a cable TV personality. It is a perfect kind of appointment for the Apprentice-style presidency that Donald Trump is running.'' Blitzer tried to pull Chalian back a bit, reminding that the man who worked for Reagan's OMB office is ''clearly qualified to be the President's national economic council director.''

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 13:30

Two weeks before the special election to replace former Rep. Tim Murphy in deep-red western Pennsylvania's 18th District, Conor Lamb launched a TV ad responding to Republican state Rep. Rick Saccone's efforts -- backed by millions in pro-Saccone outside spending -- to tie him to the California Democrat.

"My opponent wants you to believe that the biggest issue in this campaign is Nancy Pelosi. It's all a big lie," Lamb said in the ad. "I've already said on the front page of the newspaper that I don't support Nancy Pelosi. The real issues are the ones that affect your lives."

Trump's unpopularity has put a vast swath of typically safe Republican-held congressional seats in jeopardy in November's midterm elections. A new CNN poll conducted by SSRS found that 54% of registered voters say they back a Democrat in their congressional district, while just 38% prefer a Republican.

The March 13 Pennsylvania special election is something of a test case, because the district voted for Trump over Hillary Clinton by 20 percentage points in 2016, and backed Mitt Romney by 17 points in 2012. There are more than 100 GOP-held House seats where Republicans have less of an advantage by that measurement -- and if Lamb wins, it would signal that many more of those seats are vulnerable.

Pelosi is deeply unpopular among Republican voters. The party hopes to drive moderates and GOP-leaning independents back into its arms by shifting key races' focus from Trump to Pelosi.

The argument: Lamb would nudge Democrats closer to the 24 seats they need to flip in order to take control of the House -- and if that happens this fall, Pelosi would become speaker.

That Lamb needed to respond to those GOP ads is an indication they've been effective. His response could offer a template for other Democrats to use this fall, in midterm elections where some within the party have feared Pelosi could be an anchor around Democratic candidates.

A Monmouth University poll showed Lamb is within striking distance, trailing Saccone 49% to 46%.

That's why Republicans have pulled out all the stops. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have visited the district. House Republicans' campaign arm and a House Speaker Paul Ryan-aligned super PAC have spent millions on the race; a pro-Trump super PAC said last week it will spend $1 million.

The GOP spending has overwhelmingly gone to air television advertisements that link Lamb to Pelosi -- even though he said at the outset of the race that he didn't support Pelosi for House speaker.

National Democrats, aware that the party's brand is unpopular in western Pennsylvania and that Lamb has outraised Saccone, have largely stayed out of the race.

"We'll continue to monitor that election day by day. But make no mistake: Conor will have the resources he needs to compete," New Mexico Rep. Ben Ray Lujn, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman, told reporters earlier this month.

The Democratic group Ending Citizens United is spending $250,000 on ads criticizing Saccone's record as a state lawmaker.

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 13:25

The mission of the Media Research Center is to create a media culture in America where truth and liberty flourish. The MRC is a research and education organization operating under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, and contributions to the MRC are tax-deductible.

The Media Research Center participates in the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC). The MRC's CFC code is 42353.

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 13:21

SEASIDE, Calif. '--

A teacher who also serves as a reserve police officer accidentally fired a gun inside a Seaside High School classroom Tuesday, police said, and three students were injured.

Dennis Alexander was teaching a course about gun safety for his Administration of Justice class when his gun went off at 11 a.m.

Alexander was pointing his gun at the ceiling when it fired. Pieces of the ceiling fell to the ground.

VIDEO: Injured student describes accidental classroom shooting

A news release from the Seaside Police Department said no one suffered "serious injuries." One 17-year-old boy suffered moderate injuries when fragments from the bullet ricocheted off the ceiling and lodged into his neck, the student's father, Fermin Gonzales, told KSBW.

The teacher had just told the class that he wanted to make sure his gun wasn't loaded, when the gun fired, according to Gonzales.

"It's the craziest thing. It could have been very bad," Gonzales said.

The teacher was about to use the gun for a demonstration about how to disarm someone, according to Gonzales.

KSBW

Bullet fragments removed from student's neckEveryone in the classroom was stunned, and the teacher, who is a reserve officer for the Sand City Police Department, apologized.

But no one at the school checked to make sure that all of the students were uninjured, Gonzales said. The school day resumed as normal.

The 17-year-old boy's parents were shocked when he returned home with blood on his shirt and bullet fragments in his neck. The student's parents rushed him to a hospital for X-rays.

"He's shaken up, but he's going to be OK," Gonzales told KSBW. "I'm just pretty upset that no one told us anything and we had to call the police ourselves to report it."

Alexander was placed on administrative leave from his teaching position at Seaside High School, and he was also placed on administrative leave at the Sand City Police Department.

Jon Stocker Photography

Seaside High SchoolSand City Police Chief Brian Ferrante told KSBW, "I have concerns about why he was displaying a loaded firearm in a classroom. We will be looking into that."

Ferrante said Alexander has been a reserve Sand City police officer for the past 11 years, and described his track record as "positive and professional." The 2013 Reserve Officer of the Year is also a Seaside City Council member and Red Cross volunteer. KSBW interviewed Alexander in 2015 while he was volunteering for the Red Cross to help victims of the Tassajara Fire.

READ MORE: Student rally behind Alexander with petition

Teachers are not legally allowed to have firearms in California classrooms, even if they have a concealed carry permit.

Whether to arm teachers with guns on campus to make American schools safer has been a fiery question politically over the past few weeks, following a mass shooting at a Florida high school.

WATCH: Seaside High School students join National School Walkout Day

One KSBW Facebook fan remarked about the Seaside incident, "This is clear example why teachers shouldn't have a gun. Accidents happen, even to people with experience."

Another Facebook fan quipped, "Oh great.. .Ya let's give ALL the teachers guns. What could possibly go wrong?"

Gonzales said the incident is a perfect example for why teachers should not carry firearms.

"This was an incident with a trained professional. If you just give them to everybody, this could happen again and again. And it could be a lot worse," Gonzales said.

Thousands of students walked out of their classrooms across the country Wednesday to raise awareness about gun violence and school safety.

Alexander was not authorized to have a gun on campus, according to Monterey Peninsula Unified School District spokeswoman Marci McFadden.

"I think a lot of questions on parents' minds are, why a teacher would be pointing a loaded firearm at the ceiling in front of students," Monterey Peninsula Unified School District Superintendent PK Diffenbaugh said. "Clearly in this incident protocols were not followed."

Seaside police were still investigating Wednesday.

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 13:05

The SEC said Theranos deceived investors by "hosting misleading technology demonstrations, and overstating the extent of Theranos' relationships with commercial partners," noting that at times Theranos' technology performed could only do about 12 tests of the over 200 tests advertised. The SEC also said former Theranos President Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani and Holmes lied about the extent of Theranos' involvement with the military.

Balwani worked at Theranos from 2009 to 2016, after extending credit to his then-girlfriend Holmes. The pair collaborated closely, the SEC said, with Holmes working on innovation, strategic relationships and the board, while Balwani concentrated on technology and human resources. The SEC said it is also seeking an order requiring Balwani to pay a fine and prohibiting him from acting as an officer or director of a public company.

Balwani's attorney told CNBC he believed the SEC action was "unwarranted," and that Balwani

"accurately represented Theranos to investors to the best of his ability" and "took on significant financial risk investing in Theranos."

Theranos was once considered a high-flying start-up, and Holmes graced major magazine covers, touted as the personification of innovation. But Wall Street Journal investigations over the past five years questioned the efficacy of Theranos' blood testing technology, raising flags for regulators.

(Read more of the Wall Street Journal's original Theranos reporting on WSJ.com)

Holmes responded to the Journal's investigations in 2015, telling CNBC's Jim Cramer, "This is what happens when you work to change things. First they think you're crazy, then they fight you, and then all of a sudden you change the world," mirroring a quote that's often misattributed to Mahatma Gandhi.

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 12:19

Image caption The iReporter game can be used by pupils in lessons and complements English and citizenship Can you separate the fact from the fiction?

The new interactive BBC iReporter game - aimed at youngsters aged 11 to 18 - gives you the chance to take on the role of a journalist in the BBC newsroom.

It is a "choose your own adventure" game, created by Aardman Animations, which challenges you to make your own decisions on which sources, political claims, social media comments and pictures should be trusted as you contribute to the day's news output.

Which should be published, which should be checked and which should be discarded?

The game is part of a BBC initiative to help young people identify false stories by giving students and teachers resources to use in classrooms across the UK.

Media playback is unsupported on your device

Media caption An introduction to different types of fake and false informationThe resources also look at the issues of trust. In an era when people get their information from a much wider range of sources, how do young people gain confidence in deciding what they should trust?

Hints and tips on how to spot false information on social media and online are included, as well as lesson plans for teachers to use in school.

Media playback is unsupported on your device

Media caption A guide to help you decide which sources to trust and which not toThe BBC has also teamed up with the Centre for Argument Technology at the University of Dundee to create the "Evidence Toolkit" - a programme aimed at 16-to-18-year-olds.

It combines complex algorithms and archive material from BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze to help students identify the claims made and the reasoning in any news article and how the two are connected.

Media playback is unsupported on your device

Media caption If you want to be sure a story is right, check the evidence.Professor Chris Reed, director of the centre, said: "Dissecting news articles to determine their anatomy and figure out how they're working is a delicate business.

"The Evidence Toolkit equips users with a set of razor-sharp tools to go about it."

John Lawrence, lead developer on the project, explained: "The Toolkit employs state-of-the-art artificial intelligence techniques for argument mining. This is the first time AI has been unleashed on understanding the reasoning in news articles."

Amol Rajan is the BBC's media editor and was previously editor of the Independent newspaper.

Let me tell you how I decide whether or not I can trust a news source. First of all, have they shown a commitment to accuracy over a long period of time? Have they consistently got things right?

And the second thing - which is related - is: do they admit when they get things wrong? You know, if you put your hand up and say 'Sorry, I made an error, there were factual mistakes in the piece that we published', then people like me are much more likely to believe you when you say another time that you got things right.

Numbers are often used to tell all sorts of stories too. They can help show the scale of a particular problem or issue, illustrating whether it's big or small.

In this short animation you'll learn how just because a number looks big doesn't mean it really is and that a really small number might turn out to be much bigger than it first appears.

Media playback is unsupported on your device

Media caption When looking at news stories remember to take a close look at what the numbers are doingA BBC Live Lesson on sorting fact from fiction will also be streamed for schoolchildren to watch and interact with on Thursday, 22 March.

It will be presented by BBC Breakfast's Naga Munchetty, who will introduce experts from HuffPost UK and the independent fact-checking organisation Full Fact.

The Live Lesson is aimed at pupils aged 11 to 14 and complements both citizenship and English on the school curriculum.

Teachers and educators can access more online resources and lessons plans.

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 11:49

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R) on Wednesday blasted the national student walkout as a ''shameful'' attempt by left-wing groups to push their own political agenda.

"It appears that these school children, innocent school children, are being used as a tool by [this] left-wing group to further their own agenda," McMaster told South Carolina public television network ETV.

''This is a tricky move, I believe, by a left-wing group, from the information I've seen, to use these children as a tool to further their own means,'' he continued. ''It sounds like a protest to me. It's not a memorial, it's certainly not a prayer service, it's a political statement by a left-wing group and it's shameful.''

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"What we should all do and what these students should do '' I imagine a lot of them intend to do '' is to pray and to hope for the families of those who were slain," McMaster said.

High school students in cities across the country including Washington, D.C., marched out of their classrooms for 17 minutes on Wednesday to protest gun violence a month after 17 students and faculty were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

The movement was organized by student survivors demanding that lawmakers take action on guns.

David Hogg, 17, one of the most vocal Parkland students who has been advocating for gun control in the wake of the shooting, took to Twitter to respond to McMaster's comments.

''Those future voters will not reelect you and outlive you too," Hogg tweeted.

He added he "can't wait to see what the history textbooks our generation writes will have to say about people like you" while referencing the First Amendment.

That's fine those future voters will not reelect you and outlive you too can't wait to see what the history textbooks our generation writes will have to say about people like you https://t.co/96wQvE1cNA *cough cough its called the first amendment.

'-- David Hogg (@davidhogg111) March 14, 2018

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Thu, 15 Mar 2018 10:39

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Media caption Theresa May announces the expulsion of 23 Russian diplomats from the UKThe UK will expel 23 Russian diplomats after Moscow refused to explain how a Russian-made nerve agent was used on a former spy in Salisbury, the PM says.

Theresa May said the diplomats, who have a week to leave, were identified as "undeclared intelligence officers".

The UK later told the UN Security Council that Russia had used "a weapon so horrific that it is banned in war" in a "peaceful" British city.

Russia denies attempted murder and says it will respond appropriately.

Mrs May also revoked an invitation to Russia's foreign minister, and said the Royal Family would not attend the Fifa World Cup in Russia later this year.

Addressing the UN Security Council, Britain's deputy UN ambassador, Jonathan Allen, accused Russia of breaking its obligations under the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

He said he had heard the threats from Russia but that the UK would not be deterred.

"We will stand by the values which are shared by the overwhelming majority of those in this council in this United Nations and we ask you today, to stand by us," he added.

In response the Russian ambassador to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, denied Moscow's involvement in the attack and demanded "material proof" from Britain to support its charge.

He said: "We were given an ultimatum and requested in 24 hours to admit that we committed a crime. In other words, confess.

"We do not speak the language of ultimatums. We do not use that language with anyone. And we will not allow to be spoken to in that language either."

Mr Allen said the UK government has asked the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, an independent watchdog, to verify its identification of the substance used in Salisbury.

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Media caption The UK, US and Russia all addressed the UN over the use of a nerve agent on UK soilThe US ambassador Nikki Haley said Washington stood in "absolute solidarity" with Britain, citing the "special relationship" between the two countries and saying the US would "always be there" for the UK.

The mass expulsion is the largest since 31 were ordered out in 1985 after double agent Oleg Gordievsky defected.

Former spy Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter, Yulia Skripal, 33, remain critically ill in hospital after being found slumped on a bench on 4 March.

Det Sgt Nick Bailey fell ill while responding to the incident, and is in a serious but stable condition, but is thought to be improving.

Moscow refused to meet Mrs May's midnight deadline to co-operate in the case, prompting Mrs May to announce a series of measures intended to send a "clear message" to Russia.

These include:

Expelling 23 diplomatsIncreasing checks on private flights, customs and freightFreezing Russian state assets where there is evidence they may be used to threaten the life or property of UK nationals or residentsMinisters and the Royal Family boycotting the Fifa World Cup in Russia later this yearSuspending all planned high-level bilateral contacts between the UK and RussiaPlans to consider new laws to increase defences against "hostile state activity" Mrs May told MPs that Russia had provided "no explanation" as to how the nerve agent came to be used in the UK, describing Moscow's response as one of "sarcasm, contempt and defiance".

The use of a Russian-made nerve agent on UK soil amounted to the "unlawful use of force", she said.

Image copyright PA Image caption Soldiers wearing protective clothing prepare to lift and recover a vehicle in Gillingham, Dorset The PM, who was earlier briefed by senior intelligence chiefs in Downing Street, added there was "no alternative conclusion other than that the Russian state was culpable" for the attack.

She said it was "tragic" that Russian President Vladimir Putin had "chosen to act in this way".

In other moves:

Jeremy Corbyn's spokesman has said there is not yet definitive proof the Russian state was behind the attempted murder of a former spy in Salisbury.The Foreign Office updated its advice on travel to Russia, saying Britons should "be aware of the possibility of anti-British sentiment"The FA said it would work closely with the UK government and authorities regarding its participation in the World Cup in JuneMedia playback is unsupported on your device

Media caption The BBC's Paul Adams looks at why the UK is expelling 23 Russian diplomatsMeanwhile, the police and army have sealed off areas of the north Dorset town of Gillingham as part of the attempted murder investigation.

A wide cordon is in place around a truck, thought to have recovered Mr Skripal's car from Salisbury, about 20 miles from Gillingham.

About 180 troops have been deployed to Salisbury to help remove vehicles and objects from affected areas.

Zizzi restaurant and Bishop's Mill pub, where the Skripals visited before falling ill, remain closed.

Police from 15 forces across England and Wales have been sent to Wiltshire to support the investigation.

Image copyright EPA/ Yulia Skripal/Facebook Image caption Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33, are in a critical condition in hospital Russia's foreign ministry said Mrs May's statement was "an unprecedentedly crude provocation".

It said it was "categorically unacceptable and unworthy" that the UK government had "seriously aggravated" relations by announcing a "whole set of hostile measures".

Earlier, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow would co-operate if it received a formal request for clarification from the UK under the Chemical Weapons Convention, which sets a 10-day time limit for a response.

Mrs May has welcomed support from allies including the US, Nato and the EU.

"This was not just an act of attempted murder in Salisbury - nor just an act against UK," she said.

"It is an affront to the prohibition on the use of chemical weapons."

Mr Skripal, a British citizen, came to the UK in 2010 as part of a "spy swap" after he had been convicted by Russia of passing information to MI6.

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Tue, 13 Mar 2018 11:43

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Tue, 13 Mar 2018 10:12

Even though Hillary Clinton had help going down a set of stairs in India today, she still nearly fell down.

While visiting Jahaz Mahal in Dhar's Mandu, Clinton was attempting to descend about 15 stairs.

She was holding the arm of an aide.

With Huma Abedin following behind, Clinton slipped about halfway down the descent, nearly tumbling down.

A man walking in front of her jumped to grab her as she reached for him.

Despite both men helping her get to the bottom of the stairs, she slipped again, nearly doing the splits.

Huma stopped to watch as Clinton attempted to regain her balance.

Hillary kicked off her sandals to get to the bottom of the stairs.

No one seemed alarmed by the startling display.

Clinton was in the country promoting her book, ''What Happened.'' Yes, she's still bitter about losing to President Trump.

NTK Network reports:

Hillary Clinton suggested that people who supported President Trump in 2016 did so because they ''didn't like black people getting rights,'' or women getting jobs, during a discussion at the India Today Conclave on Sunday.

''If you look at the map of the United States, there's all that red in the middle where Trump won. I win the coasts, I win Illinois, I win Minnesota, places like that,'' Clinton said.

''What the map doesn't show you is that I won the places that represent two-thirds of America's gross domestic product,'' Clinton explained. ''So I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward. And his whole campaign, 'Make America Great Again,' was looking backwards.''

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Tue, 13 Mar 2018 09:24

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Mon, 12 Mar 2018 12:12

'Game-makers like Oculus VR creator Palmer Luckey support righwing and right-libertarian causes. But this isn't a new trend of gamers turning to the right.' Photograph: Bloomberg via Getty Images

D onald Trump's claim, in the aftermath of the Florida school shooting, that these events are the result of violent video games, resurrects old arguments about whether young people emulate the games they play. The World Health Organisation's (WHO) recent decision to consider video game addiction an official illness shows comparable concern. However, these responses demonstrate anxiety about the right things for the wrong reasons.

Gaming cultures are connected to violence '' but should be considered in terms of the rise of far right political discourse and the prominence of ''alt-right'' misogyny and racism. While Trump is firmly on the right and the WHO may embody normative centrism, there is an aspect of gaming that should worry the progressive left.

The white male supremacy in gaming has been discussed in the context of the harassment campaign Gamergate and via the link between Trump and gamer message board threads on the 4chan website. Yet it's not simply that many gamers are right wing, or that the right recruits gamers, but that the logic and pleasure of gaming itself has served and continues to serve the political right.

Related: No, Mr Trump, video games do not cause mass shootings | Katherine Cross

Games are ideological constructions which push a set of values on the user. Like television and film, they often support the ideologies of their context: in the Bush years, American games endorsed aggressive foreign policy; since Brexit, British games advocate isolationism or nostalgia for empire '' and the prominence of anti-Islam games in the 2000s tells it all.

However, video games have at least two unique features compared to other media.

First, rightwing ideologies have been overrepresented and dominant throughout the history of video games. Although affected by context, video games have long focused on the expulsion of ''aliens'' (Space Invaders to XCOM), fear of impure infection (Half-Life to The Last of Us), border control (Missile Commander to Plants vs Zombies), territory acquisition (Command & Conquer to Splatoon), empire building (Civilization to Tropico), princess recovery (Mario to Zelda), and restoration of natural harmony (Sonic to FarmVille).

Second, video games put the user to work on an instinctual level, making the gamer feel impulsive agreement with these ideologies. Playing Resident Evil is not equivalent to watching the movie, because the controller-wielding gamer experiences the desires of the game as their own desires '' not as the desires of another.

In the Bush years, US games endorsed aggressive foreign policy; since Brexit, British games advocate isolationism

The psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan distinguished between ''drives'' and ''instincts''. While instincts come from within us, drives occur when political forces propel us in certain directions. In these terms, video games are drives masquerading as instincts, naturalising rightwing ideologies in a way other media cannot by offering its users the chance to experience them on a personal level.

In this way, the rationale of gaming is to unite pleasurable impulse with political ideology, a process which renders gamers susceptible to discourses that urge people to follow their instincts while also prescribing what those instincts ought to be. Trump's discourse on his proposed US-Mexico wall and appeals to ethno-nationalism are cases in point: supporters are not merely expected to agree logically but to impulsively feel the political desire '' the very logic of gaming.

Angela Nagle's book Kill All Normies showed how disparate rightwing and apolitical troll communities coalesced into the alt-right, but the link between gaming and the right wing runs deeper and goes back further. Games attracted rightwing players because they carried rightwing messages and produced rightwing pleasures, and, even more worryingly, they prepared apolitical gamers for the later embrace of rightwing values. When game makers like Oculus VR creator Palmer Luckey support righwing and right-libertarian causes, we're not seeing a new trend of gamers turning to the right, but a clue to the structure of gaming and its historical role in incubating such ideologies.

In the 1990s, another theoretical response to gaming emerged which has recently been reasserted. New commentators argued that games provide a channel for frustrations that might otherwise be unleashed on to society, making games a protection from violence rather than a cause of it. The two positions make different mistakes.

Related: The video games industry isn't yet ready for its #MeToo moment | Keza MacDonald

Trump's recourse to the old argument about gaming overstates the role of games '' and places culture over legal and economic conditions. He goes after the gamers to deflect attention from the gun laws underlying mass shootings. On the other hand, the idea that games prevent violence downplays their role, implying that violent and misogynistic desires exist in all of us and games do no more than provide an outlet for such impulses. This position ignores the fact that games can have a concrete ideological effect on us '' and make us desire politically charged things on a personal level.

In the 1960s, 70s and 80s, Hollywood cinema transformed the desires, empathies and emotions of a global population (even for those who never went to the movies), but it's harder to recognise the pattern in your own context '' and we may need to consider whether we are in the midst of a comparable revolution with video games today. Currently, the new desires incubated by games lean far to the right, and without more progressive games on the market (though some are emerging), the future may be even bleaker than the political present.

' Alfie Bown is the author of The Playstation Dreamworld, a philosophy of games and politics.

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Mon, 12 Mar 2018 08:05

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Sun, 11 Mar 2018 23:53

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Sun, 11 Mar 2018 23:09