| Democratic challenger criticizes Susan Collins after new Brett Kavanaugh allegations Posted: 16 Sep 2019 04:51 PM PDT  Sara Gideon, a Democratic challenger of Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, has repeatedly criticized Collins for voting last year to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanuagh.
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| Omar Responds to Family of 9/11 Victim Who Criticized Her Posted: 16 Sep 2019 06:40 AM PDT  Representative Ilhan Omar responded on Sunday to the son of a victim of the September 11 terrorist attacks, who called her out for previous comments about the attacks that critics found dismissive.During the memorial service for 9/11 victims at Ground Zero, Nicholas Haros Jr., who lost his mother, 76-year-old Francis Haros, in the attacks, wore a shirt emblazoned with the phrase, "some people did something" on the front, the phrase Omar used to refer to the attacks.After reading the names of some of the victims, Haros Jr. repeated the phrase and pointed to his shirt."Today I am here to respond to you exactly who did what to whom," he said. "Madam, objectively speaking, we know who and what was done.""CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties," the Minnesota Democrat said earlier this year during remarks to the Council on American–Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights group, a comment that sparked outrage among conservatives and some families of victims."So 9/11 was an attack on all Americans. It was an attack on all of us and I certainly could not understand the weight of the pain that the victims of the families of 9/11 must feel, but I think it is really important for us to make sure that we are not forgetting the aftermath of what happened after 9/11," Omar responded Sunday on CBS when asked about Haros Jr.'s criticism. "Many Americans found themselves now having their civil rights stripped from them, and so what I was speaking to was the fact that as a Muslim, not only was I suffering as an American who was attacked on that day, but the next day I woke up as my fellow Americans were now treating me as a suspect."Haros Jr. appeared to accept Omar's goodwill, saying the congresswoman had "showed respect for the loss of families. And that was a good thing."
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| Iran charges three detained Australians with spying Posted: 17 Sep 2019 06:20 AM PDT  Iran has charged three detained Australians with spying, a judiciary spokesman said on Tuesday, after the reported arrest of a travel-blogging couple and an academic. Two of the Australians were alleged to have used a drone to take pictures of military sites, while a third was accused of spying for another country, spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili told reporters. It was the first official confirmation that Australians have been detained in Iran after the families of three of them said last week they had been arrested in the Islamic republic.
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| The world's oil producers keep a massive amount of capacity in reserve. But it's almost all in Saudi Arabia and the drone attack messed with that too. Posted: 16 Sep 2019 04:20 AM PDT  Drones hit two key Saudi Aramco oil refineries, shutting down production on around 5% of the world's daily oil production and causing prices to surge.
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| UPDATE 1-Russia detains two N.Korean vessels after one opens fire - reports Posted: 17 Sep 2019 08:35 AM PDT ![UPDATE 1-Russia detains two N.Korean vessels after one opens fire - reports]( "UPDATE 1-Russia detains two N.Korean vessels after one opens fire - reports") Russian border guards have detained two North Korean boats in Russian territorial waters in the Sea of Japan after one of them attacked a Russian patrol, local media cited the Federal Security Service (FSB) as saying on Tuesday. A Russian border patrol discovered two North Korean schooners and 11 motorboats fishing illegally off its far eastern coast and detained the first vessel, prompting the second one to open fire, the FSB was quoted as saying. Three Russian border guards were wounded in the incident.
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| Judge Refuses to Scrap Plea Deal That Protected Jeffrey Epstein’s Co-Conspirators Posted: 16 Sep 2019 12:04 PM PDT  Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/GettyA federal judge refused to scrap the controversial plea deal that granted immunity to Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators, seven months after ruling that it had violated the Crime Victims' Rights Act.Earlier this year, U.S. District Judge Kenneth A. Marra ruled that the U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami under Alexander Acosta—who later became President Trump's labor secretary—broke the law in 2007 when it devised Epstein's secret sweetheart deal without notifying victims. The ruling was seen as a huge victory for Jane Does 1 and 2, who sued the government in 2008, alleging the deal violated the Crime Victims' Rights Act by keeping them in the dark on the negotiations with Epstein.But in his ruling on Monday, Marra rejected most of the victims' requests for remedies, including their demand that the government turn over FBI records related to the Epstein investigation and strike the immunity provision for Epstein's alleged co-conspirators.Four women were singled out for immunity in the 2007 plea deal—in addition to other potential unnamed accomplices—after victims identified them as recruiters who allegedly helped procure underage girls for the financier's pleasure. The women were identified in the document as "including but not limited to Sarah Kellen, Adriana Ross, Lesley Groff, or Nadia Marcinkova."The plea deal gained national attention in July after Epstein's arrest in New York, where he was charged with sex trafficking and one count of sex-trafficking conspiracy by Manhattan federal prosecutors. He pleaded not guilty and his lawyers continued to fight to uphold the 2007 plea deal in Florida, arguing that the New York case was an improper "do-over" of the Florida charges. But Epstein's death in August by apparent jailhouse suicide upended the New York investigation, even as prosecutors vowed to continue digging into Epstein's underage sex trafficking ring.Send The Daily Beast a TipSteven Mnuchin's Mysterious Link to Creepy Epstein Model ScoutOn Monday, Marra denied Jane Does' request to rescind the plea deal's immunity provisions from Epstein's alleged accomplices. He stated that the co-conspirators were not involved in active litigation and were non-parties to the case against the government. "The question of the validity of the non-prosecution provisions of the NPA as they relate to the alleged co-conspirators will have to be litigated with their participation if any prosecution against them is ever brought," he wrote. "Any decision by this Court on that question is meaningless without their participation in this proceeding."The judge also denied the victims' request for FBI files related to the 2008 investigation into Epstein and his alleged co-conspirators, stating that, "it is also a matter of public knowledge that there is an ongoing investigation by the Department of Justice relative those individuals. The FBI's documents, to the extent they were not otherwise protected by attorney/client or work product privileges, in all likelihood, are relevant to that ongoing investigation."Additionally, Marra denied the request for a hearing for the victims with Acosta present, stating the former U.S. Attorney is now a "private citizen." He also rejected awarding attorneys' fees to the victims or forcing the government to pay for damages associated with their decade-long fight. Despite the mounting legal bill, Marra said that Florida prosecutors did not act in bad faith during the deal and therefore should not have to monetarily compensate Jane Does 1 and 2.Marra concluded his opinion Monday by hoping the women "may take solace, however, in the fact that this litigation has brought national attention to the Crime Victims' Rights Act and the importance of victims in the criminal justice system." Highlighting that importance, Marra did order the government to comply with the women's request for "training for employees in the U.S. Attorney's office for the Southern District of Florida about the CVRA." Prosecutors are expected to immediately begin training on the proper treatment of crime victims. The victims were also granted their request to meet with U.S. attorneys and the Department of Justice to discuss the decision to resolve the Epstein case. "[The case] has also resulted in the United States Department of Justice acknowledging its shortcomings in dealing with crime victims, and its promise to better train its prosecutors regarding the rights of victims under the CVRA in the future," the judge wrote, adding the rulings "rendered during the course of this litigation likely played some role, however small it may have been, in the initiation of criminal charges against Mr. Epstein in the Southern District of New York." * * *When Epstein was arrested in New York, the charges were a grim echo of what he faced in 2007, when he was accused of sexually abusing dozens of minor girls. Palm Beach police launched their investigation in March 2005, when a 14-year-old girl reported that a man named "Jeff" molested her at his home on El Brillo Way. The girl said she was introduced to Epstein by one of his recruiters, Haley Robson. ("Haley offers these girls a way to make fast cash. The man starts with a massage. If he likes them, he keeps them around and does more," an early police report stated.)Epstein allegedly procured his alleged victims through a "pyramid abuse scheme," as one victims' attorney called it in civil court filings, by paying the girls $200 to $300 in cash for each new underage victim they brought to his lair. The teens made $200 to $300, and sometimes up to $1,000, for giving the massages, which in some cases led to rape, according to court documents.Ultimately, Epstein was accused of sexually assaulting more than 40 minor girls at his Palm Beach mansion after hiring them to give him "massages." Police say that during these encounters, Epstein forced the girls to undress before he molested them. In some instances, Epstein allegedly had sex with the girls or ordered them to have sex with one of his co-conspirators, a young woman he described as his Yugoslavian "sex slave."In 2006, local cops asked the FBI to look into allegations that Epstein and his crew of personal assistants used the facilities of interstate commerce to coerce girls ages 14 to 17 into illicit sexual activity. By May 2007, the U.S. Attorney's Office had drafted an 82-page prosecution memo and 53-page indictment against Epstein. But Epstein's all-star legal team quickly got in touch with prosecutors and penned lengthy letters arguing he committed no federal crimes. They also tried to discredit the girls by supplying dossiers on their MySpace pages, which allegedly indicated drug use and other unsavory behavior, and supposed run-ins with police. "While we have never intended to and do not here seek gratuitously to cast aspersions on any of the witnesses ... we have been constrained to point out the fact that the alleged victims chose to present themselves to the world through MySpace profiles with self-selected monikers such as 'Pimp Juice,'" stated one February 2007 letter, signed by Epstein lawyer Gerald Lefcourt. Lefcourt argued the state attorney in Palm Beach had taken Epstein's case to a grand jury, rather than filing charges, because the victims "have serious credibility problems, including damaging histories of lies, illegal drug use and crime."In a July 2007 letter, Lefcourt and fellow Epstein lawyer Alan Dershowitz touted Epstein's philanthropic endeavors, including his relationship with former President Bill Clinton, with whom Epstein traveled to Africa to address the AIDS crisis. They also claimed Epstein "was part of the original group that conceived the Clinton Global Initiative."In September 2007, Epstein's lawyers and prosecutors collaborated to find a lesser criminal charge to which Epstein could plead guilty. As part of the NPA signed on Sept. 24, 2007, Epstein agreed to plead guilty to the two misdemeanors in state court. The NPA granted immunity to Epstein's co-conspirators and included provisions ensuring it would be secreted from the public. As the months passed, Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2 believed the feds were still pursuing their case. In January 2008, the FBI sent out victim notification letters informing the women their "case is currently under investigation" and "this can be a lengthy process and we request your continued patience while we conduct a thorough investigation." Another victim, Jane Doe 5, received a similar letter in May 2008.Yet Another Journalist Who Accepted Favors From Jeffrey EpsteinREVEALED: We Found Billionaire Pedophile Jeffrey Epstein's Secret CharityBrad Edwards, an attorney for the Jane Does, contacted the U.S. Attorney's Office to discuss the possibility of federal charges against Epstein. That June, Edwards "was led to believe federal charges could still be filed, with no mention whatsoever of the existence of the NPA or any other possible resolution to the case," Judge Marra's February ruling noted.On June 30, 2008, Epstein entered his plea in state court. Instead of pursuing federal charges of sex trafficking of children, which could have landed Epstein in prison for decades, prosecutors allowed him to plead guilty to two minor state charges of solicitation of prostitution and procurement of minors for prostitution. Jane Doe 1 filed an emergency petition to enforce her rights under the Crime Victims' Rights Act on July 7, 2008. The victims didn't receive a copy of the NPA until Aug. 28, 2008."Particularly problematic was the Government's decision to conceal the existence of the NPA and mislead the victims to believe that federal prosecution was still a possibility," Judge Marra wrote in his February order declaring the NPA illegal. "When the Government gives information to victims, it cannot be misleading. While the Government spent untold hours negotiating the terms and implications of the NPA with Epstein's attorneys, scant information was shared with victims. Instead, the victims were told to be 'patient' while the investigation proceeded."Meanwhile, Epstein served 13 months of an 18-month prison sentence (much of it on a cushy work leave, during which time he allegedly continued to abuse young girls), then paid settlements to several victims, and became a registered sex offender. In one January 2015 declaration, Jane Doe 1 stated that Epstein molested her dozens of times from 2002 to 2005 at his Palm Beach home."If I had been told about a non-prosecution agreement, I would have objected," Jane Doe said. "Criminal prosecution of Epstein for crimes against me was extremely important to me. I wanted to be consulted by the prosecutors before any resolution."During the FBI's investigation of Epstein, Jane Doe said, the billionaire's investigators trailed her and harassed her but she continued to cooperate with authorities. "I wanted to cooperate in the prosecution more than anything else in my life; I was scared of Epstein; I was scared of what he had done to me and others, and of how he was continuing to harass me, and also what he could do to me and others," Jane Doe stated.She said Epstein "should be treated the same as other defendants with less money and connections are treated for these crimes."After Marra ruled in February of this year that the plea deal violated the CVRA, the government argued the court should "give victims a voice in the criminal justice process, but not decision-making authority over prosecution decisions." Rescinding the non-prosecution agreement, they claimed, would risk "unintended harm to the victims" who wished to remain private and not participate in any new investigation."There are instances when victims of a crime or third parties may disagree with a prosecutor's decision, but that decision nevertheless remains with the prosecutor and her supervisors, and this discretion is expressly preserved in the CVRA," wrote Byung J. Pak, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, which represents the government in the Jane Doe case. Pak was nominated by President Trump in 2017.In his ruling on Monday, Marra largely agreed with the government's recommendations. Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| House of Ukraine's former top central banker set on fire Posted: 17 Sep 2019 05:58 AM PDT  The home of Ukraine's former central bank chief has been burned to the ground, the third chilling incident involving the banker over the past few weeks. Police said in a statement Tuesday that they are investigating a suspected arson attack late Monday on the house of Valeria Gontareva outside the capital, Kyiv. Gontareva has said she has received threats from Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi, who lost his PrivatBank to a government nationalization that was carried out while Gontareva was at the helm of the central bank in 2016.
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| U.S. to Return Ambassador to Belarus as Minsk Seeks New Friends Posted: 17 Sep 2019 08:03 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. plans to return its ambassador to Belarus, ending a freeze in ties with the authoritarian former Soviet republic which had lasted for more than 11 years."We are happy to see that chapter closing, and we are closing it because of the concrete steps in the direction that you, Mr. President, had taken to improve this relationship," David Hale, Undersecretary of State for political affairs, told Alexander Lukashenko during a meeting in Minsk.The U.S. withdrew its ambassador from Minsk in 2008 as relations between the two countries spiralled lower over Washington's allegations of human-rights abuses by the Belarusian government. In 2006, Lukashenko was subjected to U.S. sanctions, which remain in place.Amid rising tensions in recent months with his main ally and patron, Russia, Lukashenko has sought to rebuild ties with the U.S. and Europe. Moscow has pushed for closer links under a longstanding agreement to form a union state, but Minsk has been reluctant to give in too much to its much larger neighbor. The U.S., meanwhile, has sought to limit Russia's sway over its neighbors.Hale said the U.S. strongly supports Belarus' sovereignty and independence. Lukashenko told the U.S. diplomat he wouldn't allow the deployment of short- or medium-range missiles in his country -- something Russia has suggested it might do in response to threatened U.S. military moves in Europe -- but only if doing that didn't undermine Belarus' security.To contact the reporter on this story: Aliaksandr Kudrytski in Minsk, Belarus at akudrytski@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Balazs Penz at bpenz@bloomberg.net, Gregory L. White, Torrey ClarkFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Judge Napolitano says Brett Kavanaugh 'may actually have a case' for suing New York Times Posted: 17 Sep 2019 04:12 AM PDT  Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh could have a libel case against The New York Times over a now-revised article that suggested fresh allegations of sexual assault, Judge Andrew Napolitano argued Tuesday.
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| 20 killed as truck plunges down ravine in Philippines Posted: 17 Sep 2019 03:28 AM PDT  Twenty people, including children, were killed Tuesday in the southern Philippines when the flatbed truck they were riding in plummeted into a ravine, police said. The dead included children aged between one to six years old, with the driver among those injured, he added. Deadly road accidents are common in the Philippines, where inadequately maintained buses and poorly trained drivers form the backbone of land transport options.
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| A US strike on Iran would be disastrous for the region — and likely for the US Posted: 16 Sep 2019 07:33 AM PDT  The US is accusing Iran of attacks on a key Saudi oil facility. Experts warn a US strike on Iran would be counterproductive — even dangerous.
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| Merkel urges return to Iran nuclear deal to defuse Middle East tensions Posted: 17 Sep 2019 04:45 AM PDT  German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday called for a return to an international deal curbing Iran's nuclear activities as the only way to defuse tensions in the Middle East. "We believe that the deal to stop Iran from acquiring military nuclear capabilities is a building block we need to get back to," Merkel said during a news conference with Jordan's King Abdullah. "But there is also a long list of other burdens coming from Iran like the ballistic missiles program and its engagement in Syria," she said.
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| Edward Snowden Is Exposing His Own Secrets This Time Posted: 16 Sep 2019 03:47 PM PDT  Barton GellmanEdward Snowden doesn't share new state secrets in his memoir, Permanent Record, which The Daily Beast obtained a copy of ahead of its release Tuesday. But he does offer some personal ones, from his transformation into America's most famous secret-spiller, to the news that he was married, two years ago, to Lindsay Mills, the girlfriend he left behind when he fled the U.S. for Hong Kong with a virtual library of top secret files detailing America's global electronic spying apparatus.After enlisting in the Army at 21, Snowden writes that he was on a track called "18 X-Ray", with a chance to come out of training as a Special Forces sergeant, before breaking his leg at Fort Benning and receiving an administrative separation. "I had hoped to serve my country," he writes, as his family had before him, "but instead I went to work for it" as a contractor for the intelligence community. That was effectively a cover, in his telling, as "the agencies were hiring tech companies to hire kids, and then giving them the keys to the kingdom because… no one else knew how the keys, or the kingdom worked." He elaborates: "Here is one thing that the disorganized CIA didn't quite understand at the time, and that no major American employed outside of Silicon Valley understood, either: The computer guy knows everything, or rather can know everything."Eventually, Snowden, having attained the security clearances necessary for his tech work, "went govvy" and signed up for a straight CIA job. He joined class 6-06 of the BTTP, or the Basic Telecommunications Training Program that "disguises one of the most classified and unusual curricula in existence… to train TISOs (Technical Information Security Officers)," who work under State Department cover to "manage the technical infrastructure for CIA operations, most commonly hidden at stations inside American missions, consulates, and embassies." "[T]he worst-kept secret in modern diplomacy is that the primary function of an embassy nowadays is to serve as a platform for espionage," he writes.After being stationed in Vienna, Snowden moved to Tokyo in 2009 to work as a systems analyst for the NSA, he writes, though nominally as an employee of Dell. "Two things about the NSA stunned me right off the bat: how technologically sophisticated it was compared with the CIA, and how much less vigilant it was about security in its every iteration," he writes, noting that the NSA "hardly bothered to encrypt anything."While working there on a project called EPICSHELTER—"a backup and storage system that would act as a shadow NSA: a complete, automated, and constantly updating copy of all the agency's most important material, which would allow the agency to reboot and be up and running again, with all its archives intact, even if Fort Meade were reduced to smoldering rubble"—Snowden began researching China's domestic surveillance system, which led to his first inkling that if such systems were possible, the U.S. might be using them too, given "perhaps the fundamental rule of technological progress:. if something can be done, it probably will be done, and possibly already has been."That same summer, the U.S. released its Unclassified Report on the President's Surveillance Program, following the New York Times' reporting on the Bush-era warrantless wiretapping program. Eventually, Snowden writes, he found the classified version, "filed in an Exceptionally Controlled Information (ECI) compartment, an extremely rare classification used to make sure something would remain hidden even from those holding top secret clearance… The report's full classification designation was TOP SECRET//STLW//HCS//COMINT//ORCORN//NOFORN, which translates to: pretty much only a few dozen people in the world are allowed the read this."Snowden found it only because the STLW classification—for STELLARWIND—had raised a red flag for him as a system administrator, meaning he had to examine the file to determine what it was and how best to scrub it from the system where it wasn't supposed to have been placed. "It was clear that the unclassified version I was already familiar with wasn't a redaction of the classified report, as would usually be the practice," he writes. "Rather, it was a wholly different document, which the classified version immediately exposed as an outright and carefully concocted lie" to hide the transformation of the NSA's mission "from using technology to defend America to using technology to control it by redefining citizens' private Internet communications as potential signals intelligence."STELLARWIND, the classified report revealed, had been collecting communications in the U.S. since 2001, and continued even after Justice Department lawyers secretly objected to it in 2004. It's longevity owed everything to a kafkaesque legal position adopted by the Bush administration, "that the NSA could collect whatever communication records it wanted to, without having to get a warrant, because it could only be said to have acquired or obtained them, in the legal sense, if and when the agency 'searched and retrieved' them from its database."Having found the big secret, set up so that no one else knew it was there to even start asking questions, Snowden writes, he began using his access as a systems engineer and administrator to ask those questions, while keeping the knowledge a secret from his girlfriend and his family, and considering what to do about it. Back in the US in 2011, Snowden experienced his first epileptic seizure. The following year on a contract with Dell again, he returned to the NSA, at its Kunia Regional Security Operations Center in Hawaii. There, he writes, "my active searching out of NSA abuses began not with the copying of documents, but with the reading of them." As the sole employee of the Office of Information Sharing, he was developing an automated "readboard" to scan the IC's own internal internet and create a custom digital magazine for each employee, based on his or her interests and security clearances. He called the system Heartbeat, and its servers stored a copy of each scanned document, "making it easy for me to perform the kind of deep interagency searches that the heads of most agencies could only dream of." Heartbeat, he writes, "was the source of nearly all of the documents that I later disclosed to journalists."Snowden mentions a rare public speech Ira "Gus" Hunt, the CIA's chief technology officer, delivered a week after then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had lied to Congress about the NSA's collection of bulk communications. In the speech, covered only by the Huffington Post, Hunt flatly declared that we "try to collect everything and hang on to it forever." "You're already a walking sensor platform," he said. "It is nearly within our grasp to be able to compute on all human generated information"). As Snowden notes, a video of the talk has less than 1,000 views. After that, Snowden recounts his efforts to reach out to journalists, and to carefully hide his digital breadcrumbs by encrypting data and distributing the keys to it, while perhaps hiding his findings on SD cards inside of Rubik's Cube cubes to get them out of the NSA's underground tunnel in Hawaii.He then took what he saw as a less prestigious new position to gain access to the XKEYSCORE system, which he'd learned about but not used himself, and, he writes, is "perhaps best understood as a search engine that lets an analyst search through the records of your life.""It was, simply put, the closest thing to science fiction I've ever seen in science fact," he writes, allowing users to put in someone's basic information and then go through their online history, even playing back recordings of their online settings and watching people as they searched, character by character. "Everyone's communications were in the system—everyone's," including the president's, he writes. The potential for abuse was obvious. NSA workers even had a word, "LOVEINT" for "love intelligence," to describe analysts cyber-stalking current, former and prospective lovers, while among male analysts "intercepted nudes were a kind of informal office currency," Snowden writes. "This was how you knew you could trust each other: you had shared in one another's crimes."Finally, Snowden recounts his trip to Hong Kong, after taking a medical leave, his efforts to reach Ecuador, and his exile in Russia, where he was finally reunited with Lindsay (whose diary entries recounting his disappearance, and the pressure then placed on her by U.S. authorities are given a full, moving chapter. Snowden speaks well of a very different leaker, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, writing that while "people have long ascribed selfish motives to Assange's desire to give me aid, I believe he was genuinely motivated in one thing above all—helping me evade capture… It's true that Assange can be self-interested and vain, moody, and even bullying—after a sharp disagreement just a month after our first, text-based communication, I never communicated with him again—but he also sincerely conceives of himself as a fighter in a historic battle for the public's right to know, a battle he will do anything to win." "Most important to [Assange]," writes Snowden, "was the opportunity to establish a counter-example to the case of the organization's most famous source, US Army Private Chelsea Manning, whose thirty-five-year prison sentence was historically unprecedented and a monstrous deterrent to whistleblowers everywhere."Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| 'A war zone': Propane explosion kills firefighter, injures 8 others, levels building in Maine Posted: 16 Sep 2019 03:12 PM PDT  A firefighter was killed and eight others were injured when a powerful propane explosion destroyed a new building Monday in Farmington, Maine.
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| Wisconsin man accused of making THC cartridges charged Posted: 16 Sep 2019 02:55 PM PDT  A Wisconsin man suspected of running an illegal operation to manufacture vaping cartridges flew to California last month to get THC oil in bulk to fill thousands of cartridges to sell, prosecutors said Monday in charging documents. Authorities in Kenosha, Wisconsin, arrested 20-year-old Tyler Huffhines on Sept. 5 after parents tipped off police when they saw their teenage son with one of the cartridges. Prosecutors say Huffhines employed 10 people to fill the cartridges with THC oil at a condo he rented with a stolen identity.
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| NYC to Allow 1.1 Million Students to Skip Class for Climate Protests Posted: 17 Sep 2019 05:49 AM PDT  New York City public schools will allow 1.1 million students to skip classes Friday in order to attend the planned "climate strike" ahead of the United Nations Climate Action Summit.The protests aim to press the Summit for immediate action to stop climate change, and are geared specifically for the participation of young people.Reactions to the decision have been ecstatic in some cases, as protest organizers contemplate what they hope will be the largest climate change protest in the history of the U.S."This completely changes things, and it's our doing," Xiye Bastida, 17, a senior at Beacon High School in Manhattan, told the New York Times. Some teachers at her school were planning to accompany students to the protests even before the school district granted permission to do so."We're not against the school system," she said. "We need the schools to work with us because our larger goal is to stop the fossil fuel industry."
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| Is Russia's Crazy Status-6 Nuclear Weapon a Great Idea or a Really Bad One? Posted: 16 Sep 2019 10:00 AM PDT  Let's take a look.
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| Boy Scout leader sang naked in front of kids, and organization failed to investigate: Lawsuit Posted: 16 Sep 2019 12:03 PM PDT  A Boy Scout leader who was accused of singing naked in front of several young boys was not investigated by his troop despite multiple complaints.
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| Oil prices sink as quick Saudi output recovery seen Posted: 17 Sep 2019 09:04 AM PDT  Oil prices sank five percent on Tuesday, reversing some of the previous day's gains as analysts predicted Saudi output would recover sooner than expected after weekend drone attacks. In the space of several minutes in afternoon European trading, North Sea Brent crude oil for delivery in November tumbled from $67.75 to $65.00. "The markets were once again wrong-footed by the Saudi news," said Forex.com analyst Fawad Razaqzada in reaction to Tuesday's price drop.
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| Andrew Yang gets why Donald Trump won. He won't be president but he deserves attention. Posted: 16 Sep 2019 01:24 PM PDT  He may have the best explanation for how the Trump presidency happened: We 'automated away' 4 million manufacturing jobs in presidential swing states.
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| Iran's Zarif says U.S. "in denial" over Saudi attack - Twitter Posted: 17 Sep 2019 09:52 AM PDT ![Iran's Zarif says U.S. "in denial" over Saudi attack - Twitter]( "Iran's Zarif says U.S. \"in denial\" over Saudi attack - Twitter") Iran's foreign minister said in a tweet on Tuesday that the United States was in denial for suspecting Iran over attacks on Saudi oil facilities, and ignoring that Yemenis were fighting back after years of war against the kingdom. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said on Tuesday the United States was reviewing evidence that suggests Iran was behind the attacks on Saudi oil facilities and stands ready to defend its interests and allies in the Middle East.
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| A flight from Vietnam to South Korea was delayed for 11 hours after the pilot arrived at the airport and realized he had lost his passport Posted: 17 Sep 2019 10:13 AM PDT  T'Way Air said it was investigating the incident and how the pilot lost his passport, and that it put passengers in a hotel and fed them breakfast.
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| Democrats are calling for Brett Kavanaugh to be impeached. How would that work? Posted: 16 Sep 2019 02:14 PM PDT  The battered copy of the Constitution that Kavanaugh carried to his confirmation hearings makes clear that federal judges, like other officials, can be impeached.
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| Agency could keep Three Mile Island nuclear debris in Idaho Posted: 16 Sep 2019 03:52 PM PDT  The partially melted reactor core from the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history could remain in Idaho for another 20 years if regulators finalize a license extension sought by the U.S. Energy Department, officials said Monday. The core from Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania partially melted in 1979, an event that changed the way Americans view nuclear technology. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has determined there would be no significant impact from extending the license to store the core at the 890-square-mile (2,305-square-kilometer) site that includes Idaho National Laboratory.
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| Putin Loses Legendary Approval-Rating Crown to His New Neighbor Posted: 16 Sep 2019 09:00 PM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Want the lowdown on European markets? In your inbox before the open, every day. Sign up here.Vladimir Putin takes great pride in his sky-high approval rating. But with Muscovites rising up and a new government instilling hope in Ukraine, he's being outshone by the president next door, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.It's still early days for the administration in Kyiv. While pushing a raft of popular reforms, Zelenskiy, 41, remains in his honeymoon period, while cries he's too close to a local billionaire grow louder.The 66-year-old Putin, meanwhile, is approaching two decades as Russia's leader. Economic expansion has fizzled out, and along with it the spending largess that kept the masses happy.The last time his popularity sagged meaningfully, Putin famously got a boost after annexing Crimea from Ukraine and fomenting a war between the two former allies.Zelenskiy has a long way to go to match the 89% rating Putin reached back then.To contact the reporter on this story: Andrew Langley in London at alangley1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrea Dudik at adudik@bloomberg.net, Gregory L. WhiteFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Former Ohio judge gets life in prison for killing ex-wife in front of daughters Posted: 16 Sep 2019 11:38 AM PDT  A former Ohio judge was given life in prison last week over the brutal 2018 stabbing death of his ex-wife and the mother of his children.
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| Best Bar Tools for Your Home Bar Posted: 16 Sep 2019 10:24 AM PDT |
| French boy, 10, dies 8 years after supermarket burger poisoning Posted: 16 Sep 2019 07:57 AM PDT  A French boy aged 10, who fell gravely ill in 2011 after consuming a beef burger from supermarket discounter Lidl that was infected with E.coli bacteria, has died of complications stemming from his poisoning, the family's lawyer said. The boy, Nolan, died on Saturday "as a consequence of his poisoning", the family's lawyer Florence Rault told AFP on Sunday. Rault said that Nolan had not "ceased to suffer" after consuming the burger in June 2011.
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| Saudi Arabia knows its defences are not up to war with Iran Posted: 16 Sep 2019 09:50 AM PDT  The smoke rising above above Saudi Arabia's Abqaiq oil field might seem at first like the justification Riyadh has been waiting for. If the White House is to be believed, Iran launched an unprovoked attack on the kingdom's most important oil facilities. Saudi Arabia would be within its rights to strike its Iranian archrivals in response. In an evening tweet, Donald Trump even appeared to give Saudi Arabia a say in whether the US would attack Iran. "[The US is] waiting to hear from the Kingdom as to who they believe was the cause of this attack, and under what terms we would proceed!" Saudi Arabia has the power to bring fire and fury down on its most-hated foe but may be reluctant to actually use that power. The reality is the Saudis are deeply skittish about the prospects of any war with Iran because they know they will be Tehran's main target. If fighting breaks out between the US and Iran, the Iranians will have relatively few chances to strike America directly. They could target US ships in the Persian Gulf or order their Shia militia proxies to harass American forces in Iraq. But most of their fire is likely to be aimed at the soft underbelly of Saudi Arabia, which is well within range of Iran's missiles on the other side of the Gulf. Strikes against Saudi oil plants "Saudi Arabia will not support a war with Iran that has a Saudi return address on it," said Joshua Landis, director of the Centre for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma. "Saudi Arabia would support a war between the US and Iran, if Saudi Arabia could hide behind the US, but not one where the Saudis must step out in front, because the Saudis would lose." Although the kingdom is the world's third largest defence spender after the US and China, its military is fairly ineffective and would struggle against Iranian forces hardened by decades of unconventional warfare across the region. Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, openly lamented the disparity between the quality of his troops' weapons and the paucity of their fighting skills. "It is unacceptable that we are the world's third or fourth biggest country in military spending but our army is ranked in the twenties [in ability]," he said in 2016. "There is a problem." Mohammed bin Salman had lamented his forces' capabilities Credit: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo That problem has been mercilessly exposed on the battlefields of Yemen, where Saudi forces equipped with state-of-the-art British and American weaponry have been fought to a stalemate by ragtag Houthi rebel fighters backed by Iran. This vulnerability explains why, despite Riyadh's strong rhetoric towards Iran, the Saudis have often looked to de-escalate in the face of Iranian provocations. After two Saudi oil tankers were bombed in a mysterious sabotage attack in May, the US pointed the finger directly at Iran. Yet, Saudi Arabia hemmed and hawed and appeared reluctant to place the blame on anyone. In their initial statements about this week's attack, Saudi officials have confirmed the weapons were Iranian-made but have not gone as far as the US in directly blaming Iran. As with the tanker attacks, they may now say that a lengthy investigation is needed to determine the culprits, giving time for passions to fade. The kingdom surely dream of ridding itself of its rivals in the Islamic Republic across the narrow water. But if the price of confronting Iran is far more smoke billowing above burning Saudi oil fields then Riyadh will probably look for a way to back down.
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| Investigation into alleged surveillance abuse and targeting of the Trump campaign is in its final stages Posted: 16 Sep 2019 07:51 AM PDT  Inspector general Michael E. Horowitz outlined a multi-step review process with FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General William Barr; chief intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge reports from Washington.
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| Divided Fed set to cut interest rates this week, but then what? Posted: 16 Sep 2019 10:04 PM PDT  Deep disagreements within the Federal Reserve over the economic outlook and how the U.S. central bank should respond will not stop policymakers from cutting interest rates at a two-day meeting that began on Tuesday. An oil price spike after attacks on Saudi Arabian oil facilities over the weekend added to the list of risks facing an economy already slowed by ongoing trade tensions and global weakness. At one end of the Fed's large boardroom table sit St. Louis Fed President James Bullard and Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari, who are expected to argue for a steep reduction in borrowing costs to counter low inflation and an inverted Treasury yield curve.
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| A look at the revived allegations against Justice Kavanaugh Posted: 16 Sep 2019 01:11 PM PDT  A new claim of decades-old sexual impropriety by Justice Brett Kavanaugh is rekindling the controversy that nearly derailed his confirmation to the Supreme Court last year. The allegation was unearthed by two New York Times reporters in their research for a book about the Kavanaugh confirmation. The book says the FBI was made aware of but did not investigate the incident, purported to take place when Kavanaugh was a Yale University student in the 1980s.
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| Wisconsin brothers charged with operating counterfeit vaping cartridge operation Posted: 17 Sep 2019 11:15 AM PDT  Tyler and Jacob Huffhines ran an operation that cranked out 3,000 to 5,000 counterfeit vaping cartridges each day, authorities say.
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| Fall-Flavored Cocktails, From Pecan Pie Martinis to Pumpkin Pie Sangria Posted: 16 Sep 2019 09:54 AM PDT |
| China Might Not Actually Be Able to Hold Its South China Sea Bases but That's Not the Point Posted: 16 Sep 2019 11:00 AM PDT  What does Bejing plan to do with them?
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| The Union Is Playing Some Hardball.' Here's Why GM Workers Are On Strike Posted: 16 Sep 2019 06:31 AM PDT  The United Auto Workers union is leading its first strike against General Motors in 12 years, digging in for a fight over jobs and benefits that could cost the carmaker dearly for an indefinite period.
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| Police clear major migrant camp in northern France Posted: 17 Sep 2019 01:32 AM PDT  Grande-Synthe (France) (AFP) - French police began clearing around 1,000 migrants from a gymnasium near the northern port of Dunkirk on Tuesday after a court ruled it was a health and security hazard. The mayor of Grande-Synthe in December 2018 opened up the sports hall to migrant families seeking shelter from the cold. Since then, it has grown into a makeshift camp with around 800 people sleeping in tents pitched around the crammed gymnasium where some 170 people, mostly Iraqi Kurds hoping to reach Britain, had been sheltering.
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| US-Russia nuclear war would kill 34 million people within hours and is increasingly likely, Princeton study concludes Posted: 17 Sep 2019 10:26 AM PDT  More than 90 million people would be killed or injured in a nuclear war between the US and Russia if a conventional conflict went too far, according to a new simulation created by researchers.Such a scenario has become "dramatically" more plausible in the last two years because the two countries have dropped support for arms-control measures, according to a team from Princeton University.
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| California Bans State-Sponsored Travel to Iowa over Refusal to Provide Medicaid Coverage for Gender-Reassignment Surgeries Posted: 16 Sep 2019 12:25 PM PDT  California added an eleventh state to its travel blacklist on Friday, banning state-sponsored travel to Iowa over that state's refusal to cover gender-transition surgeries under its Medicaid program.California attorney general Xavier Becerra announced the decision to add Iowa to the travel-ban list, which takes effect October 4 and means public employees and college students will not be able to travel to Iowa on the taxpayer's dime.In May, Iowa governor Kim Reynolds signed a law blocking Medicaid from paying for gender-reassignment surgeries despite the state Supreme Court's ruling earlier this year in favor of charging taxpayers for the procedures. Gender identity is a protected characteristic under Iowa's Civil Rights Act."The Iowa Legislature has reversed course on what was settled law under the Iowa Civil Rights Act, repealing protections for those seeking gender-affirming healthcare," Becerra said in a statement. "California has taken an unambiguous stand against discrimination and government actions that would enable it."California's travel blacklist stems from a 2016 law allowing the Golden State to ban state travel to other U.S. states that roll back protections for LGBT citizens. Texas, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Mississippi, and Kentucky are also on the list.
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| Judge's stern barks at dogfighting defendants prompt appeals Posted: 16 Sep 2019 10:24 AM PDT  The judge didn't mince words when it came time to sentence five North Carolina men in an illegal dogfighting operation that involved more than 150 pit bulls. "Either the dogs have to be eliminated from the world or the people who fight the dogs or both, but there needs to be an intervention by the law and it's going to start here," U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle said. The men are now using the judge's words to appeal their sentences, arguing that he should have taken himself off the case because of his "deep-seated antagonism" toward people who engage in dogfighting and the pit bull breed itself.
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| Here's why Iran would target major Saudi oil fields and risk a US military response Posted: 17 Sep 2019 10:50 AM PDT  If Iran was responsible for the shocking attack, it falls in line with a pattern of dangerous escalations to harm the US for its harsh sanctions.
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| In Hong Kong, Employees Hide Their Political Leanings as Beijing Forces Companies to Take Sides Posted: 16 Sep 2019 01:24 AM PDT  Despite fear of losing their jobs, many workers are on the front lines
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| Why Stalin's Dreams of a Soviet Navy of Battleships Never Came True Posted: 16 Sep 2019 05:00 AM PDT  It never happened.
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| Qatar announces new residency scheme for investors Posted: 16 Sep 2019 12:50 PM PDT  Qatar announced Monday it will grant residency to foreign investors for the first time, state media reported, the latest in a series of measures designed to diversify the economy. Foreigners investing an unspecified level of "non-Qatari capital" in the economy will be eligible for renewable five-year residency permits, the state-run Qatar News Agency reported. Real estate developers active in Qatar's property market will also be eligible for the scheme, under the new law.
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| The Electoral College Flips Elections More Than We Thought Posted: 17 Sep 2019 07:45 AM PDT ![The Electoral College Flips Elections More Than We Thought]( "The Electoral College Flips Elections More Than We Thought") (Bloomberg Opinion) -- Advocates for reforming the Electoral College will doubtless get a boost by a new and important paper by University of Texas economists Michael Geruso, Dean Spears and Ishaana Talesara. They find that in close presidential elections, the probability of an "inversion" — the popular vote going one way and the electoral vote another — is far higher than most of us suppose.By now, most people who follow debate on the issue know that in 54 of the nation's 58 presidential elections — better than 9 times out of 10 — the popular vote and the electoral vote have gone to the same person. Thus we tend to think of an inversion as an anomaly.Geruso, Spears and Talesara insist that we're wrong. Once we subtract the landslides and focus only on the close elections, matters are different:In elections decided by a percentage point or less (equal to 1.3 million votes by 2016 turnout), the probability of inversion is about 40%. For races decided by two percentage points or less, the probability of inversion is about 30%. Significant likelihood of inversion persists at larger vote margins.This likelihood, the authors insist, isn't simply a matter of today's political conditions. Independent of era, independent of particular personalities, independent even of the number of states, the probability seems to be baked into the system. "Asymmetry," the authors tell us, "is a general property of the Electoral College system."Their approach easily accommodates the 2016 result. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2.1 percentage points but lost by 74 electoral votes. In the paper's model, even a 3-percentage-point popular-vote win by a Democrat would lead to about a 1 in 6 chance of a Republican electoral victory.To reach their results, Geruso, Spears and Talesara don't simply count the electoral results over time. In fact, the actual results don't matter to the model, which takes into account such factors as the distribution of electoral votes across states and the concentration of political affiliation in particular regions — not just now, but through history. The authors ran multiple Monte Carlo simulations to calculate the likelihood of an inversion in a particular election without regard to whether an inversion actually occurred. And the results seem accurate:Our models predict that the 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016 inversions were likely events. For example, our models — armed only with the information that the two-party popular vote outcome in the 2000 election was 49.7%R / 50.3% D, and estimated from a sample that excludes 2000 – predict that an inversion was more likely than not for a generic Republican and Democrat candidate pair.The authors concede that at our present political moment, matters are just as everyone thinks: The chance of an asymmetric electoral result favors Republicans. The authors calculate that this has been true for at least 30 years. For many younger left-leaning voters, this means their entire lives. Still, according to the authors, there have been historical eras when the odds of an inversion favored the Democrats. This was particularly true during Reconstruction. And while it's true that no Democratic candidate has ever won the presidency without winning the popular vote, the authors insist that this historical artifact doesn't mean no Democrat could. In fact, their models estimate that under current conditions, a Democrat who loses the popular vote by less than a single percentage point would have a 35 percent chance of winning the Electoral College. Not shabby.But here's the statistic that is bound to make the heads of true-blue commentators spin: The authors estimate that under current conditions, a Republican who narrowly loses the popular vote has a 65 percent chance of winning the election. For those whose affection or disaffection for the Electoral College is essentially a matter of partisan outcome, this will surely be the single most important calculation in the paper.As for myself, I don't consider an electoral inversion to be a disaster that we must undo the constitutional system to remedy. One needn't like the outcome of a particular election to see the virtue of a process that keeps the states with large populations from swamping their smaller cousins. My advice to those who wish that the candidate who wins the popular vote would always win the election is simple: Turn out enough of your side's voters to earn a landslide victory. As Caruso, Spears and Talesara would be the first to note, in that case an inversion is all but impossible.To contact the author of this story: Stephen L. Carter at scarter01@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Sarah Green Carmichael at sgreencarmic@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Stephen L. Carter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is a professor of law at Yale University and was a clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. His novels include "The Emperor of Ocean Park," and his latest nonfiction book is "Invisible: The Forgotten Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America's Most Powerful Mobster." For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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