| Martha McSally down 17 points in new Fox News poll showing Democrats surging in key states Posted: 03 Sep 2020 11:03 AM PDT  Polls show Trump and GOP senators losing in Arizona, Wisconsin and North Carolina — states Trump won in 2016
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| COVID-19 spread at Maine wedding now linked to 143 cases, one death, outbreak at jail Posted: 03 Sep 2020 11:58 AM PDT  There are now 143 COVID-19 cases linked to a Maine wedding, including one person who died, a state CDC spokesperson said.
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| Facebook said it removed 2 of Rep. Clay Higgins' posts for violating the company's policies against inciting violence after the congressman suggested killing armed protesters Posted: 03 Sep 2020 02:43 PM PDT  Rep. Clay Higgins wrote that he'd "drop any 10 of you where you stand" if demonstrators showed up to a Louisiana protest with guns.
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| 'Zombie' Arctic wildfires fuel record carbon emissions Posted: 03 Sep 2020 12:02 AM PDT  This summer's wildfires in the Arctic have put record amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, experts have warned. Some of fires early in the season are thought to have been caused by so-called 'zombie fires', which had been smouldering underground during the winter months. Carbon emissions from this year's wildfires burning in the Arctic Circle have already outstripped 2019's record levels and are the highest for the region in data going back to 2003, Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) said. Scientists from the service, which is run by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) on behalf of the European Commission, monitor wildfire activity across the world. They have estimated that carbon dioxide emissions from the Arctic Circle from the beginning of the year were 244 million tonnes, up by a third on the 181 million tonnes for the whole of 2019. Most of the increase in wildfires has been in Russia's Sakha Republic, which falls partly within the Arctic Circle, with millions of acres of land damaged, the scientists said. Across Eastern Russia as a whole, fires emitted approximately 540 million tonnes of carbon dioxide between June and August, surpassing the previous highest total emissions for the region, seen in 2003, they said. Elsewhere in the world, a large region of the south-western USA has been hit by wildfires due to heatwave conditions, with large plumes of smoke seen moving eastward across the Great Lakes towards the North Atlantic. California has seen the second and third worst fires in the state's history, the data shows. Mark Parrington, senior scientist and wildfire expert at CAMS, said: "The Arctic fires burning since middle of June with high activity have already beaten 2019's record in terms of scale and intensity as reflected in the estimated carbon dioxide emissions. "We know from climate data provided by our parallel service at ECMWF, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), that warmer and drier conditions have been prevalent again this summer. "Our monitoring is vital in understanding how the scale and intensity of these wildfire events have an impact on the atmosphere in terms of air pollution."
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| 12-year-old displaying Trump sign punched several times by woman, Colorado police say Posted: 03 Sep 2020 09:36 AM PDT  "The suspect then attempted to take the banner but was unsuccessful."
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| Covid: Australian anti-lockdown suspect's arrest draws controversy Posted: 03 Sep 2020 03:13 AM PDT  Viral footage shows police handcuffing a pregnant woman in her home for allegedly "inciting" a protest.
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| Germany pressed to rethink Nord Stream 2 pipeline after Navalny poisoning Posted: 02 Sep 2020 11:44 PM PDT  Pressure mounted on German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday to reconsider the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which will take gas from Russia to Germany, after she said Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny had been poisoned with a Soviet-style nerve agent. Merkel said on Wednesday that Navalny, who is being treated in a Berlin hospital, was the victim of a murder attempt using the nerve agent Novichok, and demanded an explanation by Russia. "We must pursue hard politics, we must respond with the only language (Russian President Vladimir) Putin understands - that is gas sales," Norbert Roettgen, the conservative head of Germany's parliamentary foreign affairs committee, said on Thursday.
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| The Democrats’ Dangerous Delegitimization of the Election Posted: 03 Sep 2020 12:14 PM PDT  A recent deep dive in the Washington Post's Outlook section, "What's the Worst That Could Happen?" exploring various potential outcomes of the 2020 presidential election, found that in "every scenario except a Biden landslide, our simulation ended catastrophically." According to the Post, any other outcome is destined to spark "violence" and a "constitutional crisis."Or, in other words, nice country you got there . . .Every assumption in the article, written by Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown University law professor and co-founder of the Transition Integrity Project, is awash in the conspiratorial paranoia that's infected the modern Democratic Party. It's a world where Trump officials -- played, quite implausibly, by Joe Biden partisans Michael Steele and Bill Kristol -- are "ruthless and unconstrained right out of the gate" but the genteel statesmen of Team Biden "struggled to get out of reaction mode." It is a place where Republicans aren't only reflexively seditious and autocratic, but a "highly politicized" Supreme Court tries to steal the election.In their "war game" scenarios, however, it's the Democrats who refuse to accept the will of courts to adhere to the constitutionally prescribed system rather than hysteria, and it's the Democrats who wishcast the wholly imaginary "popular vote" into existence.One of the scenarios, we learn, "doesn't look that different from 2016" -- a contest in which, it must be pointed out, not one vote has been proven to be uncounted or altered. In that outcome, America is confronted with "a big popular win for Mr. Biden, and a narrow electoral defeat."In the real world, incidentally, that scenario is called a "Trump victory."In the fictional war game, however, John Podesta, playing the role of Biden, contends that his party won't let him concede the race, and instead alleges "voter suppression" -- the catch-all go-to every time a Democrat loses -- and persuades the Democratic governors of Trump-won states such as Wisconsin and Michigan to send pro-Biden electors to the Electoral College. In the meantime, California, Oregon, and Washington threaten to secede from the union if Trump takes office. The Democratic House unilaterally names Biden president. "At that point in the scenario," the New York Times' Ben Smith explains, "the nation stopped looking to the media for cues, and waited to see what the military would do."This scenario is what a real-life "coup" might resemble. It is, needless to say, utterly insane that Democrats would destroy the nation's long-standing and peaceful transition because they refuse to accept the mandated process of electing the president. All of which is to say the proactive -- and retroactive -- delegitimization of the Trump presidency has been a successful four-year project. It permeates the entire Democratic Party's information complex.First, Democrats convinced millions of Americans that a handful of inept and puerile social-media ads were enough to overturn a presidential election in the most powerful nation on earth. By 2017, a majority of Democrats believed that vote tallies had been tampered with by Russians, somehow without a trace of evidence.Since then, Democrats have been working to convince themselves there is no legitimate way in which Trump could win the election again. A large number of high-profile left-wing columnists have laid the groundwork to make this case and high-profile politicians have joined them. Hillary Clinton's advice to Biden not long ago was to not concede defeat on the night of the November 3 election no matter what happens. In January during the impeachment trial, Representative Adam Schiff said, "The President's misconduct cannot be decided at the ballot box, for we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won." House speaker Nancy Pelosi has noted that "Let the election decide'" is a "dangerous position" because Trump is already "jeopardizing the integrity of the 2020 elections.""It's worth pointing out that *almost* no one thinks Trump will actually win more votes," Chris Hayes told his followers not long ago. "I think if he wins the electoral college and loses the popular vote *again* you're looking at the worst legitimacy crisis since secession."A far bigger crisis for the United States is that liberal pundits tell their audience that the method of winning an election in the United States, one that every president in history of the country relied on, should be considered a crisis of legitimacy.What is worth pointing out as well is that the dynamics of the presidential election would be completely different if the popular vote actually existed. But candidates do not compete for the popular vote, so they can neither "win" nor "lose" it. If they did try to win the popular vote, they would cater to the largest population centers, and no one else, and elections would look very different. I'm not sure that that setup would work out for Democrats exactly as they imagine, but it doesn't matter. A popular vote undercuts federalism, one of the foundational ideas of the Founding. And that's the point.If you haven't noticed, it's working. A recent USA Today poll found that 28 percent of Biden's supporters say they aren't prepared to accept a Trump victory as "fairly won," and 19 percent of President Trump's supporters say the same about a potential Biden victory. So a significant minority of American voters don't believe the next election will be legitimate before it has even been conducted. What happens when every long line at the polls and every Facebook meme and every delayed mail-in ballot is turned into a nefarious plot by the enemy to snatch democracy from the rightful winner? It's going to be ugly, indeed. If their "war games" are to be believed, that's what Democrats are counting on.Editor's Note: An earlier version of this article stated that "almost half" of Americans doubt the legitimacy of the next election. It has been updated to more accurately reflect the poll numbers it cites.
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| Portland chief: Violent protests come 'at increased cost' Posted: 01 Sep 2020 09:03 PM PDT  Portland's police chief has denounced protesters who broke windows and set a fire to a business in the upscale apartment building where Mayor Ted Wheeler lives, labeling the events an escalation in the street violence that Oregon's largest city has endured for months. The demonstration began late Monday and stretched into the predawn hours of Tuesday, targeting Wheeler, who is also police commissioner and has been criticized for heading up a police force that has repeatedly used tear gas against the demonstrators. Portland Police Chief Chuck Lovell said the demonstrators also wound up targeting other people who live in Wheeler's building and have had nothing to do with the protests.
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| 'You matter to us': Delta Air Lines upgrades Black traveler harassed by white flyer Posted: 03 Sep 2020 11:33 AM PDT  Demetria Poe is applauding Delta Air Lines for "taking a stance" against racism and discrimination after she was harassed by her seatmate on a flight.
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| Critics fear NYPD Asian hate crime task force could have unintended consequences Posted: 02 Sep 2020 07:59 AM PDT  "Law enforcement has been one of the biggest perpetrators of violence against Asian Americans and communities of color and continues to be one of the biggest perpetrators of violence," an activist said.
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| China's Military Has Surpassed US in Ships, Missiles and Air Defense, DoD Report Finds Posted: 02 Sep 2020 03:38 AM PDT  China's military is already superior to the U.S. in several respects and is aiming for total dominance.
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| A man in Minnesota who attended the Sturgis, South Dakota, motorcycle rally that drew more than 400,000 people has died of COVID-19 Posted: 02 Sep 2020 03:17 PM PDT  The man, who has not been identified, was in his 60s and had underlying health conditions, the Minnesota Department of Public Health told Insider.
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| Savannah church separates from United Methodist Church in support of LGBTQ Posted: 03 Sep 2020 10:12 AM PDT  A Georgia congregation said Thursday that it has finalized its split from the United Methodist Church after the denomination's divisive vote last year to strengthen bans on same-sex marriage and ordination of LGBTQ pastors.
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| Typhoon Maysak: Ship with crew and thousands of cattle missing Posted: 03 Sep 2020 05:10 AM PDT  One sailor is rescued from a ship with 43 crew and 6,000 cattle thought sunk in the East China Sea.
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| Second woman found safe after sex-trafficking victim jumped from semi, Texas cops say Posted: 02 Sep 2020 10:30 AM PDT  The woman was believed to be in "grave danger," police said.
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| Philippine court orders US Marine's early release in killing Posted: 02 Sep 2020 06:17 AM PDT  A Philippine court has ordered the early release for good conduct of a U.S. Marine convicted in the 2014 killing of a transgender Filipino which sparked anger in the former American colony. Joseph Scott Pemberton drew protests from the family and lawyers of Jennifer Laude, who was found dead in a motel room in Olongapo city, northwest of Manila, after they met at a disco bar in October 2014.
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| Health officials warn U.S. is not ready to roll out COVID-19 vaccine Posted: 02 Sep 2020 01:50 PM PDT  While one or more vaccine could be available toward the end of this year or early next, the path to delivering vaccines to 330 million people remains unclear for the local health officials expected to carry out the work.
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| China cracks down on Inner Mongolian minority fighting for its mother tongue Posted: 03 Sep 2020 10:21 AM PDT  Teachers and students have refused to comply with a new bilingual education program in Inner Mongolia. The state is cracking down in response.
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| A barista at a Target Starbucks was fired for a satirical TikTok showing how to make a 'Blue Lives Matter' drink with 'bleach' Posted: 03 Sep 2020 01:41 PM PDT  A barista who made a "Blue Lives Matter" drink in a TikTok video was fired, according to Target, which housed the Starbucks store near Indianapolis.
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| Australia's coronavirus death toll surges on aged care fatalities Posted: 03 Sep 2020 04:36 PM PDT  An Australian state reported a record 59 deaths on Friday, the highest ever daily total for the country, including previously unrecorded fatalities in aged care homes over the past several weeks. The increase fatalities in Victoria state pushed the country's death toll to 737 as the national cabinet - made up of Prime Minister Scott Morrison and state and territory leaders - met to thrash out differences over internal border closures. The Victorian capital of Melbourne has been responsible for the bulk of recent COVID-19 cases under Australia's second wave of infections.
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| NSA surveillance exposed by Snowden ruled unlawful Posted: 03 Sep 2020 06:48 AM PDT  Whistleblower Edward Snowden tweets he feels vindicated by the ruling from the US Court of Appeals.
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| Fact check: Meme accurately describes legal trouble for members of 2016 Trump campaign Posted: 02 Sep 2020 05:54 AM PDT  A viral Facebook post is accurate about legal issues facing Steve Bannon, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Michael Flynn, Roger Stone and Michael Cohen.
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| Fauci breaks with Trump on COVID-19 herd immunity: ‘That’s certainly not my approach’ Posted: 02 Sep 2020 01:29 PM PDT  "That's not a fundamental strategy that we're using."
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| Typhoon pummels South Korea, ship missing in rough waters Posted: 02 Sep 2020 05:38 PM PDT  Typhoon Maysak had weakened to a tropical storm that was east of North Korea around midday, South Korea's weather agency said. During its life as a typhoon, Maysak packed maximum winds of 90 miles per hour as it barreled through South Korea early Thursday.
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| Biden says police officers who shot Jacob Blake and killed Breonna Taylor should be charged: 'Let's make sure justice is done' Posted: 02 Sep 2020 01:06 PM PDT  At a campaign event on Wednesday, Joe Biden was asked whether he thought charges should be filed against the officers involved in the shooting of Jacob Blake and in the death of Breonna Taylor.The former vice president and Democratic Party candidate said that he felt that there was a minimum need for the officers to be charged in both cases so that the judicial system can work as designed.
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| Trump's press secretary refuses to blame Russia for the nerve-agent attack on Putin's top opponent Posted: 03 Sep 2020 11:39 AM PDT  Other world leaders have explicitly demanded an explanation from the Russian government for Navalny's poisoning.
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| Meghan and Archie to sue in UK after court hears they were 'papped' while out dog walking Posted: 03 Sep 2020 08:25 AM PDT  The Duchess of Sussex and her baby son Archie Mountbatten-Windsor are suing a photo agency which "papped" them while dog walking in Canada, as a court hears claims she "knew everything that was going on" but "carried on walking". Archie, who is one, and his mother are both listed as claimants in the case, heard for the first time at the High Court in London today and the latest in the Sussexes' battle with the tabloid press. The pictures showed the Duchess carrying Archie in a sling while walking near their temporary home on Vancouver Island, Canada, in January, smiling broadly and holding her two dogs on a lead while security walked at a distance behind her. At a remote hearing on Wednesday, the Duchess's barrister Jonathan Barnes said Meghan and her son were "papped" by a photographer for the US arm of the Splash News and Pictures Agency which then sold the images. The agency argues that the Duchess "knew everything that was going on and was a volunteer in the sense that she carried on walking when she knew she was being photographed", the court heard. The case is being brought by the Duchess in her own right, and she is listed as a "litigation friend" for Archie, a legal term meaning she is appointed to make decisions about the court case for her child.
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| Remains of sailor killed in Pearl Harbor returned home Posted: 03 Sep 2020 09:34 AM PDT  Navy Fireman First Class Hadley Heavin, 23, was on the USS West Virginia when torpedoes and bombs destroyed the battleship on December 7, 1941.
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| Israel announces partial national lockdown after coronavirus surge Posted: 03 Sep 2020 10:59 AM PDT  Israel will impose a partial national lockdown next week to battle a coronavirus infection surge, the head of its pandemic task force said on Thursday, shouting his exasperation in an emotional television address. The health official, Ronni Gamzu, said Israel was facing a "pivotal moment" in trying to contain the spread of COVID-19, with some 3,000 new cases now reported daily in a population of nine million. Other health experts have said political in-fighting among members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition government has led to a slow response to a second wave of cases after a national lockdown flattened the infection curve in May.
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| Nile dam row: US cuts aid to Ethiopia Posted: 03 Sep 2020 03:14 AM PDT  Ethiopia has begun filling the mega dam before reaching an agreement with Sudan and Egypt.
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| Postal Chiefs Warn: Workers’ ‘Heroic’ Efforts Won’t Save the Vote Posted: 03 Sep 2020 04:28 PM PDT  The embattled leadership of the U.S. Postal Service warned its elections-integrity task force on Thursday about "issues in the supply chain," particularly from printers, that risk voters not getting ballots and election mail, according to a recording of the inaugural meeting of the task force acquired by The Daily Beast. "With the dramatic increase of ballots compared to previous elections, in some cases a tenfold increase in the number of ballots in some states, there are some issues in the supply chain," a senior USPS official informed the group, which consisted of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and other senior USPS officials. The official was referring to the process by which approved manufacturers produce ballots, and other vital election mail, to state election officials to distribute to voters. "Some of these printers… just don't have the capacity they were used to in prior elections," the official said.Speaking about deadlines for requesting mail-in ballots that Postal officials worry fall too close to Election Day to be counted, another official was blunt with the group: "Despite the heroic efforts I know you guys will pursue to get that ballot in the hands of voters, the reality is, that's going to be a difficult situation for that voter to have their vote counted."At least one USPS official who attended the task force meeting told The Daily Beast they considered USPS leadership's warnings of supply-chain disruption ahead of the balloting to be a cover for leadership's failures.Issues with the ballot and election mail supply chain ultimately fall to state election officials, said David Partenheimer, a spokesperson for the Postal Service, though he added the agency "does work to assist and educate ballot producers in their mail piece design.""The Postal Service will continue with these efforts, but it is unrelated to the Postal Service's complete readiness to deliver any Election Mail that is presented to us, and we will do so in a timely and secure manner consistent with our longstanding processes and procedures that we have utilized for years," said Partenheimer. During the meeting, senior USPS officials, including DeJoy, largely blamed the states for complicating vote-by-mail efforts, complaining on Thursday about what they described as states' lack of understanding of the mail delivery process. They acknowledged that their recent and highly controversial moves – such as warning election officials in 46 states and the District of Columbia that their deadlines for voters to request ballots by mail jeopardized votes being counted – had opened the agency up to claims of politicization. Dems Turn Table on Post Office SabotageIn the meeting, DeJoy, a former logistics executive and GOP mega-donor whom voting-rights advocates and Democrats have portrayed as a loyalist out to ensure President Trump's reelection, urged the USPS elections-integrity task force to stay the course. Decrying the "political rhetoric" aimed at his leadership and the agency's recent lapses, he encouraged the task force to "be strong on our message."Attending the task-force meeting, according to a knowledgeable source, were Postmaster General DeJoy and senior USPS leaders Doug Tulino, the labor-relations chief; communications official Jeff Adams; engineering chief Scott Bombaugh; and chief logistics officer Dave Williams.Postal officials, Postal workers' unions, and other experts have, in the face of public concerns, affirmed the Postal Service's ability to handle a historic volume of mailed ballots due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet specific worries over the mail ballot supply chain, as articulated in Thursday's meeting, have been rarely made in public. During Thursday's meeting, DeJoy and his deputies defended urging the public to request ballots as early as possible. They acknowledged the supply chain issues and expressed frustration to the task force that state deadlines to request mail-in ballots could stick the Postal Service with an impossible task. But despite concerns about vendor capacity, the leadership outlined a public-relations push to "build confidence in the public," in DeJoy's words. Not every member of the task force was satisfied in its operations. "There's no reason we shouldn't be meeting once a week on something of this importance," a meeting attendee told the group, according to a recording. The attendee compared it to how "in the heat of COVID," a USPS task force on coronavirus operations met weekly. "Hopefully [we're] talking on a daily basis [to] make sure everything runs smoothly," the person said. "Generally, the feeling is that DeJoy doesn't know what he's doing, and his senior staff is not managing him," a USPS official told The Daily Beast. During the task force meeting, a senior official was candid in recognizing the controversy now engulfing the USPS: "We were very assiduously trying to avoid becoming a political football. As you can tell, we were not wildly successful in that regard."Voting rights advocates argue that the USPS risks disenfranchising voters by warning publicly that states' ballot-request deadlines—some of which are mere days before the election—are too late for the Postal Service to process before the election. But senior USPS officials at the task force meeting insisted the warnings were necessary due to the experience of this year's primaries, when thousands of ballots in several states arrived too late. "In some sense, those letters [sent to the states] got sucked up into the political fray," admitted a senior Postal Service official during the meeting. "But if you read them, you'll see our intent was totally pure." The official reiterated the concern stated in those letters about voters requesting ballots too close to their state deadlines:Members of the task force also alluded to the expectation that this fall, there may be as many as 10 times more mailed-in ballots than in a normal year. USPS officials, postal union leaders, and other officials have all said that the agency is well-equipped to deal with the influx. But a senior USPS official suggested that state policies that allow voters to request a ballot the day before, such as in Minnesota and Montana, could make that task harder and could risk problems."Given the volume we can expect, it probably won't be a good thing if there's a massive amount of volume the day before the election," said the official.Members of the task force also discussed an upcoming public relations campaign, beginning with TV ads on cable networks on Tuesday, designed to shore up public confidence in the USPS during a critical period. Ads will appear, they said, on ESPN, NFL Network and Bravo. Noting polling that shows how popular the USPS is with the public, officials said that the thrust of the campaign was to remind the country that the USPS "is always there" and "we'll continue to deliver the things that matter for the American public." Officials also discussed an upcoming mailer that the agency will send to every residence in the country, around 140 million addresses, in mid-September that will urge the public to vote as early as possible. The message, they said, was that the USPS is ready to deliver ballots, and voters need to be ready, too.In his statement to The Daily Beast, Partenheimer said, "the Postmaster General has made it clear that we are ready to deliver for the November election and are committed to fulfilling our role in the electoral process when public policy makers choose to utilize us as part of their election system."The USPS task force meeting comes as the agency faces intense scrutiny from Congress and the public about its ability to facilitate mail-in voting. DeJoy in particular faced questions from Democratic lawmakers about the operational changes that occurred at the USPS under his watch, his ties to Trumpworld, and how he came into the Postmaster General position in July following a selection process that a former USPS Board of Governors member described to lawmakers as irregular.In August, people nationwide began experiencing notable mail delays when the USPS began implementing a DeJoy-pushed plan to cut costs and boost efficiency. The plan included a shift in transportation schedules—which, for example, led to a delay in 80,000 pieces of mail in Maine—as well as a reduction in USPS mail sorting machines and limits on overtime pay and additional trips for Postal workers.In testimony before Congress, DeJoy denied being responsible for some of the changes but acknowledged the widespread mail delays under his watch. He said that any sweeping changes would be left until after the November election.In a statement about the inaugural task force meeting released early Thursday evening, DeJoy said it "reaffirmed my faith that the Postal Service is fully ready, willing and committed to deliver the nation's Election Mail timely and securely and our organization is completely aligned on fulfilling our important role in the democratic process." 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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| The Navy sent him to prison for smuggling explosives. A ‘wanted’ poster for him was sent to the Keys Posted: 03 Sep 2020 05:41 PM PDT  A U.S. Navy sailor on the lam for almost 15 years after escaping military prison in Washington state where he was beginning a three-year sentence for trying to smuggle explosives into the country could be in South Florida, officials say.
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| A month on, signal in Beirut rubble raises hope for survivor Posted: 03 Sep 2020 09:31 AM PDT  A pulsing signal was detected Thursday from under the rubble of a Beirut building that collapsed during the horrific port explosion in the Lebanese capital last month, raising hopes there may be a survivor still buried there. The effort unfolded after the sniffer dog belonging to the Chilean search and rescue team first detected something as the team was going through Gemmayzeh Street in Beirut and rushed toward the rubble of a building. It is extremely unlikely that any survivors would be found a month after the blast that tore through Beirut in August when nearly 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrate ignited at the port.
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| Her neighbors called for help. When cops showed up, they attacked a domestic abuse victim. Posted: 03 Sep 2020 06:18 PM PDT  Without provocation, Texas deputies slammed a domestic violence victim to the ground and threatened to Tase her. Afterward, they blamed her.
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| US slaps sanctions on war crimes court prosecutor Posted: 02 Sep 2020 02:48 PM PDT  US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday slapped sanctions on the top prosecutor of the International Criminal Court -- a move that The Hague-based tribunal called a "serious" attack against the rule of law.
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| SpaceX broke a record by launching 180 satellites in 1 month — accelerating Elon Musk's project to blanket Earth in high-speed internet Posted: 03 Sep 2020 07:45 AM PDT  SpaceX's newest satellites sport sun visors — an effort to reduce their brightness in the night sky and their impact on astronomers' telescopes.
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| The Privately Built Border Wall Will Fail, Engineering Report Shows Posted: 03 Sep 2020 08:29 AM PDT  Blame extensive erosion that's only getting worse.
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| U.S. agency defends decision to withhold report on Russian claims about Biden's health Posted: 02 Sep 2020 12:20 PM PDT  The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Wednesday defended its decision to withhold circulation of an intelligence report warning that Russia was trying to portray Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden as mentally unstable. A draft of the report, headlined "Russia Likely to Denigrate Health of US Candidates to Influence 2020 Election," was submitted to the agency's legislative and public affairs office on July 7, according to ABC News, which first reported the matter. Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf told Fox News on Wednesday that the agency held up the memo because it lacked necessary context and was "very poorly written."
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| India bans PUBG, Baidu and more than 100 apps linked to China Posted: 02 Sep 2020 07:00 AM PDT  The list of forbidden products includes the popular video game PUBG and search giant Baidu's app.
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| The Dominican Republic is replacing mandatory tourist coronavirus tests with free insurance Posted: 03 Sep 2020 03:51 AM PDT  From September 15, mass testing at airports will be replaced by random checks as part of the country's Responsible Tourism Recovery Plan.
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| Thailand’s king reconciles with ousted wife Posted: 02 Sep 2020 05:51 AM PDT  Thailand's King Maha Vajiralongkorn has reconciled with his royal consort, whom he stripped of her titles last year.
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| Black Lives Matter supporters disrupt Loeffler event Posted: 03 Sep 2020 01:36 PM PDT  U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler has made opposition to the demands of the Black Lives Matter movement a centerpiece of her effort to win conservative support in her campaign, and Thursday, supporters of the movement again pushed back. A former state Senate candidate and one other woman shouted down Loeffler when she made a campaign appearance with U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton in a northern Atlanta suburb. The protesters began to chant "Black lives matter!" after one of them shouted questions critical of Loeffler's description of Black Lives Matter.
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| When Kamala Harris Put Ideology before Justice Posted: 02 Sep 2020 03:30 AM PDT  You might have forgotten the first time you heard the name Kamala Harris. It was probably 16 years ago, when Harris found Democrats, along with decent people of all political persuasions, united against her.At the time, the story of a murdered California policeman had become national news amid widespread indignation over Harris's role in the case. Her actions revealed her true nature as a ruthless partisan committed über alles to the causes embraced by far-left ideologues — even when that commitment meant denying justice to a fallen officer and inflicting injustice on his family and law-enforcement colleagues.On the night of April 10, 2004, San Francisco police officer Isaac Espinoza and his partner, Barry Parker, were patrolling the city's Bayview District. Despite Bayview's being a notoriously high-crime neighborhood filled with danger, a selfless sense of duty had led Officer Espinoza to request it as his assignment "because he felt he made the most impact as a cop there."As the officers drove the streets, they noticed a man in a long, dark coat who appeared to be acting in a suspicious manner, walking with only one of his arms swinging naturally, as if he were trying to conceal something. They decided they should pull over to stop and talk to him. Officer Espinoza exited the patrol car and followed the man on foot, calling out an order to halt and identifying himself as law enforcement. The man — later identified as David Hill — first sped up before eventually slowing and stopping. He turned around, lifted the AK-47 rifle he had been hiding, and opened fire, murdering Officer Espinoza, who had never even unholstered his service weapon.Hill was a member of the West Mob, a criminal street gang that terrorized those who lived and worked within its geographic "territory" by committing rapes, homicides, assaults with firearms, narcotic sales, car thefts, burglaries, and robberies. As an expert testified at trial, "Retaliation against a [rival] gang member sends a message to other gang members, but the murder of a police officer sends a message to the community: 'Hey, even your protectors can be touched.'"That was Officer Espinoza: a protector of the community, a devoted husband to his wife, and a doting father to his three-year-old daughter, cut down in cold blood.Just three days after Espinoza's murder, before he had been laid to rest and without caring to call his widow, Harris, who was then the San Francisco district attorney, invited reporters and camera crews to a news conference to announce that she would not seek a death sentence in the case. Per the New York Times, she argued that doing so would "send the wrong message" and be "a poor use of money." But California assemblyman Joseph Canciamilla, a fellow Democrat, explained it better: "This is clearly a case where local politics took precedence over the facts of the case and a deliberative review of the circumstances."Indeed, members of Harris's own political party were admirably united against her decision. Both of California's U.S. senators at the time, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, spoke out against it and called for the death penalty in the case.Senator Feinstein, speaking at Officer Espinoza's funeral, received a standing ovation after passionately arguing that "this is not only the definition of tragic, but it is one of the special circumstances called for in the death-penalty law passed by the state of California."Senator Boxer announced that "when a police officer is murdered, those responsible should be punished to the fullest extent of the law," and urged federal officials to bring a capital case against Hill if Harris wouldn't.Even San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, who is now the governor of the state, was greatly disturbed by the miscarriage of justice. "I never thought something could challenge me in terms of my strong opposition to the death penalty," he said. "But this experience has rattled my view. It really has."As the story spread from the West Coast to the East Coast, the sentiments felt nationwide by public officials and private citizens alike were put into words by Officer Espinoza's mother: Her son had "made the ultimate sacrifice," she said, yet he was being denied "the ultimate justice." (For Hill, Officer Espinoza's murderer, this was a cause for celebration. He has said that he's "forever grateful" to Harris, and praised her "courage and integrity.")It is not unreasonable to assume that, based on Joe Biden's age and declining mental acuity, his vice president would wield extraordinary power and might even become president. Given those possibilities, we would do well to reflect on the case of Officer Isaac Espinoza and consider what a Biden-Harris administration could portend for law and justice in the United States, as well as for the brave men and women of law enforcement who, night and day, stand guard to protect us.
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| Intel Dems Demand Trump’s Top Spy Reveal Foreign Actors Exploiting U.S. Racism Posted: 02 Sep 2020 03:00 PM PDT  Two House Democrats are urging the nation's top intelligence official to make public what they argue is crucial information about the extent to which foreign actors are exploiting recent racial and social unrest in the U.S. to advance their own agendas.In a Sept. 1 letter obtained by The Daily Beast, Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) and Val Demings (D-FL), members of the House Intelligence Committee, thank the Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, for his response to their inquiry on "how foreign adversaries are heightening and exploiting tensions and social unrest in American communities to further foreign interests." But the response Ratcliffe delivered, they said, was classified—as is other information that could benefit state and local governments, the news media, and the public as they seek to understand efforts to influence the 2020 election."We strongly believe that keeping all of this information classified will severely hinder our ability to combat foreign meddling and will potentially allow the United States government to repeat the same mistakes as 2016," wrote the lawmakers. They urged the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to "publicly release similar but unclassified material" that will strengthen public awareness of election meddling campaigns.The lawmakers' letter comes as Ratcliffe, a staunch Donald Trump ally and former House Intelligence Committee member, moves to limit congressional access to election security briefings, The Daily Beast reported on Tuesday. Against that backdrop, in late August the Senate Intelligence Committee released its fifth and final report on Russian interference in the 2016 election—which added to the mountain of evidence of Russia's efforts to influence that contest. A previous chapter of the report laid bare the Kremlin's playbook of stoking racial tensions in the U.S., saying "no single group of Americans" were more targeted by social media manipulations than Black Americans.Moscow returned to that well after the 2016 election: in late 2017, reported The Daily Beast, social media accounts associated with the Russian government-backed troll army known as the Internet Research Agency launched a wave of anti-Black Lives Matter tweets when players in the National Football League began protesting police brutality. In their response to Ratcliffe, Krishnamoorthi and Demings say there's ample reason to believe those kinds of attacks are underway now, at a moment of acute racial unrest in the U.S., and may increase heading into the home stretch of the general election, as was the case in 2016. They urged Ratcliffe to share "as much unclassified information as possible" with the public by September 15. ODNI did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the lawmakers' letter.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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| Venezuelan charged in Miami money laundering case gunned down by motorcycle assassin Posted: 02 Sep 2020 11:10 AM PDT  A Venezuelan businessman charged in Miami with laundering millions of dollars from oil contracts was gunned down Tuesday by a motorcycle assassin in Venezuela, according to authorities.
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