| Who respects military more — Trump or Biden? Here’s what Americans think, poll finds Posted: 14 Sep 2020 08:45 AM PDT  The poll was conducted after it was reported Trump called military dead "losers."
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| Shooting suspect at large; $100K reward offered for information related to LA deputy ambush Posted: 14 Sep 2020 05:22 AM PDT  Officials have offered a $100K reward for information leading to an arrest after a gunman shot two LA sheriff's deputies in a weekend ambush.
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| Two people are dead and multiple injured after 'several shots' were fired near Rutgers University campus Posted: 13 Sep 2020 09:32 AM PDT  Local and campus authorities are investigating a shooting that occurred on Sunday morning at a party near Rutgers University in New Jersey.
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| This may be the first time in years Apple isn't launching a new iPhone in September — here's everything we know about when the iPhone 12 may be released Posted: 14 Sep 2020 08:51 AM PDT  Apple has reportedly pushed its iPhone 12 release back to October, marking the first time in years it won't be announcing a new iPhone in September.
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| Teen hunter run over by corn chopper after falling asleep in field, Michigan cops say Posted: 14 Sep 2020 06:15 AM PDT  The teen had been dropped off to hunt earlier in the day, police say.
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| Bring Back the Bison Posted: 13 Sep 2020 03:30 AM PDT  On October 11 last year, the World Wildlife Foundation tweeted a video of four bison being released into Badlands National Park. They spill from the trailer at the top of the hill and tumble down into the snowy expanse below, urged on by the ululations of the staffers above. If bison can look happy, these four do. They'd soon link up with the existing Badlands herd of almost 1,200 fellow bison; like cows, they are very social creatures.Typical WWF videos get 3 to 4 million views. This one received 15 million. The discrepancy is an encouraging sign for conservationists and bison lovers. Bison are the unlikely recipients of a grassroots affection typically reserved for the pandas, elephants, and tigers. But the online love for the creatures also points to a conundrum: How does one take all that love and channel it to save America's national mammal?Though Teddy Roosevelt led a push to bring back bison in the early 1900s, for the last half-century the constituency for returning massive herds of bison to the Great Plains has largely been limited to the nonprofit world and Native Americans. Conservationist groups such as the WWF have expertise and money to burn: more than $2 million in the past five years. They work largely with indigenous groups, for whom bison can have spiritual, social, and economic value.But the political forces arrayed against rewilding are many, and they make reasonable points. In an age when buying a new home is still easiest in recently developed areas, why restrict land from being turned to profitable use? And no matter how financially successful small- or medium-scale butchering becomes, it will be difficult to compete with the cattle conglomerates that supply the nation's supermarkets with cheap beef. Moreover, many proposals to repopulate national parks would require closing grazing land that is currently leased to private interests.Though bison lovers have struggled to build a durable coalition, they may have surprising new bedfellows. In corners of the online Right, in a form of meme-friendly esoteric politics, "megafauna nationalists" dream of rewilding the country. It is the strange synthesis, between megafauna nationalists and others, that will likely power any new, durable projects to repopulate the great American grassland.The Decline of Bison In 2016, Congress proclaimed the bison the national mammal. It was a ray of light for a creature that had teetered on the edge of extinction not long before. At their peak, up to 60 million bison roamed the continent. Though in the popular imagination bison are solely plains creatures, their range covered most of the continent. As a young surveyor in rural Virginia, George Washington shot and killed one. They inhabited taiga forests in Alaska, scrubby brushland in northern Mexico, and eastern woodlands in Boston. Hunting them in the 1800s was the contemporary equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel: Hunters reported looking out across the plains and being unable to see grass in any direction, so thick were the bison. Bison were systematically purged from the plains, both as a technique to control the Indians and to clear a way for the great railroads carrying the arriving "iron buffalo." By 1883, only 1,000 bison still survived, the vast majority in small, private domestic herds. Today, there are about 11,000 bison on federal lands, with about double that number elsewhere in the country.Rewilding Indian Reservations A recent initiative by the Rosebud Sioux tribe in South Dakota offers one roadmap to bringing back the bison sustainably. The tribe recently announced that it aims to build a 1,500-head herd on 28,000 acres of tribal land by 2025. It would be the largest tribally managed herd on the continent, and the Rosebud Sioux expect that the project will be financially self-sustaining.As with any conservation project, the details will be key to success. The grassland on which the bison will roam is not ideal and will require maintenance, as will the miles of reinforced fencing. But in other ways, bison require less active care than an equivalent pasture herd does. They are hardy creatures. Compared with cows, their ratio of body mass to surface area is superior, meaning they keep warm far easier. The tribe anticipates butchering 250 to 300 head a year, funding the upkeep of the herd's remainder.Behind Rosebud's Wolakota Buffalo Range are two legacy institutions, the World Wildlife Fund and the Department of the Interior. WWF provided consulting and an assessment of the land. DOI (through their Bison Conservation Initiative) agreed to send roughly 200 bison a year to the range from the semi-free-range herd in Yellowstone. (The prospect of passing a semi full of lowing bison bulls on the highway should itself be enough to justify rewilding.) Wizipan Little Elk, head of the tribe's economic development arm and formerly a DOI official under the Obama administration, spearheaded the partnership.Most tribal herds are small, maintained for cultural instruction and occasional local meat sales. Most industrial bison-farming operations maintain the creatures in conditions closer to those of well-fed cattle rather than of ranging wild creatures. If Rosebud can pull off its model, it will demonstrate that a fairly cash-poor entity can marry these two purposes, raising major quantities of a massive wild animal, mainly to have it around, while still remaining financially viable.Bison Fervor Some bison lovers dream bigger, though. If one spends enough time on Twitter (I out myself), specifically certain anonymous accounts on the right, one begins to find a particular love for megafauna. It doesn't fit neatly into any one political project, except insofar as many of the images revolve around male acts of vigor. Most are tongue-in-cheek:> tired: looking to slot machines & other addictive modern activities for examples of how to drive user engagement> > wired: looking to our pre-agricultural ancestral environment for examples of how to drive user engagement pic.twitter.com/5uKKeFthHL> > -- uncanny valley girl �� (@leaacta) June 24, 2020Or they're serious, but it's hard to tell:Some pose as policy aphorisms:You can sense patterns, but also rifts: some talk of hunting sabretooth tigers in mecha suits, others renounce technology.> There's something so magical and enchanting about the "antediluvian" aesthetic of the prehistoric world, a world untamed by God or man, full of titanic beasts, nature as primordial chaos. We need to bring it back. pic.twitter.com/Ny8TTe90aw> > -- Michel �� (@Michelesonn) May 30, 2020Perhaps the idea of rewilding megafauna is appealing as an Internet meme precisely because it feels so fantastic, divorced from reality. A world where this is possible is not a world in which it's possible to tweet about it, is it?> Megafauna nationalism pic.twitter.com/Nn826w6iKk> > -- stricture (@bog_beef) June 15, 2020Obviously, a large chunk of this is purely in jest. But the impulse to restore an America with great beasts is worth taking seriously. The memeing points to a deeper, visceral hunger for moonshot projects, for doing valuable tasks in a country that feels like it's slowly winding down.Some will find the impulse to restore an antediluvian past inherently fascist. But the visceral argument for rewilding is much simpler to distill: megafauna are fundamentally cool. Partly, they're captivating because of their staggering distance from us. Watch a buffalo as it breathes slowly. Its nostrils and tongue are grey and purple, and on each out-breath the grasses around its head tremble. This head is larger than your torso, and yet its forelegs are almost spindly, no more girthy than your forearms. The distribution of weight boggles the mind, as directly behind the head the spine juts up a foot or more, then slopes off at a steep angle to the haunches, like an old penny-farthing bike. When it decides to get up, it takes several long seconds: It has to rock back and forth, big black eyes bulging, to find the momentum to shrug that front weight forward onto its feet. One can stand quite close to a bison (in the wild, this is not recommended) without its acknowledging your presence. Its cognition, like that of all non-domesticated animals, is orthogonal to ours. As Thomas Nagel said about bats and Wittgenstein about lions, if bison could speak, we would not understand them.But they're cool also because of their relations to us. This creature is a beast, and yet it can make eye contact with me, it reacts to my presence, and we share a world, a country, a space. In some ineffable way we are kin. One does not have to share the Sioux cosmology to experience this truth, or to think that a country in which these animals were a more regular part of our life would be a better place. If there's one thing every American can agree on, it's that, despite our efforts, we feel chained to our screens, rooted to our couches, and locked away from nature. Why not bring nature bellowing back? And not just any nature, but the heaviest land animal on the continent, a symbol of national greatness?And as NYT columnist Ross Douthat has pointed out, many of our well-intentioned attempts to remove caricatures of Native Americans from public life have had the secondary effect of diminishing their presence in "the American imaginarium." Bringing back the bison, starting with comprehensive support for any Indian reservation that wanted it, would offer a chance to re-cement Native American iconography as a source of national pride. It would also begin in a small way to undo the suffering caused by the animal's mass slaughter.Fixing Our Missing Bison Problem And perhaps one can dream even bigger. This country is massive, and a tremendous proportion of its Midwest and West are federal land. The Department of the Interior runs a Bison Conservation Initiative (the program through which Rosebud received starter bison), but it prioritizes tending to bison genetics and managing existing herds. It should be given the resources to pursue a vastly more vigorous policy.To sustain itself genetically, a bison herd needs at least 2,000 head, a number that few herds in the U.S. reach. There is ample room for herds far larger in Nevada, Kansas, eastern Colorado, western Nebraska, and the Little Missouri National Grasslands in North Dakota. Building room for them would require land swaps and purchases from private owners, as well as broader ecological initiatives to strengthen desertified ecosystems.To take just one example of a potential site: Cherry County in Nebraska has one resident per square mile. Land could easily be accumulated from willing sellers, many of whom are desperate to cash out on increasingly valueless property. Taken together, Kansas's two least populated counties cover a million acres and are home to fewer than 3,000 residents. The possibilities are endless. Picture a national service program that actually entices young Americans: a year under the big sky of the American West as a modern cowboy (bisonboy?). Or intentional communities dedicated to service through wildlife preservation, centered in the small towns abutting the bison range.On the consumption side, we've seen enough misguided overhauls of the FDA's nutritional pyramid. What about one that emphasizes lean, native-to-America meats? (Bison bolognese is easy and delicious.) FDPIR (Food Distribution Program to Indian Reservations) currently serves up mostly frozen and canned food, along with processed sugars especially ill-suited to the native genetic makeup, contributing to obscenely high rates of diabetes. We could fund starter herds explicitly for butchering, perhaps as a partnership between the DOI and the Food and Drug Administration.Bison Nationalism What one could call bison nationalism is only the latest installment in a long line of American attempts to massively reshape the biological landscape. In 1910, facing a national meat shortage and charged with the slightly crazed optimism of the time, Congress seriously considered a proposal to import hippopotami to the Louisiana bayou. During the ravages of the Dust Bowl, the federal government planted 220 million trees in an effort to keep soil tied down.Today, conservation efforts still have the potential to spark national pride. Abroad, Saharan African nations collaborate on a continental Great Green Wall to push back the desert. In England, the semi-feral New Forest ponies roam land held in common by local residents and are cared for special park rangers. The ponies are known as "architects of the forest" for their central role in maintaining and trimming plant life.Up to this point, I have not discussed the ecological benefits bison themselves provide, largely because we simply don't know the long-term effects of reintroducing them on a large scale into their old landscape. We have no old herds to measure. But we do know the central role they play when embedded in an ecosystem. Bison were once a keystone species on the Great Plains. Their wallows numbered over 100 million and provided habitats for mountain plovers, prairie dogs, and other burrowing creatures. More species of songbird find a home in the mosaic landscape that bison create by foraging unevenly, unlike cattle that have monotonized grazing patterns. In death, wild bison provide scavenge for wolves, bears, and ravens, and eventually high-quality soil for the prairie.Their benefits aren't limited to simple species conservation. Bison are such heavy grazers en masse that they turn back the biological clock for springtime plants, increasing plant productivity by up to 40 percent. In Siberia's Pleistocene Park, researchers are attempting to bring megafauna back to maintain the steppe, which sequesters much more carbon than forests do. Roving herds of bison on the American steppe would foster more plant growth, which in turn would help cement carbon in the soil, creating humus (organic matter that forms the "foundation of soil fertility"), fostering more plant growth, supporting more grazing bison. It's hard to picture a more virtuous cycle.Today, our Native American population faces interlocking crises of sickness, disease, and climate change. Nationally, the hollowing out of the Midwest contributes to a loss of shared history, a lack of opportunity for Zoomers and Millennials, and a sense of national slackness and dissolution. It may be that both the Rosebud Sioux tribe and the online dreamers share an insight most of us are missing: The mighty bison can help on every front. It's time to bring them back.Editor's note: This article has been amended slightly since its original publication, to correct the identity of Wizipan Little Elk.
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| Networks boycott Trump event over his repeat breach of coronavirus guidelines Posted: 13 Sep 2020 12:54 PM PDT  President held six rallies in month following admission that virus was deadly and 'goes through the air'
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| Umar Khalid: India student leader arrested over Delhi riots Posted: 14 Sep 2020 12:04 AM PDT  Delhi police arrested Umar Khalid after questioning him for 11 hours on Sunday.
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| Here's What the Massive Amount of Smoke Created by West Coast Wildfires Looks Like From Space Posted: 12 Sep 2020 12:04 PM PDT  Satellite images show massive amounts of smoke engulfing the West Coast of the U.S. and extending hundreds of miles over the Pacific Ocean
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| Western Wildfires: Trump headed to California as death toll rises; firefighters in furious battle; air quality dismal Posted: 14 Sep 2020 09:27 AM PDT  Meteorologist Dan Borsum said strong southerly winds and low humidity Monday will result in elevated fire weather conditions across the region.
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| A pod of 'crazy' killer whales is launching coordinated attacks on boats, terrifying the sailors and baffling scientists Posted: 13 Sep 2020 07:23 AM PDT  Orcas are ramming sailboats along the Spanish and Portuguese coasts in an unprecedented display of aggressive behavior.
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| Afghan women negotiators face hardline Taliban in peace talks Posted: 12 Sep 2020 07:43 PM PDT  Four Afghan women who endured the Taliban's oppressive rule and have fought for fragile gains since the militants were ousted are facing the hardline group in peace talks.
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| Army COVID-19 vaccine may produce a side benefit: Cure for the common cold Posted: 14 Sep 2020 04:00 AM PDT  Walter Reed researchers say based on what they've learned about COVID so far, you need to get a flu shot
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| Postal contracts awarded to DeJoy-run company were questioned in 2001 USPS audit Posted: 14 Sep 2020 02:30 AM PDT  The Postal Service audit found that the company may have cost taxpayers $53 million more than had the contracts gone through a bidding process.
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| ’I can no longer remain silent’: Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend reveals how he is ‘haunted’ by her killing Posted: 14 Sep 2020 08:20 AM PDT  Kenneth Walker has spoken out about the shooting of his girlfriend, Breonna Taylor, saying he can "no longer remain silent". Taylor, a decorated Emergency Medical Technician, 26, was shot dead by police officers in her apartment on 13 March during a drug raid in connection to her ex-boyfriend. Mr Walker, who was at home with Taylor on the night she was killed, is "haunted" by the experience, Steve Romine, one of Mr Walkers attorney's, told NBC News.
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| Russian excess deaths over summer outstrip COVID toll by more than 3 to 1 Posted: 14 Sep 2020 07:25 AM PDT  The number of excess deaths in Russia between May and July was more than three times higher than the official coronavirus toll, recent government data show, a discrepancy some experts say raises questions about the accuracy of Moscow's counting. While Russia has confirmed the world's fourth largest tally of coronavirus cases, it has a relatively low death toll from the associated disease, COVID-19. Tatiana Golikova, the head of Russia's coronavirus crisis centre, told President Vladimir Putin in late July that Russia's coronavirus mortality rate was "significantly lower than in a range of other countries".
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| China’s Defense Ministry says U.S. is biggest threat to world peace Posted: 14 Sep 2020 07:55 AM PDT  On Sunday, China's Defense Ministry blasted a U.S. report on the country's military ambitions, saying it is the U.S. and not China, that poses the biggest threat to the international order and world peace.
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| Cotton Announces Bill to Revoke China’s ‘Most Favored Nation’ Status Posted: 14 Sep 2020 07:14 AM PDT  Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) announced Monday that he is introducing legislation to repeal permanent most favored nation trade status, a designation that guarantees equal trading opportunity among a nation's trade partners.In an appearance on Fox & Friends, Cotton criticized China's status as a most favored nation, and said he would introduce legislation this week that would require the president and congress to reassess the status each year.Under Cotton's new legislation if China were to "shoot missiles at our ships in the Western Pacific" or crack down on Hong Kong as it has done this year, "then we would be able to say each year we are not going to renew most favored nation status for China," he said. > China should be stripped of its permanent most-favored-nation status.> > Joe Biden voted to give the communist country the special trade status 20 years ago, supercharging the loss of American manufacturing jobs.> > I'm introducing legislation to end it. pic.twitter.com/LWPXmcORlf> > -- Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) September 14, 2020The senator also blasted Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden for his decades of support of increased trade opportunities with the Chinese Communist Party."This week is the twentieth anniversary of Joe Biden voting to give permanent most favored nation status to China," he said. "Just think about that — most favored nation status to a communist country."He said the status had "supercharged the loss of American manufacturing jobs" and criticized the former vice president for defending it last week during an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper.Tapper asked Biden, "A lot of people think that allowing China into the World Trade Organization, which you supported, extending most favored nation status to China, which you supported, that those steps allowed China to take advantage of the United States by using our own open trade deals against us. Do you think, in retrospect, you were naive about China?"Biden defended the stance saying, "No, here is the thing. In the context of that, we want China to grow. We don't want a war with China."Cotton has shown repeated disapproval of Biden's stance on China and in March published an article at National Review titled "Joe Biden Is China's Choice for President," in which he criticized Biden's support for China's most favored nation status. "In the critical fight over whether to grant most-favored-nation trade status and World Trade Organization membership to China in the 1990s — a fight in which, again, many of his party's leaders in Congress were on the right side — Biden carefully shepherded China through the process from his powerful perch as the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee," the longtime China hawk wrote. In 2000, Biden voted to approve Permanent Normal Trade Relations with the country, which created a path for China to become a member of the World Trade Organization one year later."Wherever a brake might have been applied — by placing human-rights or labor conditions on most-favored-nation status, for example — Biden voted the measures down and lobbied other senators for Beijing," Cotton continued. "Unfortunately, China and Biden got their way, and American workers are still suffering from it."
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| Scientists outraged by White House appointees' meddling with coronavirus information: 'Outright egregious' Posted: 14 Sep 2020 10:05 AM PDT  Scientists are "aghast" over news of White House meddling with public health reports that conflict with President Donald Trump's coronavirus messaging.
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| Oregon officials said they are preparing for a 'mass fatality incident' as 500,000 people stand in evacuation zones from the wildfires ravaging the West Coast Posted: 12 Sep 2020 05:43 PM PDT  There are currently 6 reported deaths in Oregon due to the wildfires that have devastated millions of acres, as well as more in other Western states.
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| A law enforcement group in Texas put up billboards warning visitors to Austin that the city slashed its police department budget Posted: 13 Sep 2020 07:02 AM PDT  "Warning!!! Austin Police Defunded Enter at Your Own Risk," reads one of the billboards, erected by the Texas Municipal Police Association.
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| Smoke from West Coast wildfires stretches 2,000 miles across US, satellite photo shows Posted: 14 Sep 2020 07:22 AM PDT  A pall of smoke from the fires reaches as far as Michigan.
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| Letter from Africa: Behind Ghana and Nigeria's love-hate affair Posted: 12 Sep 2020 04:51 PM PDT  Why the current tensions over the closure of some Nigerian-owned shops in Ghana should come as no surprise.
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| Israeli gets 3 life sentences for deadly 2015 arson attack Posted: 14 Sep 2020 06:09 AM PDT  An Israeli court on Monday handed down three life sentences to a Jewish extremist convicted in a 2015 arson attack that killed a Palestinian toddler and his parents. The Lod District Court found Amiram Ben-Uliel, a Jewish settler, guilty of murder in May for the killing of 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh by firebombing his home in the West Bank village of Duma. The 2015 arson attack came amid a wave of vigilante attacks on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank by suspected Jewish extremists.
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| Venezuelan media name alleged U.S. spy arrested near refinery complex Posted: 13 Sep 2020 10:49 AM PDT  Pro-government media in Venezuela on Sunday named an alleged U.S. spy who President Nicolas Maduro said was captured last week near the country's largest oil refinery complex. Outlets close to the ruling Socialist Party identified the detainee as a former marine, John Heath Mattew, and said he was arrested on Thursday with three other people including a sergeant major in Venezuela's National Guard as they drove between Falcon and Zulia states in northwestern Venezuela. Ultimas Noticias newspaper, citing a preliminary report by the authorities, said the U.S. suspect was a former marine who had fought in Iraq, and that during the arrest soldiers seized a satellite phone, credit cards and mobile phones.
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| Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax joins Black women in governor’s race Posted: 13 Sep 2020 08:41 AM PDT  Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax formally kicked off his campaign for governor Saturday, a year after facing two allegations of sexual assault. Fairfax delivered a campaign speech at the Old Court House in Fairfax in northern Virginia. Three Black Democrats, including Fairfax, are currently vying for the party's 2021 nomination to the governor's house.
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| United Airlines accused of favoring young, white, blond attendants for NFL, MLB flights Posted: 13 Sep 2020 02:06 PM PDT  United Airlines is accused in a lawsuit of staffing NFL flights with attendants who are "young, white, female and predominately blond/blue-eyed."
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| Australian marine authorities left baffled after discovering humpback whale in shark-infested river Posted: 14 Sep 2020 05:46 AM PDT  Marine authorities were puzzling on Monday over how to persuade at least one wayward humpback whale to leave a murky, crocodile-infested river in northern Australia and continue an annual migration to Antarctica. There have been no previous recorded sightings of whales in East Alligator River in the Northern Territory's World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park, and no one can explain why at least three of the blue water mammals ventured so deep inland in a river with little visibility. Marine ecologist Jason Fowler said he spotted three whales on Sept. 2 while sailing with friends more than 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the river's mouth. "We happened to bump into some great big whales which completely blew me away," Mr Fowler said on Monday. "The water's incredibly murky. It's got zero visibility. So you can only see the whales when they're right on the surface," he said. He estimated there were two adults and a younger whale, around 10 meters (33 feet) to 12 meters (39 feet) long. "The west Australian humpback whale population has absolutely exploded. It's the great conservation success story in the ocean," Mr Fowler said. "There are so many humpbacks heading up the W.A. (Western Australia state) coast now, they're bound to end up in new places. What's incredibly weird is the fact that they're up a muddy, shallow river full of crocodiles - that's unheard of," he said. Despite the river's name, there are no alligators in Australia. It was named after its many crocodiles by European explorers who apparently couldn't tell the difference.
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| As some small gulf states normalize relations with Israel, Palestinians see fraying support Posted: 13 Sep 2020 02:11 PM PDT  Arab states prefaced normalization with Israel on a deal giving Palestinians a state. But the United Arab Emirates' and Bahrain's moves change that.
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| A Constitutional Affront by Wisconsin’s Attorney General Posted: 14 Sep 2020 03:30 AM PDT  Wisconsin's attorney general seeks to rob the state's citizens of their sovereignty. He is trying to grab power that does not belong to him and wants to make mischief while avoiding oversight. This lawless behavior — aimed today at Wisconsin's farmers and tomorrow at small towns — must be checked.The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and Attorney General Josh Kaul oppose a number of Wisconsin farmers in a legal dispute that focuses on high-capacity wells. The specific questions in that dispute are whether Wisconsin farmers can use high-capacity wells and under what conditions. (A high-capacity well is one that can withdraw more than 100,000 gallons a day.) These wells are critical to many of Wisconsin's farmers, who use them to irrigate crops and to raise livestock. (Many small towns also use high-capacity wells.) While access to such wells is important during a "regular" farming cycle, if there is such a thing, it is even more so during times of drought, when deep, high-capacity wells can serve as their only sources of water. Simply put, access to high-capacity wells can make the difference between prosperity or destitution for Wisconsin farmers.The attorney general seeks to avoid laws intended in part, to protect those farmers. The Wisconsin legislature passed a series of laws that expressly define the conditions under which the DNR can grant or deny permits to build and operate high-capacity wells. But the attorney general wants the power to ignore that legislation and make the law as he sees fit. He wants the DNR to have the power to impose non-legislative conditions on farmers who seek high-capacity wells. He believes he is a better steward of the people's waters, and the environmental impacts to them, than the legislature, farmers, and the people themselves.The broader dispute goes beyond farmers, however. It effects every Wisconsinite's liberties and raises fundamental questions about government power. Does Wisconsin's legislature, elected by the people in their sovereign capacity, make the law? Or can an unelected state agency — unmoored from legislative control, and against the express wishes of Wisconsin's elected officials — make law? Reversing the state's legal position in the middle of an ongoing lawsuit, Kaul seeks power through unchecked administrative control.Those in power cannot and must not make law that way. Government power comes from the consent of the governed. Through the Wisconsin constitution, we consented to be governed by legislators and elected officials, those whom we can hold accountable. By seeking to ignore the legislature (and a formal opinion of the previous attorney general), Kaul seeks to take power that does not belong to him and give it over to the DNR (and keep some for himself). That power belongs to the people and, in turn, to the legislature they elect. The attorney general may not make law that contravenes what the legislature has declared. Even if he was motivated by good intent, the inescapable fact is the constitution clearly makes the legislature supreme over the bureaucracy.To make matters even worse, he does not want Wisconsinites to know how he arrived at this decision. He has claimed the power to avoid open-records laws that none of his predecessors dared claim.He changed the state's legal position during the dispute, and those affected, reasonably, want to know why. When they asked, the attorney general essentially told them to pound sand. The Wisconsin Department of Justice has refused to turn over documents that would shed light on its decision to change legal positions, claiming attorney-client privilege. That privilege is important, but it can also be used inappropriately to shield government actors from embarrassment and scrutiny. That is the whole point of open-records laws — to hold government actors accountable and to prevent them from abusing their power.When asked to identify the client who claimed the privilege, the DOJ responded that the DOJ itself was the client. In other words, the DOJ claimed the right to refuse open-records requests on behalf of itself. It's like the constitution "pleading the Fifth" on itself, to itself. If the DOJ is its own client and can assert a privilege to avoid turning over documents, there is little (other than judicial challenges) stopping it from skirting Wisconsin's open records laws.These actions set a terrible example when people want greater, not less, institutional transparency. Ironically, Kaul recently stated: "It's important that we lead by example. With today's announcement [on a separate topic], we are re-affirming the importance of transparency in government." He was correct — at least there. The office must lead by example. Here, it failed.That we must protect Wisconsin's God-given natural resources, such as our water, is manifest. That we must also maintain fidelity to the Wisconsin constitution and to the people's sovereignty is equally so. The attorney general's power grab destroys liberty and must not be allowed to stand.
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| Secretive Pentagon research program seeking to replace human hackers with AI Posted: 13 Sep 2020 09:35 AM PDT  The Joint Operations Center inside Fort Meade in Maryland is a cathedral to cyber warfare. Part of a 380,000-square-foot, $520 million complex opened in 2018, the office is the nerve center for both the U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency as they do cyber battle.
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| San Francisco could be first major American city to let 16-year-olds vote Posted: 13 Sep 2020 02:24 PM PDT  San Francisco could give children as young as 16 the right to vote in local elections if a landmark proposition passes in the US's November elections. The proposition to lower the voting age by two years will be decided by the city's residents, who rejected the legislation when it was first proposed in 2016, according to NBC News. "Our motivation here first and foremost is to make sure that we put new voters in a position to establish that habit in the first election they're eligible for, and then to continue participating throughout their lives which is good for democracy on every level," Vote 16 campaign manager, Brandon Klugman, told NBC News.
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| Dong Tam case: Two sentenced to death in Vietnam over police killings Posted: 14 Sep 2020 06:08 AM PDT  Three policemen and one resident died in clashes over a land dispute that caused a public outcry.
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| Turkey says U.S. needs to return to neutral stance on Cyprus Posted: 13 Sep 2020 03:39 PM PDT  Turkey said early on Monday that the United States needed to return to a neutral stance on Cyprus, after Washington and Nicosia signed a memorandum of understanding to create a training centre. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said earlier this month that the United States would lift a 33-year arms embargo on Cyprus and deepen its security cooperation with Nicosia. During a visit to Cyprus, Pompeo said on Saturday that Washington remained "deeply concerned" about Turkey's actions in the eastern Mediterranean, where it is at a standoff with Greece and Cyprus over maritime areas thought to be rich in natural gas.
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| 3 labs have independently confirmed Putin critic Navalny was poisoned with Novichok, Germany says Posted: 14 Sep 2020 05:29 AM PDT  Two additional labs have confirmed that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned with Novichok, Germany has announced.Germany earlier this month said that the prominent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who fell ill on a flight to Moscow in August, was poisoned with the Soviet-era nerve agent, citing test results from a German military lab. On Monday, Germany said specialist labs in both France and Sweden have confirmed this finding, The Associated Press reports. "Three laboratories have now confirmed independently of one another the proof of a nerve agent of the Novichok group as the cause of Mr. Navalny's poisoning," Steffen Seibert, a spokesperson for the German government, said. Seibert called for Russia to "explain itself" and said "we are in close consultation with our European partners on further steps." An examination by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is ongoing, Germany also said. Navalny was taken to Germany for treatment after previously being hospitalized in Russia, and last week, the Berlin hospital said he was out of a medically induced coma. G7 countries have condemned Navalny's poisoning "in the strongest possible terms," while Russia has claimed a "massive disinformation campaign" is underway and that "unfounded attacks on Russia are continuing." Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week said there is a "substantial chance" that senior Russian officials were responsible for Navalny's poisoning."People all around the world see this kind of activity for what it is," Pompeo said. More stories from theweek.com Vindman: Trump is Putin's 'free chicken' Court-tapped judge-advocate tears into Barr's 'corrupt and politically motivated' move to drop Flynn case Surprise resignation of federal prosecutor ups concerns Barr is leaning on Durham investigation
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| 'I could never have envisioned this': At least 35 dead as nearly 100 wildfires continue to rage across 12 Western states Posted: 14 Sep 2020 06:25 AM PDT  More than 30,000 firefighters and support personnel are battling the blazes. Evacuation orders are in effect for communities near 36 of the wildfires.
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| 2 die in single-engine plane crash in eastern South Dakota Posted: 14 Sep 2020 06:04 AM PDT |
| New Biden ads target Black men Posted: 14 Sep 2020 04:02 AM PDT  Black women are often considered the "backbone" of the Democratic Party, but Black men could play an equally crucial role in the upcoming presidential election.
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| Protest in Istanbul against Charlie Hebdo cartoons Posted: 13 Sep 2020 09:23 AM PDT  Around 200 people in Istanbul demonstrated on Sunday against a French magazine's decision to republish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
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| Princeton, Williams Top 2021 U.S. News Best Colleges Rankings Posted: 13 Sep 2020 09:01 PM PDT |
| China travel ‘ban’ was wasn’t Trump’s idea, despite his claims otherwise, says Bob Woodward in new book Posted: 14 Sep 2020 08:28 AM PDT  Journalist does not offer supporting data for claims in awkward 'Today Show' interview
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| ‘At the Intersection of Two Criminalized Identities’: Black and Non-Black Muslims Confront a Complicated Relationship With Policing and Anti-Blackness Posted: 13 Sep 2020 09:47 AM PDT  The BLM movement is forcing Muslims to reckon with anti-Blackness and scrutinize their already tense relationship with police
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| Police body cam footage shows fatal shooting in Pennsylvania Posted: 14 Sep 2020 07:34 AM PDT  The Lancaster City Police Department has released body cam footage of a shooting that left 27-year-old Ricardo Munoz dead. The footage appears to show Munoz holding an object, said to be a knife by police, while charging at the officer before being shot. Protests were reported late Sunday evening in response to Munoz's death.
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| Israeli top model Bar Refaeli sentenced in tax evasion case Posted: 13 Sep 2020 05:47 AM PDT  Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli was sentenced on Sunday to nine months' community service and her mother was ordered jailed for 16 months for tax evasion on earnings from her international career. The former Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover model, now a popular TV personality in Israel, had pleaded guilty to tax offences under a plea bargain that also included her mother and agent, Tzipi Refaeli. Israel tax authorities accused the two of evading paying taxes on income of about $7.2 million.
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| Fox News host Tucker Carlson says only liberals believe climate change and systemic racism are real Posted: 13 Sep 2020 03:10 PM PDT  On Friday, while anchoring a segment on the wildfires affecting the West Coast, Fox News host Tucker Carlson blamed Democratic politicians for turning the massive devastation into a political opportunity. Tucker Carlson argues that climate change is like "systemic racism in the sky" in that it doesn't exist but liberals want you to believe its there.
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| Nigeria's slave descendants prevented from marrying who they want Posted: 13 Sep 2020 04:14 PM PDT  Campaigners fight to overturn customs and a caste system that discriminates against some Igbo people.
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| Officials say east Libya government resigns amid protests Posted: 13 Sep 2020 02:10 PM PDT  An interim government in eastern Libya resigned on Sunday amid street protests that erupted across the divided country over dire living conditions, officials said. Prime Minister Abdallah al-Thani submitted the resignation of his government to Aguila Saleh, speaker of the eastern-based House of Representatives, said the government's spokesman, Ezzel-Deen al-Falih. Abdallah Abaihig, a spokesman for the parliament, confirmed the government's resignation, saying lawmakers would review it in their next meeting.
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| Fact check: Stacey Abrams paid outstanding taxes, but the Rev. Al Sharpton still owes Posted: 12 Sep 2020 01:56 PM PDT  Financial disclosures reveal the high-profile Democrats paid off individual income taxes. We rate this claim partly false.
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