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curegbm · 5 years ago

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The Great 5G Hype

David Rosen, CounterPunch, March 20, 2020

President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson share much in common – a similar appearance, a showman’s presence, conservative (if not racist) beliefs, a nationalist ideology, reputed extramarital affairs and support for Brexit. However, their mutual affection hit the wall in late January over 5G – “Fifth Generation” – broadband technology when the UK decided that it could work with the Chinese tech company, Huawei, as a supplier of 5G equipment as long as its market share did not exceed 35 percent.

The promise of 5G wireless service is significant, increasing connection speeds by tenfold over the current – “4G” – broadband service. Trump tweeted in February 2019, “I want 5G, and even 6G, technology in the United States as soon as possible. It is far more powerful, faster, and smarter than the current standard. American companies must step up their efforts, or get left behind. There is no reason that we should be lagging behind on………”

Trump claims that 5G is important to him and the country. In April 2019, he declared, “The race to 5G is on and we must win” and promised “my administration is freeing up as much wireless spectrum as is needed.” He then went on to claim, “It’s a race our great companies are now involved in.” Trump and others within his administration have warned that Huawei represents a national security threat, potentially enabling China to spy on the communications of American government agencies, businesses and citizens.

In light of the UK’s decision to work with Huawei, Trump was – according to the Financial Times — “apoplectic” and had a heated argument with Johnson, threatening to cut intelligence ties with the UK; Sec. of State Mike Pompeo quickly withdrew the threat.

The British decision raised great confusion within the Trump administration. In a major foreign policy speech on February 6th, Attorney General Bill Barr warned, “China has built up a lead in 5G, capturing 40 percent of the global 5G infrastructure market. For the first time in history, the United States in not leading the next technology era.” He then declared, “Huawei is now the leading supplier on every continent, except North America. The United States does not have an equipment supplier.” Barr claims that China’s market share is 40 percent and its leading competitors are Nokia (17% share) and Ericsson (14% share). He then made a bold proposal: “Putting our large market and financial muscle behind one or both of these firms would make it a more formidable competitor and eliminate concerns over its staying power.”

Barr’s proposal freaked out the White House. The following day, key administration officials joined in a chorus to assail the proposal. Vice President Mike Pence appeared on CNBC insisting that “the best way forward” on 5G is through private enterprise, not government takeovers. He was quickly followed by Larry Kudlow, Trump’s economic adviser, who insisted that “the U.S. government is not in the business of buying companies, whether they’re domestic or foreign.”

A variety of federal agencies (including the NSA), corporations and politicians have put forward alternative strategies to address the nation’s lagging 5G status. Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) introduced legislation establishing a $1 billion fund for “Western-based alternatives to Chinese equipment providers Huawei and ZTE.”

Unfortunately, U.S. problems with regard to the deployment of 5G have far more to do with structural problems with the telecom industry – and the role of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) – then Huawei.

***

The Trump administration — led the by FCC — and the telecom companies are committed to the deployment of what has been labelled 5G. Media ads champion it as the greatest next new thing, an answer to all the nation’s communications problems. And all-too-many popular stories and industry reports fail to consider fundamental problems associated with its deployment – let alone whether it is the right long-term strategy for the nation’s tele-communications.

Unknown to most Americans, the U.S. is a second-tier communications country. A July 2019 report from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) ranked the U.S. 15th of the 34 OECD countries in terms of broadband usage. More revealing, a December 2019 report from Speedtest Global Index found the average speeds for download and upload — for mobile and fixed services — for the top 25 countries were as follows:

+ Mobile – download 32.01 Mbps; upload 12.02 Mbps;

+ Fixed Broadband – download 73.58 Mbps; upload 40.39 Mbps.

The U.S.’s position is pretty bleak per data rate. For mobile, it didn’t make the top 25 countries assessed; for fixed broadband, it ranked 11th at 130.9 Mbps – Singapore ranked first at 200.12 Mbps.

Compounding this picture, Americans pay more for inferior services. A 2019 report in Forbes assessed 6,313 mobile data plans in 230 countries and found that Americans pay the most for a gigabyte of data. Fees ranged from $0.26 in India and $0.27 in Kyrgyzstan to $1.73 in Italian, $2.99 in France, $6.66 in the United Kingdom and $6.96 in Germany. Costs in North America were the highest, averaging $12.02 in Canada and $12.38 in the U.S.

These findings are in line with estimates from New Networks Institute which reports that American subscribers to a basic “Triple Play” or bundled package — i.e., Internet, TV and phone services – pay between $70-$155 a month, not counting add-ons. In Europe, the OCED estimates that (in 2017) the Triple Play – broadband bundle — “basic” service ran $44.77 a month and the “cheapest” was only $15 a month. Thus, U.S. bundle prices ranked the highest – often two to three times higher – than other OCED countries.

Two fundamental challenges face the further deployment of 5G in the States – health concerns related to 5G signals and towers, and FCC telecom industry financing. Together, they raise substantial questions as to the whether the country will ever climb out of its second-tier telecom status.

***

One question that haunts 5G deployment is whether it is safe. Questions as to the health consequences of cellular communications date from 1993 when some early users claimed that cell-phone radiation caused cancer. The cell-phone industry sponsored research that raised serious questions as to the technology’s safety, but the research was fudged so as to protect the industry.

In 2013 the American Academy of Pediatrics requested the FCC to investigate the potential risks of 5G and numerous local and state governments have raised concerns about mobile cell phone use. In December 2019, the FCC reported that it found no health problems related to the rollout of 5G wireless networks. It cited the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) assertions that there was no scientific evidence linking cellphones use to health problems. “No expert health agency expressed concern about the Commission’s RF [radio frequency] exposure limits,” an FCC staff wrote.

In the fall of 2019, Scientific American hosted an informal debate over 5G’s safety. In the first opinion piece, “We Have No Reason to Believe 5G Is Safe,” Joel Moskowitz, PhD, director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Family and Community Health, argued that the FCC’s 1996 report focused on radio frequency radiation (RFR) and the behavioral changes in rats “exposed to microwave radiation and were designed to protect us from “short-term heating risks to RFR exposure.” The author points out since the original FCC study, “the preponderance of peer-reviewed research, more than 500 studies, have found harmful biologic or health effects from exposure to RFR at intensities too low to cause significant heating.”

In a follow-up piece, “Don’t Fall Prey to Scaremongering about 5G,” David Robert Grimes, a cancer researcher and physicist based at Dublin City University, dismissed Moskowitz’s findings. “Many of the studies Moskowitz linked to are of poor quality, and more tellingly, at least one he listed flatly contradict his dire assertions,” he asserts. Going further, he draws from a World Health Organization report that finds “a large number of studies have been performed over the last two decades to assess whether mobile phones pose a potential health risk. To date, no adverse health effects have been established as being caused by mobile phone use.”

The academic debate over the health consequences of 5G deployment persists and is moving from scholarly duels to the courtroom. On February 2nd, Children’s Health Defense (CHD), led by Robert Kennedy, Jr., filed suit in the U.S. Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit against the FCC for its failure since 1996 to review its health guidelines and “to promulgate scientific, human evidence-based radio frequency emissions (‘RF’) rules that adequately protect public health from wireless technology radiation.”

CHD’s suit is based, in part, on a 2012 report by the General Accountability Office (GAO) that found that the then-existing guidelines may not more recent scientific and medical knowledge and recommended that the FCC formally reassess its guidelines. The FCC’s guidelines address only one aspect of potential harm from electromagnetic radiation — heat. The current guidelines do not address other ways in which exposure to increasing electromagnetic radiation from wireless communications can harm human health as well as the environmental systems upon which all life depends.

In its suit, CHD joined forces with the Irregulators, a group of “senior telecom experts, analysts, forensic auditors, and lawyers …,” including former FCC officials, who are challenging the FCC’s accounting practices. On January 17, 2020, they appeared before the U.S. District Court in Washington, DC, to argue that the FCC has facilitated one of the largest accounting scandals in American history.

On March 13, 2020, the DC Court of Appeals ruled on the case, providing an opportunity for states and cities across the country to bring cases against the nation’s telecommunications utilities. The Court formally dismissed the Irregulators case because “none of them possesses Article III standing.” However, the Court took the group’s concerns seriously and – citing Nat’l Rural Telecom Ass’n v. FCC (1993) — noted:

Rate-of-return carriers also have perverse incentives to shift costs “away from unregulated activities (where consumers would react to higher prices by reducing their purchases) into the regulated ones (where the price increase will cause little or no drop in sales because under regulation the prices are in a range where demand is relatively unresponsive to price changes).”

Most critically, it went further and insisted:

… any injuries the petitioners suffer through the application of outmoded Part 36 [of Code of Federal Regulations] rules to price-cap carriers are traceable not to the Commission’s freeze order but to the states’ voluntary and independent decisions to use the rules of Part 36 for their own purposes.

Thus, the Court fulfilled the Irregulators primary objective and opened the door for states and cities to bring claims against individual telecom companies.

The group accused the FCC of “freezing” its cost-accounting rules 19 years ago, thus allowing the nation’s telecommunications companies – the telecom trust – to engage in a bookkeeping slight-of-hand practices that costs telecom users, states and taxpayers across the country an estimated $50-$60 billion a year. The group estimates that over the last decade this scam has cost users $500 billion or upwards of $1 trillion since 2000.

The FCC divides the communications into two distinct service categories. Title I services consist of enhanced “information services” whereas Title II services designate basic or “common carrier” services. Title I services are subject to fewer regulations, whereas Title II services are subject to more regulation.

The Irregulators argue that the giant telecoms, in collusion with the FCC, are seeking to fully privatize the Internet. Together, they are pushing the adoption of 5G wireless technology as a substitute for fiber-to-the-home. The Irregulators, along with others, see this as but the latest move to not only remove all regulations and allow private companies to take over the state utility wired networks, but provide Americans with a second-rate – as possible harmful – communications infrastructure.

The Irregators’ Bruce Kushnick, head of New Networks, warns: “The 5G frenzy is like any of the previous techno-bait-and-switch schemes — and this one is ironically similar to the super-hyped 1990’s ‘Info-Highway’ when America was supposed to get a fiber optic network that would replace the existing copper wires.” 5G utilizes higher-frequency radio bands but to be deployed, the system requires the installation of greater number of cell transmitters and receivers that are located closer to the ground and to a customer’s home.

At the heart of the Irregulators case is a call for federal and state officials – and ordinary telecom users – to remember that phone services are state regulated public telecommunications utilities. Its suit serves to reveal that since AT&T was formally broken-up into seven Regional Bell Companies in 1984, two things have occurred – (i) the telecom industry re-consolidated and (ii) the FCC became a corporate-industry-captured government agency that stopped working for the public good.

The great telecommunications revolution of the 1990s was based on a notion of fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), an infrastructure that guaranteed everyone – whether in a big city or the rural heartland – equal access to the world-wide-web. It was introduced in 1999 and began to take off in 2001 and, by 2007, 10.5 million FTTH connections were reported. In 2008, NASA conceives 5G wireless technology and the telecom industry quickly commercialized it, seeing it as an easier to implement and a cheaper option than FTTH. With the shift from wired to wireless services, the U.S. begins the steady decline as a first-tier telecom nation.

The effort to provide FTTH to all Americans has ended. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation noted: “Wireless carriers are working hard to talk up 5G (Fifth Generation) wireless as the future of broadband. But don’t be fooled—they are only trying to focus our attention on 5G to try to distract us from their willful failure to invest in a proven ultrafast option for many Americans: fiber to the home, or FTTH.”

Sadly, the U.S. is likely to remain a second-tier communications nation for the foreseeable future.

David Rosen is the author of Sex, Sin & Subversion: The Transformation of 1950s New York’s Forbidden into America’s New Normal (Skyhorse, 2015). He can be reached at [email protected]; check out www.DavidRosenWrites.com.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/03/20/the-great-5g-hype/

My note: Scientific American published my piece in response to an earlier piece by Ken Foster. Initially, SciAm told me that they would not publish a rebuttal to Grimes' piece, but after they were attacked for Grimes' inaccuracies by Microwave News and by wireless safety advocates, SciAm invited me to submit a rebuttal. However, after I submitted my response to Grimes, SciAm decided against publishing any further pieces on this topic. If you are interested in an account of what transpired with SciAm or want to read my rebuttal to Grimes, "5G, Public Health and Uncomfortable Truths, see my post, Scientific American Created Confusion about 5G's Safety: Will They Clear It Up?.

Related Posts on EMR Safety

"We Have No Reason to Believe 5G is Safe" (Scientific American)

Scientific American Created Confusion about 5G's Safety: Will They Clear It Up?

(includes "5G, Public Health and Uncomfortable Truths")

5G Wireless Technology: Is 5G Harmful to Our Health?

5G Wireless Technology: Millimeter Wave Health Effects

Scientists and Doctors Demand Moratorium on 5G

5G Wireless Technology: Cutting Through the Hype

5G Global Protest

5G Day of Action

5G Wireless Technology: Major newspaper editorials oppose "small cell" antenna bills

FCC Open Letter Calls for Moratorium on New Applications of Radiofrequency Radiation

Joel M. Moskowitz, Ph.D., Director

Center for Family and Community Health

School of Public Health

University of California, Berkeley

Electromagnetic Radiation Safety

Website: https://www.saferemr.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaferEMR

Twitter: @berkeleyprc

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paulbenedictblog · 5 years ago

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Usa today Rockefeller Center tree, green tongue pot myth, deer at sea: News from around our 50 states

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Usa today Alabama

Auburn: Auburn University says its smartly-known golden eagle Nova, additionally called Battle Eagle VII, may per chance likely even be in the early levels of heart failure. The college made the announcement Tuesday in a news open. The 20-year-feeble male eagle for bigger than a decade soared above the gang at college football games. He was sidelined from the pregame tradition after a 2017 prognosis of cardiomyopathy, a chronic disease of the center. Dr. Seth Oster, college avian veterinarian for the college’s Southeastern Raptor Center, talked a pair of most modern exam indicated the eagle may per chance likely even be in the early levels of heart failure. Veterinarians are adjusting remedy dosages to pick out a mediate about at to treat the situation. Aurea, a 5-year-feeble female golden eagle, and Spirit, a 23-year-feeble female bald eagle, have made pregame flights this season.

Usa today Alaska

Ketchikan: Attorneys have filed a category-action lawsuit that seeks to reverse a most modern payment amplify in a neighborhood of verbalize-owned properties providing assisted residing care. Recordsdata organizations list the lawsuit filed in Ketchikan Superior Court docket asks a non-public to effort a preliminary and everlasting injunction in opposition to payment will increase at Pioneer Houses. The lawsuit names the verbalize of Alaska, Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy, and Alaska Department of Successfully being and Social Products and companies officers as defendants. The Sept. 1 payment changes elevated the mark of a Pioneer Houses bed by between 40% and 140%. One in every of the attorneys who filed the lawsuit says the verbalize all straight away elevated charges, harming residents. An Alaska Department of Law first payment says the division needs to evaluate the criticism nonetheless normally would now not discuss about ongoing instances.

Usa today Arizona

Flagstaff: A proposal to rep an “ecologically friendly” perpetual resting verbalize on deepest lands in direction of the Coconino Nationwide Forest may per chance likely even now not be so restful for the 13 tribes that take into legend the nearby San Francisco Peaks sacred. Better Issue Forests, a San Francisco, California-essentially essentially based mostly firm, purchased the land from a Phoenix proprietor and announced plans to rep its third “memorial forest,” or cemetery, on the property northwest of Flagstaff. The corporate needs to verbalize cremated remains round a chosen tree on the parcel, which sits at an elevation of 8,400 toes and capabilities ponderosa and southwestern white pine, quaking aspens, and Douglas fir bushes, to boot to a meadow. The project, if it clears verbalize and county regulatory hurdles, may per chance likely likely be preserved as a conservation station. Nonetheless the 160-acre place lies in direction of the boundaries of land deemed eligible to be designated a “old cultural property” surrounding the San Francisco Peaks and the Kachina Peaks Barren predicament and, in the break, to be positioned on the Nationwide Register of Historic Places. An announcement from the Hopi Tribe called the concept a “total violation of our non secular and cultural beliefs.”

Usa today Arkansas

Cramped Rock: The city’s teachers are staging demonstrations over the verbalize’s stripping of their collective bargaining vitality and its ongoing adjust of the district. Nonetheless they’re offering few clues on whether or now not they’ll strike for the first time in decades. Teachers, oldsters and students held “drag-ins” around the 23,000-student district Wednesday, strolling into college constructions together earlier than classes started to picture their beef up for the union. They’re fragment of a chain of actions union leaders have deliberate after the verbalize Board of Education’s resolution to strip its collective bargaining vitality. The union’s contract with the district expired Thursday. The head of the union says it hasn’t dominated out a strike, which may per chance well likely likely be the first in the district since 1987. Arkansas has been as a lot as the ticket of Cramped Rock’s schools for merely about 5 years.

Usa today California

Riverside: Officers have quashed plans to create a modern city called Paradise Valley on the southern fringe of Joshua Tree Nationwide Park in the Southern California desolate tract. The Riverside County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to settle for its Planning Commission’s recommendation and deny the project with out continuance. The resolution is a victory for conservationists and residents who voiced issues about sprawl in the inland predicament east of Los Angeles. It’s a blow to GLC Enterprises, which had been seeking to get approval for Paradise Valley for 15 years. The developer envisioned a community with 8,500 properties and 1.3 million sq. toes of condo for industrial and civic makes enlighten of. Supporters whisper it can likely per chance have created jobs and $5 million in annual tax earnings.

Usa today Colorado

Denver: Proposition DD, which is succesful of legalize sports having a bet in the verbalize, has secured passage. The measure passed by about 1.4%, in step with unofficial results posted by the Secretary of Issue’s Place of work on Wednesday afternoon. That dissimilarity doesn’t descend in direction of the 0.5% margin of victory to feature off an computerized narrate, that technique correct sports having a bet will seemingly be allowed as rapidly as Also can, ought to serene the live result lengthen in the first payment count. Proposition DD would legalize sports having a bet in Colorado via established casinos and online via web sites operated by any of the 38 casinos currently under verbalize oversight. The verbalize would make a selection 10% of salvage proceeds from sports having a bet and exhaust most of its decrease – as a lot as $29 million yearly – on water projects in direction of Colorado.

Usa today Connecticut

Hartford: Slip-hailing company Lyft is offering powerful-needed free transportation in town to faded inmates via a modern partnership with town and a nonprofit criminal justice reform neighborhood. Louis Reed, nationwide organizer for the bipartisan neighborhood #decrease50, announced Wednesday that an initial installment of 60 to 80 codes free of payment Lyft rides is now on hand for distribution at town’s Welcome Center. Mayor Luke Bronin says transit bus routes are tiny, and the modern partnership will relief get folk to job interviews or health care appointments. Hartford is the first city to pick out fragment in this plot, nonetheless diversified cities and organizations around the nation are expected to enlighten, at the side of Chicago, Los Angeles, Oakland and Contemporary York City, to boot to a pair of rural areas.

Usa today Delaware

Dover: Officers are making ready to send potable water to properties advance Dover Air Power Defective after deepest wells were stumbled on to have chemical contaminants exceeding federal health advisory levels. The Delaware Issue Recordsdata reports town’s utility committee voted Oct. 29 to waive an annexation requirement so the properties can get city water service. Issue officers announced in July that defense force officers had notified them about wells substandard with per- and polyfluoroalykyl substances. Such chemical compounds are stumbled on in diversified products, at the side of firefighting foam that has been used at defense force bases nationwide. City Manager Donna Mitchell says Dover needs the waiver in preparation of the contaminated coming forward and asking for water service relief, which she says it has yet to fabricate. The contaminated has been providing bottled water to affected properties.

Usa today District of Columbia

Washington: An ex-FBI agent is telling jurors that Donald Trump confidant Roger Stone quoted his hero Richard Nixon as Stone entreated an companion now not to contradict his non-public testimony to lawmakers. The quote was cited in a Stone textual pronounce detailed by faded agent Michelle Taylor at Stone’s trial. A Stone companion, radio host Randy Credico, was requested in 2017 to appear earlier than the House Intelligence Committee. That’s when Stone texted him: “ ‘Stonewall it, plead the fifth, the relaxation to assign the concept …’ Richard Nixon.” Stone is on trial in federal court in Washington on prices of lying to Congress and tampering with a behold. He was charged under particular counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Stone denies wrongdoing. Stone has prolonged admired Nixon and has a tattoo of the late president on his support.

Usa today Florida

Wauchula: A 33-year-feeble orangutan granted correct personhood by a non-public in Argentina is settling into her modern atmosphere at the Center for Massive Apes in central Florida. Patti Ragan, director of the center in Wauchula, says Sandra is “very sweet and inquisitive” and adjusting to her modern residence. She was born in Germany and spent 25 years at the Buenos Aires Zoo earlier than arriving in Florida on Tuesday. In 2015 Attain to a resolution Elena Liberatori dominated that Sandra is legally now not an animal nonetheless a non-human particular person with rights. She remained at the zoo, which closed in 2016, except leaving for the United States. On the center, Sandra joins 21 orangutans and 31 chimpanzees rescued or retired from circuses, stage reveals and the weird and wonderful pet alternate.

Usa today Georgia

Atlanta: For the first time in three decades, town is now not going to host a Peach Drop to ring in the modern year. The Atlanta Journal-Structure reports Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms broke the news Tuesday in direction of an interview with Majic 107.5/97.5’s afternoon host Ryan Cameron. Bottoms says officers are taking a ruin to reevaluate the place and the intention in which the tournament is deliberate. She says town now now not owns Underground Atlanta, which adds issues to hosting the tournament, which has at instances drawn 100,000 folk. The Peach Drop debuted in 1989 – a play off Contemporary York City’s Times Sq. ball descend. After a non-public developer purchased Underground Atlanta, town moved the Peach Drop to Woodruff Park for Contemporary Year’s 2017 nonetheless brought it support to Underground Atlanta last year.

Usa today Hawaii

Honolulu: A settlement has been reached over a deadly excessive-rise fireplace, even supposing the amounts to be paid by insurance protection companies to plaintiffs remains confidential. The Honolulu Basic particular person-Advertiser reports a settlement conference was concluded Tuesday regarding the July 2017 Marco Polo building fireplace that killed four folk. Officers whisper the fireplace at the 568-unit building was one of many worst in stylish Honolulu historic past, requiring the efforts of about 130 firefighters. A non-public has ordered defendants to get monetary disbursements out of an escrow legend by Jan. 15. The settlement looks to unravel loads of court cases filed over the fireplace that caused an estimated $107 million in hurt. Attorneys whisper they’re now not allowed to keep in touch about settlement amounts their customers are expected to receive.

Usa today Idaho

Boise: The verbalize granted a conditional waiver Thursday to the U.S. Department of Energy that may per chance likely even enable analysis quantities of spent nuclear gasoline into the verbalize after years of blocking off such shipments. The settlement announced by Gov. Brad Cramped and Attorney Fashioned Lawrence Wasden, each Republicans, technique the Idaho Nationwide Laboratory may per chance likely even receive about 100 kilos of spent gasoline for experiments as fragment of a U.S. system to develop nuclear vitality and carve support greenhouse gas emissions. The waiver requires the Energy Department to first indicate it will process 900,000 gallons of excessive-level radioactive liquid extinguish that sits above a broad aquifer that gives water to farms and cities. The Energy Department has spent some $600 million seeking to fabricate that, so some distance having failed nonetheless reporting correct progress earlier this year at its Built-in Wreck Medication Unit.

Usa today Illinois

Chicago: Advocacy groups at the side of the ACLU of Illinois have filed court cases in opposition to two county sheriff’s departments for alleged violations of the TRUST Act, which limits cooperation between native police and federal immigration authorities. The groups whisper it’s fragment of an effort announced Thursday to show screen law enforcement agencies for compliance of the 2017 that law prohibits native police from conserving a particular person on an immigration detainer except there’s a warrant signed by a non-public, among diversified things. The court cases narrate sheriff’s departments in Stephenson and Explore counties unlawfully detained loads of immigrants for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement after minor traffic offenses. Republican faded Gov. Bruce Rauner signed the TRUST Act in 2017 with backing from law enforcement. Democrats widely supported the premise.

Usa today Indiana

Indianapolis: Regardless of warning indicators flashing this past summer season, Indiana economists whisper they manufacture now not query a recession in 2020, nonetheless the verbalize’s economy will proceed growing at a slower streak. A tight labor market, weakness in manufacturing and the continued alternate war with China are expected to make contributions to a slowdown in the verbalize’s economy. Indiana’s financial output is expected to grow at a streak of about 1.25% next year, in step with the most contemporary financial forecast released by the Kelley College of Industry at Indiana University. Per the forecast, Indiana’s 2020 economy will seemingly be anemic. There are present intellectual spots, such because the 50-year low in unemployment, more folk collaborating in the labor force and elevated wages. Nonetheless economists in the support of the Kelley College forecast talked about political dysfunction and international alternate friction have disrupted provide chains, causing industry and user self belief to erode.

Usa today Iowa

Cedar Falls: The University of Northern Iowa’s president says he’s forming a committee to address minority and diversified students’ allegations of systemic racism on the Cedar Falls campus. President Trace Nook took responsibility in a most modern letter to the college community for the college’s failure to adequately fulfill needs feature by an ad hoc student neighborhood and backed by the student govt. The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier reports Nook’s action follows a social media advertising and marketing campaign of criticism by the student neighborhood, Racial and Ethnic Coalition. Among diversified things, the neighborhood posted video testimonials from minority students talking about issues they’ve had on campus, at the side of facing a racist professor and seeking to navigate college fluctuate policies.

Usa today Kansas

Topeka: Time is running out to originate construction on a modern coal-fired vitality plant earlier than its enable lapses. The wrestle over the plant has lasted bigger than a decade. By the time the Kansas Supreme Court docket cleared the technique for construction in 2017, a company eager on it called the potentialities it can likely likely be constructed “some distance-off.” Nonetheless the Kansas City Basic particular person and Wichita Eagle list that paperwork they obtained picture the utility spearheading the project told regulators “foremost pastime” remains in building the plant. Sunflower Electrical Energy Corp. requested for an 18-month extension of a key enable “to finalize preparations” for its construction. Issue regulators renewed the enable except March 2020 and warned they'd now not enable more time. Sunflower didn’t rule the relaxation in or out this week.

Usa today Kentucky

Frankfort: Issue parks are offering a discount on lodging to active-accountability defense force people and to veterans via March 31. An announcement from Kentucky Issue Parks says the USA Militia Good deal is on hand to those currently serving in the navy, retired people of the defense force, veterans, Nationwide Guard people and reservists. With the carve price, hotel rooms originate at $59.95 a evening, and one-bed room cottages originate at $79.95 a evening. The charges are correct at a majority of Kentucky’s 17 resort parks, nonetheless there’s a $5 upcharge at Barren River, Cumberland Falls, Kentucky Dam Village, Lake Barkley, Lake Cumberland and Natural Bridge. The discount is additionally on hand at John James Audubon Issue Park. Extra data is on hand online.

Usa today Louisiana

Contemporary Orleans: Five hundred seventy-one of many verbalize’s public schools, or about 44%, have “many times struggling groups of students” and are actually required to rep improvement plans. Louisiana’s Department of Education released efficiency data Wednesday as fragment of the verbalize’s compliance with the federal Every Student Succeeds Act. Among the 571 schools are 271 labeled as wanting “total improvement,” for chronic low overall grades or terrible commencement charges. Three hundred diversified schools – at the side of some with excessive overall grades – must work to toughen efficiency among sub-groups of students, at the side of English language rookies, low-earnings students and those with disabilities. The division pointed to promising findings, at the side of more schools earning A and B grades.

Usa today Maine

Harrington: A lobsterman hauled in an weird and wonderful steal 5 miles off the flit – a stay deer. Ren Dorr says he was setting traps when he saw a young deer Monday morning. He says the deer had given up swimming and was being carried farther offshore. He and his crew hauled the 100-pound buck aboard. Having a wild animal in a confined condo may per chance likely even be anguish. Nonetheless Dorr tells the Bangor Day to day Recordsdata that the deer was so tuckered out that he “laid just correct down savor a dog.” He says it took a half of-hour to plot support to Harrington, where the deer was feature free. Dorr says that he has considered deer swimming earlier than nonetheless that this was diversified. He says that if he and his crew hadn’t intervened, the deer would were “a goner.”

Usa today Maryland

Baltimore: The different of holiday makers who visited the verbalize last year may per chance likely even have dropped relatively of, nonetheless a list says they spent extra cash than in 2017. The Financial Affect of Tourism in Maryland list was announced Wednesday at the annual Maryland Tourism and Shuttle Summit. The list says company spent bigger than $18 billion last year, up about 2.1% from the earlier year. Total visitation decreased from 42.5 million to 41.9 million in 2018, nonetheless the decrease was offset by will increase in visitor per-commute spending. That was driven by longer stays at more in-verbalize locations. The list says most of Maryland’s company got right here by car. Alternatively, the Thurgood Marshall Baltimore-Washington International Airport served a list 27.2 million passengers last year.

Usa today Massachusetts

Boston: The mayor says an effort to rename the sq. in a historically sad neighborhood to Nubian Sq. isn’t slow despite the failure of a citywide referendum. Democratic Mayor Marty Walsh talked about Wednesday that his verbalize of labor will seemingly be meeting with title-switch advocates to keep in touch about next steps. Walsh says that entails formally petitioning town’s Public Improvement Commission for the title switch. He says voters in the Roxbury neighborhood overwhelmingly approved the proposal to rename Dudley Sq.. Walsh’s verbalize of labor says 1,986 Roxbury residents voted in favor to 957 in opposition to. The nonbinding referendum failed citywide, with 46% in favor and 54% in opposition to. Supporters want to rename the industrial center after the usual African empire because Thomas Dudley played a key role in Massachusetts’ slave alternate in colonial instances.

Usa today Michigan

Corwith Township: The verbalize now owns a huge, prolonged-sought allotment of northern property boasting a lake, forests and rare species that’s in the fluctuate of the verbalize’s elk herd. The Michigan Department of Natural Property says it’s performed the $3.8 million defend shut of the Storey Lake property. The deal to have interplay roughly 2,000 acres in the north-central Decrease Peninsula took about two decades to wrangle. The land in Otsego and Cheboygan counties sits between diversified pieces of public acreage: the Pigeon River Country Issue Forest and a tract of verbalize-managed forest land. Officers whisper the property is commence for correct hunting, fishing, tenting, hiking and plant life and fauna viewing. The public will seemingly be invited to pick out part in putting in place an get right of entry to concept. The land once was in the fingers of an proprietor from Switzerland.

Usa today Minnesota

St. Paul: Gov. Tim Walz has requested U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to deny a catastrophe for 12 counties of northwestern Minnesota where farmers are having a elaborate harvest season. In his quiz Thursday, the governor talked about the unrelenting tainted weather this season has plot on high of challenges farmers were already facing from low commodity prices and alternate uncertainties. He says crops have fallen victim to flooding, disease and freezing temperatures. A secretarial catastrophe declaration would get emergency loans on hand to affected producers. The USDA normally requires that a county have a 30% loss in manufacturing of now not decrease than one gash. Walz notes that the soybean and sugarbeet harvests in northwestern Minnesota are running technique in the support of attributable to heavy rains, whereas an early freeze ended many of the potato harvest.

Usa today Mississippi

Taylor: The mayor has all straight away resigned after bigger than four decades relatively than labor. The Oxford Eagle reports James E. Hamilton sent his resignation to the Taylor Board of Aldermen this week. He additionally stepped down because the town’s planning administrator. No critical aspects or reasoning were equipped to the overall public, and the newspaper says its makes an strive to contact Hamilton were unsuccessful. Alderman Ellen Meacham says the aldermen unanimously voted to settle for every of Hamilton’s resignations, though she desires Hamilton may per chance likely even’ve finished the last two years of his present duration of time as mayor. The board on Tuesday discussed a diversified election to be held in early 2020. Crucial aspects aren’t finalized. Hamilton ran unopposed in essentially the most most modern election in 2017.

Usa today Missouri

Kansas City: A frigid weather draw had folk in the metro station attempting bigger than just correct a sweater this week – it additionally had them reaching for nostril plugs. The Nationwide Weather Provider speculated in a tweet that a frigid front that swept into the metro Wednesday evening carried farm odors with it and trapped them in the shallow fragment of the atmosphere. One particular person replied to the clarification announcing, “I believed my dogs tracked in poo from outside! I’m now not crazy.” Meteorologists later tweeted what they described as a excessive-resolution reverse trajectory model to picture the seemingly provide of the “questionable air quality.”

Usa today Montana

Helena: The Massive Divide Ski Put may per chance likely likely be the first ski station in the verbalize to commence for the modern season this Saturday. Aided by the early chilly and snow this descend, the crew has been making snow for a pair of weeks now. Owner Kevin Taylor tells the Self reliant File that the Nov. 9 opening will seemingly be its earliest ever to having a chairlift running. Taylor says the ski station opened Nov. 10 last year and Nov. 11 in 2017. Running on Saturday may per chance likely likely be the Sincere Excellent fortune Chairlift on the decrease mountain to boot to the yard towrope. Snowmaking continues on some additional runs, nonetheless for the reason that most modern chilly snap was so rapid, Taylor is unsure whether or now not diversified runs will commence this weekend or next.

Usa today Nebraska

Lincoln: Officers concept to diminish crew at one verbalize-drag residence for juvenile offenders whereas adding to the team at two diversified companies and products. The Department of Successfully being and Human Products and companies announced the changes Wednesday as fragment of a a lot bigger overhaul of its Formative years Rehabilitation and Medication Center draw. Department officers whisper they concept to carve support the team at the YRTC in Geneva effective Jan. 6, 2020, because that facility won’t be serving as many youths. Nonetheless they concept to hire additional employees at YRTC companies and products in Lincoln and Kearney. Department officers whisper crew individuals who lose their jobs may per chance likely have the different to enlighten for jobs at the diversified YRTC companies and products or in diversified areas in verbalize govt. They whisper they hope to steal employees whenever doable.

Usa today Nevada

Las Vegas: The Nevada Department of Conservation and Natural Property’ resolution to pick out some distance flung from its web place a list a pair of sacred American Indian place is drawing criticism. A division first payment talked about the elimination resolution got right here at the quiz of the Issue Historic Preservation Place of work over issues it will also picture the place to vandalism or looting. Nonetheless Rupert Steele, chairman of the Utah-essentially essentially based mostly Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation, whose tribe is among folk that take into legend the place sacred, talked about no one consulted the tribe regarding the resolution. The Goshute, Ely and Duckwater Shoshone tribes all take into legend the place, known because the swamp cedars, sacred and non-public the bushes are threatened by a proposal to pipe groundwater from northern and eastern Nevada to Las Vegas. “I may per chance likely per chance like that up there,” Steele talked about of the eradicated list. “That technique the guidelines may per chance likely even be free flowing to the total folk.”

Usa today Contemporary Hampshire

Plymouth: Plymouth Issue University has got a $48,000 grant to put in force a program to educate kids regarding the risks of e-cigarettes. The program known as “CATCH,” an acronym for Coordinated Technique to Child Successfully being. It entails lecture room lessons, come in direction of-led actions, and social and community beef as a lot as educate kids. By January 2020, students in the PSU Successfully being and Physical Education Teacher Certification program who're making ready to remain student educating or college health self-discipline experiences will receive practising. They'll put in force this plot in 35 center and excessive schools in direction of the verbalize in spring 2020. The grant is from the CVS Successfully being Foundation.

Usa today Contemporary Jersey

Atlantic City: The federal govt has dropped its objection to a pair of southern Contemporary Jersey towns the enlighten of sand from a nearby offshore place to replenish their seashores. The most modern action by U.S. Internal Secretary David Bernhardt ought to serene get ongoing beach widening and storm security projects more cost-effective. It additionally removes the necessity for an weird and wonderful proposal floated loads of months ago that would have let some towns shave sand off the end of a pair of of their bigger dunes and enlighten it to widen seashores. On Monday, Bernhardt wrote to Salvage. Jeff Van Drew, a Democrat who represents the affected station of the southern Contemporary Jersey flit, announcing the protection reversal. The prohibition “was growing pointless crimson tape that was having the reverse manufacture of its real intent,” Van Drew talked about in an announcement.

Usa today Contemporary Mexico

Roswell: A lawyer from this town smartly-known because the place of an alleged 1947 UFO smash says he's going to self-discipline President Donald Trump in early-voting Contemporary Hampshire. The Roswell Day to day File reports approved reliable Rick Kraft has filed the categories needed to appear on the ballotas a Republican candidate in the first-in-the-nation presidential predominant. Per the Contemporary Hampshire secretary of verbalize’s web place, Kraft filed his declaration of candidacy Tuesday. The 61-year-feeble Kraft says he made up our minds to drag after he and his foremost other visited the Contemporary Hampshire Issue House in Concord, Contemporary Hampshire, and realized how easy it is to get on the ballot. He called the streak “a bucket list-form ingredient.” Kraft says he would now not concept on coming into any diversified verbalize primaries or caucuses.

Usa today Contemporary York

Florida: A Norway shipshape that years ago was displayed on its proprietor’s espresso table will rapidly rise in a magnificent grander setting: the center of Rockefeller Center. Carol Schultz equipped the sapling for the 1959 Christmas season. After exhibiting it in her residence in the village of Florida, Contemporary York, she planted it in her front yard. In 2010, Schultz and her companion Richard O’Donnell went on Rockefeller Center’s web place and made the 14-ton tree’s narrate for stardom. Earlier this year, they realized it had been chosen. It was decrease Thursday and lifted by crane onto a flatbed truck. This will seemingly likely advance Saturday at Rockefeller Center, where this may per chance possibly likely even be hoisted and surrounded by scaffolding for the decoration process. The lighting fixtures ceremony is slated for Dec. 4.

Usa today North Carolina

Charlotte: Sixteen-year-feeble environmental activist Greta Thunberg says she plans to abet a youth-led climate rally in the Tar Heel Issue this week. Thunberg tweeted Wednesday that she will seemingly be a part of the strike Friday at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Executive Center. Thunberg won international attention for a speech at the United International locations Climate Action Summit in September. Recordsdata retail outlets list the narrate Friday is being organized by the student-led N.C. Climate Strike motion. An total lot of folk attended a rally the neighborhood hosted in September, the identical day hundreds of hundreds of folk around the enviornment skipped college and work to drag govt action on climate switch.

Usa today North Dakota

Bismarck: A descend survey indicates the mule deer population continues to recover in the western North Dakota Badlands thanks to yet one more correct year of fawn manufacturing. Mule deer in the predicament persisted three straight harsh winters ending in 2011 that resulted in list-low fawn manufacturing. The Bismarck Tribune reports biologists counted 2,218 mule deer in direction of the October survey, shut to last year’s 2,446. The ratios of 41 bucks per 100 does and 84 fawns per 100 does additionally held regular. Issue Wildlife Chief Jeb Williams says the real numbers are encouraging even in the occasion that they don’t signify an amplify. Hunting mule deer does was banned for four straight seasons starting in 2012 to help the population recover. North Dakota’s gun season for mule and white-tailed deer opens at noon Friday.

Usa today Ohio

Columbus: Gov. Mike DeWine has signed into law a measure repealing the verbalize’s gross sales tax on tampons and diversified female hygiene products. The Republican governor signed the measure Wednesday. It was integrated in yet one more invoice that gives a tax credit ranking to teachers who engage college gives. Democratic verbalize Salvage. Brigid Kelly, of Cincinnati, and Republican verbalize Salvage. Niraj Antani, of Miamisburg, cosponsored the real legislation repealing the so-called red tax. Most states serene tax tampons and diversified menstrual products, at the side of pads and cups. They’re normally categorized as “luxury objects” in preference to necessities that are now not taxed, equivalent to food or clinical gives. Ohio is among a pair of dozen states that have currently changed such policies.

Usa today Oklahoma

Tulsa: A Republican verbalize lawmaker has abandoned his effort to rename a stretch of Route 66 after President Donald Trump. Issue Sen. Nathan Dahm told the Tulsa World on Wednesday that he’s performed seeking to rename the 4-mile stretch of the iconic motorway in northeastern Oklahoma after Trump. The Oklahoma Route 66 Association and Lt. Gov. Matt Pinnell each impulsively rejected naming sections of Route 66 after Trump or any diversified political resolve. Pinnell, who oversees Oklahoma’s advertising and marketing and branding, and others were working to connect the route of the faded U.S. 66 for tourism. Pinnell says a “uniform branding” will rapidly be rolled out. Issue Salvage. Ben Loring, who represents the district where the proposed stretch of motorway is located, says it will even have adversely affected tourism.

Usa today Oregon

Portland: The verbalize Department of Environmental Quality says smoky skies and stagnant air are expected to hang round in Oregon and southwest Washington for yet one more week. The Oregonian/OregonLive reports the agency in the muse issued an air quality advisory Monday nonetheless on Wednesday prolonged the warning. The agency now expects the air quality advisory to be in manufacture except now not decrease than Nov. 12. Stagnant air cases are trapping smoke and diversified contaminants advance the floor where folk breathe. A total lot of county and native health agencies have issued burning restrictions. DEQ requested folk to enlighten burn restrictions of their areas and defend some distance flung from pointless outside enlighten, critically those with lung or heart issues and young kids.

Usa today Pennsylvania

York: Police officers are alleging in some DUI instances that those that’ve currently smoked marijuana have green tongues. Law enforcement is even told to investigate cross-test a “doable green coating” in one in fact just correct practising program taught all over the enviornment. Police can narrate no scientific analysis to help up the premise. Yet, for decades, they’ve used the observation as one of loads of indicators to interpret doable motive and get arrests in criminal instances. An prognosis of larger than 1,300 DUI instances that reached the York County Court docket of Fashioned Pleas in 2018 stumbled on now not decrease than 28 that talked about phrases equivalent to “green coating,” “green movie” and “green tint.” Scott Harper, a defense approved reliable in West York, list it as “more or much less junk science.” He currently argued in a DUI case in York County that there’s “no evidence that a ‘green tongue’ is indicative of any particular stage of marijuana impairment (assuming it in fact is evidence of the relaxation at all).” The Nationwide Group for the Reform of Marijuana Laws was more blunt. “The science in the support of marijuana consumption turning your tongue green is ready as sound because the science in the support of the earth being flat or that lying makes your nostril grow,” Erik Altieri, govt director of NORML, talked about in an electronic mail.

Usa today Rhode Island

South Kingstown: Researchers whisper the verbalize’s rich, moist soil may per chance likely even get it a pacesetter in the manufacturing of saffron, a luxurious spice. The Windfall Journal reports University of Rhode Island researchers stumbled on a take a look at feature may per chance likely even yield 12 kilos of saffron per acre once a year – bigger than double the harvest in Iran, which produces 90% of the enviornment’s saffron. Researchers whisper the domestic attach apart a matter to for saffron is on the rise, with 35 heaps imported in 2016 and 50 heaps predicted by 2021. Saffron is popular in Center Japanese, Indian and diversified cuisines nonetheless has diversified makes enlighten of. Wholesale prices drag about $5,000 per pound. Buyers can pay $20 for a pair of threads of saffron and $95 for a quarter-ounce. University researchers whisper saffron is costly because it’s delicate to reap.

Usa today South Carolina

Reevesville: The ballotfor the mayoral whisk in this little town was blank Tuesday, leaving voters to jot down in whomever they wished. The Put up and Courier reports Paul Wimberly didn’t know he’d been reelected as Reevesville’s mayor except he spoke with a reporter the next morning. Wimberly has been mayor for 34 years nonetheless missed the election registration decrease-off date this year when Dorchester County was attach apart responsible of the whisk. The hopeful contenders on the City Council additionally missed the decrease-off date, that technique the whisk had no first payment candidates. Wimberly talked about he wasn’t too afraid, because the 1.6-sq.-mile town of about 196 folk is aware of his face and title. So he’s now help in the $300-per-year management role for the town, which depends totally on volunteer positions.

Usa today South Dakota

Pierre: Gov. Kristi Noem says the verbalize is now bigger than 99% compliant with federal Precise ID necessities ahead of next year’s decrease-off date. Noem talked about Thursday that early work by the verbalize’s driver licensing program to meet the decrease-off date technique that every body eligible South Dakotans, with solely a pair of exceptions, have already got been issued a Precise ID-compliant license or card. She says the October 2020 decrease-off date will form now not have any manufacture on those with a Precise ID license or card issued in South Dakota. The federal Precise ID Act sets minimal security standards for licenses. A Precise ID-compliant driver’s license will seemingly be needed to board domestic flights starting Oct. 1, 2020. South Dakota began issuing Precise ID-compliant licenses and identification playing cards Dec. 31, 2009.

Usa today Tennessee

Knoxville: Functions are actually commence for a modern scholarship at the University of Tennessee that guarantees definite students free tuition. A college news open says the UT Promise scholarship is equipped to qualifying verbalize residents attending UT’s campuses in Knoxville, Chattanooga, Martin and Memphis. It requires that students total eight volunteer service hours a semester and make a selection part in a mentoring program. To be eligible, present, fleshy-time UT students will must have a family family earnings under $50,000 yearly and qualify for the Tennessee HOPE Scholarship. Scholarship students will seemingly be paired with a mentor in descend 2020. To enlighten for the scholarship, present students must total the scholarship application and the 2020-21 Free Utility for Federal Student Support by Feb. 1. They additionally must total eight hours of community service by July 1.

Usa today Texas

Huntsville: An inmate who was a member of a white supremacist gang was executed Wednesday evening for strangling a girl merely about 20 years ago over fears she would alert police about his drug operation. Justen Hall, 38, got a lethal injection at the verbalize penitentiary in Huntsville for the October 2002 slaying of Melanie Billhartz. Prosecutors talked about Hall killed Billhartz, 29, with an extension wire from his drug condo in El Paso and then buried her physique in the desolate tract. His attorneys had requested to quit the execution, alleging he was now not competent to be executed and had a historic past of mental illness. Nonetheless a non-public in El Paso last month denied the quiz. Hall was the 19th inmate attach apart to loss of life this year in the U.S. and the eighth in Texas. Three more executions are scheduled in Texas this year.

Usa today Utah

Salt Lake City: A lawmaker who was aiming to be the first Latina mayor of Salt Lake City has conceded the whisk to a city councilwoman who rose to prominence combating air pollution. Democratic Sen. Luz Escamilla talked about in an announcement Wednesday that she conceded in a phone name to fellow Democrat Erin Mendenhall and wished her the “easiest of success.” Mendenhall took a commanding early lead with merely about 59% of the vote Tuesday, nonetheless Escamilla vowed to defend in the whisk except the count was total. Escamilla says that changed after she got modern critical aspects on the different of uncounted mail-in ballots. She says the figures were decrease than expected, making it very now not actually for her to overtake Mendenhall. Mendenhall will change one-duration of time Mayor Jackie Biskupski, who made up our minds now not to drag all over again.

Usa today Vermont

Burlington: Famend Vermont ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s is accused of misleading its customers regarding the create of milk and cream used in its products. Environmental advocate and faded gubernatorial candidate James Ehlers says father or mother company Unilever is making the most of pretend advertising and marketing, in step with a most modern lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court docket in Burlington. The federal criticism filed Oct. 29 alleges that Unilever violated its customers’ belief by announcing Ben & Jerry’s products were made with milk and cream sourced from “satisfied cows” on Vermont dairy farms that make a selection part in its humane “Caring Dairy” program. Handiest a minority of the cream and milk used in the ice cream comes from a pair of of these farms, the criticism alleges. “The last milk and cream originates from factory-fashion, mass-manufacturing dairy operations, precisely what buyers who make a selection Ben & Jerry’s products would savor to defend some distance flung from,” the criticism says.

Usa today Virginia

Abingdon: Voters have defeated a proposal that would have relocated their historic courthouse’s capabilities to a vacant Kmart building in a strip mall. The Bristol Herald Courier reports every precinct in Washington County voted in opposition to the proposal in a referendum this week. The streak was proposed because county officers and judges had expressed effort over security points and a lack of condo and parking. Nonetheless the premise had drawn derision at earlier public hearings. County Administrator Jason Berry says the live result's a “sure message from the oldsters.” He says a committee discovering out the negate will now revisit at 2016 engineering watch and likely take into legend modern alternatives.

Usa today Washington

Olympia: Issue auditors whisper an investigation revealed elevators and escalators are now not yearly inspected as required by verbalize law. KING-TV reports the Department of Labor and Industries failed to stare bigger than half of of the verbalize’s 18,000 conveyances in 2018. Investigators whisper hundreds of conveyances failed to have inspections for 2 or three years, and three were now not inspected in over 10 years. Department officers whisper the backlog was attributable to a building affirm that generated more elevators and escalators wanting inspections. Officers whisper the verbalize additionally struggled to steal inspectors, nonetheless additional funding has allowed the division to pay larger salaries and add additional inspectors. Officers whisper deepest insurance protection policies require conveyance inspections a pair of instances a year. The verbalize division solely serves as a evaluate and steadiness.

Usa today West Virginia

Daniels: An American Heritage Girls troop has helped to lift funds for its mentor’s most cancers remedy. The Register-Herald reports troop people Kate Hontz, Rebekah Stephens and Callie Bethel held a fundraiser last Saturday to help pay for Rachel Quesenberry’s chemotherapy treatments. Callie told the newspaper that the trio “just correct wished to fabricate the relaxation we are succesful of also” to help with Quesenberry’s clinical prices. The 33-year-feeble Quesenberry was recognized with breast most cancers in January and has since passed via chemical and surgical treatments that require her to dash back and forth between Huntington and Daniels. The newspaper says Quesenberry has had IV transfusions that require her to pick out additional chemotherapy remedy for five years. The newspaper says all proceeds from the tournament will dash straight away to Quesenberry, as will any vendor costs.

Usa today Wisconsin

Madison: Contemporary data from the University of Wisconsin-Madison reveals students at the verbalize’s flagship campus are getting out sooner than ever, in mild of mounting nationwide issues and conversations regarding the rising mark of college. College students who graduated from UW-Madison with a bachelor’s stage in the 2018-19 college year did so in a median of fine under four calendar years – 3.96 years, to be loyal – in step with data from the college’s Place of work of Academic Planning and Institutional Study. It’s the first time since the college started monitoring moderate time to stage four decades ago that the amount has been so low. The frequent, calculated in fleshy calendar years (now not academic years), technique students are serene spending a diminutive bigger than the eight-semester now not new to most bachelor’s stage programs.

Usa today Wyoming

Cheyenne: An duration in-between legislative panel has rejected a proposal that would amplify the verbalize tax on alcohol to fund substance abuse remedy programs. The proposed invoice equipped by Republican verbalize Sen. Charlie Scott, of Casper, was voted down 7-6 on Wednesday by the Joint Committee on Labor, Successfully being and Social Products and companies. Proponents of the invoice famed that Wyoming’s excessive suicide payment indicates the persevering with substance issues facing the verbalize and that substance abuse programs in the verbalize had considered sizable funding cuts in most modern years. Alternatively, opponents contended that the tax amplify was unfair and pointless because present revenues were satisfactory to address the substance abuse programs.

From USA TODAY Network and wire reports

Read or Piece this myth: https://www.usatoday.com/myth/news/50-states/2019/11/08/rockefeller-center-tree-green-tongue-pot-epic-deer-sea-news-round-states/40568795/

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conversci · 6 years ago

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Publish or Perish

The future of academic publishing and biomedical research Tuesday, 18 June 2019

Australia’s medical research community has in recent years faced important pressures and challenges. Funding cuts, uncertain research career prospects and research careers cut short, the push for better research translation for social impact are among some of the issues that are confronting many researchers. We have convened a panel to discuss an emerging issue for the local biomedical research community: the disruption to academic publishing and its likely impact on the sector.

Academic journals have been the longstanding method for scientists to communicate new knowledge and ideas to their peers. They are influential in building the reputation and career of researchers as well as the reputation and ranking of research institutes and universities, in securing research funding, and in facilitating translation for impact. Access to this new knowledge is only possible through a subscription model where scientists or institutions pay to access journals, commonly referred to as the paywall barrier. As a result, publishing of academic journals has also become a major business.

The digital revolution is disrupting academic publishing. Digital journals have changed the nature of and access to scholarly academic material through new distribution channels. Authors are bypassing subscription-based publishing and adopting an Open Access publishing model, where no payment is required to access articles or journals. In the biomedical sciences, examples of Open Access is represented by journals such as PLOS (Public Library of Science) and BioMed Central.

Open Access publishing is gaining support, with a growing number of universities in the US and Europe deciding not to renew traditional multi-year licences with journal publishers. The European Union has resolved that all European scientific publications should be accessible by Open Access from 2020. A largely European-based initiative, Coalition S, is also insisting that by 2020, it will be mandatory that any research funded by consortium members be freely and immediately available to the public.

The disruption of academic publishing is a global phenomenon, but what impact may it may have on our biomedical research community?

What are the features of the Open Access model?

How should researchers choose between publishing in traditional or Open Access journals?

Will Open Access publishing result in better outcomes – for researchers, universities, research institutes and the economy?

Will Open Access result in better innovation?

How are our universities and funding bodies responding to this new publishing model?

We are bringing together a panel of experts representing the key stakeholders in Australian biomedical research to address and other questions.

Our panel members:

Professor James McCluskey AO, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), University of Melbourne

Dr Julie Glover, Executive Director of the Research Foundations Branch,National Health and Medical Research Council

Dr Glenn Begley, CEO, BioCurate Ltd

Dr Clare Fedele, Senior Postdoctoral Researcher, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre

Mr James Mercer, Regional Sales Director Oceania, Springer Nature

Professor Beth Webster (Moderator), Director, Centre for Transformative Innovation, Swinburne University of Technology

Who will benefit by attending?

Researchers, particularly in the sciences, bioengineering and computing disciplines

Businesses related to the biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and medical technology industries

Undergraduate and postgraduate students

Anyone interested in the future of biomedical research in Australia

Professor James McCluskey

James McCluskey AO, FAA, FAHMS B Med Sci (UWA), MBBS (UWA), FRACP, FRCPA, MD (UWA) is Deputy Vice Chancellor Research and Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor in Microbiology and Immunology at The University of Melbourne.

He trained in Perth as a physician and as a research fellow at the National Institutes of Health (USA). He has held senior positions at Monash University, Flinders University and the Australian Red Cross Blood Service in Adelaide, South Australia. He established the SA unrelated bone marrow donor registry.

He has published more than 320 scientific articles on HLA, immunogenetics, antigen presentation and immune recognition. His work has spanned transplantation biology, autoimmunity, T cell hypersensitivity and recognition of non-peptide ligands by unconventional T cells.

He led the development, funding and establishment of the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity and coordinated the team that won a USD$50M grant from The Atlantic Philanthropies to help to establish a new Fellowship program focused on indigenous leadership to effect social change.

He is a past President of the Australasian Society for Immunology, The Australasian & South East Asian Tissue Typing Society and the International Histocompatibility Workshop Group.

He has been a director of more than 10 independent medical research institutes and cooperative research centres.

Dr Julie Glover

Dr Glover is the Executive Director of the Research Foundations Branch. This includes responsibility for directing NHMRC’s research support schemes, leading strategic research activities and international collaborations.

Dr Glover completed a PhD in the Faculty of Science at the Australian National University in 1996 and held research positions until joining the Bureau of Rural Sciences in 2002. In 2007 Julie moved into the Innovation Division of the Department of Industry and spent the next four years developing and delivering key innovation policies. Dr Glover joined NHMRC as a Director in 2011.

Dr C. Glenn Begley M.B., B.S., Ph.D., F.R.A.C.P., F.R.C.P.A., F.R.C.Path., F.A.H.M.S.

Dr Begley is the inaugural CEO of BioCurate, a joint initiative of Monash and Melbourne Universities and created to provide commercial focus in the early phases of drug development.

He served as Chief Scientific Officer at Akriveia Therapeutics, California (2016-2027) and TetraLogic Pharmaceuticals, Pennsylvania (2012-2016). From 2002-2012, he was Vice-President and Global Head of Hematology/Oncology Research at Amgen, Thousand Oaks, California, responsible for building, directing and integrating Amgen’s 5 research sites. There he highlighted the issue of research integrity and scientific reproducibility.

Since then he has made multiple presentations on the subject of scientific integrity including to President Obama's Science Council, the White House, US National Institutes of Health, US Academies of Science, US National Institute of Standards and Technology, the British Broadcasting Company, Wellcome Trust, Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, and numerous Universities, Research Institutes and companies.

Before Amgen he had over 20 years of clinical experience in medical oncology and hematology. His personal research focused on regulation of hematopoietic cells and translational clinical trials. His early studies, in Prof Donald Metcalf’s department first described human G-CSF, and in later clinical studies, performed in Professor Richard Fox’s Department at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, the group first demonstrated that G-CSF-"mobilized" blood stem cells hastened hematopoietic recovery, a finding that revolutionized bone-marrow transplantation.

His honors include being elected as the first Foreign Fellow to the American Society of Clinical Investigation in 2000, to the Association of American Physicians in 2008, and in 2014 to the Research "Hall of Fame" at his alma mater, the Royal Melbourne Hospital and to the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences.

Dr Clare Fedele

Dr Clare Fedele is a cancer scientist and Strategic Research Communications Officer at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre.

She has a PhD in biochemistry from Monash University and has been the recipient of prestigious fellowships from the NHMRC and the Victorian Cancer Agency.

Clare is passionate about science outreach and is a regular on ABC Melbourne Breakfast radio, where she brings biomedical science stories to life.

In 2017 Clare was named a Superstar of STEM by Science and Technology Australia, a federal program aimed at increasing the public visibility of female leaders in STEM industries.

Mr James Mercer

James Mercer is the Regional Sales Director Oceania, Springer Nature. He has worked in academic publishing in commercial roles for 20 years. Joining Springer in 2008 he has been responsible for Springer Nature’s sales in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Between 2004 and 2008 he was responsible for Oxford University Press’ journals business across the Asia-Pacific region.

Prior to joining OUP James fulfilled a number of positions at Blackwell’s in the UK after graduating from the University of Leeds in 1999.

Professor Beth Webster

Beth Webster is the Director of the Centre for Transformative Innovation at Swinburne University. Previously she was Director at Intellectual Property Research Institute of Australia and Professorial Fellow, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economics and Social Research. She has a PhD from the University of Cambridge. She has undertaken wide-ranging research on the economics of innovation, intellectual property, as well as more general research on the performance of Australian enterprises. This includes over 100 articles in refereed journals.

Recent government clients include the Commonwealth Departments of Industry, Technology and Resources; Employment; Education, Training; IP Australia; the Fair Pay Commission; AusAID and the Victorian Departments of Treasury and Finance and Environment, the European Commission, the OECD and the Garnaut Climate Change Review. Industry clients include IBM, Medicines Australia; the Business Council of Australia.

In recent years she has undertaken many studies on industry performance, both using BLADE and other relevant datasets, for the Victorian Government, The Australia Department of Industry, Austrade, IP Australia, The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade inter alia.

Event details:

Date: Tuesday, 18 June 2019

Time: 6.00pm – 7.30pm

Venue:

Elisabeth Murdoch Theatre A

Elisabeth Murdoch Building, Spencer Road

University of Melbourne

Parkville

#csnpast

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thisdaynews · 5 years ago

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Inside Mark Zuckerberg's private meetings with conservative pundits

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/inside-mark-zuckerbergs-private-meetings-with-conservative-pundits/

Inside Mark Zuckerberg's private meetings with conservative pundits

“The discussion in Silicon Valley is that Zuckerberg is very concerned about the Justice Department, under Bill Barr, bringing an enforcement action to break up the company,” said one cybersecurity researcher and former government official based in Silicon Valley. “So the fear is that Zuckerberg is trying to appease the Trump administration by not cracking down on right-wing propaganda.”

Facebook has been criticized in recent days, including by Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, for its ad policy, which exempts politicians from third-party fact-checking and arguably facilitates the spread of disinformation.

When asked about the gatherings, a senior Trump administration official said “the White House is looking for meaningful steps from Facebook on a number of fronts,” including “competition, free speech for everybody including conservatives, and privacy.”

“Nominal outreach won’t cut it,” the official added.

As part of the series, Zuckerberg met earlier this year with Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who insinuated that Facebook had become a monopoly during a congressional hearing last year; Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who has fingered Zuckerberg as contributing to “the death of free speech in America”; and conservative radio talk host Hugh Hewitt, who has cautioned against a DOJ enforcement action but has called for a “new regulatory regime” to minimize “big tech bias” against conservatives.

CNN commentator Mary Katharine Ham, conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, AEI fellow and former Washington Free Beacon editor Matt Continetti, Town Hall editor and Fox News contributor Guy Benson, and Media Research Center founder Brent Bozell have also attended the dinners, according to the person familiar with the gatherings. Washington Examiner chief political correspondent and Fox News contributor Byron York also confirmed his attendance but declined to disclose the contents of the dinner because there was a prior agreement that it was off-the-record.

A spokesman for Graham confirmed that the South Carolina senator has spoken with Zuckerberg. Carlson, Continetti, Benson, Bozell and Hewitt declined to comment. Ham and Shapiro did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for Facebook, noting Zuckerberg’s recent meetings in Washington with Democrats, said in a statement, “For years, Mark Zuckerberg has met with elected officials and thought leaders all across the political spectrum.”

Each dinner has been hosted at one of Zuckerberg’s homes in California, and at least one lasted around two-and-a-half to three hours. The conversations center around “free expression, unfair treatment of conservatives, the appeals process for real or perceived unfair treatment, fact checking, partnerships, and privacy,” the source familiar with the meetings said.

“My perception of him was more positive than I anticipated,” this person added, referring to Zuckerberg. “He was receptive and thoughtful.”

“I’ve always thought that he wanted to make things right by conservatives,” said another person familiar with the dinners. “I think he’s been genuine in hoping that might happen. Sometimes I think the headwinds are so strong in Palo Alto that I don’t think even he can succeed.”

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has engaged in similar outreach to conservatives in an attempt to gain their trust, and hosted a private dinner in Washington, D.C. with GOP political operatives and commentators in July 2018, according to the Washington Post.

Facebook changed its policies following Russia’s election interference in 2016 in an attempt to halt the spread of false news and foreign-bought ads. But the company has also been working to minimize and correct the appearance of bias in those policies ever since it was reported that the company’s employees may have suppressed stories from right-leaning publications and authors in its “Trending Topics” section.

As part of those efforts, the company launched a yearlong “conservative bias audit” in 2018, which was conducted by former Sen. Jon Kyl and a team from his law firm Covington and Burling.

Kyl interviewed 133 conservative lawmakers and groups for the audit, which ended in August and resulted in changes to its advertising policies. It’s unclear whether the Zuckerberg dinners are another facet of that project.

Allegations that Facebook censors conservatives, however, have gone largely unsubstantiated—conservative publications including Fox, Breitbart, and Shapiro’s Daily Wire were among the top publishers on Facebook as of this past May, according to data from the social media tracking firm Newswhip.

Trump’s 2016 campaign also took advantage of Facebook’s offer to embed employees, who acted as political operatives and provided critical support to the campaign’s social media operations, according to a study released in November 2017. (Hillary Clinton’s campaign declined a similar offer.)

Facebook’s critics on the left have argued that the company is overcorrecting and trying to curry favor with the Trump administration as it faces increasing scrutiny over its sloppy privacy practices and potential monopoly in social media. “Facebook made a grave mistake in allowing external political actors to direct an assessment of company policy and practices,” Henry Fernandez, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, said after the “conservative bias” audit was completed in August.

The ongoing talks between Zuckerberg and prominent conservatives have attracted the attention of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which conducts oversight on issues related to telecommunications and consumer protection and is “aware” of allegations that conservatives “are trying to work the refs” ahead of 2020, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

The committee’s Democrats sent a previously unreported letter to Facebook in June, after a doctored video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went viral on the platform, asking what the company was doing to address “the spreading of political disinformation by real accounts.”

“We are concerned that you and your company are not taking these occurrences seriously and are grossly unprepared for the 2020 election,” they wrote. “Specifically, we are concerned that there may be a potential conflict of interest between Facebook’s bottom line and immediately addressing political disinformation on your platform.”

Facebook’s vice president of U.S. public policy, Kevin Martin, responded three weeks later in a letter, also obtained by POLITICO. In it, he said the company has been working with third-party fact checkers to “remove fake accounts, disrupt the financial incentives behind propagating false and misleading information,” and letting users know “when they are reading or sharing information (excluding satire and opinion) that has been disputed or debunked.”

“Leading up to 2020 we know that combating misinformation is one of the most important things we can do,” Martin wrote.

But the social media giant has come under fire recently for its ad policy, which considers politicians’ claims—if made directly on their Facebook page, in an ad or on their website��to be “direct speech and ineligible for our third-party fact checking program.” In keeping with that policy, Facebook has allowed a Trump campaign ad making false claims about Joe Biden’s ties to Ukraine to remain on the platform.

Warren, who has proposed breaking up Facebook, Amazon, and other tech giants, tested the limits of that policy last week by releasing an ad making the deliberately false claim that Zuckerberg and Facebook had endorsed Trump’s re-election.

“If Trump tries to lie in a TV ad, most networks will refuse to air it,” said the Warren ad. “But Facebook just cashes Trump’s checks. Facebook already helped elect Donald Trump once. Now, they’re deliberately allowing a candidate to intentionally lie to the American people. It’s time to hold Mark Zuckerberg accountable — add your name if you agree.”

Facebook hit back on Saturday night, likening the company’s policies on candidate speech to that of the Federal Communications Commission.

“The FCC doesn’t want broadcast companies censoring candidates’ speech,” the company tweeted. “We agree it’s better to let voters—not companies—decide.”

Zuckerberg held a closed-door meeting with half a dozen senators last month to discuss what Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) described at the time as an opportunity for lawmakers to air their concerns about Facebook’s role in American democracy directly with the company’s founder. On that same trip to Washington, Zuckerberg also met with Trump, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and White House social media director Dan Scavino.

He is due in Washington next week to testify before the House Financial Services Committee, where he’s expected to discuss Facebook’s controversial cryptocurrency plans.

#conservative #Foreign #Politics #pundits

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thewebofslime · 5 years ago

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Here is a video from ABC titled The Stingray: How Law Enforcement Can Track Your Every Move : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzSgLpNrr2E The company L3Harris Technologies making these "skynet" devices for the Police have Jesuit ties on the companies board of directors and executives --as do all big defense contractors, multinationals etc. From Wikipedia : " L3Harris Technologies (L3Harris) is an American technology company, defense contractor and information technology services) provider that produces C6ISR systems and products, wireless equipment, tactical radios, avionics and electronic systems, night vision equipment and both terrestrial and spaceborne antennas) for use in the government, defense and commercial sectors. It was formed from the merger of L3 Technologies (formerly L-3 Communications) and Harris Corporation on June 29, 2019,[3] and is expected to be the sixth-largest defense contractor in the world." https://ift.tt/32v8fZB The Cato Institute did a study back in 2017 on the profound survellience state implications of these stingray devices being deployed to local state and federal police. : https://ift.tt/2k2sr2o " In recent years, stingrays have moved from military and national security uses to routine police use. Surveillance technology, designed for use on battlefields or in antagonistic states where constitutional concerns are minimal, has increasingly found its way into the hands of local law enforcement, often without any discernible effort to adapt the equipment or the policies governing its tactical use to the home front, where targets are citizens with constitutional rights rather than battlefield combatants. Further exacerbating the problems with stingray transfers are the efforts of the Harris Corporation (the Florida-based manufacturer of the devices) and the federal agencies responsible for licensing and coordinating the transfers of these devices to state and local law enforcement agencies to hide the technology. The administrative regime that the federal government and the Harris Corporation have built requires law enforcement agencies to keep the capabilities, uses, and often, the very existence of stingrays a secret from citizens, legislators, and courts...... Meanwhile, the overly restrictive terms of the nondisclosure agreement, upon which both the Harris Corporation and the FBI condition the local use of stingrays, have compromised prosecutions of people suspected of serious violent crimes. In other words, the ostensibly hypothetical prosecutions of terrorists and drug kingpins are crowding out actual prosecutions of criminals when police and prosecutors are forbidden from disclosing stingray use to the courts..... The relationship between the federal government, Harris, and state and local law enforcement agencies also represents a threat to American federalist principles. The federal government’s terms of use amount to a demand that state and local officials abrogate their authority to prosecute cases when the federal government would rather maintain secrecy. These conditions undermine the police powers of the states, as does the mandate that agencies conceal their surveillance tactics from judges in cases before them...... The cell-site simulators used by law enforcement are primarily manufactured by the Florida-based Harris Corporation. Originally used exclusively by the federal government, the proliferation of cell-simulator software for purely state and local law enforcement use has rapidly accelerated. The technology is currently in use by the Federal Bureau of Investigation; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF); the Department of Homeland Security (DHS); Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE); the U.S. Marshals Service; and the Drug Enforcement Administration; as well as the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, National Guard, and the National Security Agency. Even the Internal Revenue Service possesses stingray devices. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, along with litigation and media investigation, have revealed state or local law enforcement use of the technology in 23 states and the District of Columbia as of October 2016. By 2010, the Harris Corporation had entered into negotiations with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which regulates the sale and use of all radio-emitting devices, to begin licensing stingray equipment to state and local law enforcement. Harris requested, and the FCC assented to, a provision of the licensing agreement that would require law enforcement agencies that wish to employ stingray devices to coordinate their acquisition and use with the FBI." Now here are the Jesuit alumni executives at L3Harris Technologies. Byron Green--Vice President, Operations : " Byron Green is the vice president of operations for L3Harris Technologies, Inc. In this role, Green has responsibility for leading global manufacturing, quality, environmental health and safety, supply chain management and e3 – L3Harris’ lean operating system. Green possesses more than 20 years of extensive operations and enterprise continuous improvement experience in large, global manufacturing organizations. Green joined L3Harris in July 2019 from Whirlpool Corporation where he most recently served as the vice president of manufacturing for the North American region. In this role, Green was accountable for production, manufacturing engineering and advanced program planning for fourteen manufacturing facilities and 28,000 employees. Prior to joining Whirlpool in 2017, Green spent almost 20 years at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, ultimately leading North American vehicle assembly, producing 2.3 million vehicles annually. In this role, Green had responsibility for advanced program planning & investments, process design activities and program management & launch. Green joined Chrysler in 1998 and over the course of his tenure held a wide variety of operations and manufacturing roles including plant manager of several facilities, vice president, Powertrain – Engine/Foundry Manufacturing, vice president, manufacturing for the Jeep and truck division, and vice president, manufacturing engineering – where he was responsible for leading the advanced manufacturing engineering function for the company globally, including process development & standardization, lean manufacturing, and execution of new model launches. Green began his career as a manufacturing co-op student at General Motors. Upon graduation, he spent nine years in escalating production and manufacturing engineering roles at both General Motors and Ford Motor Company. Green received his master’s degree in engineering management/control systems from University of Detroit Mercy(Jesuit), and his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the former General Motor Institute, now Kettering University." https://ift.tt/32yCL4U Tania Hanna---Vice President, Government Relations : " Tania Hanna is vice president of Government Relations for L3Harris Technologies. Hanna is responsible for the company’s relations with the U.S. Congress, the executive branch and Aerospace and Defense industry associations located in the Washington, DC, area. Tania held the equivalent role at Harris Corporation before the company’s merger with L3 Technologies, Inc. in June 2019. Prior to her role leading government relations at Harris, Hanna worked as vice president of Policy and Legislative Affairs, responsible for implementing and overseeing Harris’ engagements with the U.S. Congress and related organizations, and building the company’s international government relations capabilities. Before joining Harris in 2003, Hanna served as a senior associate with a DC-based law firm, senior attorney at the Federal Communications Commission and general counsel for a small Internet startup. Hanna earned a bachelor’s degree in international politics from Georgetown University(Jesuit), a graduate degree from the University of Antwerp, Belgium, and a master’s degree in organizational leadership from Norwich University. She also has a Juris Doctor from American University." https://ift.tt/32yCL4U James “Jim” Jordano---Vice President, Integration Management Office : " James “Jim” Jordano is vice president, Integration Management Office (IMO) for L3Harris Technologies. Prior to the merger of L3 Technologies and Harris Corporation in June 2019, Jordano led pre-close integration activities for Harris’ IMO as well as Global Business Services including payroll, real estate and facilities. Jordano joined Harris Corporation in 2015 to lead the integration of Exelis into Harris following its acquisition, while leading the Global Business Services organization. Prior to joining Harris, Jordano served as vice president of Supply Chain Management for Sunrun. In this position, he led all supply chain related functions including strategic sourcing, procurement, materials planning, distribution and logistics. In 2011, Jordano acted as managing director for Profectus Advisory Group, a consulting firm specializing in performance improvement in the areas of revenue growth, new product development and productivity. Before Profectus, Jordano spent 27 years at United Technologies Corporation (UTC), where he held significant leadership positions at various UTC units in supply chain and general management roles. Jordano holds a bachelor’s degree in finance from Pace University, a Master of Science in financial management from Fairfield University(Jesuit) and a Master of Business Administration from Columbia Business School." https://ift.tt/32yCL4U Ross Niebergall---Vice President and Chief Technology Officer : " Ross Niebergall is vice president and chief technology officer of L3Harris Technologies. He leads the company’s global engineering function and partners with segment leadership to manage the cost, execution and quality of programs. In addition, he plans, prioritizes and oversees IRAD projects, implements best-in-class process standards, drives improvements in quality and efficiency, and leads technology talent development efforts. Niebergall joined Harris Corporation in 2017 to serve as the vice president and chief technology officer prior to the company’s merger with L3 Technologies, Inc. He previously served as vice president, deputy for Development Programs, Engineering and Technology, for Raytheon’s Intelligence, Information and Services unit. In this role, he supported the development of a diverse portfolio, spanning both commercial and defense markets, including cybersecurity, command and control systems, sensors and imaging, and mission support products. During his career at Raytheon, Niebergall held significant technical and leadership positions, including chief executive officer of U.S. operations for Thales-Raytheon Systems, a joint venture, and senior director of Engineering for the C4I Systems business. He began his career in Raytheon’s Space and Airborne Systems division. Niebergall has a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and computer science from the University of Regina in Canada, and a master’s and doctorate degree in mathematics from the University of Notre Dame (Catholic, Jesuit controlled). He has served as an associate professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of North British Columbia and as a post-doctoral research fellow and visiting scientist at McMaster University in Ontario" https://ift.tt/32yCL4U Jesuit trained former U.S. Army General Peter W. Chiarelli is on the board at L3 Harris! Quoting from L3Harris's website : " General Peter W. Chiarelli, U.S. Army (Ret.), 69, has been a member of the L3Harris or a predecessor board since 2012 and serves as chair of our Ad Hoc Technology Committee and as a member of our Audit Committee. Chiarelli is a retired general of the U.S. Army. He is also chairman of the board of Interologic Inc., a company that helps impact-oriented organizations achieve their goals through leading edge data and analytics technology. Prior to his retirement in 2012 from the U.S. Army, he most recently served as Vice Chief of Staff, the Army’s second highest ranking officer and held other senior officer positions, including Senior Military Assistant, Secretary of Defense; Commander of the Multi-National Corps – Iraq; Division Commander, Fort Hood, Texas and Baghdad, Iraq; U.S. Army Chief of Operations, Training and Mobilization; and Executive Officer, Supreme Allied Commander, Europe. After his retirement from the U.S. Army, Chiarelli served as chief executive officer of One Mind from 2012 to 2018." https://ift.tt/32yCL4U From Wikipedia : "Peter W. Chiarelli (born March 23, 1950)[1] is a retired United States Army general) who served as the 32nd Vice Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army from August 4, 2008 to January 31, 2012. He also served as commander, Multi-National Corps – Iraq under General George W. Casey, Jr.(Jesuit trained at Georgetown). He was the Senior Military Assistant to the Secretary of Defense from March 2007 to August 2008. He retired from the U.S. Army on January 31, 2012 after nearly 40 years of service.... He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in political science from Seattle University,(Jesuit) a Master of Public Administration degree from the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington, and a Master of Arts degree in national security strategy from Salve Regina University.(Catholic). He is also a graduate of the U.S. Naval Command and Staff College and the National War College. " https://ift.tt/2pcwTe4 " Peter has made over 3 trades of the L3Harris Technologies stock since 2017, according to the Form 4 filled with the SEC. Most recently he exercised 333 units of LHX stock worth $70,792 on 10 February 2019. The largest trade he's ever made was exercising 334 units of L3Harris Technologies stock on 10 February 2017 worth over $71,005. On average, Peter trades about 30 units every 22 days since 2012. As of 10 February 2019 he still owns at least 1,000 units of L3Harris Technologies stock." https://ift.tt/2A4oxwh

#TheWebOfSlime

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courtneytincher · 5 years ago

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Street Protests Might Bring Down Putin—Or Make Him Even More Dangerous to U.S.

Vasily Maximov/GettyThe well-known Russian political scientist Valery Solovey has talked a lot recently about possible political change in his country, but he was particularly emphatic in a tweet on Sunday, the day after 60,000 Russians protested on the streets of Moscow: "I have a growing feeling that this fall mass protests will enter a self-sustaining trajectory. This is even faster than I expected and what I have publicly talked about. The underbrush of mass discontent has become parched. And the government is stubbornly bringing a match to it."But does Solovey's scenario—based on the premise that the Putin regime has gone too far in suppressing peaceful protestors—take into account the huge punitive machine that the Kremlin has to douse the flames it is igniting? A Missile Explosion, a Radiation Spike, and Kremlin Secrecy Bring Back Memories of ChernobylNot only are Putin's loyal siloviki (those who run the “institutions of force”) showing no hesitation in unleashing their might against the democratic opposition; the rank and file forces under them are zealously following orders and unlikely to rebel. As one responder to Solovey tweeted:"No one has explained to ordinary police officers what would happen to them when the power changes, so they will continue to come down furiously with their clubs. After all, they, like Putin, are very afraid of revolution."This video of police on Saturday beating up a young woman illustrates the point and has caused a huge stir in the Russian independent media. She later was hospitalized with a concussion:Russia's mass street protests over election fraud in 2011-12 shook the Kremlin to its core and were a nightmare for Putin, who blamed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the unrest. She publicly expressed “serious concern” about irregularities in the 2011 Duma election, and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper among others has suggested Putin's enduring grudge against Clinton may partly explain his aggressive support for Trump in 2016.Mindful of those protests eight years ago, Putin has long been preparing for another such outbreak, which this time began in July and was fueled by the decision of Russia's Central Election Commission to ban numerous independent candidates from running in Moscow's municipal election on September 8. In 2016, Putin created a National Guard (Rosgvardia), which reports directly to him and numbers an estimated 350,000 men, including special forces and internal troops that used to be under the MVD (the Ministry of Internal Affairs). A Battered Professor Leads Moscow’s Growing Grassroots Protests Against PutinDesigned to quell mass unrest, Rosgvardia is headed by Viktor Zolotov, a KGB veteran who became a close Putin ally when the two worked for the St. Petersburg mayor, Anatoly Sobchak, in the early 1990s. (Zolotov was Sobchak's bodyguard.) The FSB (Federal Security Service) not only arrests and investigates Russian citizens for such crimes as "extremism," and corruption; it also has its own special forces, which are designated mainly for anti-terrorism, but could be called upon to suppress public disorders. FSB chief Aleksandr Bortnikov, who joined the KGB in Leningrad in 1975, is a direct protégé of Putin. The MVD, which operates the regular police, is also loyal to Putin. MVD chief Vladimir Kolokoltsev is not a "piterskii" (part of Putin's St. Petersburg clan), but he is a dedicated career cop, (he formerly headed the Moscow police) known for coming down hard against real or perceived lawbreakers. And finally, the powerful Russian Investigative Committee, which recently opened a criminal case against Aleksei Navalny's Foundation Against Corruption (FBK) on charges of money laundering, is also under Putin's thumb. Its chief is Aleksandr Bastrykin, a fellow law student with Putin at Leningrad State University in the 1970s and a long-time Putin crony. (The Kremlin has reportedly awarded staffers from the Investigative Committee a 20 percent pay raise.) Navalny, a leading opposition figure, and several of his colleagues are languishing in jail for organizing unauthorized protests; if the Investigative Committee's criminal case against them proceeds, they could end up in labor camps, like Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the exiled former head of the oil company Yukos, who was arrested in 2003 on Putin’s orders and spent 10 years behind bars.The Putin regime may have overreacted in its response to the protests, with the bungled jail poisoning of Navalny recently, the thousands of arrests, and the excessive, indiscriminate use of force against protestors. The whole crisis might have been avoided if the authorities had allowed at least a few candidates to appear on the Moscow ballot, which would have hardly threatened the Kremlin's grip on the city's government. But the siloviki have good reason to maintain their resolve. They are all incredibly corrupt, as demonstrated in the numerous exposes by Navalny's FBK, and would suffer bad consequences if Putin's regime fell. (Recall the fate of the corrupt Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovich, who was forced to flee to Russia by the seat of his pants in 2014.) As for ordinary policemen and guard troops, rather than getting their news from the internet, where Navalny and others make their case against the Kremlin, they apparently watch state-controlled television, which portrays the protestors as pawns of the West. Radio Liberty's Mike Eckel wrote last week: "Conspiracies of foreign intelligence agency meddling have also trickled down to the precinct level for Moscow police. One man who was detained during the protests, even though he said he was merely a bystander, was berated by an officer during his two days in police custody: 'Guys, you understand nothing. You’re being controlled. It’s the CIA that is manipulating you…The protests are just the beginning. This is part of a protracted campaign to oust the regime and seize Russia’s resources.'”As in 2011-2012, the authorities prefer to see the current ferment as Western inspired, rather than to question their own policies. After the August 3 street demonstrations, the Russian Foreign Ministry accused the U.S. Embassy in Moscow of encouraging turnout and "interfering in the internal affairs of our country" because the embassy published a map of the planned route: In fact, the Americans intended the map as a warning to its citizens to stay away from the protests. And on Sunday, Roskomnadzor, the government agency that oversees the internet, demanded in a formal complaint, that Google prohibit users of YouTube, its subsidiary, from posting notifications about the protests. Roskomnadzor threatened Google with an “adequate response” in case of refusal to comply with its requirements: “The Russian Federation will regard this as interference in the sovereign affairs of the state, and also as hostile and hindering the conduction of democratic elections in Russia.”Russian journalist Iulia Latynina (forced to flee Russia in 2017 because her life was threatened) observed after Saturday's protests: "It is very interesting to watch [on YouTube] the riot police, because they have the special tactics and strategy of a war against their own people. These police went through combat coordination, that is, they know how to act…They beat people as if they were going after Germans at the entrance to the Kremlin." Latynina claims that members of the riot police and the security organs think of themselves as a righteous sect, surrounded by enemies who are supported by the U.S. State Department. Their violence is arbitrary because it doesn't matter to them whether the person who is arrested or beaten is just an innocent bystander or an oppositionist. Drawing parallels with Stalin's terror, Latynina concludes: "We have a lot of commentators who say: 'This violence is ineffective. It only makes people angry.' Well guys, sorry, please. Of course, violence is effective… and the history of our country, unfortunately, is direct evidence of this. Look what Stalin did. Stalin destroyed the Russian people and not only the Russian people but the Soviet people, all the people that were there. How many rebellions were there against Stalin?" Former FSB lieutenant-colonel Gennady Gudkov, who used to serve in the Russian Duma, seems to share Latynina's pessimism. In a blog for radio Echo of Moscow on Sunday, Gudkov wrote: "If we discard the version that the Kremlin and its inhabitants are completely crazy, then we are left with one single impression: that the regime ordered its police to act extremely cruel with only one purpose - to anger society, sow indignation, hatred and a desire to take revenge." Gudkov goes on to explain that the Kremlin's end game may be to provoke enough public unrest to justify the declaration of a state of emergency, which would result in a cancellation of all future elections, complete censorship of the press and the internet, a shutdown of the independent media and even curfews. "One gets the impression," Gudkov continued, "that today the regime deliberately acts on the principle of 'the worse, the better.' If so, then you and I have entered the last stage of Putin's rule: the masks are dropped, the image in the world is gone, there is only one way - a la North Korea and the complete 'freezing' of public life for decades. And holding on until there are no longer enough forces, money and ammunition for the fighters of the 'Rosgvardiya.' A bloody road to nowhere."Whatever the likelihood of these grim prognoses, which probably give the Kremlin too much credit for having a strategy, the authorities are keeping up some appearance of biding by the rules. On Saturday, when police with black masks arrested Lyubov Sobol, a lawyer and producer of videos for Navalny's FBK, as well as a would-be candidate for the Moscow elections, they came with policewomen. Thirty-one-year-old Sobol, who has been on a hunger strike for over three weeks in protest against the election committee's decision, tweeted later: "The female police were hauled along just 'for show.' They were under the command of other officers…The police car that took me away stopped literally around the corner and let the policewomen out." Sobol, the mother of a toddler, was released only after several hours of questioning, so she missed the demonstration. On the way home she thanked all the protestors for their solidarity with the opposition and urged them not to give up. On Monday, the FBK posted a stunning expose, revealing the extensive corruption of a key member of the Central Election Committee, Boris Ebzeyev. Noting that Navalny and several colleagues are sitting behind bars and that its offices were raided last week, the FBK voiced defiance: "They are obviously trying to destroy us and make it so that we cannot go about our business - the fight against corruption. But this, of course, will not work. And to be honest, it only infuriates and energizes us." The democratic opposition is calling for another street demonstration on August 17, despite the fact that the Moscow mayor's office has refused to authorize it. Political scientist Solovey observed in May that revolutions aren’t made by majorities, but by ambitious minorities “who suddenly understand that they have a chance to do now what they could not do earlier." Maybe he is right, after all. 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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jennifersnyderca90 · 6 years ago

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Canadian Police Raid ‘Orcus RAT’ Author

Canadian police last week raided the residence of a Toronto software developer behind “Orcus RAT,” a product that’s been marketed on underground forums and used in countless malware attacks since its creation in 2015. Its author maintains Orcus is a legitimate Remote Administration Tool that is merely being abused, but security experts say it includes multiple features more typically seen in malware known as a Remote Access Trojan.

An advertisement for Orcus RAT.

As first detailed by KrebsOnSecurity in July 2016, Orcus is the brainchild of John “Armada” Rezvesz, a Toronto resident who until recently maintained and sold the RAT under the company name Orcus Technologies.

In an “official press release” posted to pastebin.com on Mar. 31, 2019, Rezvesz said his company recently was the subject of an international search warrant executed jointly by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).

“In this process authorities seized numerous backup hard drives [containing] a large portion of Orcus Technologies business, and practices,” Rezvesz wrote. “Data inclusive on these drives include but are not limited to: User information inclusive of user names, real names, financial transactions, and further. The arrests and searches expand to an international investigation at this point, including countries as America, Germany, Australia, Canada and potentially more.”

Reached via email, Rezvesz declined to say whether he was arrested in connection with the search warrant, a copy of which he shared with KrebsOnSecurity. In response to an inquiry from this office, the RCMP stopped short of naming names, but said “we can confirm that our National Division Cybercrime Investigative Team did execute a search warrant at a Toronto location last week.”

The RCMP said the raid was part of an international coordinated effort with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Australian Federal Police, as part of “a series of ongoing, parallel investigations into Remote Access Trojan (RAT) technology. This type of malicious software (malware) enables remote access to Canadian computers, without their users’ consent and can lead to the subsequent installation of other malware and theft of personal information.”

“The CRTC executed a warrant under Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) and the RCMP National Division executed a search warrant under the Criminal Code respectively,” reads a statement published last week by the Canadian government. “Tips from international private cyber security firms triggered the investigation.”

Rezvesz maintains his software was designed for legitimate use only and for system administrators seeking more powerful, full-featured ways to remotely manage multiple PCs around the globe. He’s also said he’s not responsible for how licensed customers use his products, and that he actively kills software licenses for customers found to be using it for online fraud.

Yet the list of features and plugins advertised for this RAT includes functionality that goes significantly beyond what one might see in a traditional remote administration tool, such as DDoS-for-hire capabilities, and the ability to disable the light indicator on webcams so as not to alert the target that the RAT is active.

“It can also implement a watchdog that restarts the server component or even trigger a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) if the someone tries to kill its process,” wrote researchers at security firm Fortinet in a Dec. 2017 analysis of the RAT. “This makes it harder for targets to remove it from their systems. These are, of course, on top of the obviously ominous features such as password retrieval and key logging that are normally seen in Remote Access Trojans.”

As KrebsOnSecurity noted in 2016, in conjunction with his RAT Rezvesz also sold and marketed a bulletproof “dynamic DNS service” that promised not to keep any records of customer activity.

Rezvesz appears to have a flair for the dramatic, and has periodically emailed this author over the years. Sometimes, the missives were taunting, or vaguely ominous and threatening. Like the time he reached out to say he was hiring a private investigator to find and track me. Still other unbidden communications from Rezvesz were friendly, even helpful with timely news tips.

According to Rezvesz himself, he is no stranger to the Canadian legal system. In June 2018, Rezvesz shared court documents indicating he has been involved in multiple physical assault charges since 2007, including “7 domestic disputes between partners as well as incidents with his parents.”

“I am not your A-typical computer geek, Brian,” he wrote in a 2018 email. “I tend to have a violent nature, and have both Martial arts and Military training. So, I suppose it is really good that I took your article with a grain of salt instead of actually really getting upset.”

However, these tools tend to be viewed by prosecutors as malware and spyware when their proprietors advertise them as hacking devices and provide customer support aimed at helping buyers deploy the RATs stealthily and evade detection by anti-malware programs.

Last year, a 21-year-old Kentucky man pleaded guilty to authoring and distributing a popular hacking tool called “LuminosityLink,” which experts say was used by thousands of customers to gain access to tens of thousands of computers across 78 countries worldwide.

Also in 2018, 27-year-old Arkansas resident Taylor Huddleston was sentenced to three years in jail for making and selling the “NanoCore RAT,” which was being used to spy on webcams and steal passwords from systems running the software.

In many previous law enforcement investigations targeting RAT developers and sellers, investigators also have targeted customers of these products. In 2014, the U.S. Justice Department announced a series of actions against more than 100 people accused of purchasing and using “Blackshades,” a cheap and powerful RAT that the U.S. government said was used to infect more than a half million computers worldwide.

Earlier this year, Rezvesz posted on Twitter that he was making the source code for Orcus RAT publicly available, and focusing his attention on developing a new and improved RAT product.

Meanwhile on Hackforums[.]net — the forum where Orcus was principally advertised and sold — members and customers expressed concern that authorities would soon be visiting Orcus RAT customers, posts that were deleted almost as quickly by the Hackforums administrator.

As if in acknowledgement of that concern, in the Pastebin press release published this week Rezvesz warned people away from using Orcus RAT, and added some choice advice for others who would follow his path.

“Orcus is no longer to be considered safe or secure solution to Remote Administrative needs,” he wrote, pointing to a screenshot of a court order he says came from one of the police investigators, which requires him to abstain from accessing Hackforums or Orcus-related sites. “Please move away from this software without delay. It has been a pleasure getting to know everyone in my time online, and I hope you all can take my words as a life lesson. Stay safe, don’t do stupid shit.”

from https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/04/canadian-police-raid-orcus-rat-author/

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thetens-blog1 · 7 years ago

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Current Jobs at Stanbic IBTC Bank for SOC Analysts,July 2017

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nedsvallesny · 6 years ago

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Canadian Police Raid ‘Orcus RAT’ Author

An advertisement for Orcus RAT.

As KrebsOnSecurity noted in 2016, in conjunction with his RAT Rezvesz also sold and marketed a bulletproof “dynamic DNS service” that promised not to keep any records of customer activity.

Earlier this year, Rezvesz posted on Twitter that he was making the source code for Orcus RAT publicly available, and focusing his attention on developing a new and improved RAT product.

from Technology News https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/04/canadian-police-raid-orcus-rat-author/

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amberdscott2 · 6 years ago

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Canadian Police Raid ‘Orcus RAT’ Author

An advertisement for Orcus RAT.

As KrebsOnSecurity noted in 2016, in conjunction with his RAT Rezvesz also sold and marketed a bulletproof “dynamic DNS service” that promised not to keep any records of customer activity.

Earlier this year, Rezvesz posted on Twitter that he was making the source code for Orcus RAT publicly available, and focusing his attention on developing a new and improved RAT product.

from Amber Scott Technology News https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/04/canadian-police-raid-orcus-rat-author/

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terabitweb · 6 years ago

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Original Post from Krebs on Security Author: BrianKrebs

Canadian police last week raided the residence of a Toronto software developer responsible for authoring and selling “Orcus RAT,” a software product that’s been marketed on underground forums and used in countless malware attacks since its creation in 2015. Its author maintains Orcus is a legitimate Remote Administration Tool that is merely being abused, but security experts say it includes multiple features more typically seen in malware known as a Remote Access Trojan.

An advertisement for Orcus RAT.

As KrebsOnSecurity noted in 2016, in conjunction with his RAT Rezvesz also sold and marketed a bulletproof “dynamic DNS service” that promised not to keep any records of customer activity.

The sale and marketing of remote administration tools is not illegal in the United States, and indeed there are plenty of such tools sold by legitimate companies to help computer experts remotely administer computers. However, these tools tend to be viewed by prosecutors as malware and spyware when their proprietors advertise them as hacking devices and provide customer support aimed at helping buyers deploy the RATs stealthily and to evade detection by anti-malware programs.

Earlier this year, Rezvesz posted on Twitter that he was making the source code for Orcus RAT publicly available, and that he was focusing his attention on developing a new and improved RAT product.

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Go to Source Author: BrianKrebs Canadian Police Raid ‘Orcus RAT’ Author Original Post from Krebs on Security Author: BrianKrebs Canadian police last week raided the residence of a Toronto software developer responsible for authoring and selling “

#Krebs on Security

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rolandfontana · 6 years ago

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Investigations of US Coast Guard, MS-13 Win John Jay Justice Reporting Awards

Seth Freed Wessler of Type Investigations, and Hannah Dreier of ProPublica are the winners of the 14th annual John Jay College/Harry Frank Guggenheim 2019 Awards for Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting, Karol V. Mason, president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, announced Monday.

“The enterprise and hard work of these journalists paid off with some powerful criminal justice stories,” said President Mason. “Independent reporters and the thorough investigations they conduct are a cornerstone in protecting the freedoms and rights of all Americans.

“In addition, these Harry Frank Guggenheim Award winners make clear the continuing importance of media in helping Americans understand today’s criminal justice challenges.”

The prizes, administered by John Jay’s Center on Media, Crime and Justice (CMCJ), publisher of The Crime Report, recognize the previous year’s best print and online justice reporting in a U.S.-based media outlet between November 2017 and October 2018. Winning entries in each of the two categories share a cash award of $1,500 and a plaque. Runners-up (see below) receive certificates of Honorable Mention.

The 2019 Winners:

Seth Freed Wessler

Seth Freed Wessler, reporting for Type Investigations (formerly The Investigative Fund) has won the 2019 John Jay Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Award (Single-Story Category) for “The Coast Guard’s Floating Guantánamos,” an investigation of the little-known practice of detaining low-level drug smugglers under reportedly inhumane conditions on U.S. Coast Guard cutters offshore. His reporting was originally published by The New York Times Magazine and then amplified with new reporting in collaboration with The Current on CBC, Canada’s national broadcasting network.

Wessler’s year-long investigation involved culling thousands of pages of court filings and interviewing or corresponding with more than two dozen former detainees in U.S. prisons and in Ecuador. The result was “an entirely original and shocking story of government overreach,” commented one of this year’s jurors. Editor Esther Kaplan said the Coast Guard, “seemingly” in response to Wessler’s reporting, has since proposed using a dedicated prison ship to hold detainees, and she noted Canada has launched an investigation into allegations of mistreatment.

Hannah Dreier

Hannah Dreier of ProPublica won the 2019 John Jay Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Award (Series Category) for her multi-part and multi-media investigation of flawed federal and local law enforcement practices in the struggle against the notorious MS-13 gang. Her first story, “A Betrayal,” published in collaboration with New York magazine, chronicled the tragedy of Henry, a teenager who had helped police arrest fellow gang members only to have his life endangered when law enforcement turned over his file to immigration authorities.

Hannah Dreier

A second story, “The Disappeared,” in partnership with Newsday and This American Life, described the failure by local law enforcement to adequately investigate the murder by the gang of 15-year-old Miguel. Both cases illustrated the “carelessness and indifference” of authorities in dealing with the casualties of America’s stepped-up campaign against MS-13, said ProPublica Editor-in-Chief Stephen Engelberg in his nomination letter.

Both stores can be downloaded here.

Dreier’s articles had “extraordinary impact,” Engelberg added, noting that the Suffolk County, N.Y., police had launched an investigation into the mishandling of the investigations into the deaths of Miguel and others. “Hundreds of readers reached out to Henry offering jobs and a home…the Department of Homeland Security opened a civil rights investigation, and ICE said it would stop creating detailed gang memos.”

RUNNERS-UP

Two compelling investigative pieces from The Marshall Project (TMP) tied for this year’s Runner-Up place in the single-story category.

Alysia Santo was honored for a path-breaking year-long investigation into the operation of state victim compensation funds, and Joseph Neff earned the award for his investigation into the wrongful conviction, exoneration—and its tragic aftermath—of Henry McCollum and Leon Brown, two intellectually disabled half-brothers found innocent of a rape-murder charge after spending 30 years on North Carolina’s Death Row.

Alysia Santo

Alysia Santo’s story, “The Victims Who Don’t Count,” was published in USA Today and reprinted in 20 regional newspapers; and Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting broadcast a 25-minute radio story on 460 public radio stations. Her exposé “showed for the first time that the rules governing the disbursement of victim’s compensation disproportionately hurt black crime victims,” TMP Editor Bill Keller said in his nomination letter.

Joseph Neff

Joseph Neff’s story, “The Price of Innocence,” which also appeared in The New York Times, explored how the two brothers were exploited by lawyers and supposed advocates after they were released.

Joseph Neff

Follow-ups on the story by WRAL-TV, the NBC affiliate in Raleigh-Durham, helped draw attention to their plight and led to an investigation by the North Carolina State Bar.

Not only did Neff’s reporting bring to light “one of the worst” examples of exoneree exploitation, but it highlighted a previously un-reported nationwide issue, Keller said: “Few states offer any post-release services or protection to the innocent, (and) those with disabilities or dysfunctional families shouldn’t have to rely on a diligent reporter to obtain the protection they need.”

Madeleine Baran, et al.

A team of investigative reporters and producers at American Public Media Reports was awarded the Runner-Up prize in the Series Category for their 11-episode project investigating the case of Curtis Flowers, a black man in Mississippi who is on Death Row for a murder he claims he didn’t commit. Based in Mississippi for nearly a year, the team produced their series for the second season of “In the Dark,” revealing misconduct by the local district attorney, as well as a 25-year pattern of malfeasance that included systematically striking African Americans from jury trials.

Madeline Baran

“Our reporting reached millions of people and sparked conversations about the power of prosecutors, and the ways in which prosecutors can abuse that power,” wrote APM Reports editor Catherine Winter in her nomination letter, noting that the “In the Dark” podcasts have been downloaded by more than 31 million people. APM reporter Madeleine Baran will receive the Honorable Mention certificate in the name of APM’s 10-person reporting team.

Prize Jury

The jurors for this year’s prize were:

Alexa Capeloto, Associate Professor, John Jay College

Joe Domanick, Associate Director, CMCJ;

Ted Gest, President, Criminal Justice Journalists;

Ann Givens, of The Trace;

Katti Gray, contributing editor, The Crime Report;

Mark Obbie, a criminal justice writer and former executive editor of American Lawyer; and

Spencer Woodman of The Chicago Reader (co-winner of the 2018 Journalism Prize in the Single-Story Category) and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

Wren Longno served as Administrator of this year’s awards.

Dinner Feb 21

The awards will be presented February 21, 2019 at a dinner in New York City, held in conjunction with the 14th annual John Jay/Harry Frank Guggenheim Symposium on Crime in America.

The dinner will also honor pioneer podcasters Sarah Koenig of Serial and Brittany Packnett of Pod Save the People as this year’s “Justice Media Trailblazers.”

Reservations for the dinner can be made here.

The awards will be presented by John Jay President Karol Mason, Serial co-producer Julie Snyder, Brooklyn NY activist Blair Imani, and emcee Errol Louis of NY1.

John Jay/Harry Frank Guggenheim Symposium

The awards dinner is the cornerstone event of the 14th Annual Harry Frank Guggenheim Symposium on Crime in America at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City February 21-22, 2019.

The symposium, Violence in America: Myth and Reality, will examine challenges of the changing environment for criminal justice reform in 2019.

Speakers include:

George Gascon, San Francisco District Attorney;

The Hon. Gurbir Grewal, New Jersey Attorney General;

Sen. Larry Obhof, President, Ohio State Senate;

Daniel Isom, former St. Louis police chief;

Stephanie Ueberall, director of the Violence Prevention Program of the NYC Citizens Crime Commission; and

Prof. Issa Kohler-Hausmann, Yale Law School, author of “Misdemeanorland.”

The symposium, administered by the Center on Media, Crime and Justice at John Jay College (publisher of The Crime Report) is the only national gathering that brings together journalists, legislators, policymakers, scholars and practitioners for candid on-the-record discussions on emerging issues of U.S. criminal justice. The conference is open to the public, but a one-time fee of $25 is required for attendance at the on-the-record symposium.

For a full list of speakers, and to register for the conference, please click here

Overall support for the conference and fellowships comes from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. Additional support is provided by the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Public Safety Performance Project, the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice, the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and others.

JUSTICE REPORTING FELLOWSHIPS

Twenty-nine U.S. journalists from print, online and broadcast outlets have also been awarded Reporting Fellowships to attend the 14th annual John Jay/Harry Frank Guggenheim Symposium on Crime in America, including five who have received special investigative fellowships from the Quattrone Center on the Fair Administration of Justice at the University of Pennsylvania Law School for projects examining systemic issues in the justice system.

The unique fellowships are aimed at encouraging and promoting top-quality journalism on criminal justice. The Fellows were selected from a wide pool of applicants based on editors’ recommendations, and on investigative reporting projects underway or in the planning stage.

A full list of the John Jay/Guggenheim and Quattrone Reporting Fellows is below.

JOHN JAY/GUGGENHEIM JUSTICE REPORTING FELLOWS

(in Alphabetical Order)

Ron Berler, freelance Deven Clarke, KSAT News12 Rachel de Leon, Reveal/CIR Ron Denham, WGLT Tim Eigo, Arizona Attorney Karl Etters, Tallahassee Democrat Andrew Ford, USA Today Network Dan Glaun, MassLive Megan Guza, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review Gary Harki, Virginian Pilot Emily Harris, Reveal/CIR Katie Moore, Topeka Capital Journal Patricia Murphy, KUOW Seattle Tom Olsen, Duluth News-Tribune Julie Reynolds Martinez, Voices of Monterrey Bay Kayla Rivera, freelance Elise Schmelzer, Denver Post Frank Schultz, Janesville Gazette Skyler Swisher, South Fla Sun Sentinel Almudena Toral, Univision Kathryn Varn, Tampa Bay Times Josh Vaughn, The Sentinel Paula Ward. Pittsburgh Post Gazette Charlotte West, Quill

2019 JOHN JAY/QUATTRONE INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING FELLOWS

(in Alphabetical Order)

Josh Brodesky, San Antonio Exp News Rachel Lippmann, St. Louis Public Radio Michael Sainato, freelance/The Guardian Mary Sanchez, Flatland Olivia P. Tallet, Houston Chronicle

Investigations of US Coast Guard, MS-13 Win John Jay Justice Reporting Awards syndicated from https://immigrationattorneyto.wordpress.com/

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paulbenedictblog · 5 years ago

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New Post has been published on %http://paulbenedictsgeneralstore.com%

News top stories daily news hot topics Coral threat, woman bites camel, Reagan home in peril: News from around our 50 states

News top stories daily news hot topics

News top stories daily news hot topics Alabama

Sir Bernard Law: A pygmy hippopotamus has been born on the Sir Bernard Law Zoo. The zoo final week launched the arrival of the calf born Aug. 4. The calf changed into born to first-time oldsters: mom Asali and dad Mikey. Asali gave beginning to twins, but the zoo acknowledged the opposite calf lived most efficient two days thanks to a condition that made it unable to nurse. The zoo acknowledged mom and small one will be housed in a non permanent habitat positioned within the South The US realm of the zoo, come the flamingos, until the calf is a pair of twelve months faded. The pygmy hippopotamus is a colossal mammal native to the forests and swamps of western Africa. The species is even handed endangered within the wild.

News top stories daily news hot topics Alaska

Anchorage: The nation’s most costly wildfire this twelve months is one that began in June and restful continues to burn on the Kenai Peninsula. The Swan Lake fireplace has to this level trace about $46 million to fight, in accordance to the Nationwide Interagency Fire Heart in Boise, Idaho. The Anchorage Each day Info stories that places it before the Walker Fire in California, which the Idaho center says trace about $29 million to fight. A lightning strike in June began the Alaska fireplace within the Kenai Nationwide Natural world Refuge. Rain later diminished fireplace process, but it flared again in August’s hot, dry stipulations. Fire officials acknowledged that as of Thursday, it had burned greater than 261 square miles and changed into 57% contained. There had been 265 firefighters struggling with the natural world.

News top stories daily news hot topics Arizona

Flagstaff: The growth plans of Lowell Observatory comprise it discontinuance to opening a brand new open-deck observatory, a movable-roof facility that contains six telescopes to be used each by researchers and by the public. The Arizona Each day Solar stories that the open-deck observatory is getting its finishing touches in preparation for an Oct. 5 mountainous opening. Its six telescopes encompass one designed for viewing galaxies and star clusters and one other supposed for learning the particulars of the worthy nearer – no no longer as a lot as in substantial phrases – moon and planets in our photo voltaic machine. Perched on forested Mars Hill overlooking downtown Flagstaff, Lowell is the save astronomer Clyde Tombaugh spotted Pluto, then is named Planet X, in 1930. The non-public observatory changed into based by Percival Lowell in 1894.

News top stories daily news hot topics Arkansas

West Memphis: Carvana, a firm that facilitates shopping and promoting faded vehicles on-line, plans to open a $40 million advanced in eastern Arkansas and create greater than 400 jobs. The Arkansas Economic Pattern Commission on Friday launched Carvana will detect an inspection and distribution center in West Memphis. Gov. Asa Hutchinson says Arizona-based completely mostly Carvana is changing the faded automobile change through technology and colossal buyer provider. Prospects can browse hundreds of vehicles on Carvana.com to finance, draw discontinuance, change in for an present automobile, or agenda supply or pickup by potential of the firm’s Automobile Merchandising Machines.

News top stories daily news hot topics California

San Francisco: The metropolis’s famous cable cars are running again after a 12-day provider cease to rehabilitate the gearboxes that back flee the 19th-century public transportation machine. The wooden cars had been slowly rock climbing San Francisco’s hills Monday, with operators ringing their brass bells. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency removed the manually operated cable cars from streets Sept. 11. The gearboxes poke 30-foot-huge wheels in a cable automobile powerhouse that pull the 12 miles of steel cables below the cable automobile tracks that bewitch the engineless cable cars up the metropolis’s steep hills. Officials negate the work is segment of an give a enhance to mission began in 2017 to repair heavy gear in provider since 1984. It has an estimated trace of about $6 million.

News top stories daily news hot topics Colorado

Durango: Officials negate fish populations within the Animas River comprise been severely depleted attributable to suffocation prompted by debris from a 2018 wildfire. The Durango Herald stories Animas River fish populations are down about 80% attributable to runoff stuffed with ash from the 416 Fire, which burned an estimated 84 square miles of mostly U.S. Forest Service land within the Hermosa Creek watershed in southwest Colorado. Dispute natural world officials negate heavy rains and flooding from July to September 2018 prompted the runoff. The first full-scale Colorado Parks and Natural world look for conducted since then chanced on a 64% decline from the river’s historical average amount of trout. Officials negate there changed into a 95% decline from the river’s historical average of fish longer than 14 inches.

News top stories daily news hot topics Connecticut

Groton: Greater than $2 million in federal grants has been awarded to a program to back create a clearinghouse for seaweed aquaculture review and promote southern New England shellfish aquaculture. Connecticut Sea Grant, based completely totally on the University of Connecticut’s Avery Level campus, will additionally be a contributor to 2 additional projects exciting the improvement of model relate legislation for seaweed sales and building a various seafood processing group of workers. The funding is segment of the Nationwide Sea Grant College Program, which specializes in marine review and sustainable building of marine resources. The Nationwide Sea Grant Seaweed Hub will get $1.1 million in federal funds, whereas the shellfish initiative will get $1.2 million.

News top stories daily news hot topics Delaware

Dover: Dispute agriculture officials are growing a quarantine in northern Delaware so as to fight the unfold of the invasive spotted lanternfly. The quarantine now entails all of New Fort County north of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. The relate Division of Agriculture is urging the public to execute on draw and anecdote the bug to the company. The invasive pest feeds on greater than 70 plant species, collectively with maples, apple trees and hops. Adults resemble colourful moths and are active from July to December. Below the quarantine, firms will need to comprise permits to pass regulated articles within or from the condominium. Regulated objects encompass plant life, proceed and construction supplies. The frequent public is urged to be aware a compliance guidelines.

News top stories daily news hot topics District of Columbia

Washington: Hundreds of activists blocked predominant intersections throughout the nation’s capital Monday, disturbing speedy government action on climate commerce. Below the banner of ShutDownDC, a nice coalition of activist groups sought to lift the morning traffic within the capital metropolis to a standstill. At one area about three blocks from the White Rental, activists parked a yellow-and-purple sailboat within the center of the intersection with several protesters handcuffed to the frame. Washington police comprise a standing coverage to handbook sure of mass arrests of protesters, if imaginable. And even those protesters who needed to be gash free from the sailboat with welding gear had been no longer arrested. The Metropolitan Police Division did arrest 26 those that had been blockading the entrance to a valuable tunnel.

News top stories daily news hot topics Florida

Orlando: A girl is expressing outrage after her 6-twelve months-faded granddaughter changed into handcuffed, arrested and fingerprinted thanks to a tantrum in faculty. Meralyn Kirkland acknowledges that her granddaughter would possibly presumably well presumably want been performing out at school final Thursday but says it changed into because the baby had no longer been drowsing effectively thanks to a clinical condition. In an interview with WKMG Info 6, Kirkland acknowledged a workers member at an predominant college changed into kicked whereas looking out for to quiet the baby. That’s when the college’s resource officer, Dennis Turner, intervened and despatched the first grader to a juvenile detention center for fingerprints and a mug shot. Orlando police negate they’ve launched an interior investigation to resolve if the resource officer adopted appropriate protocol in engaging the girl on battery fees.

News top stories daily news hot topics Georgia

Atlanta: A mapping program is discovering that rural broadband entry within the relate is worse than federal officials first draw. Lawmakers are trying to search out ways of bringing more broadband provider to rural areas – and they must know the extent of the topic. On the opposite hand, WABE Radio stories lawmakers comprise most efficient had mistaken maps from the Federal Communications Commission. Deana Perry, who runs the Georgia Division of Community Affairs’ rural broadband program, told lawmakers the FCC maps faded census blocks. If one particular person had broadband in a block, the total block changed into classified as served. Now, a brand new relate mapping program the employ of a type of methodology is discovering that there are vastly more underserved areas in Georgia than the federal maps showed.

News top stories daily news hot topics Hawaii

Captain Cook dinner: Moral four years after a valuable marine warmth wave killed monumental swaths of this archipelago’s fragile reefs, scientists are warning that a return of anecdote-environment hot water within the Pacific will cause more frequent bleaching and presumably coral demise. Even handed one of many relate’s most appealing coral reefs prospers appropriate below the outside in a bay on the west hover of Hawaii’s Immense Island. On shoreline a long way from the impacts of sunscreen and throngs of holiday makers, scientists ogle early signs of what’s expected to be a catastrophic season of coral bleaching in Hawaii. The ocean right here is about 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit above frequent for this time of twelve months. Coral can recover from bleaching, but when it's a long way uncovered to warmth over several years, the likelihood of survival decreases.

News top stories daily news hot topics Idaho

Boise: A federal bewitch says a mining firm within the relate has no longer complied with court orders and continues to violate neat water rules. The Idaho Statesman stories U.S. Chief Magistrate Buy Ronald Bush on Thursday determined Atlanta Gold had no longer carried out huge compliance at its Montezuma Creek area above Atlanta in Elmore County. Atlanta Gold’s prison professional Michelle Components acknowledged Friday that the firm would wouldn't comprise any negate on the ruling. The bewitch acknowledged Atlanta Gold’s therapy machine remains incapable of treating elevated volumes of water from annual snow melt or other high-water events equivalent to heavy rains. He acknowledged development has been made, but improvement doesn't equal huge compliance with federal rules. Montezuma Creek is a tributary of the Heart Fork of the Boise River.

News top stories daily news hot topics Illinois

Dixon: Ronald Reagan’s boyhood home would possibly presumably well presumably wish to discontinuance its doorways attributable to financial woes. WREX-TV stories the Ronald Reagan’s Boyhood Dwelling and Visitor’s Heart seeks donations to end afloat. Patrick Gorman, the center’s government director, says the condominium in Dixon generates $30,000 annually through excursions and the reward shop. Working charges trace about $70,000 a twelve months, creating a $40,000 annual deficit. The home is listed on the Nationwide Register of Historic Areas but receives no government funding. Jerry Schnake, the center’s assistant director, says it borrowed $100,000 from the home’s board of administrators in 2016 for a restoration mission, leaving it $70,000 in debt. Gorman says having to discontinuance the home would be a loss to the community and to anyone enraged about history.

News top stories daily news hot topics Indiana

Gary: The metropolis plans to break a long-abandoned sanatorium constructed 90 years ago to aid the unlit community at a time when unlit folks weren’t welcome at so-called white hospitals. The (Northwest Indiana) Times stories the St. John’s Clinic building has been vacant because it closed in 1950 and changed into again and again named regarded as one of many relate’s most endangered structures by Indiana Landmarks. Gary Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson says the building deteriorated so badly that demolishing it's needed for safety, because it could presumably well presumably crumple. Northwest Indiana Landmarks Director Brad Miller says St. John Clinic is past repair. He says it performed a predominant role, employing unlit doctors and nurses to deal with Gary’s unlit community before hospitals began treating folks of all races.

News top stories daily news hot topics Iowa

West Des Moines: A new whiskey from a native distillery is hitting the shelves this tumble – and it’s mostly made with corn. Foundry Distilling Co. is releasing its first-ever batch of Corn Whiskey, which rested for 10 years in faded Templeton Rye barrels before bottling. Foundry owner Scott Bush says he became interested in corn whiskey a decade ago whereas running Templeton Rye. The whiskey is constituted of 81% corn, 15% rye and 4% barley and bottled at 91 proof. Little greater than 800 cases of Corn Whiskey will be made readily on the market. A diminutive amount of bottles is seemingly to be reserved now or bought foundation Nov. 2 at central Iowa retail outlets cherish Hy-Vee and Fareway. This spirit will be offered solely in Iowa, with an expected retail trace of $79.99 per bottle.

News top stories daily news hot topics Kansas

Dodge Metropolis: A capuchin monkey is recovering after it changed into injured whereas it seems looking out for to give up an intruder from taking a younger monkey. Officials on the Wright Park Zoo negate the older monkey, Vern, changed into damage, and his son, Pickett, changed into chanced on on the outskirts of Dodge Metropolis on Sept. 3. The younger monkey changed into no longer injured. The Dodge Metropolis Each day Globe stories officials on the beginning draw Vern’s injuries had been minor, but a veterinarian chanced on injuries it seems prompted by blunt power trauma. The monkey underwent surgery at Kansas Dispute University on Sept. 10 to repair damaged bones. Zoo spokeswoman Abbey Martin acknowledged Monday that Pickett is doing effectively and abet on repeat. Vern remains in quarantine whereas he recovers. Dodge Metropolis police are investigating the incident.

News top stories daily news hot topics Kentucky

Frankfort: Dispute officials are preparing to begin a program that objectives to amplify the amount of students attempting for elevated education after high college. The Council on Postsecondary Training says in a assertion that the statewide beginning of Gear Up Kentucky is planned for Wednesday at Jap Kentucky University. On the muse, 12 college districts comprise been chosen to participate in this intention that’s being paid for through a grant from the U.S. Division of Training. Gaining Early Consciousness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs presents free products and companies to back students develop better academically and to amplify their recordsdata about postsecondary choices and financing. Council President Aaron Thompson says the initiative “is a sport changing program” that will back discontinuance fulfillment gaps and streamline pathways to university.

News top stories daily news hot topics Louisiana

Grosse Tete: Authorities negate a camel at a truck give up petting zoo sat on a girl after she crawled into its enclosure. Iberville Parish Sheriff’s officials told The Imply on Sunday that the Florida woman’s husband had been throwing treats to their dog below the camel’s fence. Their dog went into the enclosure, and the girl crawled below barbed wire to retrieve the pet. That’s when the 600-pound camel sat on her. She told deputies she bit the camel to free herself. The lady changed into brought to a sanatorium. Deputy Louis Hamilton Jr. acknowledged the couple provoked the camel and cited them for a leash legislation violation. Tiger Truck Quit is about 16 miles out of doorways of Baton Rouge and retains Caspar the camel as an enchantment.

News top stories daily news hot topics Maine

Vinalhaven: Four properties owned by the unhurried pop artist Robert Indiana are in fact in possession of the root that intends to transform his Huge title of Hope island home into an art museum, the root’s chairman says. The Vinalhaven properties, assessed at $1.4 million, encompass Indiana’s Victorian condominium, collectively with a colossal building that can aid as a studio and artist area, one other building that can aid as reward shop and ticket venue, and a microscopic home, Larry Sterrs says. Indiana’s estate remains embroiled in a lawsuit by a firm that held the copyright for his iconic “LOVE” sequence. The lawsuit changed into filed the day before Indiana’s demise final twelve months. With the property transfer this month, the root, which isn’t a social gathering to the lawsuit, can continue its work to turning his used home into a museum to repeat his art work and create art and arts education purposes.

News top stories daily news hot topics Maryland

College Park: A federal bewitch has thrown out a psychotherapist’s lawsuit disturbing the relate’s ban on treating minors with conversion therapy, the put collectively of looking out for to commerce a consumer’s homosexual orientation. U.S. District Buy Deborah Chasanow’s ruling Friday rejected Christopher Doyle’s claims that the legislation violates his First Modification rights to free speech and spiritual freedom. The bewitch acknowledged prohibiting the put collectively of conversion therapy on minors doesn’t prevent licensed therapists from expressing their interior most views about conversion therapy to minor purchasers. Even handed one of Doyle’s attorneys says they will enchantment the bewitch’s decision. Gov. Larry Hogan signed the measure into legislation in Could also simply 2018, making Maryland the 11th relate to create legislation against conversion therapy for minors.

News top stories daily news hot topics Massachusetts

Boston: Michael Bivins, a founding member of the bands New Version and Bell Biv Devoe, is popping his attention from song to sports. The Roxbury YMCA in Boston says Bivins has teamed up with Puma to sponsor a basketball league for adolescence ages 9 to 13. Every Saturday for 10 weeks, eight teams will compete within the league expected to attract 100 youths. Puma and Bivins’ BivFam Basis are conserving all charges. Bivins is a Boston native who restful lives within the metropolis and fondly remembers his comprise days playing adolescence basketball. In a assertion from the Y, Bivins in contrast the league to winning a Grammy. “I desired to – cherish we negate within the song change – remix it and lift it abet,” Bivins says.

News top stories daily news hot topics Michigan

Detroit: Fire has destroyed a building that is segment of the metropolis’s celebrated out of doorways art mission is named the Heidelberg Project. Flames had been shooting during the roof before firefighters brought the blaze below regulate Monday morning. The building east of downtown Detroit has “you” painted throughout it, regarded as one of many structures with the work of artist Tyree Guyton. The rear changed into gutted, and lumps of bricks had been all around the save. Guyton is legendary for attaching sneakers, clocks, vinyl data, stuffed animals and other objects to flee-down homes within the neighborhood. A spokesman, Dan Lijana, says the Heidelberg Project has been hit with fireplace within the past. “Each time we’ve emerged from it stronger,” he says.

News top stories daily news hot topics Minnesota

St. Paul: A illness unfold by bugs has killed a wild deer come Caledonia in Houston County and is suspected within the demise of one other deer nearby. The Division of Pure Resources acknowledged Monday that Houston County is the second county in Minnesota the save wild deer comprise shriveled epizootic hemorrhagic illness. The viral illness changed into confirmed in two farmed deer earlier this month come Rushford in Houston County and in four wild deer come St. Stephen in Stearns County of central Minnesota. The relate’s first known occasion of EHD changed into final October, when it killed six captive deer in Goodhue County of southeastern Minnesota. EHD is unfold by a biting insect called a midge, or no-seeum. It’s no longer regarded as a chance to humans but kills deer fleet.

News top stories daily news hot topics Mississippi

Jackson: The Mississippi Division of Archives and Historic past is offering back to offset the cost of discipline journeys to the relate’s twin history museums within the capital. The department says it has $25,000 to back students who back most public colleges to discuss over with the Museum of Mississippi Historic past and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum and is calling for to bewitch more. Students within the Biloxi, Jackson and Sunflower County districts are admitted free attributable to an endowment established by the W.K. Kellogg Basis. The department says bus firm Cline Excursions is offering free transportation to students in districts within 50 miles of regarded as one of Cline’s six hubs in Ridgeland, Oxford, Starkville, Hattiesburg, McComb and Memphis, Tennessee. Division director Katie Blount says the goal is for every Mississippi pupil to discuss over with the museums.

News top stories daily news hot topics Missouri

Spokane: Spokane College District has adopted a four-day week starting this tumble to enhance workers recruitment and retention. The district can’t provide salaries as high as neighboring districts because it's a long way microscopic and lacks resources. Students back classes Tuesday through Friday with longer work days. Spokane Superintendent Della Bell-Freeman says this permits the district to give more benefits to fresh and future workers. These benefits encompass three-day weekends, fewer work days total, and more family and free time. Dispute lawmakers permitted this selection for districts facing advanced choices throughout an economic downturn in 2010, when relate funding changed into diminutive. Since then, 61 districts comprise transitioned to a four-day week, collectively with Spokane and 27 other districts this twelve months.

News top stories daily news hot topics Montana

Billings: Officials negate it could presumably well presumably lift days to sure a rockslide within the metropolis that damaged a condominium and fleet trapped a relate lawmaker who lives there. The Billings Gazette stories the condominium on the irascible of the Rimrocks changed into beaten early Saturday, and a neighbor helped free Republican Earn. Invoice Mercer, an prison professional who changed into trapped interior. The mosey left a chase of colossal boulders blockading the residential boulevard. Billings public works director Dave Mumford says the cleanup will beginning up after a geotechnical knowledgeable assesses the soundness of the mosey condominium. Mumford says it could presumably well presumably lift about a days to sure the boulevard. He says folks need to restful steer sure of the condominium because the slope and the condominium each appear unstable.

News top stories daily news hot topics Nebraska

Falls Metropolis: Officials are bearing in mind declaring their community “a metropolis of arts.” Space KNCY stories that the Metropolis Council is predicted to make a proclamation next month. The southeast Nebraska community claims Saturday Evening Post illustrator John Falter as a native son, as effectively as painter Alice Cleaver, artist and author Alan Tubach and jazz musician Pee Wee Erwin. The curator at Stalder Gallery in Falls Metropolis, Christina Wertenberger, says this type of proclamation would aid other cities to adopt a identical proclamation and be a step ahead in growing folks’s recordsdata of the humanities. Library Director Hope Schawang says the proclamation would be good because the metropolis has been accumulating and maintaining visible arts for greater than 100 years.

News top stories daily news hot topics Nevada

Reno: A Las Vegas-based completely mostly developer is proposing to form a 20-epic luxurious resort within the coronary heart of downtown Reno. CAI Investments has submitted an utility to the metropolis detailing its plans for a high-give up resort on Courtroom Avenue appropriate south of the Truckee River off South Arlington Avenue. The pass comes greater than a decade after the firm first submitted plans for a broad tower in Reno. CAI Investments CEO Christopher Beavor acknowledged in a video posted on the firm’s web pages that this will be the first “flooring-up, non-gaming, non-smoking upper upscale resort ever constructed in Northern Nevada.” It additionally is predicted to encompass workplace save to back meet rising save a matter to within the Reno condominium.

News top stories daily news hot topics New Hampshire

Plymouth: Excessive college students within the relate who participate within the FIRST Robotics Opponents will bag an additional chance to repeat off their abilities and presumably invent college scholarships. The Governor’s Cup competition being held Saturday at Plymouth Dispute University will enable as a lot as 50 high college seniors to invent scholarships for one semester at regarded as one of many University Intention of New Hampshire or community college campuses. Greater than 25 teams from high colleges throughout the relate are expected to participate. The off-season competition changed into created through a partnership exciting Gov. Chris Sununu, FIRST New Hampshire, the university and community college systems, Eversource and BAE Systems.

News top stories daily news hot topics New Jersey

Newark: Sampling in quite a lot of of homes uncovered to handbook in ingesting water has chanced on that as a lot as 99% of metropolis-issued water filters are working, metropolis and relate officials acknowledged Monday. Tests valid during the final several weeks had been performed after water in two homes with lead pipes showed elevated lead ranges final month without reference to the employ of the filters. Since then, residents in about 14,000 homes comprise been receiving bottled water allotted by the metropolis and spiritual groups. Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy acknowledged Monday that about 300 homes had been tested and that 97% of the filters labored effectively when the tap changed into changed into on. That amount rose to 99% if water ran for 5 minutes before samples had been taken. Metropolis officials acknowledged they would continue distributing bottled water on the moment.

News top stories daily news hot topics New Mexico

Albuquerque: A federal bewitch has rejected an effort by a Native American tribe to reclaim Valles Caldera Nationwide Preserve. U.S. District Buy James Browning no longer too long ago issued a sealed idea denying Jemez Pueblo’s dispute that its aboriginal property rights had been never extinguished. In a court submitting that summarized his findings, the bewitch acknowledged the federal government had sure title to the land, and the case changed into being brushed off. Jemez Pueblo considers the nearly 140-square-mile swath of federally managed public land as a spiritual sanctuary and segment of its extinct area of beginning. The property is home to monumental grasslands, the remnants of a broad volcanic eruption and regarded as one of New Mexico’s most renowned elk herds.

News top stories daily news hot topics New York

New York: First lady Melania Trump rang the gap bell Monday on the New York Stock Commerce. The change’s first female president, Stacey Cunningham, escorted Mrs. Trump and discussed the change’s history with her. They had been flanked by kids from the United Countries Global College whereas standing in front of a backdrop promoting Be Most effective, the first lady’s adolescence initiative. Mrs. Trump obtained applause on the change flooring and chatted with the kids, who regarded enraged and apprehensive. Earlier recordsdata stories acknowledged some oldsters had objected to what they perceived as a politically themed tournament. Participation changed into voluntary. Republican President Donald Trump is in New York for a three-day discuss over with to the United Countries.

News top stories daily news hot topics North Carolina

Ocracoke: The relate’s top education official says quite a lot of of iPads will be despatched to students and teachers on an island damaged by Storm Dorian. North Carolina Public Faculties acknowledged in a press liberate that Superintendent Mark Johnson launched Monday that the department of public instruction would send 200 iPads to Ocracoke College, the save flooding compelled 185 students out of their building. The department says it hopes the iPads will back students end on agenda with schoolwork until their building is seemingly to be reopened. Students are at display attending classes in a instructing center. The liberate says the Sept. 6 typhoon flooded Ocracoke College with greater than 3 toes of water. Gov. Roy Cooper has asked President Donald Trump to repeat the island a catastrophe condominium so federal funds is seemingly to be accessed.

News top stories daily news hot topics North Dakota

Mandan: Metropolis leaders are bearing in mind a proposal to solve an ongoing dispute about whether a Western-themed bar need to restful be allowed to avoid losing a mural in front of the building. The Bismarck Tribune stories Lonesome Dove’s art work and all other present murals would be permitted below the proposed ordinance, but new murals would want to be aware a a type of area of requirements. Lonesome Dove homeowners Brian Berube and August Kersten sued the metropolis over freedom of speech in Could also simply after they had been ordered to avoid losing the mural. The painting depicts the title of the bar collectively with a rearing horseman against brown hills at sundown. Attorney Robert Frommer, who's representing the Lonesome Dove, says the proposed initiative “raises valuable constitutional concerns.” Metropolis commissioners will vote on the proposal Oct. 1.

News top stories daily news hot topics Ohio

Columbus: Four transgender folks disturbing a relate rule preventing folks from changing the gender listings on their beginning certificates comprise won their day in court. U.S. District Courtroom Buy Michael Watson denied the relate’s interrogate that the lawsuit filed by the ACLU, Lambda Moral and the ACLU of Ohio be brushed off. The lawsuit contends the beginning certificates rule imposed by the relate Division of Effectively being and the Space of job of Very predominant Statistics is unconstitutional. Most states already enable such adjustments. Ohio and Tennessee are the final two to ban them. A federal lawsuit disturbing Tennessee’s rule changed into filed in April. Kansas ended a federal lawsuit there in June, when Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly struck a deal by agreeing to enable gender identification adjustments on Kansas beginning certificates.

News top stories daily news hot topics Oklahoma

Norman: The new intervening time president on the University of Oklahoma is condemning the employ of blackface after a pupil’s social media put up showed a white man with a unlit substance painted on his face. OU President Joe Harroz acknowledged in a assertion unhurried Sunday that whereas wearing blackface is racist, free speech protections seemingly prohibit him from doing away with the pupil from campus. The university newspaper OU Each day reported that the pupil acknowledged he changed into wearing a charcoal face cowl and had no racist intent. A community of unlit pupil leaders notified OU administrators regarding the put up Sunday. Two students withdrew from OU final twelve months after a video surfaced of a girl in blackface, and the university severed ties with a fraternity in 2015 after a racist chant changed into caught on video.

News top stories daily news hot topics Oregon

Bend: A university draw says a Pacific Northwest bat that migrates south for the cool weather faces a valuable chance from wind mills. The Bend Bulletin stories a draw by Oregon Dispute University-Cascades concludes that the hoary bat faces an unsure future because its numbers comprise declined by 2% per twelve months. A draw author, Tom Rodhouse, says bats is seemingly to be killed by collisions with propellers and by barotrauma, which occurs when bats circulation through low force zones created by spinning blades of a wind turbine. The sudden commerce in force causes bats’ lungs to make greater sooner than the bats can exhale, ensuing in burst vessels that possess their lungs with blood. Rodhouse says hoary bats in most cases circulation into peril zones because their delicate sonar capabilities can’t detect force drops.

News top stories daily news hot topics Pennsylvania

Harrisburg: The Dispute Police says it hopes to resume accumulating recordsdata early next twelve months on the shuffle of drivers whom troopers pull over after a recordsdata group reported the put collectively ended seven years ago. Highlight PA acknowledged Friday that the company stopped recording the shuffle of drivers in 2012. A relate police spokesman says the commerce changed into attributable to review indicating there wasn’t proof of racial disparities in traffic stops. Highlight PA says relate police tracked that recordsdata until the mid-1970s, then resumed in 2002. A 2004 anecdote chanced on there wasn’t constant proof drivers had been being stopped thanks to their shuffle or ethnicity. The draw additionally chanced on, alternatively, that there comprise been “racial, ethnic, and gender disparities” in how stopped motorists had been treated by troopers.

News top stories daily news hot topics Rhode Island

Providence: Federal justice officials negate the metropolis’s college district had failed its English learning pupil inhabitants for years. The Boston Globe stories it obtained a letter despatched to the metropolis by the Justice Division’s Civil Rights Division in 2018, declaring the district changed into developing English learning students “to fight and, too in most cases, to fail.” The letter says oldsters had been improperly immediate to waive their child’s good to English language purposes. After receiving the letter, the metropolis launched it changed into overhauling its purposes and hiring more teachers certified to educate those students. A metropolis spokeswoman declined to negate on the letter but referenced a settlement into which Providence entered with the Justice Division final twelve months to make sweeping adjustments and determine students immediate of language products and companies. The relate is taking regulate of the struggling district.

News top stories daily news hot topics South Carolina

Allendale: The relate’s smallest county is as soon as again breaking in a brand new leader, native son William Goodson. Allendale County has had to rent a brand new county supervisor about every three or four years in this century to this level. It’s laborious to avoid losing folks without family or other ties in a area without a Walmart and about an hour away from the closest movie theater or interstate highway. The roughly $72,000 salary, whereas appropriate for Allendale County, is about on par with the pay for running the parking department in Charleston. The county now has about 9,000 folks, shedding 14% of its inhabitants because the 2010 U.S. census. A half of-dozen 1950s-generation accommodations line U.S. Freeway 301 during the coronary heart of the county. As soon as the principle New York-to-Miami vacationer highway, it lost the holiday traffic decades ago after Interstate 95 opened two counties over.

News top stories daily news hot topics South Dakota

Expeditiously Metropolis: Dispute regulators will interrogate the Legislature to require greater financial ensures for oil and gas wells in accordance to a failed 40-effectively pure gas mission within the northwest segment of the relate. Dispute minerals and mining administrator Mike Lees says the the department will interrogate for adjustments to the bonding requirements when legislators meet again this cool weather. The Expeditiously Metropolis Journal stories his comments got right here final week throughout a gathering of the relate Board of Minerals and Atmosphere. Lees says the department will suggest that every oil and gas drillers be required to put up bonds of both $50,000 per effectively or a $100,000 blanket bond for an limitless amount of wells, without reference to depth.

News top stories daily news hot topics Tennessee

Nashville: The relate Division of Forestry has moved up its out of doorways burn enable beginning up date this tumble. Burn permits are in fact required to begin up all open-air out of doorways fires within 500 toes of any wooded area, grassland or woodland. Burn permits in most cases beginning up Oct. 15 and flee through Could also simply 15. Permits will be issued by phone or on-line, if stipulations enable. Tennesseans are encouraged to review native restrictions of their neighborhoods before conducting any burning process. In Brentwood, Nolensville and Spring Hill, fireplace officials comprise suspended issuing burn permits, citing “continual warmth and drought stipulations in Heart Tennessee.”

News top stories daily news hot topics Texas

Dallas: A white police officer who fatally shot a unlit neighbor in his comprise home changed into distracted by a phone name with a colleague with whom she’d been romantically eager, a prosecutor acknowledged Monday in the beginning up of the officer’s trial. Amber Guyger, 31, has acknowledged the shooting final twelve months happened after she entered the neighbor’s home one flooring up by mistake. She is on trial for the demise of 26-twelve months-faded Botham Jean, whom she acknowledged she mistook for an intruder in her comprise home. The case is being heard by a jury that perceived to comprise a majority of girls and folks of colour. Jean, an accountant from the Caribbean nation of St. Lucia, “changed into doing no hurt to anyone, which changed into his manner,” Dallas County Assistant District Attorney Jason Hermus acknowledged in a gap assertion. He famous Jean changed into in his lounge drinking a bowl of vanilla ice cream when Guyger entered.

News top stories daily news hot topics Utah

St. George: Municipal officials negate they are looking out for to reevaluate an ordinance that allowed banners for a homosexual pleasure competition to be hung from metropolis light posts. Banners in St. George for the Pride of Southern Utah competition Saturday comprise prompted a discussion of imaginable limits on signage hung from metropolis-owned property. The competition that drew quite a lot of of folks to the metropolis in southwest Utah additionally prompted on-line debates regarding the banners on St. George Boulevard. The discussion began after an email from Councilwoman Michele Randall pronouncing she changed into dim with the banners changed into posted on social media. Randall’s message says the metropolis council need to restful re-evaluate allowing “political statements” on municipal property. Mayor Jon Pike says the coverage that seemingly predates the hot council need to restful be reconsidered.

News top stories daily news hot topics Vermont

Brandon: The metropolis is drafting a legislation that will presumably well presumably restrict building within its river corridors. The Rutland Herald stories the back to the metropolis of Brandon would be that the community would pay less after a federal declared catastrophe. Ed Bove, of the Rutland Regional Planning Commission, says river corridors are the save the riverbeds tend to pass throughout or after storms. They're no longer to be at a loss for phrases with floodplains, which can presumably well presumably be the save water rises and inundates the condominium. He says the improvement restrictions for designated river corridors don’t entirely prohibit building, but what gets constructed into them desires to be designed a sure manner, and building permits need to restful be despatched to the relate for review. Some areas of Brandon are inclined to flooding.

News top stories daily news hot topics Virginia

Richmond: Penal advanced officials are unconstitutionally limiting public entry to executions within the relate by blockading witnesses from seeing sure steps within the process, four recordsdata organizations yell in a federal lawsuit filed Monday. The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Courtroom in Richmond alleges the department is violating the First Modification by the employ of curtains to block witnesses from seeing “needed steps” in accomplishing a deadly injection or electrocution – the 2 execution systems allowed below relate legislation. “These limits on witnesses’ skill to survey Virginia’s executions severely curtail the public’s skill to heed how those executions are administered, or to assess whether a explicit execution violates both the Structure or the relate’s prescribed execution procedures, or is otherwise botched,” the recordsdata organizations relate within the lawsuit.

News top stories daily news hot topics Washington

Olympia: New relate rules for promoting cattle are scheduled to lift create in October, rock climbing fees and nudging producers into the employ of USDA-permitted radio-frequency identification tags. The Capital Press stories ranchers who employ the “840” tags – a three-amount world code for the U.S. – will be ready to anecdote sales on-line to the relate Division of Agriculture. The department hopes the ease will motivate more cattlemen to make employ of the heed. The 840 tags enable animal-health officials to trace a cow from beginning to slaughter. The USDA intends to make 840 tags predominant by 2023. The federal company says monitoring every cow will restrict crippling change sanctions if a farm animals illness breaks out. The 840 tags and on-line reporting will be voluntary, for now.

News top stories daily news hot topics West Virginia

Charleston: A bill expected to be launched throughout the 2020 legislative session would possibly presumably well presumably give up greyhound racing within the relate. Info retail outlets anecdote Republican Senate President Mitch Carmichael launched an idea part Tuesday calling for an give as a lot as the put collectively. He’s now facing opposition from some relate delegates. The Parkersburg Info and Sentinel stories the casinos make video lottery funds of about $15 million annually to the West Virginia Lottery Commission. The lottery commission transfers the cash into purse accounts on the casinos and the racing commission. Carmichael says the cash subsidizes the greyhound change but is seemingly to be better invested in roads and education. Democratic Delegate Shawn Fluharty says ending greyhound racing would bag rid of as many as 1,700 jobs in West Virginia.

News top stories daily news hot topics Wisconsin

Madison: A community of lawmakers is introducing a bill that will presumably well presumably enable American Indians from anywhere within the US to pay resident tuition at University of Wisconsin Intention colleges. The bill’s chief sponsors, Democratic relate Earn. Slash Milroy, Republican Earn. Jeff Mursau and Democratic Sen. Jeff Smith, negate they hope the bill can aid more American Indians to back college in Wisconsin, amplify campus vary and aid as a step in direction of reconciliation after so many tribes lost their land within the 19th century. The bill’s chances are dusky. Aides for Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald didn’t straight away reply to emails inquiring regarding the measure’s potentialities.

News top stories daily news hot topics Wyoming

Gillette: An assault by hackers on a health group’s computer systems has compelled a sanatorium to raze some surgeries, give up admitting patients and transfer some fresh patients to other facilities. Campbell County Effectively being spokeswoman Karen Clarke acknowledged Saturday the Campbell County Memorial Clinic’s emergency room in Gillette is restful working, but the ransomware assault has made some patient care products and companies unavailable. Clarke acknowledged non-compulsory surgeries for Monday had been canceled, and other surgeries are being evaluated case-by-case. Campbell County Effectively being despatched stare Friday that every of its computer systems had been tormented by the assault. In a ransomware assault, hackers lift a computer machine hostage and save a matter to cash in change for restoring entry. Officials negate there would possibly be not any proof any patient recordsdata has been accessed or misused.

From USA TODAY Network and wire stories

Read or Part this epic: https://www.usatoday.com/epic/recordsdata/50-states/2019/09/24/coral-chance-woman-bites-camel-reagan-home-misfortune-recordsdata-round-states/40194799/

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The Special Counsel’s Job Is Done, but the Mueller Media Complex Roars On

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/the-special-counsels-job-is-done-but-the-mueller-media-complex-roars-on/

The Special Counsel’s Job Is Done, but the Mueller Media Complex Roars On

In mid-July, four months after Robert Mueller delivered his investigative findings to the attorney general, a podcast called “The Report” aired its very first episode. You might have thought that after two and half years of obsessive coverage another voice in the media din would have a hard time finding an audience.

You would be mistaken.

Story Continued Below

The 39-minute podcast—a deep-dive on the minutiae of the special counsel’s much debated 448-page work on the Russia probe, complete with dramatic narration, ominous sound effects and carefully-enunciated foreign names—was an instant online hit. Goosed along by a Rachel Maddow mention and by diehard fans of its makers at Lawfare, a wonky online repository for national security and intelligence news, the podcast racked up 300,000 downloads. With another dozen or so episodes still in the pipeline, the producers of “The Report” see their work’s popularity as proof that despite the president’s proclamation Mueller cleared him of committing any crimes while in office, Americans are nowhere near ready to declare “case closed.”

“They’re not sick of talking about it, and I can show you the numbers to prove it to you,” Susan Hennessey, a Lawfare executive editor and the main narrator of “The Report,” said the day after the former special counsel delivered his terse and undramatic testimony to Congress.

“The Report” is but one example of a little remarked phenomenon of the Russia scandal: While the special counsel’s office has shut down and the boss himself has returned to life as a private citizen, the universe of pundits, podcasts, journalists and others focused on Mueller’s work has continued to expand.

On top of the major networks and dominant national newspapers, all of which have seen their audiences grow substantially since 2017, there are more than a dozen podcasts that have emerged to pore over the Mueller saga and Russian election meddling. Mueller’s report is still selling well too: a version published by theWashington Posthas been on theNew York Times’ best-seller list for 15 weeks even though it’s available for free online. And you can expect, in the coming weeks, more details about a miniseries adaptation of James Comey’s memoir,A Higher Loyalty, which told the story of the former FBI director whose firing by Trump led directly to Mueller’s commission. And Bob Woodward himself is eyeing a second book on the Trump era that looks “deeply into all of these issues direct and indirect,” he told POLITICO.

Call it the Mueller Media Complex, and it thrives despite the former special counsel’s admonition that all the answers are contained in the report.

All the ingredients exist for this hydra to keep on growing too: Trump’s constant tweets invoking the Russia investigation, a daily drumbeat of “will they or won’t they?” impeachment chatter in Congress, lawsuits and testimony that promise to keep dredging up details out of the special counsel’s report, a Roger Stone trial this fall in Washington D.C. and warnings from Mueller himself that some of the same forms of foreign sabotage are happening again in 2020.

Just hours after Mueller completed his doubleheader appearances before Congress last month, “The Asset,” another popular podcast that could only be made in the Trump era, taped a special edition of its show at a bar just blocks from the Capitol. About a hundred people downed free cocktails while watching the live panel discussion, which included former agents from the FBI and CIA trying to put the special counsel’s low-key testimony into larger context. The hosts were also eager to promote their show’s 12-part series, which was winding down after a three-month run of weekly episodes drawing connections between Trump’s business dealings, Russia and the Mueller investigation.

“I feel there’s a huge appetite for more information about this, for more stories to be told and hopefully at some point in time to reach a satisfying conclusion that is more definitive than where we are right now,” Paul Woodhull, producer of “The Asset,” which is affiliated with the left-leaning Center for American Progress’s lobbying arm, told me.

That House Democrats are eyeing impeachment “breathes a lot of life into this” because of the prospect more could still be learned if Congress is able to get its hands on an unredacted copy of the Mueller report, Woodhull explained. The podcast’s funders are weighing whether to green light a second season, Woodhull added. “I can say I’m aggressively lobbying for it.”

***

As Bob Woodward’s career demonstrates, every major scandal since Watergate—even some outside of Washington politics—has seen large media ecosystems build up around it. Each is also frequently a reflection of the technology of their times: Think of the print investigative reporters who helped take down Richard Nixon, the cable TV legal analysts like Jeffrey Toobin and Greta Van Susteren who made names for themselves during O.J. Simpson’s murder trial, or how the brand new Drudge Report website scooped Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff to reveal Bill Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

The Russia investigation may be remembered as the probe built perfectly for the podcasts. Sure, long-form audio shows have been around since the tail end of the George W. Bush presidency. But here during the rise of Trump more than a dozen programs have taken form with roots in discussing the shenanigans of 2016—and what’s happened since. All political perspectives are available, like the “Special Prosecutor with Larry Klayman” show where the founder of the conservative group Judicial Watch gets introduced to the sound of helicopters flying overhead and then frequently uses his airtime to impugn the Russia probe’s origins. Over on “Mueller, She Wrote,” which features three Southern California female comedians, one of the more popular segments is called “fantasy indictment draft.”

“Everyone owes Robert Mueller a dinner or something for all of this, at the very least,” said Chris Bannon, chief content officer at Stitcher, a free online radio service that hosts many of the aforementioned Mueller-themed podcasts, including “The Mueller Report: A Radio Dramatization” and “Stay Tuned with Preet,” a talk show hosted by the former U.S. attorney from the Southern District of New York that covers a cross section of topics but often returns to the special counsel’s work. Bannon explained that the Russia probe has lent itself so well to the medium because of its complexity—and the interest of listeners who want to hear it all pieced together.

“It’s the reasonable voices talking in a room together,” he said.

Isikoff, now chief investigative correspondent at Yahoo! News and host of two podcasts with ties to the 2016 election, said the range of new online audio shows related to Trump and Russia “are a natural marriage of a new medium with the hot story of the day.”

“It’s not a surprise that there’d be so many podcasts that’d revolve around the events of Trump’s presidency. It’s the dominant news story of the era and podcasts are the increasingly dominant way in which we get our news,” he said.

The Russia probe has meant new career options for scores of former federal prosecutors and others with backgrounds in national security and law enforcement. Several signed lucrative contracts with cable networks eager to have their own on-call analysts. Many had spoken up first in print news accounts and via their own extensive Twitter threads, where they pitched their services to a confused public eager to make sense of the most arcane legal maneuvers.

“I think it’s safe to say this is a moment in which there has been more interest in legal analysis than there has ever been in my lifetime,” said Renato Mariotti, a former assistant U.S. attorney from Chicago who said he had fewer than 100 Twitter followers when the Mueller probe launched but has parlayed his expertise into a CNN analyst contract, a podcast and a recurring column in POLITICO Magazine. His Twitter followers now exceed 200,000.

“For someone like me it was an opportunity. It allowed me to present facts and analysis to a lot of people and it spread very quickly,” he said.

The same went for Lawfare, a side project of the non-profit Brookings Institution that for years had been a backwater venue for detailed policy conversations about everything from government surveillance to terrorism and cybersecurity. Then came Russian election meddling, and its top editor Benjamin Wittes often responded to big Mueller media revelations by posting on Twitter short videos of a miniature cannon explosion. The website published hundreds of Mueller items, including a real-time dissection of the Trump campaign’s 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer who approached Donald Trump Jr. offering dirt about Clinton. Thanks to the Russia investigation, the web site has seen its traffic surge at exponential rates and boasts of about 15 million page views combined for 2017 and 2018.

“We have all been very surprised at the degree to which this giant new audience has shown up at our door wanting to participate in that conversation,” Wittes said. “Yeah, it crept up on us except there was nothing subtle about it…It hit us over the head like a sledge-hammer.”

Mueller media coverage hit its peak in 2019 as the probe came to an end. But even the end didn’t feel particularly final, what with the debate over Attorney General William Barr’s summary, Mueller’s subsequent press conference about Barr’s summary, and then seven hours of House hearings. The long goodbye drove coverage through the roof.

Nearly 5.6 percent of MSNBC’s total airtime this year through early August was devoted to the special counsel, according to data compiled by the TV News Archive. The online research outfit, which measures closed-caption mentions in 15-second intervals for the three major cable networks, also found that 4.5 percent of CNN’s coverage and 2.9 percent of the FOX airtime covered Mueller so far this year. For all of the networks, that’s more than a two-fold increase compared with the attention they each gave to the topic during the second half of 2017 when the Russia investigation first got rolling.

***

Mueller beat reporters are donewith their courthouse stakeouts. Patriot Plaza, the southwest D.C. office complex where the special counsel and his team of lawyers and FBI agents were housed, has returned to bureaucratic anonymity.

But that doesn’t mean the media ecosystem is dying. In fact, it’s just changing shape, or at least location.

Lawmakers are actually getting help from some of the people who played featured roles in the media’s coverage. One of the House Judiciary panel’s senior attorneys is Norm Eisen, the former top Obama White House ethics official who early in the Trump era was a frequent CNN pundit and while at his previous perch at the Brookings Institution co-authored an extensive analysis about why the president obstructed justice. It’s a similar story over on the House Intelligence Committee, which started the year by hiring Daniel Goldman, a former federal prosecutor and MSNBC analyst to lead the panel’s investigations, and Diana Pilipenko, a money laundering and sanctions expert who had been part of the Center for American Progress’s Moscow Project that’s dedicated to digging on Trump’s financial ties to Russia.

More opportunities may hinge on impeachment and the Democratic congressional investigations, and whether anyone can turn up stones that the special counsel didn’t already publicize. Some of the people who have established brands around Mueller say they have no trouble shifting to other topics of expertise.

“As long as people keep listening we’ll keep putting the content out,” said A.G., the host of “Mueller, She Wrote,” which she launched in late 2017 and now has 1 million monthly downloads, advertisers and a live road show selling $30-tickets to deep-blue audiences in Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle and Boston.

The San Diego comedian, who doesn’t use her real name because she also has a day job in the federal executive branch, recently launched a second podcast called “The Daily Beans” talking through the news headlines. “It wasn’t supposed to be a forever situation,” she said of the “Mueller, She Wrote” persona. “It’s kind of up in the air, just like our democracy is.”

Most of the big shows are also up in the air. But they’re not coming in for a landing anytime soon.

“We’re talking about that right now,” Isikoff said of ConspiracyLand, the six-episode podcast he hosted that examined the unsolved 2016 murder of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich in Washington D.C. The show has garnered nearly 1 million listeners. “It’s really hit a nerve out there,” he said.

Chuck Rosenberg, a former head of the Drug Enforcement Agency and ex-FBI staffer under both Mueller and Comey, launched a podcast in April with 10 episodes logged as of the end of July. It features in-depth biographical interviews with several of the top national security and law enforcement officials at the center of the Russia probe, including Comey, former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, former FBI acting director Andrew McCabe, former FBI general counsel James Baker and former Obama White House homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco. Rosenberg is now working on a second season for the podcast, scheduled to begin again in early to mid-September, and he’s also continuing to do on-air work as a legal analyst with MSNBC.

And some members of this robust ecosystem are in it, whether they like it or not.

Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor andNational Reviewcolumnist who kicked off his own podcast around June 2018, said he expected to keep talking about issues including Mueller, impeachment, Democratic lawsuits to enforce the emoluments clause of the Constitution and trying to gain access to Trump’s tax returns.

“I don’t say that with any great joy. I think it’d be better if we actually moved onto what is going to happen in the country after 2020,” said McCarthy, a FOX commentator dating to the George W. Bush administration. “If that meant my little piece of the industrial complex had to fade away, I would be OK with that.”

Broadway and Hollywood have had their roles to play as well.

A celebrity cast reading in New York last month featuring Kevin Kline playing Mueller and John Lithgow in the role of Trump has gotten more than 3 million online views, and a tool kit explaining how to mount a live production including a free version of the script written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Robert Schenkkan has been downloaded more than 13,000 times. Hundreds of local groups, many of them chapters of the pro-impeachment group Indivisible, are already planning their own readings.

Details on any Hollywood productions dealing with Mueller or the 2016 campaign remain under wraps, though several sources with ties back to the entertainment world say they’ve been privy to discussions on film projects about the Russia investigation. Given the lack of an actual ending to the overall Trump story and studio squeamishness about getting into the president’s crosshairs, it could be years before anything memorable gets made about the Mueller probe. Just look at the late-blooming interest in the Clinton impeachment: the Slate podcast “Slow Burn” didn’t come out until last year, and a new Monica Lewinsky-produced season of American Crime Story is set to air next fall on the FX network.

“I think that there’s endless potential and that I think what has unfolded as a matter of fact is infinitely more fascinating than what fiction writers could have thought of two years ago,” said Eric Schultz, the former Obama White House deputy press secretary who consulted on the recent Netflix reboot of the presidential television drama “Designated Survivor.” For starters, he called the FBI’s pre-dawn raid in the summer of 2017 on former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s Alexandria, Virginia, condominium “a scene that writes itself.”

“It felt incredibly cinematic throughout the course of the investigation, the revelatory nature of how it unfolded,” Schultz added. “In terms of the chronology of the underlying facts and how we learned them I think would make a lot of Hollywood writers jealous. It’s powerful raw material and can certainly translate on screen.”

For now, it’s up in the air who, if anyone will emerge as the next Woodward or Isikoff—a name brand forever linked back to the 2016 campaign, Trump and the Russia investigation. Mueller himself won’t ever be a talking head. He’s made that abundantly clear. But could one of his deputies emerge in that role?

So far, no one who worked on the special counsel probe is talking publicly about their work, though a memoir from former prosecutor Andrew Weissmann is reportedly coming. Whether Weissmann would ever migrate from the cloistered realm of the prosecutor into the noisy media world remains unknown. Back in April, while sitting in the D.C. federal courthouse cafeteria, POLITICO asked him whether he’d consider breaking the special counsel office’s well-documented silence to opine publicly the next time there’s a major presidential scandal.

He replied, “God help us.”

#Complex #Foreign #Politics #Roars

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