| Scrutiny of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy intensifies Posted: 14 Sep 2020 04:01 PM PDT  Scrutiny of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy intensified on Monday amid new reports alleging improper business dealings and persistent charges that the longtime Republican donor is subverting postal operations in order to make mail-in voting difficult in November's presidential election.
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| Mother, 2-year-old escorted from Southwest Airlines flight because of mask policy Posted: 14 Sep 2020 02:34 PM PDT  A Chicago woman said she was humiliated when she and her 2-year-old son were escorted from their flight Saturday because her child was having a snack.
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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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| 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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| 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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| 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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| Potential sign of alien life detected on inhospitable Venus Posted: 14 Sep 2020 08:04 AM PDT  Scientists said on Monday they have detected in the harshly acidic clouds of Venus a gas called phosphine that indicates microbes may inhabit Earth's inhospitable neighbor, a tantalizing sign of potential life beyond Earth. The researchers did not discover actual life forms, but noted that on Earth phosphine is produced by bacteria thriving in oxygen-starved environments. The international scientific team first spotted the phosphine using the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii and confirmed it using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescope in Chile.
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| A fired Facebook employee wrote a scathing 6,600-word memo detailing the company's failures to stop political manipulation around the world Posted: 14 Sep 2020 03:18 PM PDT  The employee said she has "blood on my hands" as political strife has broken out in many nations following Facebook's lack of action.
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| Trump may end up at Rikers Island by the end of 2023 if he loses re-election: legal experts Posted: 14 Sep 2020 09:44 AM PDT  "Trump's conviction would seal the greatest downfall in American politics since Richard Nixon"
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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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| Oregon Man Arrested Twice in 12 Hours for Starting Fires Near Portland Freeway Posted: 14 Sep 2020 11:48 AM PDT  An Oregon man was arrested early Monday morning for the second time in 12 hours after he set "multiple" fires along a Portland freeway.Shortly after 4p.m. on Sunday, Portland Police were called to assist firefighters in extinguishing a small brush fire along Interstate 205, which caused no injuries or structural damages.A witness flagged down police officers about an hour later and pointed out the suspect, who was in a tent nearby."Officers arrested the suspect, who confirmed he lit the fire with the device," the Portland Police Bureau said.Domingo Lopez Jr., 45, was arrested for using a Molotov Cocktail to start the brush fire and booked in the Multnomah County Detention Center on charges of reckless burning and second degree disorderly conduct.Lopez was later released and went on to start six more small fires in the early hours of Monday morning.Portland police responded shortly after 3:30a.m. to reports of multiple fires burning along the west side of the same freeway."Portland Fire and Rescue extinguished three of them while passing community members put out the other three," police said. "All were caught early."Officers found Lopez walking along the shoulder and arrested him again. He was taken to a hospital on a Police Officer Hold for a mental health evaluation. Police confiscated a plastic bottle with a wick and a lighter as evidence.Lopez now faces seven counts of reckless burning and one count of second-degree disorderly conduct.Police said arson investigators were following up to see if any other charges are warranted.Lopez is the fifth individual to be arrested on suspicion of arson as fires burn through West Coast states. Two men in Washington state, a man in Oregon and a woman in California have also been arrested.At least 35 people have died as of Monday from fires in California, Oregon, and Washington. In Oregon, a million acres have burned, and more than 40,000 people have fled their homes.
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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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| 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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| 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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| 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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| Biden condemns shooting of L.A. County deputies, Trump wants death penalty for suspect 'if they die' Posted: 13 Sep 2020 09:48 AM PDT  Former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, on Sunday condemned the "cold-blooded" and "unconscionable" shooting of two Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department deputies stationed in their patrol vehicle in Compton on Saturday night. The search for the suspect -- who could be seen from a distance in what appears to be a video of the shooting -- is still ongoing.Biden has attempted to simultaneously speak out against police brutality and violent responses to it, so it's no surprise that he reacted unambiguously to the incident, which has not been confirmed to be related to the overarching tensions surrounding the nation's police forces.> This cold-blooded shooting is unconscionable and the perpetrator must be brought to justice.> > Violence of any kind is wrong; those who commit it should be caught and punished.> > Jill and I are keeping the deputies and their loved ones in our hearts and praying for a full recovery. https://t.co/330QfeIUGg> > -- Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 13, 2020President Trump also spoke out harshly, describing the shooter as one of the "animals that must be hit hard" in an early morning tweet. Later on Sunday, the president called for a "fast trial" and the "death penalty for the killer" if the deputies die. The two officers are currently in critical condition, having undergone surgery.Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti told CNN's Jake Tapper during an appearance on Sunday's State of the Union that there's "no place in civilized society" for such a shooting and promised "we will find justice" for the deputies. > LA Mayor Eric Garcetti on the shooting of two Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department deputies: "There's no place in civilized society for anybody to draw an arm and shoot our law enforcement officers that put their lives on the line … We will find justice for them." CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/3eQQmOBORD> > -- State of the Union (@CNNSotu) September 13, 2020More stories from theweek.com Court-tapped judge-advocate tears into Barr's 'corrupt and politically motivated' move to drop Flynn case The climate refugees are here. They're Americans. Cheer's Jerry Harris is reportedly under investigation by the FBI for allegedly soliciting sex from minors
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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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| Seattle's Pier 58 partially collapses into water; 2 construction workers injured Posted: 13 Sep 2020 06:42 PM PDT |
| I.Coast parties nominate former president, ex-PM for election Posted: 13 Sep 2020 04:26 PM PDT  Ivory Coast ex-president Henri Konan Bedie and former rebel leader Guillaume Soro were officially nominated on the weekend as the candidates of their opposition parties for next month's tense presidential election.
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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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| Mike Pompeo's wife asked State Department staffers to work the week of Christmas so they could help her write personal holiday cards, report says Posted: 14 Sep 2020 09:26 AM PDT  Staffers on an email chain with Susan Pompeo testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in its investigation into the State Department.
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| Texas officer charged with assault in fatal 2019 shooting Posted: 14 Sep 2020 12:32 PM PDT  A Texas police officer has been charged with assault for fatally shooting a woman after a struggle over the officer's stun gun last year, prosecutors announced Monday. A Harris County grand jury indicted Baytown Officer Juan Delacruz Monday for shooting Pamela Turner in the parking lot of an apartment complex where they both lived in May 2019. Delacruz was charged with aggravated assault by a public servant, a felony that could lead to a sentence of five years to life in prison if he's convicted.
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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 Court-tapped judge-advocate tears into Barr's 'corrupt and politically motivated' move to drop Flynn case The climate refugees are here. They're Americans. Cheer's Jerry Harris is reportedly under investigation by the FBI for allegedly soliciting sex from minors
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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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| 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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| Pennsylvania judge strikes down ‘unconstitutional’ coronavirus restrictions Posted: 14 Sep 2020 11:05 AM PDT  Lawsuit was filed in May and many restrictions have already been lifted
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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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| The future US Navy carrier air wing will fight at extended ranges, admiral says Posted: 14 Sep 2020 11:25 AM PDT  The top aviator on the chief of naval operations' staff says the carrier is still relevant to a high-end fight.
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| Researchers trial inhaled versions of Oxford and Imperial COVID-19 vaccine candidates Posted: 14 Sep 2020 09:56 AM PDT  Inhaled versions of COVID-19 vaccine candidates developed by Oxford University and Imperial College will be trialled to see if they deliver a localised immune response in the respiratory tract, British researchers said on Monday. The Oxford and Imperial vaccines are both being tested in trials through intramuscular injection, but scientists from Imperial said that vaccines delivered via inhalation could potentially deliver a more specialised response.
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| 'Hotel Rwanda' hero charged with terrorism in Rwanda court Posted: 14 Sep 2020 06:17 AM PDT  A Rwandan court on Monday charged Paul Rusesabagina, whose story inspired the film "Hotel Rwanda," with terrorism, complicity in murder, and forming an armed rebel group. Rusesabagina declined to respond to all 13 charges, saying some did not qualify as criminal offenses and saying that he denied the accusations when he was questioned by Rwandan investigators. Rusesabagina, 66, asked to be released on bail, citing poor health that has caused him to be taken to hospital three times in the time that he has been held in Rwanda.
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| Newsom to Trump: ‘Climate change is real’ Posted: 14 Sep 2020 12:42 PM PDT  California Governor Gavin Newsom confronted President Trump's position on climate change, saying "climate change is real" amid wildfires that have overtaken parts of the state.
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| South Dakota AG struck, killed a pedestrian with car; initially said he thought he hit a deer, officials say Posted: 14 Sep 2020 05:11 PM PDT  South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg told authorities he thought he hit a deer on Saturday night when he struck and killed a pedestrian.
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| Trump fumes over Biden ad, media coverage at Nevada rally Posted: 12 Sep 2020 09:21 PM PDT  The president attacked his opponent in bitter terms and repeated warnings that Democrats would destroy America's suburbs.
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| Why global hegemony was the worst thing to happen to America Posted: 14 Sep 2020 02:45 AM PDT  Do we need another 672 million people in this country? That's the argument advanced in Matt Yglesias's new book One Billion Americans. By accepting a great many more immigrants, and increasing the birthrate with pro-family policy, we might roughly triple our population.The billion-person mark is basically a loose framing device for a discussion of several of the Vox writer's favored policies: upzoning cities to allow more housing construction, more public transit, congestion pricing, Matt Bruenig's Family Fun Pack, and so on.One might quibble here or there with Yglesias' agenda, but the individual elements are defensible on their own terms. (Immigration reform and family policy are particularly welcome.) However, they also don't require a billion people to be worthwhile. No, the actual justification for that particular population mark is mainly nationalist. China is coming back into its own after two centuries of recovering from colonialist meddling, and "against China, we are the little dog: There are more than one billion of them to about 330 million of us," he writes in an excerpt. "America should aspire to be the greatest nation on Earth."I disagree. America's status as global hegemon has been devastating for both ourselves and the world. It is high time the U.S. accustomed itself to normal country status — a great power to be sure, but no longer drastically more powerful than any other. The rise of China as the first peer nation we have had in decades just possibly might remind America of the value of diplomacy, international institutions, and minding our own business.Now, as I have written before, Yglesias is correct to note that China is a menacing country. It's a ruthless dictatorship in the midst of a horrifying ethnic cleansing campaign against its Uighur minority that may well count as genocide. It is slowly crushing a peaceful pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong. It runs an incredibly pervasive surveillance system. It is constantly bullying its smaller neighbors, particularly Taiwan. Its "Belt and Road" and other initiatives are clearly aimed at establishing a kind of economic empire by roping dozens of poorer nations into a relationship of dependency on Beijing (in a way familiar to students of the British Empire).However, America remaining physically the most powerful single country is not the most important factor in whether China will be able to dominate the globe in future, or continue to roast the biosphere with greenhouse gases. (It currently emits twice what the U.S. does.) China is a nuclear-armed power, so physical might has only limited influence on it anyway. What matters is the political character of China's closest competitors — namely the U.S., the E.U., and India — plus the functioning of the global economy, and the broader diplomatic context.Absent some kind of disaster, just the historically close bloc of Western Europe and the U.S. could provide an effective counterweight to China for the rest of the century at least. Unfortunately, America has spent the last two decades tearing at the postwar alliance of Western democratic states by going on an international killing spree. China's authoritarianism is indeed terrible, but its behavior outside its borders has not been even close to as bad as the so-called War on Terror. Indeed, with the rise of Donald Trump and an increasingly extremist Republican Party, there is a real danger the U.S. will abandon ties with democratic Europe altogether and become just another authoritarian kleptocracy — like China, except orders of magnitude more incompetent.I submit that winning the Cold War and emerging as by far the world's most powerful country was one of the worst things that has ever happened to America. We spent the 1990s drunk on our own success and power, believing that neoliberal capitalism marked an "end of history" written on American lines. Then 9/11 happened, and the nation went berserk. As Derek Davison writes at Foreign Exchanges, it was a terrible tragedy, but as far as actual body count not even in the same time zone as, say, the siege of Leningrad, or indeed the several catastrophes America would go on to inflict on the Middle East in a frothing desire to inflict vengeance on somebody, never mind who. The Costs of War project at Brown University recently calculated that the various post-9/11 wars have created 37 million refugees. "The real trauma that America suffered on 9/11 was to its collective self-image, its belief in its own overwhelming power, and control of the rest of the world," Davison writes.When one country is so strong that it can do basically whatever it wants, its internal pathologies or neuroses become the world's problems. It is not a coincidence that the most decent, best-governed countries in the world — places like Taiwan, New Zealand, or the Nordics — do not have the option of flying off the handle at a minor provocation and turning half a subcontinent into a smoking blood-drenched hellscape. It is also likely not a coincidence that as America has torched international treaties banning wars of aggression and torture, Chinese leaders have felt a freer hand to oppress neighbors or their own population. American hypocrisy is too glaring for any kind of values-based criticism to bite anymore, and we have sowed too much disunity with Europe to present any kind of united front against genuine horrors. "Stand with the U.S. against China?" Germany might say. "What, are they not torturing enough people?"It would be a good idea for decent democratic nations to try to check the power of China as it continues to grow and assert itself, and encourage it to behave decently. But the only effective way to do that is through setting a good example, and through the soft power of a united democratic bloc. Internal reform to make U.S. welfare institutions, infrastructure, and climate policy less of an international laughingstock, and restoring ties to alienated European allies, would also be helpful. Rolling back the military-industrial complex would help even more.Let us do that rather than trying to add another digit to the national population clock simply to remain the biggest dog in global politics.More stories from theweek.com Court-tapped judge-advocate tears into Barr's 'corrupt and politically motivated' move to drop Flynn case The climate refugees are here. They're Americans. Cheer's Jerry Harris is reportedly under investigation by the FBI for allegedly soliciting sex from minors
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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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| Former Florida governor candidate Andrew Gillum comes out as bisexual in first interview since Miami hotel incident Posted: 14 Sep 2020 10:53 AM PDT  Former Florida Democratic candidate for governor urges people not to automatically associate bisexuality with marital infidelity
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| US Air Force exit from Germany ‘going to take some time,' top general says Posted: 14 Sep 2020 12:03 PM PDT  "We're going to be deliberate about this," Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian said. "We want to make sure we get it right, such that there's no impact to our ability to deliver the mission while we would be in transition."
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| US Customs seized 2,000 earphones made by OnePlus, an Apple competitor, calling them 'counterfeit Apple AirPods' and saying they violated Apple's trademark Posted: 14 Sep 2020 12:24 PM PDT  The photos included in the CBP announcement show OnePlus Buds, wireless headphones made by an Apple competitor.
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| Vietnam sentences brothers to death over bloody land clash Posted: 14 Sep 2020 05:18 AM PDT  A Vietnamese court sentenced two brothers to death and handed prison terms or probation to 27 others on Monday, for their roles in the high-profile killings of three policemen in a clash over land rights, the security ministry and a lawyer said. Le Dinh Cong and Le Dinh Chuc were charged with murder and resisting law enforcement before their tightly guarded trial. The brothers' father, Le Dinh Kinh, 83, was shot dead by police during the January clash at Dong Tam, a small rice-farming community next to a military air base, where authorities attempted to build a wall that the villagers said encroached on their land.
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| U.S. Afghanistan Commander Says Intel Has Not Confirmed Russian Bounties on American Troops Posted: 14 Sep 2020 12:26 PM PDT  The U.S. commander of troops in Afghanistan said that American intelligence officials have not been able to confirm the existence of a Russian bounty program offering Taliban militants rewards for targeting U.S. troops in Afghanistan."It just has not been proved to a level of certainty that satisfies me," General Frank McKenzie, commander of the U.S. Central Command, told NBC News."We continue to look for that evidence. I just haven't seen it yet," the general said, adding, "it's not a closed issue."Reports broke in June that U.S. intelligence found that at least one American soldier, as well as a number of Afghan civilians, died as a result of the secret bounty payments.Some bounties as high as $100,000 were reportedly paid for each U.S. or allied troop killed, and several American service-members were reported to have died as a result of monetary rewards that a Russian military intelligence unit offered to terrorist militants to target U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan. But McKenzie doesn't believe the intelligence is conclusive."I found what they presented to me very concerning, very worrisome. I just couldn't see the final connection, so I sent my guys back and said, look, keep digging. So we have continued to dig and look because this involves potential threats to U.S. forces, it's open," McKenzie said of reviewing the intelligence on the issue. "I just haven't seen anything that closes that gap yet.""People that are involved in it get very emotional about it," he added. "I can't afford to be emotional about it. I've got to step back and look at the totality of the picture."Intelligence about the alleged bounty offerings by Russia was reportedly included in the president's daily written intelligence briefing in February, but the White House claims Trump was not verbally briefed on the matter until media reports on the claim.In July, President Trump said he has never discussed the intelligence with Russian President Vladimir Putin despite several phone calls between the two heads of state since the intelligence was made known. Trump has argued that reports of Russian bounties, which were disputed by the National Security Agency, were inconclusive and thus "didn't rise to the level" at which he would be verbally briefed.Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reportedly warned Russia's foreign minister against placing bounties on the heads of American soldiers during a July 13 phone call.McKenzie said that if Russia is targeting American troops in Afghanistan he "won't hesitate to take action if that's the case. I just haven't seen it.""There's a lot of conflicting information out there, but nothing was out there that I could grasp that connect together in a pattern that I would consider actionable," McKenzie said.In response to the media reports of bounties, the House Armed Services Committee voted to add an amendment to the latest defense bill that makes any further withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan contingent on whether any country has paid the Taliban or any other groups to attack American troops.
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| Rochester Police Chief La'Ron Singletary relieved of duty following Daniel Prude's death Posted: 14 Sep 2020 04:06 PM PDT  The mayor made the announcement during a hastily called press conference on Monday. Singletary learned the news on Twitter.
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| Trump supporters are freaking out and "baffled" as his campaign shows signs of weakness: report Posted: 13 Sep 2020 05:19 AM PDT  "There is actually a lot of frustration out there with the Trump campaign being dark"
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| Climate change denier hired for top position at NOAA Posted: 13 Sep 2020 09:00 PM PDT  David Legates, a professor of climatology at the University of Delaware who has spent years rejecting the scientific consensus that human activity is causing climate change, confirmed with NPR this weekend that he was hired as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's deputy assistant secretary of commerce for observation and prediction.NPR says that this suggests Legates will directly report to Neil Jacobs, the acting head of the agency. Legates would not respond to questions about his new role or specific responsibilities.NOAA oversees climate research and forecasting. In 2007, Legates co-authored a paper that questioned findings about the role of climate change in destroying polar bear habitats; this research was partially funded by grants from ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute lobbying group, and Koch Industries, InsideClimate News reports. He was also in a video promoting the discredited theory that the sun caused global warming.NPR notes that Legates is affiliated with the Heartland Institute think tank, which is partly funded by the fossil fuel industry and tries to persuade the public that climate change isn't real and evidence provided by the NOAA and other scientific agencies isn't trustworthy. While it's important to have researchers raise questions, their claims must have science to back them up, and Jane Lubchenco, the head of NOAA under former President Barack Obama, told NPR Legates is "not just in left field — he's not even near the ballpark."More stories from theweek.com Court-tapped judge-advocate tears into Barr's 'corrupt and politically motivated' move to drop Flynn case The climate refugees are here. They're Americans. Cheer's Jerry Harris is reportedly under investigation by the FBI for allegedly soliciting sex from minors
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