07 November 19
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07 November 19
Richard Wolffe, Guardian UK
Wolffe writes: "In every good disaster movie, we get to meet the easily dispensable character: someone who mixes just enough stupidity with just enough mediocrity to be cannon fodder for the impending calamity."
Sondland, 62, declined through an attorney to comment. But his wife, Katherine Durant, criticized coverage of her husband, saying in an interview that only those motivated by self-interest were speaking. Durant has mostly remained in Portland during Sondland’s posting abroad, she said, helping to run the hotel business he founded. She said she fears an economic backlash against the hotel company. Already a prominent local company has cut ties with Provenance Hotels, and a Democratic congressman, Earl Blumenauer, has called for a boycott until Sondland cooperates fully in the impeachment inquiry.
Attorney General William P. Barr, left, and President Trump before Trump signed an executive order on Oct. 28 creating a commission to study law enforcement and justice at the International Association of Chiefs of Police Convention. (photo: Charles Rex Arbogast/AP)
Matt Zapotosky, Josh Dawsey and Carol D. Leonnig, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "President Trump wanted Attorney General William P. Barr to hold a news conference declaring that the commander in chief had broken no laws during a phone call in which he pressed his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate a political rival, though Barr ultimately declined to do so, people familiar with the matter said."
The department — and Barr in particular — has similarly sought separation from Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer who was leading the effort to investigate the Bidens.
In addition to asserting that Barr and Trump had never discussed investigating the Bidens, Kupec said in her statement that the attorney general had not “discussed this matter, or anything relating to Ukraine, with Rudy Giuliani.” Barr’s allies had previously confided to reporters that the attorney general was unhappy with Giuliani, particularly over his going outside of normal channels to pursue investigations of interest to the president.
Last month, after the department arrested two Giuliani associates who had worked on investigating the Bidens’ activities in Ukraine, the New York Times reported that Giuliani had participated in a meeting about a separate case with Brian A. Benczkowski, the head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, and lawyers in the department’s fraud section.
The day after that report, the department issued an unusual statement saying those in the meeting were unaware of the case that led to charges against Giuliani’s associates for alleged campaign finance violations. Giuliani also is being investigated as a part of the case, though he has said he has not been told of that.
“When Mr. Benczkowski and fraud section lawyers met with Mr. Giuliani, they were not aware of any investigation of Mr. Giuliani’s associates in the Southern District of New York and would not have met with him had they known,” Peter Carr, a department spokesman, told the Times.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before the House Financial Services Committee on Oct. 23, 2019. (photo: Aurora Samperio)
Olivia Solon and Cyrus Farivar, NBC News
Excerpt: "A cache of leaked Facebook documents shows how the company's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, oversaw plans to consolidate the social network's power and control competitors by treating its users' data as a bargaining chip. The documents were obtained and are being published by NBC News."
This trove comprises approximately 7,000 pages in total, of which about 4,000 are internal Facebook communications such as emails, web chats, notes, presentations and spreadsheets, primarily from 2011 to 2015. About 1,200 pages are marked as "highly confidential."
Taken together, they show how Zuckerberg, along with his board and management team, found ways to tap Facebook users' data — including information about friends, relationships and photos — as leverage over the companies it partnered with. In some cases, Facebook would reward partners by giving them preferential access to certain types of user data while denying the same access to rival companies.
For example, Facebook gave Amazon special access to user data because it was spending money on Facebook advertising. In another case the messaging app MessageMe was cut off from access to data because it had grown too popular and could compete with Facebook.
All the while, Facebook planned to publicly frame these moves as a way to protect user privacy, the documents show.
State and federal authorities are now closely scrutinizing Facebook's business practices. In October, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced that 47 attorneys general from states and U.S. territories plan to take part in a New York-led antitrust probe into Facebook. Over the summer, the House Judiciary Committee held hearings over antitrust concerns in Silicon Valley while the Federal Trade Commission also continues to examine the firm's practices.
The documents, which NBC News first received and reported on in April, originate from a years-old lawsuit pending in state court in San Mateo County, California. In addition to internal communications, they include depositions from Facebook employees and expert witnesses (parts of which are missing) and other court filings. They remain under protective order in the civil lawsuit known as Six4Three v. Facebook.
Historically, women have needed to be convinced to enter politics. But since the 2016 presidential election, thousands of women announced their plans to run for public office. (photo: ELLE)
For Justice Democrats, First There Was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Now, There's Jessica Cisneros.
Madison Feller, ELLE
Excerpt: "In 2018, it was impossible to ignore Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The first-time candidate won against an influential incumbent Democrat, becoming the youngest Congresswoman ever and solidifying the power of Justice Democrats, the progressive organization that recruited her."
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Black people with complex medical needs were less likely than equally ill white people to be referred to programs that provide more personalized care. (photo: Ed Kashi/Redux)
Madison Feller, ELLE
Excerpt: "In 2018, it was impossible to ignore Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The first-time candidate won against an influential incumbent Democrat, becoming the youngest Congresswoman ever and solidifying the power of Justice Democrats, the progressive organization that recruited her."
In 2018, it was impossible to ignore Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The first-time candidate won against an influential incumbent Democrat, becoming the youngest Congresswoman ever and solidifying the power of Justice Democrats, the progressive organization that recruited her.
Now, for 2020, Justice Democrats has introduced a new slate of candidates, including Jessica Cisneros, the 26-year-old whose race has often been compared to Ocasio-Cortez's, even though hers took place in the solidly blue Bronx. Cisneros, on the other hand, is running in Texas's 28th congressional district, going up against eight-term incumbent Rep. Henry Cuellar in the state's March 3rd primary. (Cisneros once interned for Cuellar but was shocked by his voting record; she now calls him "Trump’s favorite Democrat.") If she wins, she'll eclipse AOC for the title of youngest Congresswoman. Here, why she decided to run.
If you take time to get to know @JCisnerosTX, you’ll understand how important her voice would be to Congress.
Back in the day I used to organize &work w families in her community. This South Texas district is quite close to my heart.
Check out her story:
1,272 people are talking about this
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Black people with complex medical needs were less likely than equally ill white people to be referred to programs that provide more personalized care. (photo: Ed Kashi/Redux)
Heidi Ledford, Nature Research
Ledford writes: "An algorithm widely used in US hospitals to allocate health care to patients has been systematically discriminating against black people, a sweeping analysis has found."
The researchers found that the algorithm assigned risk scores to patients on the basis of total health-care costs accrued in one year. They say that this assumption might have seemed reasonable because higher health-care costs are generally associated with greater health needs. The average black person in the data set that the scientists used had similar overall health-care costs to the average white person.
But a closer look at the data revealed that the average black person was also substantially sicker than the average white person, with a greater prevalence of conditions such as diabetes, anaemia, kidney failure and high blood pressure. Taken together, the data showed that the care provided to black people cost an average of US$1,800 less per year than the care given to a white person with the same number of chronic health problems.
The scientists speculate that this reduced access to care is due to the effects of systemic racism, ranging from distrust of the health-care system to direct racial discrimination by health-care providers.
Two former employees of Twitter are charged with spying for Saudi Arabia by accessing information in private accounts. (photo: Mike Blake/Reuters)
2 Former Twitter Employees Charged With Spying on Saudi Dissidents for Saudi Crown Prince MBS
Richard Gonzales, NPR
Gonzales writes: "Two former employees of Twitter were charged with spying for Saudi Arabia by snooping into thousands of private accounts seeking personal information about critics of the Riyadh government, according to court documents filed Wednesday in San Francisco."
Richard Gonzales, NPR
Gonzales writes: "Two former employees of Twitter were charged with spying for Saudi Arabia by snooping into thousands of private accounts seeking personal information about critics of the Riyadh government, according to court documents filed Wednesday in San Francisco."
The case represents the first time that federal prosecutors have charged Saudis with deploying agents inside the United States, reports The New York Times.
Ahmad Abouammo, a U.S. citizen, was a media partnerships manager at Twitter who was not authorized to access Twitter users' private information. He allegedly did exactly that, for which he received payments of up to $300,000 from a Saudi source identified in the complaint only as "Foreign Official-1." Abouammo also received a Hublot watch with a value of about $20,000.
Last year, Abouammo was interviewed in his home by the FBI about the watch and the payments he had received. According to the complaint, during the interview he created a false invoice on his home computer to try to justify the payments as compensation for media consulting he said totaled no more than $100,000.
Abouammo is charged with acting as a foreign agent and falsifying records to obstruct a federal investigation.
Ali Alzabarah, a Saudi citizen, worked at Twitter beginning in August 2013 as a "site reliability engineer."
Between May 21, 2015, and Nov. 18, 2015, Alzabarah, without authorization, accessed "the Twitter data of over 6,000 Twitter users, including at least 33 usernames for which Saudi Arabian law enforcement had submitted emergency disclosure requests to Twitter," the complaint said. Among the accounts he accessed were those belonging to well-known critics of the Saudi government.
"One of those accounts belonged to a prominent dissident, Omar Abdulaziz, who later became close to Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist who advocated for free expression in the Arab world," according to The Washington Post.
After being confronted by his superiors at Twitter, Alzabarah claimed that he had looked at the data out of curiosity. He left the Twitter building in San Francisco on Dec. 2, 2015. The following day he submitted his resignation in an email while en route back to Saudi Arabia, according to the complaint.
A third man, Ahmed Almutairi, aka Ahmed Aljbreen, was also charged with spying. He is a Saudi citizen described in the complaint as a principal in a social media marketing company that works for the Saudi royal family. As an alleged intermediary between Saudi officials and the former Twitter employees, he is believed to be in Saudi Arabia working with Alzabarah on social media projects "for the benefit of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia," according to the complaint.
Twitter, in a statement, said it is aware that "bad actors" will try to undermine its service and that the company "limits access to sensitive account information to a limited group of trained and vetted employees."
"We understand the incredible risks faced by many who use Twitter to share their perspectives with the world and to hold those in power accountable," the company added. "We have tools in place to protect their privacy and their ability to do their vital work."
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Coal-fired power plant. (photo: Chris LeBoutillier/Pexels)
Coal Plants Get a Pass to Pollute Our Waterways
National Resource Defense Council, EcoWatch
Excerpt: "The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Monday proposed to roll back safeguards that keep one of the nation's biggest industrial polluters - coal-burning power plants - from discharging harmful substances into the nation's waterways."
National Resource Defense Council, EcoWatch
Excerpt: "The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Monday proposed to roll back safeguards that keep one of the nation's biggest industrial polluters - coal-burning power plants - from discharging harmful substances into the nation's waterways."
Power plants alone are responsible for 30 percent of all toxic pollution dumped into surface waters.
"These two measures are the latest example of the Trump administration rewarding polluters at the expense of all of us who rely on clean water," said Jon Devine, director of federal water policy at NRDC.
"The EPA's proposal would expose millions of people to a toxic brew of mercury, arsenic, lead and selenium — pollutants that can cause neurological disorders and cardiovascular disease and increase the risk of cancer," Devine continued, referring to the agency's move to undermine the 2015 requirements under the Effluent Limitation Guidelines, which set pollution limits for discharges from power plants. These water pollution standards control the amount of heavy metals, nutrients and other pollutants that coal-fired power plants may discharge into our nation's rivers, lakes and bays. In 2017, under President Trump, the adoption of the 2015 requirements were delayed by the EPA.
Also alarming is the agency's proposed rollback of a rule that stopped power plants from transporting and storing dirty coal ash waste by first diluting it in water and then storing it in risky, unlined waste ponds, which can spill and leak, affecting nearby communities.
"Coal ash dumps are already leaking toxic pollution into our groundwater supplies across the country," said Becky Hammer, deputy director of federal water policy at NRDC. "As the dangerous spills in Tennessee and North Carolina dramatically demonstrate, these toxic dumps are contaminating our communities and harming our health. Allowing them to stay open risks causing serious harm to public health, particularly in low-income communities and communities of color."
"These dangerous attacks on the environment and our public health cannot be allowed to stand," Devine said.
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