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🇺🇸 **Mexico analyzing U.S. proposal on deportation funding**
🇲🇽 *Reuters* - <https://archive.fo/ShuRz>
Mexico’s government said on Thursday that it was analyzing a proposal from the U.S. State Department to help fund the deportation of migrants from Mexico.
The New York Times reported here on Thursday that President Donald Trump's administration told Congress that it intended to use $20 million of foreign aid to help Mexico deport thousands of people.
In a joint statement, Mexico’s Interior and Foreign Ministries said they had not accepted the proposal in either a “verbal or written” way.
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🇺🇸 **Agencies scramble to prep Russia probe files for release after sweeping Trump order**
*FOX News* - <http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/09/18/agencies-scramble-to-prep-russia-probe-files-for-release-after-sweeping-trump-order.html>
Trump ordered declassified involve a renewed Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant against former campaign aide Carter Page and text messages from disgraced former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.
Republicans on Capitol Hill, including House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., are touting the president’s order, saying it covers “pretty much everything that he wanted…and the text messages are a bonus,” a source said of Nunes.
The president also ordered the release of unredacted text messages from fired FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok, former FBI counsel Lisa Page, former FBI Director James Comey and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
🇺🇸 **Project Veritas Releases 'Deep State Unmasked' Video: 'Resist Everything. Every Level. F*** S*** Up'**
*Daily Wire* - <http://archive.fo/ICKYR>
James O'Keefe's Project Veritas has released their first dose of undercover footage allegedly revealing the shadowy actors of the "deep state." In Tuesday's footage, an employee of the State Department and a member of the Metro DC Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) admits to working on DSA work while on the clock and makes it clear that his goal is to "resist everything" at "every level."
State Department employee Stuart Karaffa tells undercover Project Veritas reporters that he drafts communication for his DSA activism on the taxpayers' dime, though he's careful not to leave a "paper trail."
"I'm careful about it," he says in the footage. "I don’t leave a paper trail, like I leave emails, and like any press s*** that comes up I leave that until after 5:30. But as soon as 5:31 hits, got my, like, draft messages ready to send out."
Karaffa also boasts about assisting the DSA by monitoring Virginia campaign finance and election news while on the clock.
"You could put two and two together probably," says the State Department employee. "So with web traffic, I mean I could make the case before a court of law that — I’m going to the Virginia sort of, campaign finance website — that I’m just interested in what people are doing politically. But if they also go and look at like DSA minutes and like Officer positions they’ll be like, 'That’s weird, you were the co-chair of the electoral caucus, and you spent three hours on a Virginia campaign finance website.'"
"Maybe someday I’ll go to board of elections jail, probably not," Karaffa scoffs. It's unlikely, he explains, because of the weak oversight and strong protection for firing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXLuqQe8DqQ
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🇺🇸 **Brett Kavanaugh Accuser’s Classmate Retracts Claim ‘Incident Did Happen’**
*Breitbart* <https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/09/20/brett-kavanaugh-accusers-classmate-retracts-claim-incident-did-happen/>
She had no idea that she'd have to go into specifics and defend allegations, then have face plastered all over MSNBC & Twitter.
🇺🇸 **Justice Dept. examining whether employee violated ethics rules**
*The Washington Post* - <https://archive.fo/4fiEv>
Justice Department officials said Wednesday that they are examining claims in a surreptitiously recorded video that a junior agency employee may have used government resources to help further her political protest activities.
Allison Hrabar, a paralegal in the Justice Department’s antitrust division, was recorded during her participation in Democratic Socialists of America activities, in which she discussed her efforts to find the home addresses of a target of one of the group’s protests.
The recordings were made by Project Veritas, an activist group led by James O’Keefe that uses deceptive tactics to secretly record conversations in an effort to embarrass its targets. The group released a video Wednesday that included clips of Hrabar talking about her activities for DSA. The video also featured a former Department of Health and Human Services worker saying that she sometimes received advance word of policy decisions being made by the Trump administration.
In June, Hrabar participated in a protest against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen as she ate at a D.C. restaurant. Months earlier, Hrabar was part of a protest at the home of a lobbyist for a private prison company.
Another snippet in the video shows her saying: “What’s kind of lucky is at the DOJ, we can’t really get fired.”
Federal employees can be fired, though the process is often difficult and drawn out.
If Hrabar used government access to research databases to inform her protest activities, that would be a violation of federal law prohibiting federal employees from using government resources to engage in political advocacy.
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‼ ⚠ **Captain Kirk JT revealed to be a homosexual from scientific measurements**
The owner of famous alt- right white supremacist 4Chan hate server Outer Heaven has been recently unveiled to be a homosexual according to scientifc research by a joint research team of Harvard and MIT graduates.
According to a report by the scientists, Captain Kirk JT holds the current record for having the highest nlgga and gay levels in all of humanity. While surveying gay levels of the U.S. population, the researchers observed extremely high homosexuality levels eminating from the cellar of an East Los Angelos Kentucky Fried Chicken.
The owner of the KFC in question seemingly had no idea Kirk was living on site, as they had never gone into the cellar except for one time in 2007 when a customer was reportedly robbed, murdered, and raped in that order by Tyrone Niggeus Watermelon III Jr.
After the many years of Kirk radiating homosexuality from the cellar, the chicken used in KFC was infected with gay- which the team of researchers link to a record high estrogen level increase in men living in California, particularly African Americans.
Captain Kirk JT has been removed from the premises and will be kept in a maximum security lead-lined cell. Further tests will be conducted in Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, and even parts of Utah and Idaho to confirm whether Captain Kirk's homosexuality has spread to any surrounding states,
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🇮🇱 **America 'One Of 45 Countries' Infected By Uber-Powerful Israeli Smartphone Spyware**
🇺🇸 *Forbes* - <https://archive.is/UBlm6>
Some of the world’s most sophisticated Android and iPhone spyware has been found floating around America for the first time. It's one of as many as 45 countries in which NSO Group malware was uncovered. And together they may represent breaches of American and other nations' computer crime laws against cross-border hacking, not to mention a severe concern for citizens’ privacy, according to the researchers who uncovered the professional spy software.
The malware of concern, dubbed Pegasus, is the creation of NSO Group, an Israeli company valued at close to $1 billion. It can hide on Apple or Google devices, spying via the camera, listening in on conversations through the microphone, stealing documents and siphoning off once-private messages, amongst other surreptitious activities.
Now it seems infections of NSO’s Pegasus tool have metastasized across more nations than previously believed. In a report released Tuesday, researchers from Citizen Lab, based out of the University of Toronto, claimed Pegasus had spread its wings in as many as 45 countries. Previously, Citizen Lab told Forbes it had evidence of as many as 174 individual infections across Android and iOS phones.
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@amsalem did you do this
🇺🇸 **Republicans Reclaim Seat Not Held in 139 Years**
*FOXNEWS* - <http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018/09/21/newt-gingrich-texas-offers-blueprint-for-red-wave-election-in-november.html>
Blue wave in November? More like red tidal wave.
"You may not have read about this GOP victory, because the liberal national media is not exactly excited to report that Republicans reclaimed a seat they had not held in 139 years."
"…this victory is even more frightening because the district is 73 percent African-American and Hispanic."
🇹🇼 **3-D printed gun crusader Cody Wilson arrested in Taiwan on sexual assault charge**
🇺🇸 *LA Times* - <https://archive.fo/ZlFpv>
Taiwan authorities have arrested and jailed the owner of a Texas company that sells blueprints for untraceable 3D-printed guns and who is wanted on suspicion of sex with a minor, a National Immigration Agency spokesman said.
The agency said it arrested Cody R. Wilson on Friday at a Taipei hotel after the U.S. government voided his passport.
Taiwan immigration officials now are “negotiating” with the de facto American embassy in Taipei on how to proceed on deporting Wilson to the United States, a spokesman for the agency said.
Because Wilson’s passport is now invalid, he has no “legal basis” to stay in Taiwan under local laws, the agency said in a statement.
Washington and Taipei do not have an extradition treaty that would facilitate a deportation, but the two governments do cooperate on security issues and U.S. relations with Taiwan have improved under President Trump.
“Our agency will coordinate with the American Institute in Taiwan (de facto embassy) to arrange for the travel documents to be issued as soon as possible and arrange for his return to his country as soon as possible in an appropriate manner,” the statement said.
It’s unclear why Wilson came to Taiwan.
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🇺🇸 **White House Drafts Antitrust Order to Investigate Google and Facebook's Business Practices**
*Time/Bloomberg* - <https://archive.fo/XLNlQ>
The White House has drafted an executive order for President Donald Trump’s signature that would instruct federal antitrust and law enforcement agencies to open investigations into the business practices of Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Facebook Inc. and other social media companies.
The order is in its preliminary stages and hasn’t yet been run past other government agencies, according to a White House official. Bloomberg News obtained a draft of the order.
The document instructs U.S. antitrust authorities to “thoroughly investigate whether any online platform has acted in violation of the antitrust laws.” It instructs other government agencies to recommend within a month after it’s signed actions that could potentially “protect competition among online platforms and address online platform bias.”
The document doesn’t name any specific companies. If signed, the order would represent a significant escalation of Trump’s antipathy toward Google, Facebook, Twitter and other social media companies, whom he has publicly accused of silencing conservative voices and news sources online.
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Good
🇺🇸 **New Yorker: Brett Kavanaugh Exposed Himself at Freshman Party; Kavanaugh Denies**
*Breitbart* - <https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/09/23/new-yorker-brett-kavanaugh-exposed-himself-at-freshman-party-kavanaugh-denies/>
The New Yorker reported a new accusation Sunday evening against Judge Brett Kavanaugh: that as a college freshman at Yale University, a drunken Kavanaugh “exposed himself at a drunken dormitory party,” and that when she tried to push him away in her drunken condition she accidently touched his penis.
Legend says they come in pairs
everyone said this was coing
lmao
🇮🇷 🇺🇸 🇮🇱 **Iran warns U.S, Israel to expect a 'devastating' revenge: state TV**
*Reuters* - <https://archive.fo/JIfxU>
The deputy head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards warned U.S. and Israeli leaders on Monday to expect a “devastating” response from Iran, accusing them of involvement in Saturday’s attack on a military parade in the city of Ahvaz that killed 25 people.
“You have seen our revenge before ... You will see that our response will be crushing and devastating and you will regret what you have done,” Hossein Salami said in a speech before the funeral of the victims in Ahvaz, broadcast live on the state television.
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🇺🇸 **Rosenstein Resigning?**
*Axios* - <https://www.axios.com/rod-rosenstein-resign-justice-department-trump-cf761f4c-fca3-4794-92d4-a56c9e32ff43.html>
Rosenstein resigning or on his way to be fired this Monday morning, mixed reports.
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^false reports,it was a regularly schedualed meeting between him and the chef of staff.
YUP, we been bamboozled, the media jumped the gun, fgts in the media reporting different variations too of him resigning or fired, was a total shit show and then some.
🇺🇸 **Axios Issues Critical "Clarification" To Rosenstein Resignation Report**
*Zero Hedge/Axios* - <https://archive.fo/AOPo6>
Jonathan Swan, the Axios reporter who initially broke the news this morning that Rod Rosenstein had "verbally resigned" and subsequently triggered a drop in the Dow that erased billions of dollars in value, has issued an important "clarification" that - as fate would have it - changes the story from a major news-cycle-dominating revelation to a barely noteworthy tidbit.
After sparring with Vanity Fair reporter Gabriel Sherman, who suggested that Swan "got played" by a White House insider looking to distract from the second Kavanaugh revelation, Swan has admitted that the phrasing of his initial report was a little off. Instead of reporting that Rosenstein had "verbally resigned", Swan said he meant to say that Rosenstein had verbally offered his resignation to Chief of Staff John Kelly.
```Note for readers: I regret the way I wrote this morning's version of the story. By saying Rosenstein had "verbally resigned" to Kelly rather than "offered his resignation," I conveyed a certainty that this fluid situation didn’t deserve. It’s an important nuance, and I regret the wording.```
Speaking to reporters at the United Nations, President Trump finally commented on the political event du jour, saying he's looking forward to meeting with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Thursday to discuss his future and "determining what's going on", after Axios reported earlier that Rosenstein told Trump's Chief of Staff John Kelly that he was resigning.
"We’ll be determining what’s going on,” Trump told reporters at the United Nations on Monday. “We want to have transparency, we want to have openness and I’m looking forward to meeting with Rod at that time."
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🇮🇱 **In a blow to Israel, Russia says it will send Syria powerful antiaircraft missiles**
🇸🇾 🇷🇺 *The Washington Post* - <https://archive.fo/6Whnd>
Russia said Monday it would equip Syria with sophisticated air defense systems, a move that could worsen a rift with Israel by limiting its ability to bomb across its northern border.
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Moscow would send Russia’s powerful S-300 ground-to-air missile systems to Syria, a longtime ally, in the next two weeks. Israel, which has repeatedly bombed Iranian targets in Syria, has long opposed such deliveries, and Russia up to now has refrained from supplying the weapons.
But the downing last week of a Russian reconnaissance plane with 15 service members aboard changed the dynamic. The plane was shot down by a Syrian missile, but Russia faulted Israel for the crash because an Israeli fighter jet allegedly had used the Russian plane as a screen against Syria’s air defenses.
Israel, by contrast, said that its air force had not violated any agreements with Russia and that Israeli jets had already returned to Israeli airspace when the missiles were launched. The crash was one of the deadliest incidents for regular Russian service members in the Syrian war.
“Today, the situation has changed, for no fault of ours,” Shoigu said in a televised statement Monday announcing the S-300 deliveries.
Shoigu said Russia also will jam military aircraft communications in the airspace next to Syria over the Mediterranean Sea while upgrading Syria’s air defense command systems.
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🇺🇸 **Ted Cruz And Wife Chased Out Of DC Restaurant By Anti-Kavanaugh Protesters**
*ZeroHedge/Gateway Pundit* - <https://archive.fo/O5Z2R>
Senator Ted Cruz, a supporter of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, was verbally assaulted by a group of protesters at a DC restaurant Monday night while trying to dine with his wife, as seen in a video posted by twitter account Smash Racism DC.
The protesters, chanting "we believe survivors," blocked Cruz's wife from exiting the restaurant at one point, prompting the Texas Senator to ask them to "let my wife through."
In another clip, a woman claiming to be a survivor of sexual assault approached Cruz and his wife accompanied by her backup chanters, asking to discuss Brett Kavanaugh, "I know that you're very close friends with Mr. Kavanaugh. Do you believe survivors sir? We believe survivors. Senator, I have a right to know what your position is on Brett Kavanaugh. I'm a survivor of sexual assault. There are now three people that have come forward and said that Brett Kavanaugh attacked them. Have you talked to him about that?"
https://twitter.com/SmashRacismDC/status/1044408931169300481
https://twitter.com/SmashRacismDC/status/1044408830564683776
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i cant wait till hes on the bench
*bhash thuh fash!!11!111!!*
🇺🇸 **Third Kavanaugh accuser, a former US Mint employee, '100 percent credible,' Avenatti says**
*USA Today* - <https://archive.fo/LR3fB>
A third woman accusing Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct will come forward in the next 48 hours, according to Michael Avenatti, the lawyer for adult film star and alleged President Donald Trump mistress Stormy Daniels.
Following a Monday hearing over Daniels’ lawsuit against Trump and his former lawyer Michael Cohen over a hush-money deal, Avenatti told reporters he has been hired by a former employee of both the State Department and the U.S. Mint who has information of a sexual nature about Kavanaugh and his high school friend Mark Judge.
“It will relate to how they behaved at countless house parties,’’ Avenatti said.
Avenatti also told reporters the woman, whom he did not name, has multiple security clearances and will “literally risk her life’’ by coming forward. He called her “100 percent credible,’’ saying she has multiple witnesses to corroborate her story and would be willing to take a polygraph if Kavanaugh does as well.
Avenatti didn't disclose how his client met Kavanaugh and Judge or reveal details on the timing of the alleged misconduct.
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*I'll bring out thousands of whores, got thousands of them baby, I'll bring them all out!* - Avenatti
<:gayfrogs:319792618576019466> **FOUNDER OF GROUP THAT HARASSED TED CRUZ TWEETED ABOUT DEAD COPS, ASSASSINATING MIKE PENCE**
*Info Wars* - <https://www.infowars.com/founder-of-group-that-harassed-ted-cruz-tweeted-about-dead-cops-assassinating-mike-pence/>
Antifa professor back in the spotlight after restaurant confrontation. He's the long neck fgt that plays the woman role in Star Wars Ep. VIII, previously was a professor at John Jay College in NYC.
The founder of the ‘Smash Racism DC’ group that harassed Senator Ted Cruz and his wife in a restaurant last night is Antifa professor Mike Isaacson, who previously tweeted about teaching “future dead cops” and assassinating Mike Pence.
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🇺🇸 **Bill Cosby Sentenced To 3-10 Years Behind Bars For Sexual Assault**
*Philadelphia CBS Local* - <https://archive.fo/fCcHk>
Bill Cosby learned his fate inside a Montgomery County courtroom on Tuesday. The 81-year-old actor and comedian has been sentenced to three to 10 years in a state facility for sexually assaulting a former Temple University employee at his home in 2004.
O’Neill also ruled Cosby as a “sexually violent predator.” The classification means that Cosby must undergo lifetime counseling and report quarterly to authorities. His name will appear on a sex-offender registry sent to neighbors, schools and victims.
Cosby’s lawyer argued for bail after the ruling, but O’Neill pushed back, saying he will not treat Cosby any differently under the law.
“I’ve imposed sentencing at this stage,” said O’Neill. “If you want to take it up with another court, you can.”
Cosby’s lawyers had fought the “sexually violent predator” designation, arguing that Pennsylvania’s sex-offender law is unconstitutional and that he is no threat to the public at his age. But O’Neill said prosecutors had met their burden of proof by “clear and convincing” evidence.
Cosby was found guilty in April on three counts of aggravated indecent assault. Jurors convicted Cosby of sexually assaulting Andrea Constand without consent, while she was impaired and after incapacitating her.
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🇺🇸 **Michael Avenatti Makes His Twitter Private, Citing ‘Trump Trolls’**
*Daily Caller* - <https://archive.fo/Hupi5>
Lawyer Michael Avenatti said Tuesday that he was “forced” to make his Twitter account private after receiving some unwelcoming comments, which he says are due to his recent representation of an anonymous woman claiming Judge Brett Kavanaugh was involved in gang rapes in high school.
Avenatti tweeted Sunday that he represents a woman with “credible information” regarding Kavanaugh and has since demanded the Senate Judiciary Committee not only question Kavanaugh on his involvement in a “train of men” that he claims drugged and gang-raped women in high school, but also asked the committee to allow more witnesses to testify.
Since his announcement, Avenatti has attempted to prove the credibility of his accusations without revealing who his client is and without providing any evidence so far.
Avenatti’s claim made without any proof apparently has not sat well with the Twitter community. Avenatti tweeted Tuesday that he’s been “forced” to make his account private “because the bots and Trump trolls are out in full force due to my representation re Kavanaugh.”
A senior Democratic aide also told The Daily Beast that Avenatti “has a tendency to sensationalize and make his various crusades more about himself than about getting at the truth.”
Another Democratic source told the outlet that while he or she believes he represents a credible allegation, Avenatti has “undercut it. If he had vetted it through a media outlet and had journalists represent it in a well-reported way or have the committee introduce it, it would have been better.”
Avenatti says he will make his Twitter public as soon as he is able to.
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🇺🇸 **Millennials Are Causing the U.S. Divorce Rate to Plummet**
*Bloomberg* - <https://archive.fo/rjIw1>
Americans under the age of 45 have found a novel way to rebel against their elders: They’re staying married.
New data show younger couples are approaching relationships very differently from baby boomers, who married young, divorced, remarried and so on. Generation X and especially millennials are being pickier about who they marry, tying the knot at older ages when education, careers and finances are on track. The result is a U.S. divorce rate that dropped 18 percent from 2008 to 2016, according to an analysis by University of Maryland sociology professor Philip Cohen.
Demographers already knew the divorce rate was falling, even if the average American didn’t. Their question, however, was why? And what do current trends mean for the marital prospects of today’s newlyweds?
“The change among young people is particularly striking,” Susan Brown, a sociology professor at Bowling Green State University, said of Cohen’s results. “The characteristics of young married couples today signal a sustained decline [in divorce rates] in the coming years.”
Young people get the credit for fewer divorces because boomers have continued to divorce at unusually high rates, all the way into their 60s and 70s. From 1990 to 2015, according to Bowling Green’s National Center for Family and Marriage Research, the divorce rate doubled for people aged 55 to 64, and even tripled for Americans 65 and older. Cohen’s results suggest this trend, called “grey divorce,” may have leveled out in the past decade, but boomers are still divorcing at much higher rates than previous generations did at similar ages.
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🇺🇸 **Yale study: Illegal immigrant population likely double, possibly triple previous estimates**
*The Washington Times* - <https://archive.fo/BBtyE>
Professors at Yale University have roiled the immigration debate with a new study calculating there are between 16 million and 30 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. — as much as three times more than most demographers figure.
The professors’ model looked at estimates of how many people came illegally, and how many people likely left, and concluded there are a lot more people who arrived than the 11 million suggested by traditional estimates. The model says the most likely figure is double that, at about 22 million.
If true, the numbers would mean U.S. officials have done a poorer job of catching illegal immigrants than imagined, and that one out of every nine people living in the U.S. is here illegally.
“Policy debates about the amount of resources to devote to this issue, and the merits of alternative policies, including deportation, amnesty, and border control, depend critically on estimates of the number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S., which sets the scale of the issue,” said the academics, Professors Jonathan S. Feinstein and Edward H. Kaplan and postdoctoral associate Mohammad Fazel-Zarandi, all at the Yale School of Management.
They published their findings in PLOS ONE, an open access scholarly journal, and sparked fierce pushback from the demographers who study the issue and say the professors’ numbers are impossible.
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🇮🇱 **Israel Is Giving China the Keys to Its Largest Port - and the U.S. Navy May Abandon Israel**
🇨🇳 *Haaretz* - <https://archive.is/g7JF4>
China will operate Haifa port, near Israel's alleged nuclear-armed submarines, and it seems no one in Israel thought about the strategic ramifications.
Shaul Horev dropped a bombshell, but hardly anyone noticed. Horev, an Israel Defense Forces reservist brigadier general who has served, among other posts, as the navy chief of staff and chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, is currently director of the Research Center for Maritime Policy and Strategy at the University of Haifa. At the end of August, the center held a conference, to which participants from the United States were invited, to examine security issues relating to Israel and the Mediterranean region.
In an interview with the religious-Zionist media outlet Arutz Sheva, Prof. Horev noted that one topic that came up at the event was Chinese investments in Mediterranean ports, and in Israel in particular. Pointing out that a Chinese company will soon start operating Haifa Port, he said that Israel needs to create a mechanism that will examine Chinese investments to ensure that they do not put Israel’s security interests at risk.
“When China acquires ports,” Horev said, “it does so under the guise of maintaining a trade route from the Indian Ocean via the Suez Canal to Europe, such as the port of Piraeus in Greece. Does an economic horizon like this have a security impact? We are not weighing that possibility sufficiently. One of the senior American figures at the conference raised the question of whether the U.S. Sixth Fleet can see Haifa as a home port. In light of the Chinese takeover, the question is no longer on the agenda.”
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🇺🇸 **W. Virginia's Decision to Allow Smartphone Voting for Midterms Raises Serious Security Concerns**
*PJ Media* - <https://archive.fo/aIN2T>
For the first time in our nation's history, voters in 24 counties in W. Virginia will be able to vote using their mobile phones. While some are hailing the decision because it will make voting easier for members of the military deployed overseas, experts are warning of possible security breaches.
"Voatz has developed a secure mobile voting application that allows voters to receive, vote, and return their ballots electronically," the press release claims. "The application also utilizes blockchain technology to store electronically submitted ballots until election night, and requires a heightened standard of identity verification for users than traditional absentee ballot processes. This project is unprecedented in United States history, being the first mobile voting application and first use of blockchain technology in a federal election."
In order to use the mobile technology, users register with Voatz by taking a picture of their government ID and also a selfie video of their face. Voatz then uses facial recognition software that (they claim) can verify the voter's identity. Once approved, voters can cast their ballots using Voatz's app. After the vote is cast it is added to the blockchain, a digital ledger of sorts, popularized by digital currencies such as Bitcoin.
The state of W. Virginia admits that there are "substantial" security concerns, but explained that Voatz will be utilizing "federal standards for software development, regular maintenance and security upgrades, in-depth penetration testing, source code auditing and audits of the system’s cloud infrastructure. After surpassing those requirements, the pilot moved forward."
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🇺🇸 **BREAKING: Michael Avenatti Reveals Client Making ‘Gang Rape’ Allegation Against Kavanaugh**
*MediaITE* - <https://archive.fo/UfmsE>
Attorney for Stormy Daniels, Michael Avenatti, earlier this week, claimed to have a client with a third allegation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. He made the announcement, and tweeted lurid accusations, without offering the identity of the client or any evidence.
Today, Avenatti tweeted a name and photo of that client, along with a sworn statement from the alleged victim laying out her serious allegations.
In the statement, Julie Swetnick, a current government employee, alleges Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge attended a party where she was drugged and gang raped by a series of boys. While she does not accuse Kavanaugh of assaulting her, she claims she witnessed him participate in the gang rapes.
```In approximately 1982, I became the victim of one of these “gang” or “train” rapes where Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh were present. Shortly after the incident, I shared what had transpired with at least two other people. During the incident, I was incapacitated without my consent and unable to fight off the boys raping me. I believe I was drugged using Quaaludes or something similar placed in what I was drinking.”```
https://twitter.com/MichaelAvenatti/status/1044960940884709378
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🇺🇸 **GEORGE SOROS FUNDED FUSION GPS, HIS SPOKESMAN CONFIRMS**
*The Daily Caller* - <https://dailycaller.com/2018/09/26/george-soros-funded-fusion-gps/>
A spokesman for left-wing billionaire financier George Soros is acknowledging that he indirectly funded Fusion GPS, the firm behind the Steele dossier
Sources have told The Daily Caller News Foundation in the past that Soros helped fund Fusion’s post-election work on Russian interference in the election process
Soros’ spokesman told The Washington Post that Soros donated to the Democracy Integrity Project, a group founded by a former staffer to Sen. Dianne Feinstein
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🇺🇸 **Facebook Loses Around $13 Billion in Value After Data Breach Affects 50 Million of Its Users**
*Fortune* - <https://archive.fo/8XwrF>
2018 continues to be a challenging year for Facebook. The company’s stock closed down 3% Friday following reports that hackers gained access to the personal data on 50 million of its users.
The data breach is the latest in a string of mishaps and controversies that the company has endured, including its involvement in the Russian disinformation campaign during the 2016 U.S. presidential election and Facebook’s sharing its user data in what became the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended his company during two days of Congressional hearings in April.
In the latest incident, Facebook said its engineering team discovered on Tuesday that hackers exploited a vulnerability in Facebook’s code that exposed to attackers its site’s so-called access tokens – essentially, digital keys that allow people to stay logged into Facebook without having to re-enter their password.
“We’re taking this incredibly seriously,” Facebook said in a blog post announcing the breach, adding that the company has fixed the vulnerability and notified law enforcement of the hack.
The company’s swift response did little to settle investor unease about the string of snafus at the social media giant. Facebook’s stock fell as much as 5% to $162.57 a share during intraday trading Friday as news of the hack broke. The stock recovered slightly before the market’s official close, but once it did Facebook’s market cap had lost about $13 billion of its value.
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🇺🇸🇲🇽 🇨🇦 **Trump cites 'historic' trade pact with Canada, Mexico**
*Reuters* - <https://archive.fo/gOY3l>
U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday took credit for salvaging a trilateral free trade accord with Canada and Mexico, marking it as a victory in his campaign to reshape global commerce as financial markets breathed a sigh of relief.
The deal, announced on Sunday, is a reworking of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, which underpins $1.2 trillion in trade between the three countries. Trump had described NAFTA as a bad deal for Americans and threatened to eliminate it as part of his “America First” agenda.
The new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) is aimed at bringing more jobs into the United States, with Canada and Mexico accepting more restrictive commerce with the United States, their main export partner.
While changing NAFTA and bringing down U.S. trade deficits was a top Trump campaign pledge, Sunday’s agreement largely leaves the broader deal intact and maintains supply chains that would have been fractured under weaker bilateral deals.
U.S., Canadian and Mexican stocks were trading higher on Monday, with the benchmark S&P 500 index .SPX rising more than 0.7 percent and the Toronto Stock Exchange's S&P/TSX index .GSPTSE gaining about 0.4 percent.
The Canadian dollar CAD=D4 strengthened to a four-month high against the U.S. dollar, while the Mexican peso MXN=D3 rose to near a two-month high against the greenback before paring some gains.
----------------
🇺🇸 **Feds Force Suspect To Unlock An Apple iPhone X With Their Face**
*Forbes* <https://archive.fo/SC3XR>
It finally happened. The feds forced an Apple iPhone X owner to unlock their device with their face.
A child abuse investigation unearthed by Forbes includes the first known case in which law enforcement used Apple Face ID facial recognition technology to open a suspect's iPhone. That's by any police agency anywhere in the world, not just in America.
It happened on August 10, when the FBI searched the house of 28-year-old Grant Michalski, a Columbus, Ohio, resident who would later that month be charged with receiving and possessing child pornography. With a search warrant in hand, a federal investigator told Michalski to put his face in front of the phone, which he duly did. That allowed the agent to pick through the suspect's online chats, photos and whatever else he deemed worthy of investigation.
The case marks another significant moment in the ongoing battle between law enforcement and tech providers, with the former trying to break the myriad security protections put in place by the latter. Since the fight between the world's most valuable company and the FBI in San Bernardino over access to an iPhone in 2016, Forbes has been tracking the various ways cops have been trying to break Apple's protections.
First came multiple cases in which suspects were told to unlock iPhones with their fingerprints, via Apple's Touch ID biometric login. The same technique was then used on dead subjects. Earlier this year, this publication uncloaked GrayKey, a $15,000-$30,000 tool that could break through the passcodes of the latest iOS models, including the iPhone X. Another contractor, Israel's Cellebrite, announced similar services.
----------------
🇮🇱 **Israel seeks to 'justify another aggression' with false missile claims: Lebanon**
🇱🇧 *Reuters* <https://archive.fo/EWHQK>
Lebanon’s foreign minister said on Monday Israel was trying to “justify another aggression” by falsely alleging there are missile sites near Beirut airport belonging to Iran-backed Hezbollah.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking at the United Nations last week, identified three locations near the airport where he said the Shi’ite group Hezbollah was converting “inaccurate projectiles” into precision-guided missiles.
Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, speaking to foreign ambassadors before taking them on a tour of the area, said there were “many statements ... affirming the possession of accurate missiles by Hezbollah”.
But he added: “This does not mean that these missiles are present in the vicinity of Beirut airport”.
Bassil accompanied the diplomats, who included Russian and Iranian envoys, and journalists on a tour of three sites near the airport, including the grounds of a top division Lebanese football team, Al-Ahed, which Israel identified as one of the sites.
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🇩🇪 **German Police Arrest Six Suspected Neo-Nazis Ahead of Planned Attack**
*Wall Street Journal* <https://archive.fo/c8K0I>
German police said they had arrested six men suspected of planning an attack on immigrants and politicians, as the country struggles with a backlash from far-right groups that has followed an influx of migrants.
The suspects, all of whom were between 20 and 30 years old, were part of skinhead and neo-Nazi groups, the country’s federal prosecutor said on Monday. The attack was allegedly planned to take place on Wednesday, the Day of Germany Unity, which commemorates the anniversary of German reunification.
Police arrested the suspects after a series of coordinated raids in the states of Saxony and Bavaria. During the raids, police found bats, tasers, an air gun and Nazi propaganda, including portraits of Adolf Hitler and Nazi flags, which are banned in Germany.
The group called itself Revolution Chemnitz, after the east German city that saw mass protests following a murder allegedly committed by asylum seekers this month. Neo-Nazis openly protested in Chemnitz, as well as at several other similar events that were since organized in other German cities.
Crime linked to far-right groups and motivated by racism has increased after the migration crisis of 2015, when hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers poured into the country. While the number of assaults has started to drop again this year, authorities and human-rights activists have said racist attacks are becoming more brutal.
“Far-Right terror is posing a real and great danger and we take it very seriously,” German Justice Minister Katarina Barley tweeted on Monday in reference to the arrests.
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🇺🇸 **Multiple Packages Sent To Pentagon Test Positive For Ricin**
*CNN * - <https://archive.fo/NuuU5>
WASHINGTON — Officials at the Pentagon say at least two pieces of mail sent to the facility tested positive for the deadly poison Ricin.
---------------------
you're supposed to include at least a paragraph of text you KIKE
why are you all shitting up my channel
🇺🇸 **Trump Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes as He Reaped Riches From His Father**
*New York Times* <https://archive.fo/duPUl>
The president has long sold himself as a self-made billionaire, but a Times investigation found that he received at least $413 million in today’s dollars from his father’s real estate empire, much of it through tax dodges in the 1990s.
President Trump participated in dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud, that greatly increased the fortune he received from his parents, an investigation by The New York Times has found.
But The Times’s investigation, based on a vast trove of confidential tax returns and financial records, reveals that Mr. Trump received the equivalent today of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate empire, starting when he was a toddler and continuing to this day.
Much of this money came to Mr. Trump because he helped his parents dodge taxes. He and his siblings set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents, records and interviews show. Records indicate that Mr. Trump helped his father take improper tax deductions worth millions more. He also helped formulate a strategy to undervalue his parents’ real estate holdings by hundreds of millions of dollars on tax returns, sharply reducing the tax bill when those properties were transferred to him and his siblings.
These maneuvers met with little resistance from the Internal Revenue Service, The Times found. The president’s parents, Fred and Mary Trump, transferred well over $1 billion in wealth to their children, which could have produced a tax bill of at least $550 million under the 55 percent tax rate then imposed on gifts and inheritances.
The Trumps paid a total of $52.2 million, or about 5 percent, tax records show.
----------------
🇺🇸 **FBI Probe of Kavanaugh Is Expected to Wrap Up Very Soon**
*Wall Street Journal* <https://archive.fo/m81Mj>
People familiar with the process said Tuesday that the FBI investigation into the allegations of sexual misconduct against Judge Kavanaugh could wrap up very soon, well ahead of the end-of week deadline.
GOP aides on the Hill and another person familiar with the process said they were expecting the bureau to conclude its report as soon as late Tuesday or early Wednesday. Agents had interviewed at least four key people as of Tuesday in its background investigation of Judge Kavanaugh. The White House had given the bureau until Friday to wrap up the probe.
Senators would then be shown the FBI's findings, but it wasn't clear if the public would get a look as well.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said on Tuesday the report was expected "soon" and "will be made available to each senator and only senators will be allowed to look at it."
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🇺🇸 **Confidence in Pope Francis Down Sharply in U.S.**
*Pew Research Center* <https://archive.fo/VXYJ3>
By a two-to-one margin, American Catholics now give Francis negative marks for his handling of the sex abuse scandal
As allegations and investigations of sex abuse in the Catholic Church become more widespread, a new Pew Research Center survey finds that confidence in the way Pope Francis is handling the crisis has plummeted among U.S. Catholics. Just three-in-ten Catholic adults say Francis is doing an “excellent” or a “good” job addressing the issue, which is down 24 points since 2015 and 14 points from when Pew Research Center last asked the question in January of this year.
While seven-in-ten American Catholics say their overall opinion of Pope Francis is favorable, six-in-ten now say he is doing an “only fair” or “poor” job handling the sex abuse scandal, including 36% who say his efforts on this front have been poor. This is nearly double the share who said he was doing a poor job at the beginning of this year, and triple the share who said this in 2015.
The declining confidence in Francis’ handling of the sex abuse crisis is broad-based, occurring across a wide variety of subgroups of U.S. Catholics. Since 2015, for instance, the share who give the pope “excellent” or “good” ratings for his handling of the issue declined by 24 points among Catholic men and 23 points among Catholic women. Similarly, both younger and older Catholics have grown increasingly critical of the pontiff’s handling of the situation.
Even among Catholics who say they attend Mass weekly, the share who give Francis positive marks for his handling of the sex abuse crisis has been cut in half since 2015; 34% in this group now give Francis “excellent” or “good” ratings for his handling of the issue, whereas 67% gave him a positive evaluation in 2015.
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🇺🇸 **Juul gets a surprise visit from the FDA as part of agency’s crackdown**
*The Verge* <https://archive.fo/PH2pI>
The inspection ‘resulted in the collection of over a thousand pages of documents’
The Food and Drug Administration is tightening its leash on e-cigarette giant Juul Labs. On Friday, the FDA conducted a surprise inspection of the company’s headquarters, and took thousands of pages of documents in the process, CNBC reports.
The inspection was part of the FDA’s efforts to curb youth vaping, the agency says in an email to The Verge. “The new and highly disturbing data we have on youth use demonstrates plainly that e-cigarettes are creating an epidemic of regular nicotine use among teens,” the FDA says.
Back in April, the agency asked Juul to turn over information that might explain why the devices are so popular with young people. And on Friday, inspectors went to find documentation about Juul’s sales and marketing tactics for themselves. The inspection “resulted in the collection of over a thousand pages of documents,” the FDA says.
The FDA also inspected Juul’s contract manufacturing facilities earlier this year to check if they met FDA requirements, the FDA says. And just over two weeks ago, the agency gave an ultimatum to Juul and four other companies that manufacture the popular e-cig brands Vuse, MarkTen XL, blu, and Logic: the companies have until mid-November to prove that they can keep kids from using their vapes, or else face having their flavored products taken off the market.
----------------
The pope Sucks
i hate this pope so much
@w7 your now head archivist
congrats
Conference about Iran/Iraq/N Korea w/ Sec of State Pompeo
**BREAKING NEWS**
🇺🇸 **William Clyde Allen III, of Logan, Utah, was taken into custody by the FBI. He is suspected of mailing seeds used to make ricin to President Trump and the Pentagon**
*Breaking 911* - <https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1047626801034514435>
🇷🇺 **Vladimir Putin: Sergei Skripal Is a Scumbag and a Traitor**
*The Guardian* <https://archive.fo/6zK70>
Russian president attacks former spy but angrily denies Kremlin ordered his poisoning
Vladimir Putin has called the former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal a “scumbag” and a “traitor”, as he angrily denied allegations that the Kremlin ordered his poisoning with a nerve agent.
Speaking at an energy forum in Moscow, the Russian president accused the west of portraying Skripal, who was poisoned with novichok in Salisbury, as an innocent victim.
“I see that some of your colleagues are pushing the theory that Mr Skripal was almost some kind of human rights activist,” Putin said following a question from a moderator.
“He was simply a spy. A traitor to the motherland. There is such a concept – a traitor to the motherland. He was one of those.”
Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were found slumped on a park bench in the English city on 4 March. Britain says Russian intelligence officers poisoned them with novichok.
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🇺🇸 **U.S. withdraws from international accords, says U.N. world court 'politicized'**
*Reuters* <https://archive.fo/ZYfSP>
The Trump administration on Wednesday pulled out of two international agreements after Iran and the Palestinians complained to the International Court of Justice about U.S. policies, the latest withdrawal by Washington from multilateral accords.
The U.S. national security adviser John Bolton slammed the highest United Nations tribunal as “politicized and ineffective” as he announced that the United States would review all international agreements that could expose it to binding decisions by the ICJ.
Earlier on Wednesday the ICJ handed a victory to Tehran, ordering the United States to ensure that sanctions against Iran, due to be tightened next month, do not affect humanitarian aid or civil aviation safety.
Tehran had argued that the U.S. sanctions imposed since May by the Trump administration violated the terms their 1955 Treaty of Amity. Washington responded by pulling out of the treaty, a little-known agreement that was signed long before Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution that turned the two countries into arch enemies.
In the nearly two years since being elected, President Donald Trump has withdrawn the United States from a nuclear agreement between six powers and Iran, pulled out of a global climate accord, left the U.N. cultural agency, and threatened NATO military allies that the United States would “go its own way” if members did not spend more on defense.
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🇺🇸 **U.S. Readies New Charges Against Russian Hackers**
🇷🇺 *Wall Street Journal* <https://archive.fo/ZYfSP>
The U.S. Justice Department said it would announce charges Thursday against seven Russian military intelligence officers, while the British and Dutch governments accused the intelligence unit of directing a series of high-profile online hacks.
In the first of the apparently coordinated announcements, the U.K. said the hacks by the Russian military agency, the GRU, included the 2016 leak of Democratic National Committee emails and the release of U.S. and other athletes’ antidoping test results.
The Dutch government said its intelligence services had disrupted an attempted hack in April into the international body tracking chemical weapons’ use and Canada said it had assessed with “high confidence” that the GRU was responsible for illegally obtaining information from the World Anti-Doping Agency, based in Montreal.
The British Foreign Office said the GRU was guilty of “indiscriminate and reckless” cyberattacks over the last three years that targeted a range of political and media institutions.
The statement comes following a serious deterioration in British relations with the Kremlin following an alleged chemical-weapons attack this year on Sergei Skripal, a former GRU officer living in Britain, for which the U.K. holds his former employer responsible.
In another announcement on Thursday, the Dutch government said its intelligence services disrupted a GRU cyberhack of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which monitors the use of chemical weapons, in April this year.
----------------
🇨🇳 **Chinese spying microchips found in Apple, Amazon computers: report**
*Fox Business* <https://archive.fo/2kxvt>
Chinese hackers have reportedly implanted spying in servers used by numerous data centers of such U.S. corporate giants as Apple and Amazon, Bloomberg Businessweek reported Thursday.
The Chinese initiative targeted nearly 30 companies, Bloomberg Businessweek said in an exclusive report based on a lengthy investigation. The outlet said the hacking is "the most significant known supply chain attack ever against U.S. companies."
No consumer data was reportedly compromised.
The malicious microchips were traced to subcontracting factories that manufactured motherboards for Super Micro, based in San Jose, California. Agents with the People’s Liberation Army bribed or bluffed factory officials to change motherboard designs so the Chinese chips could be implanted in the motherboards.
While the news agency says Apple and Amazon found the chips in servers as long ago as 2015, the two corporate giants deny the claim that the presence of the chips was anything more than a manufacturing mistake.
Apple removed Super Micro servers in 2015 and cut ties with Super Micro the following year.
----------------
🇲🇾 **Malaysian prime minister calls Jews 'hook-nosed' **
*The Guardian* <https://archive.fo/Dc8UX>
The Malaysian prime minister has described Jews as “hook-nosed” and blamed them for creating the troubles in the Middle East – reigniting accusations of antisemitism against him.
Mahathir Mohamad, who at 93 became the world’s oldest head of government after starting his second stint as prime minister in May, has for decades been accused of antisemitism for his attacks against Jews, whom he has accused of perpetrating a humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian territories.
“If you are going to be truthful, the problem in the Middle East began with the creation of Israel. That is the truth. But I cannot say that,” he said in an interview on BBC’s Hard Talk.
Calling Israelis “special”, Mahathir challenged historical accounts that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, saying the figure was 4 million.
When asked about the description of Jews in his book The Malay Dilemma, he said: “They are hook-nosed. Many people called the Malays fat-nosed. We didn’t object, we didn’t go to war for that.”
The Anti-Defamation League, a US-based organisation against antisemitism, was not immediately available for comment but attacked Mahathir’s “decades-long record of antisemitic conspiracy theories” in a tweet in May. “The world cannot accept this from any leader,” the tweet read.
Last week, when addressing the UN general assembly in New York, Mahathir said the world “rewards Israel” for breaking international laws and committing acts of terrorism against Palestinians.
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🇺🇸 **CNN Analyst Max Boot Claims Trump Blaming Soros Is Like Blaming ‘The Jews’**
*Daily Caller* <https://archive.fo/sdyhX>
Max Boot, CNN analyst and Washington Post columnist, claimed on Friday that when President Donald Trump blamed some of the anti-Kavanaugh protests on George Soros, he was really blaming his “problems on the Jews.”
Boot tweeted, “Funny (actually not so funny) how authoritarians or would-be authoritarians always blame their problems on the Jews–and now in particular on George Soros who has replaced the Rothschilds as the symbol of Jewish finance.”
His tweet was a response to an early morning tweet from President Donald Trump, which claimed that Soros (and others) were responsible for financing a number of the protesters who have ambushed senators on elevators and in the halls of the Senate office building.
And in at least one case, the president is correct in tracing the money back to Soros. One of the women who ambushed Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake in an elevator last week came from the Center for Popular Democracy, an organization that is funded in part by the billionaire.
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🇺🇸 **Kavanaugh confirmation all but sure after long, bitter fight**
*Associated Press* <https://archive.fo/rcopY>
After weeks of shocking accusations, hardball politics and rowdy Capitol protests, a pair of wavering senators declared Friday they will back Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation, all but guaranteeing the deeply riven Senate will elevate the conservative jurist to the nation’s highest court on Saturday.
The announcements by Republican Susan Collins of Maine and Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia ended most of the suspense over a political battle that has transfixed the nation — though die-hard Democrats insisted on arguing through the night to a mostly empty Senate chamber.
Some of them continued raising concerns that Kavanaugh would push the court further to the right, including with possible sympathetic rulings for President Donald Trump, the man who nominated him. But the case against Kavanaugh had long since been taken over by allegations that he sexually abused women decades ago — accusations he emphatically denied.
In the pivotal moment Friday, Collins, perhaps the chamber’s most moderate Republican, proclaimed her support for Kavanaugh at the end of a Senate floor speech that lasted nearly 45 minutes. While she was among a handful of Republicans who helped sink Trump’s quest to obliterate President Barack Obama’s health care law last year, this time she proved instrumental in delivering a triumph to Trump.
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🇺🇸 **ISIS Warns of Knife Attack 'Surprises' at Concerts**
*PJ Media* <https://archive.fo/cpuN7>
Shortly after the one-year anniversary of the mass shooting that targeted an outdoor concert on the Las Vegas Strip, a pro-ISIS media group is circulating an online poster warning of knife attacks at musical events.
Previous releases from Remah Media Production included a January poster showing a jihadist standing in front of a cityscape vowing to "sink America" and another showing jihadists standing in front of a nondescript legislative building vowing that "soon you will taste agony." The group has also released video nasheeds, or songs to inspire terrorists.
In the new poster, a jihadist wearing a suit jacket stands with a large knife behind his back while behind concert-goers whose attention is fixed on the stage.
"Wait for our surprises," warns the text, signed "Islamic State."
In May 2017, a suicide bomber claimed by ISIS killed 22 people leaving an Ariana Grande concert at the Manchester Arena in the UK. Since the Oct. 1, 2017, massacre on a country music festival, ISIS has both claimed and idolized shooter Stephen Paddock, encouraging would-be terrorists to poach from his tactics such as how he used a sniper's perch in a suite on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay to kill 58 people and wound hundreds more.
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🇺🇸 **Staffer who 'doxed' GOP senators faces nearly 50 years in federal prison**
*Washington Examiner* <https://archive.fo/3kbyL>
Jackson Cosko, a 27-year-old Washington, D.C., resident, was arrested Wednesday by U.S. Capitol Police when he was caught sneaking into the offices of Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., after 10 p.m. Tuesday and using an aide’s computer and log-in.
He was charged with five federal offenses: making public restricted personal information, making threats in interstate commerce, unauthorized access of a government computer, identity theft, and witness tampering.
The criminal complaint against him also charges him with second-degree burglary and unlawful entry, which are both criminal offenses in D.C.
Cosko appeared Thursday afternoon before Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who ordered him detained pending a Tuesday hearing.
From August until his arrest, Cosko worked as an unpaid fellow with the office of Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, which said it ended his fellowship and is cooperating in the investigation.
Prior to that, he worked for roughly 17 months as an aide to Hassan and before that was employed by former Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. According to an affidavit, five U.S. senators’ restricted personal information was posted on Wikipedia.com by Cosko.
----------------
🇺🇸 **Kavanaugh confirmed, quickly sworn in; major Trump victory**
*Associated Press* <https://archive.fo/7uCKN>
Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in as a Supreme Court justice Saturday night after the bitterly polarized U.S. Senate narrowly confirmed him. The Senate vote delivered an election-season triumph to President Donald Trump that could swing the court rightward for a generation after a battle that rubbed raw the country’s cultural, gender and political divides.
Kavanaugh was quickly sworn in at the court building, across the street from the Capitol, even as protesters chanted outside.
The near party-line Senate vote was 50-48, capping a fight that seized the national conversation after claims emerged that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted women three decades ago — which he emphatically denied. Those allegations magnified the clash from a routine Supreme Court struggle over judicial ideology into an angrier, more complex jumble of questions about victims’ rights, the presumption of innocence and personal attacks on nominees.
Acrimonious to the end, the battle featured a climactic roll call that was interrupted several times by protesters in the Senate galleries before Capitol Police removed them. Vice President Mike Pence presided over the roll call, his potential tie-breaking vote unnecessary.
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🇺🇸 **U.S. rejects Iran's legal claim to recover $1.75 billion in frozen assets**
🇮🇷 *Reuters* <https://archive.fo/bnRK0>
The United States on Monday asked judges at the International Court of Justice to throw out a claim by Iran to recover $1.75 billion (1.5 billion euros) in national bank assets seized by U.S. courts. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2016 that the assets must be turned over to American families of victims of the 1983 bombing of a U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, among others.
The hearings at the tribunal were separate from Iran’s claim relating to current U.S. sanctions against Teheran. Iran’s claim in both cases is based on a 1955 Amity Treaty, which was signed 24 years before Iran’s Islamic Revolution that turned the two countries into arch enemies.
“The actions at the root of this case center on Iran’s support for international terrorism,” Richard Visek, legal advisor to the U.S. Department of State, said on Monday, calling on the court to reject Iran’s suit.
Washington announced last week it would withdraw from the Amity Treaty after the tribunal ordered the U.S. to ensure that sanctions against Iran do not affect humanitarian aid or civil aviation safety. It will take a year for a withdrawal from the Amity Treaty to take effect and Iran’s case against the asset seizure, which was filed in 2016, will continue regardless.
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🇸🇾 **Syrian rebels complete withdrawal of heavy weapons from Idlib frontline: Anadolu**
*Reuters* <https://archive.fo/qf5vY>
Under the agreement struck last month between Turkey and Moscow, the main backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, rebels deemed as radicals are required to withdraw by the middle of this month from the zone, and heavy weaponry must be withdrawn by Oct. 10.
The Turkey-backed National Front for Liberation (NFL) rebel alliance said on Saturday that the process of withdrawing heavy weapons had begun.
Anadolu gave no further details about the withdrawal of heavy weapons from the frontline. Earlier, it said the rebels were expected to clear the demilitarized zone by Monday.
Other Syrian rebels are due to remain within the demilitarized zone to assist Turkish troops monitoring and patrolling the area, the NFL has said.
The Turkey-Russia agreement halted a threatened Syrian government offensive. The United Nations had warned such an attack would create a humanitarian catastrophe in the Idlib region, home to about 3 million people.
The main jihadist group in the Idlib area, Tahrir al-Sham, has yet to say whether it will comply with the agreement.
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🇺🇸 **Brett Kavanaugh just hired the Supreme Court's first all-women law clerk team**
*The Week/NYTimes* - <https://archive.fo/ZFqe2>
The newly confirmed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh has already fulfilled one of his promises.
After weeks of contentious hearings, the Senate voted to confirm the polarizing nominee Saturday evening. And Kavanaugh was already on the job Sunday morning with the court's first-ever all-women team of law clerks by his side, The New York Times reports.
Even before sexual assault allegations rocked his confirmation process, concerns swirled around Kavanaugh's stance on women's right. Specifically, Democratic senators feared he would provide the court with a conservative majority that could facilitate the rolling back of Roe v. Wade. Kavanaugh tried to counter those concerns at his first round of confirmation hearings, touting how "no federal judge ... has sent more women law clerks to clerk on the Supreme Court than I have." He also said he had four female law clerks ready to work for him "on a moment's notice," which would make him "the first justice in the history of the Supreme Court to have a group of all-women law clerks."
Those four women — Kim Jackson, Shannon Grammel, Megan Lacy, and Sara Nommensen — were at the Supreme Court on Sunday, aiding Kavanaugh ahead of his first case hearings this week, the Times details. Jackson will become one of three black law clerks working at the Supreme Court this term. She has previously worked for Kavanaugh, along with one of the other black clerks, per The Washington Post.
Kavanaugh will kick off his Supreme Court career Tuesday with a case about crimes involving firearms.
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🇺🇸 **Google+ shut down amid recently publicized leaks **
*Wall St Journal/Google* - <https://archive.fo/KcOIK>
Google exposed the private data of hundreds of thousands of users of the Google+ social network and then opted not to disclose the issue this past spring, in part because of fears that doing so would draw regulatory scrutiny and cause reputational damage, according to people briefed on the incident and documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
As part of its response to the incident, the Alphabet Inc. unit plans to announce a sweeping set of data privacy measures that include permanently shutting down all consumer functionality of Google+, the people said. The move effectively puts the final nail in the coffin of a product that was launched in 2011 to challenge Facebook Inc. and is widely seen as one of Google’s biggest failures.
A software glitch in the social site gave outside developers potential access to private Google+ profile data between 2015 and March 2018, when internal investigators discovered and fixed the issue, according to the documents and people briefed on the incident. A memo reviewed by the Journal prepared by Google’s legal and policy staff and shared with senior executives warned that disclosing the incident would likely trigger “immediate regulatory interest” and invite comparisons to Facebook’s leak of user information to data firm Cambridge Analytica.
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🇷🇴 **Romania vote to ban same-sex marriage fails due to low voter turnout **
*BBC News* - <https://archive.fo/jXzFx>
A referendum to establish a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in Romania has failed - after only a fifth of voters bothered to turn out.
Romanians were being asked whether they wanted the constitution changed to specify that marriage can only be between a man and a woman.
But just 20.4% of eligible voters cast ballots - short of the 30% needed.
The result may come as a suprise, as a poll on Friday indicated support for the change was as high as 90%
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🇰🇵 **Kim Jong Un and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo agreed to arrange a second summit between U.S. and North Korea**
*Global News* - <https://archive.fo/SLAW0>
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo agreed to arrange a second summit between the two countries as soon as possible, South Korea’s presidential office said on Sunday.
South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in met Pompeo after the top U.S. diplomat’s trip to Pyongyang earlier in the day, which included a meeting with Kim.
Pompeo told Moon that he and Kim discussed denuclearization steps to be taken by North Korea and the issue of inspection on those actions, which Washington has been calling for, as well as the measures the United States would take, Moon’s press secretary Yoon Young-chan said in a statement.
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🐾 **What it’s like to have sex as a ‘furry’**
New York Post - <http://archive.fo/uzzg4>
No, he doesn’t have sex in the wolf suit.
Much.
“When I imagined getting a suit, I thought it would be something I would want to do,” says Dominic Rodriguez, director of a new documentary on the “furry” subculture — and a member himself.
“But honestly?” he says. “The suit is so beautiful, it’s so much better than I thought it would be, I don’t want to mess it up. I could just put it on and get [oral sex], though.”
Furries, as they are known, have been the subject of much eyebrow-raising since the community came into the spotlight in the 1990s. Misconceptions and vilifications, many of which are addressed in the film, abound. So what, exactly, is a furry, according to someone on the inside?
----------------------------
🇺🇸 **Nikki Haley resigns as UN ambassador, stays mum on next move**
*Fox News* - <https://archive.fo/JbIkp>
Nikki Haley abruptly announced her resignation Tuesday as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, catching staff and lawmakers by surprise and leaving Washington guessing about the next move for one of the administration's most prominent figures.
Speaking in the Oval Office alongside President Trump, who accepted the resignation, Haley said she would serve through the end of 2018. She preemptively sought to mute speculation she might run against her old boss, stressing that she will support Trump and will not campaign for the White House in 2020.
Haley called her time at the U.N. a "blessing," but offered no reason for leaving other than a belief that government officials must know "when it’s time to step aside."
Trump told reporters that Haley did "an incredible job" and is a "fantastic person." He said she had told him six months ago that she wanted to take a break "maybe at the end of the year."
"Now the U.S. is respected. Countries may not like what we do, but they respect what we do," she said, citing a number of achievements of the Trump administration.
"The U.S. is strong again, it's strong in a way that should make all Americans very proud," she told reporters.
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🇮🇱 **Israel detains American student for her alleged boycott support**
🇺🇸 *CBS* - <https://archive.fo/ETERo>
In a groundbreaking case, Israel has detained an American graduate student at its international airport for the past week, accusing her of supporting a Palestinian-led boycott campaign against the Jewish state.
The case highlights Israel's concerns about the boycott movement and the great efforts it has made to stop it. The grassroots campaign has made significant inroads in recent years, particularly among university students and millennials.
Lara Alqasem, a 22-year-old U.S. citizen with Palestinian grandparents, landed at Ben-Gurion Airport last Tuesday with a valid student visa. But she was barred from entering the country and ordered deported, based on suspicions she is a boycott supporter.
An Israeli court has ordered that she remain in custody while she appeals. The weeklong detention is the longest anyone has been held in a boycott-related case, and it was not immediately clear on Tuesday when a final decision would be made.
Alqasem, from the Fort Lauderdale suburb of Southwest Ranches, Florida, is a former president of the University of Florida chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. The group is a branch of the BDS movement, whose name comes from its calls for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel.
BDS supporters say that in urging businesses, artists and universities to sever ties with Israel, they are using nonviolent means to resist unjust policies toward Palestinians. Israel says the movement masks motives to delegitimize or destroy the Jewish state.
"Lara served as president of a chapter of one of the most extreme and hate-filled anti-Israel BDS groups in the U.S.," said Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan, who spearheads the Israeli government's efforts against the boycott. "Israel will not allow entry to those who work to harm the country, whatever their excuse."
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🇨🇳 **New evidence of hacked Supermicro hardware found at U.S. telecom firm**
🇺🇸 *Chicago Tribune/Bloomberg* - <https://archive.fo/7Fnkk>
A major U.S. telecommunications company discovered manipulated hardware from Super Micro Computer Inc. in its network and removed it in August, fresh evidence of tampering in China of critical technology components bound for the U.S., according to a security expert working for the telecom company.
The security expert, Yossi Appleboum, provided documents, analysis and other evidence of the discovery following the publication of an investigative report in Bloomberg Businessweek that detailed how China's intelligence services had ordered subcontractors to plant malicious chips in Supermicro server motherboards over a two-year period ending in 2015.
Appleboum previously worked in the technology unit of the Israeli Army Intelligence Corps and is now co-chief executive officer of Sepio Systems in Gaithersburg, Maryland. His firm specializes in hardware security and was hired to scan several large data centers belonging to the telecommunications company. Bloomberg is not identifying the company due to Appleboum's nondisclosure agreement with the client. Unusual communications from a Supermicro server and a subsequent physical inspection revealed an implant built into the server's Ethernet connector, a component that's used to attach network cables to the computer, Appleboum said.
The executive said he has seen similar manipulations of different vendors' computer hardware made by contractors in China, not just products from Supermicro. "Supermicro is a victim -- so is everyone else," he said. Appleboum said his concern is that there are countless points in the supply chain in China where manipulations can be introduced, and deducing them can in many cases be impossible. "That's the problem with the Chinese supply chain," he said.
Super Micro Computer, which does business as Supermicro and is based in San Jose, California, gave this statement: "The security of our customers and the integrity of our products are core to our business and our company values. We take care to secure the integrity of our products throughout the manufacturing process, and supply chain security is an important topic of discussion for our industry. We still have no knowledge of any unauthorized components and have not been informed by any customer that such components have been found. We are dismayed that Bloomberg would give us only limited information, no documentation, and half a day to respond to these new allegations."
Bloomberg News first contacted Supermicro for comment on this story on Monday at 9:23 a.m. Eastern time and gave the company 24 hours to respond.
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🇿🇦 **South Africa’s Zulu nation joins white farmers in fight against government land seizures**
*RT* - <https://archive.fo/64Chk>
The largest ethnic group in South Africa, Zulu, has spoken out against the expropriation of land without compensation in the country. Zulu is ready to cooperate with the country's white farmers, known as Afrikaners or Boers.
Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini has said the group will cooperate with South African minority rights group AfriForum.
“The Zulu nation I’m talking about will not exist if we don’t have food. That’s why I say farmers must come closer so that we discuss what we can do when we talk about agriculture and the availability of enough food in the land. That’s why I’m asking AfriForum of the Boers to come and help us,” Zwelithini said, as quoted by eNews Channel Africa.
“Because when government started talking about the appropriation of land, expropriation without compensation, Boers downed tools. There is no food in South Africa,” he added.
Zulu people are the largest ethnic group in South Africa, with an estimated 10-12 million people living mainly in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. The group accounts for more than a fifth of the country’s population and its opinion is important in the context of the general elections next year.
“Anyone who wants to be voted for and elected by us, I’m going to talk now, anyone who wants to be elected by us must come and kneel here and commit that I will never touch your land,” the Zulu King said.
While kings have no official power in modern South Africa, they still have the loyalty of millions of people and are recognized in the constitution as traditional leaders.
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🇺🇸 ***Breaking***
Stock Market down 800 “led by big tech companies”
UPDATE: Trump says the Fed has 'gone crazy' after the Dow tumbles 830 points in one day
Today 6:44 PM ET (MarketWatch)
🇺🇸 **‘THE GOOD CENSOR’: Leaked Google Briefing Admits Abandonment of Free Speech for ‘Safety And Civility’**
*Breitbart* - <https://archive.fo/24HKf>
An internal company briefing produced by Google and leaked exclusively to Breitbart News argues that due to a variety of factors, including the election of President Trump, the “American tradition” of free speech on the internet is no longer viable.
Despite leaked video footage showing top executives declaring their intention to ensure that the rise of Trump and the populist movement is just a “blip” in history, Google has repeatedly denied that the political bias of its employees filter into its products.
But the 85-page briefing, titled “The Good Censor,” admits that Google and other tech platforms now “control the majority of online conversations” and have undertaken a “shift towards censorship” in response to unwelcome political events around the world.
Examples cited in the document include the 2016 election and the rise of Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) in Germany.
Responding to the leak, an official Google source said the document should be considered internal research, and not an official company position.
----------------
🇺🇸 **Stock Market plummets more than 800 points, tech companies the cause**
*CNBC* - <https://archive.fo/1qgMO>
Stocks sank on Wednesday as a steep decline in tech shares and worries of rapidly rising rates sent Wall Street on pace for its worst day in eight months.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 831.83 points lower at 25,598.74 as Intel and Microsoft fell more than 3.5 percent each. The Nasdaq Composite plummeted 4 percent to 7,422.05.
The S&P 500 dropped 3.3 percent to 2,785.68, with the tech sector underperforming. The broad index also posted a five-day losing streak — its longest since November 2016 — and fell below its 50-day and 100-day moving averages, widely followed technical levels.
Both the Dow and S&P 500 posted their biggest one-day drops since early February, while the Nasdaq notched its largest single day sell-off since June 24, 2016.
Stocks have fallen sharply this month. For October, the S&P 500 and the Dow are down more than 4.4 percent and 3.3 percent, respectively. The Nasdaq, meanwhile, has lost more than 7.5 percent.
----------------
@w7 wheres the news?
🇨🇦 **Canada starts legal marijuana sales Wednesday as world watches closely**
*USA Today* - <http://archive.fo/QvFOU>
VANCOUVER – Canada’s launch of legal marijuana sales may set the stage for a global cannabis revolution, unleashing a wave of high-quality medical research that could bolster pot's reputation as a healthier alternative to alcohol and tobacco and fuel a economic boom across the USA.
Starting Wednesday, Canada becomes the highest-profile country to not only decriminalize cannabis possession and use, but to tax, regulate and monitor its growth, distribution and sale.
"They know they are the global leaders if they get it right. And they are making this a priority from the top down," said April Pride of Van der Pop, a Seattle-based women-focused cannabis lifestyle brand operating in the USA and Canada.
Canada’s national approach means pot businesses can use banks, trade stocks and sponsor peer-reviewed medical studies like any other pharmaceutical operation. It's a far cry from the piecemeal approach taken in the USA, where cannabis entrepreneurs worry the Justice Department may swoop in if the political winds shift. Though a majority of states have adopted some form of legal weed, marijuana remains illegal at the federal level in the USA.
----------------
🇺🇸 **Trump calls Stormy Daniels 'Horseface'**
*The Hill* - <https://archive.fo/iXUD8>
President Trump on Tuesday called adult-film star Stormy Daniels "Horseface" and threatened to "go after" her after he won a court victory over his alleged mistress.
“'Federal Judge throws out Stormy Danials [sic] lawsuit versus Trump. Trump is entitled to full legal fees.' @FoxNews Great, now I can go after Horseface and her 3rd rate lawyer in the Great State of Texas. She will confirm the letter she signed! She knows nothing about me, a total con!' he tweeted.
The tweet comes one day after a federal judge in California threw out Daniels's defamation lawsuit against Trump and ordered Daniels to repay the president's legal fees.
Daniels's attorney, Michael Avenatti, responded by calling Trump a "disgusting misogynist" and a "liar" who has dishonored his family and country.
"You are a disgusting misogynist and an embarrassment to the United States. Bring everything you have, because we are going to demonstrate to the world what a complete shyster and liar you are. How many other women did you cheat on your wife with while you had a baby at home?" he tweeted.
The former adult film star later hit back at Trump, making a ribald reference to his genitals.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present your president. In addition to his...umm...shortcomings, he has demonstrated his incompetence, hatred of women and lack of self control on Twitter AGAIN! And perhaps a penchant for bestiality. Game on, Tiny," she tweeted.
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🇺🇸 **“People just can’t know that.” MO Sen. McCaskill Hides Agenda Including “semi-automatic rifle ban” from Moderate Voters, Staffers Reveal in Undercover Video it “could hurt her ability to get elected.”**
*Project Veritas* - <https://archive.fo/VAtkV>
Project Veritas Action Fund has released a third undercover video from campaigns during this 2018 election season. This report exposes how incumbent Senator McCaskill and individuals working on her campaign conceal their liberal views on issues in order to court moderate voters.
Said James O’Keefe, founder and president of Project Veritas Action:
“This undercover report shows just how broken our political system has become. Senator McCaskill hides her true views from voters because she knows they won’t like them.”
Senator McCaskill revealed her intention to vote on various gun control measures in undercover footage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Doh0d78lin4
----------------
🇭🇳 🇬🇹 🇲🇽 **Northbound migrant group doubles in size, enters Guatemala**
🇺🇸 *Yahoo/Reuters* - <https://archive.fo/VdRMw>
Up to 3,000 migrants crossed from Honduras into Guatemala on Monday on a trek northward, after a standoff with police in riot gear and warnings from Washington that migrants should not try to enter the United States illegally.
The crowd more than doubled in size from Saturday, when some 1,300 people set off from northern Honduras in what has been dubbed "March of the Migrant," an organizer said. The migrants plan to seek refugee status in Mexico or pass through to the United States.
Reuters could not independently verify the number of participants, but images showed a group carrying backpacks and clogging roads near the border, some waving the Honduran flag.
The impoverished nations of Central America, from which thousands of migrants have fled in recent years, are under mounting pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump's administration to do more to curb mass migration.
"We are seriously concerned about the caravan of migrants traveling north from Honduras, with false promises of entering the United States by those who seek to exploit their compatriots," the U.S. Embassy in Honduras said in a statement on Sunday evening.
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence last week called on presidents in the region to tackle the issue, saying Washington would be willing to help with economic development and investment in return.
----------------
🇺🇸 **Washington to Decide on First-of-Its-Kind U.S. Carbon Fee**
*Bloomberg* - <https://archive.fo/vI2UC>
Voters in Washington state will go to the polls Nov. 6 to decide whether or not they want to impose a first-of-its-kind “fee” on carbon emissions. Ballot initiative 1631 marks the second time the state will vote to put a cost on emissions. A prior effort, labeled a carbon tax, failed when it was on the ballot two years ago.
Proponents including Democratic Governor Jay Inslee and Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates are hoping the new proposal -- which the state estimates would raise $2.3 billion for clean-energy investment by 2025 -- will win more backing. If passed, it would be the first effort of its kind enacted by referendum anywhere in the world, making the state a global leader in climate policy at the same time the Trump administration is reversing some federal measures.
“If it passes, it would encourage carbon-tax supporters in other states -- as a matter of political reality, this means ‘blue’ states -- to pursue analogous referendums,” said Pavel Molchanov, an analyst at Raymond James & Associates in Houston, said in an email.
Because Washington is already one of the cleanest U.S. states in terms of greenhouse gases, a carbon fee would be less of a burden for households there than in other places, according to Neelesh Nerurkar, vice president with the Washington-based research firm ClearView Energy Partners LLC.
Fifty percent of registered voters support the measure, with 36 percent opposed, and 14 percent undecided, according to a poll conducted Oct. 4 to Oct. 9 by Elway Research and Crosscut, an online news provider. The margin of error is 5 percent.
----------------
🇫🇷 **Italy brands France a 'disgrace' after police dump migrants across border**
🇮🇹 *Reuters* - <https://archive.fo/k8bwX>
Italy’s far right Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini branded France an “international disgrace” on Tuesday for having driven two migrants across its border and dumping them in Italy.
Tensions between the neighbors have risen as Rome has accused Paris of hypocrisy by refusing to take in a fair share of the hundreds of thousands of migrants who have reached Italy by boat since 2014.
On Friday, witnesses reported seeing a French police van cross the mountain border at Claviere, near the Italian ski resort of Sestriere, and making two black men get out in a wooded area before driving back the short distance to France.
Italy demanded explanations from France and on Monday French media quoted the head of the Hautes-Alpes region that flanks Italy as acknowledging that its police had crossed the border, calling the incursion “an error”.
Salvini, who serves as interior minister and is also head of the far-right League, dismissed the explanation and demanded to know the identities of the two men, who he said were migrants.
----------------
🇵🇸 **U.N. allows Palestinians to act more like full member in 2019**
*Reuters* - <https://archive.fo/PZxPj>
The 193-member United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday allowed the Palestinians to act more like a full U.N. member state during meetings in 2019 when they will chair the group of 77 developing nations.
The United States, Israel and Australia voted against the move, which won 146 votes in favor. There were 15 abstentions and 29 countries didn’t vote.
“We cannot support efforts by the Palestinians to enhance their status outside of direct negotiations. The United States does not recognize that there is a Palestinian state,” U.S. Deputy U.N. Ambassador Jonathan Cohen told the General Assembly.
The Palestinians want to establish a state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. Israel captured those territories in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed East Jerusalem in a move not recognized internationally.
“We strongly oppose the Palestinians’ election as chair of the G77 as well as this so-called enabling resolution,” he said. “Only U.N. member states should be entitled to speak and act on behalf of major groups of states at the United Nations.”
In 2012, the U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly approved the de facto recognition of the sovereign state of Palestine when it upgraded the Palestinian Authority’s U.N. observer status to non-member state - like the Vatican - from entity.
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🇨🇳 **China says internment camps are 'free vocational training'**
*AP* - <https://archive.fo/E6kEY>
China on Tuesday characterized its mass internment of Muslims as a push to bring into the "modern, civilized" world a destitute people who are easily led astray — a depiction that analysts said bore troubling colonial overtones.
The report is the ruling Communist Party's latest effort to defend its extrajudicial detention of Central Asian Muslim minorities against mounting criticism.
China's resistance to Western pressure over the camps highlights its growing confidence under President Xi Jinping, who has offered Beijing's authoritarian system as a model for other countries.
About 1 million Uighurs, Kazakhs and other minorities have been arbitrarily detained in mass internment camps in China's far west Xinjiang region, according to estimates by a U.N. panel. Former detainees say they were forced to disavow their Islamic beliefs in the camps, while children of detainees are being placed in dozens of orphanages across the region.
The report by the official Xinhua News Agency indicated that key to the party's vision in Xinjiang is the assimilation of the indigenous Central Asian ethnic minorities into Han Chinese society — and in turn, a "modern" lifestyle.
Xinjiang Gov. Shohrat Zakir said the authorities were providing people with lessons on Mandarin, Chinese history and laws. Such training would steer them away from extremism and onto the path toward a "modern life" in which they would feel "confident about the future," he said.
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🇭🇺 **Hungary gender studies ban draws university anger**
*Yahoo/AFP* - <https://archive.fo/b3GkB>
A prestigious Hungarian university on Tuesday blasted a government decree that prohibits gender studies courses as a "major infringement" on academic freedom.
The decree, signed by Prime Minister Viktor Orban and in force since Saturday, dropped the subject from a list of masters degree programmes entitled to official accreditation and financial support.
Institutions are also now barred from launching new courses in the discipline, although students who have already begun courses may complete their studies, according to the decree.
"This is a major infringement on academic freedom and university autonomy," said the Budapest-based Central European University (CEU) in a statement.
"Eliminating this programme will be a significant loss to the Hungarian scholarly community and for democratically-minded public policy," said the CEU, one of only two universities in Hungary that offered gender studies degrees.
The decree is seen by critics as the latest attack by Orban's right-wing government on both university independence and political opponents of its socially conservative policies.
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🇭🇳 🇬🇹 🇲🇽 **Trump Threatens To Cut Off Funding To Countries Allowing Citizens To Immigrate Illegally To US**
🇺🇸 *The Daily Caller* - <https://archive.fo/X1ter>
President Donald Trump warned several South American countries that they will no longer receive payments from the United States unless they combat illegal immigration efforts by their citizens in a tweet sent Tuesday.
“We have today informed the countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador that if they allow their citizens, or others, to journey through their borders and up to the United States, with the intention of entering our country illegally, all payments made to them will STOP (END)!” Trump tweeted.
The president continued to rail against illegal immigration by sending another tweet just minutes later.
“Anybody entering the United States illegally will be arrested and detained, prior to being sent back to their country!” Trump said.
Trump’s tough talk on immigration comes as the 2018 midterms approach and Republicans attempt to keep control of Congress.
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🇺🇸 **U.S. Wins Title of World’s Most Competitive Economy for First Time in a Decade**
*Breitbart* - <https://archive.fo/YxIbk>
The World Economic Forum, which hosts the annual conference of global elites in Switzerland, said on Tuesday that the United States is the most competitive economy in the world.
The U.S. has not held the number one spot since 2008, when the aftermath of the financial crisis and bungled recovery efforts left the U.S. economy limping.
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🇺🇸 **Supreme Court agrees to hear a case that could determine whether Facebook, Twitter and other social media companies can censor their users**
*CNBC* - <https://archive.fo/FwcPb>
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that could determine whether users can challenge social media companies on free speech grounds.
The case, Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck, No. 17-702, centers on whether a private operator of a public access television network is considered a state actor, which can be sued for First Amendment violations.
The case could have broader implications for social media and other media outlets. In particular, a broad ruling from the high court could open the country's largest technology companies up to First Amendment lawsuits.
That could shape the ability of companies like Facebook, Twitter and Alphabet's Google to control the content on their platforms as lawmakers clamor for more regulation and activists on the left and right spar over issues related to censorship and harassment.
The Supreme Court accepted the case on Friday. It is the first case taken by a reconstituted high court after Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation earlier this month.
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beep boop
free speech
beep boop
orangeman bad
🇺🇸 **Stoned Driver Crash Risk Grows as Legal Pot Spreads in the U.S.**
*Bloomberg* - <https://archive.fo/L0wyH>
As the push to legalize marijuana gains momentum, so is evidence that more permissive policies on the drug are putting motorists at risk.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found, in a study to be released on Thursday, that traffic accidents are rising in states that have legalized recreational marijuana. That followed stark warnings from the National Transportation Safety Board, which on Tuesday issued several recommendations to combat drug-impaired driving.
“The last thing in the world that we want is to introduce another legal substance where we may be adding to that toll and to the carnage on our highways,” said David Harkey, president of the Insurance Institute. “With marijuana impairment, we’re just now starting to understand what we don’t know.”
After retail sales of recreational cannabis began, the frequency of collision insurance claims in Colorado, Nevada, Oregon and Washington State rose about 6 percent higher than in nearby states where marijuana is still illegal, the IIHS said in the study.
A separate IIHS study saw a 5 percent increase in the rate of crashes per million vehicle registrations reported to police in Colorado, Oregon and Washington versus neighbors that haven’t legalized the drug.
"The bottom line of all of this is that we’re seeing a consistently higher crash risk in those states that have legalized marijuana for recreational purposes," Harkey said.
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🇺🇸 **Plug pulled on Lena Dunham’s Lenny Letter website**
*New York Post* - <https://archive.fo/cdxDF>
Lena Dunham’s feminist-leaning site, the Lenny Letter, is shutting down.
The website from the co-creator of HBO’s “Girls,” which blasted twice-a-week emails with articles on women’s topics, will cease operations on Friday, The Post has learned.
A rep for Dunham did not respond to requests for comment.
Rumblings of Lenny’s closure began to trickle out earlier this week when freelance writers were notified by editors that they would receive “kill fees,” or compensation for written works that haven’t been published.
The newsletter had always struggled for ad support, according to industry sources, and a series of controversies hasn’t helped. Last November, Dunham caught flak when she defended former “Girls” writer Murray Miller after an actress accused him of sexually assaulting her in 2012.
Lenny Letter’s readership has plunged precipitously since July 2017, sources said, when it reportedly had 500,000 subscribers, with nearly half of them still opening its newsletters.
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🇲🇽 **Mexico deploys hundreds of riot police as migrants near**
*Yahoo/AFP* - <https://archive.fo/cuveV>
Mexico deployed hundreds of riot police Thursday to its border with Guatemala as a caravan of Central American migrants prepared to cross on their way to the United States, defying President Donald Trump's threats.
Hundreds of federal police in riot gear fanned out on the international bridge in Suchiate, on the Mexican-Guatemalan border, as the caravan of several thousand Honduran migrants trekked toward the crossing.
Guatemala also sent police reinforcements to its side of the border, after Trump threatened to cut aid to the region, deploy the military and close the US-Mexican border if the migrants were allowed to continue.
A first group of several hundred migrants arrived late Wednesday in the border town of Tecun Uman, Guatemala, where they overflowed a local shelter, leaving many to sleep in the town square or on the street, an AFP correspondent said.
Many were traveling with a single change of clothes and little money. Others were carrying young children in their arms.
The migrants planned to wait for the rest of the caravan to arrive, then cross the border en masse in hopes of overwhelming the Mexican authorities, who have vowed to detain anyone without a visa.
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🇲🇽 **Trump threatens to send MILITARY to seal southern border if Mexico doesn't stop Central American immigrants including 'MANY CRIMINALS' from reaching the U.S.**
🇺🇸 *Daily Mail* - <https://archive.fo/wt0Ox>
Donald Trump threatened on Thursday to seal America's southern border with military force unless Mexico intervenes to stop the flow of illegal immigrants traveling to the U.S. from Central America.
The stern, tweeted warning came as a group of more than 4,000 travels north through Mexico in the hope of reaching the United States, despite having no visas or other legal papers to enter.
Trump blamed his Democratic rivals for the resulting chaos, saying 'they want Open Borders and existing weak laws.'
He resurrected the claim that launched his White House campaign in 2015, saying that 'this large flow of people' includes 'MANY CRIMINALS' and putting the words in uppercase letters for effect.
'I must, in the strongest of terms, ask Mexico to stop this onslaught – and if unable to do so I will call up the U.S. Military and CLOSE OUR SOUTHERN BORDER!' Trump wrote.
'All Democrats fault for weak laws!' he added.
Trump on Thursday also renewed Wednesday's threat to stop all payments to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, including humanitarian aid, if their governments 'allow their citizens, or others, to journey through their borders and up to the United States.'
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is scheduled to fly to Mexico on Friday.
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🇺🇸 **Arizona man, 62, falls into mine shaft, breaks bones and kills 3 rattlesnakes before being rescued days later**
*Fox News* - <http://archive.fo/XZDBI>
A 62-year-old man was rescued from the depths of an Arizona mine shaft Wednesday -- two days after he plunged into the pit and began an ordeal during which he nursed his numerous injuries while simultaneously fending off a trio of rattlesnakes, officials said.
John Waddell was lifted out of the 100-foot-deep shaft Wednesday after his friend, Terry Schrader, heard Waddell hollering near Eagle Eye Road and milepost 13, located about 35 miles south of Aguila, Arizona, FOX10 Phoenix reported.
When Waddell plummeted into the shaft Monday, he broke both his legs. Worse, as he lay helpless, he suddenly discovered several rattlesnakes were slithering around him. Waddell said he managed to kill three of the serpents during the trying two days underground, all the while hoping someone would eventually hear his cries for help.
It took rescuers nearly six hours to pull Waddell out of the shaft to safety and then to airlift him to a hospital. Although Waddell was severely dehydrated and had broken his legs, his injuries were not life-threatening, FOX10 reported.
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🇹🇷 **People-Smugglers Bringing Illegal Migrants to EU in Limos, Luxury Cars**
*Breitbart* - <http://archive.is/hAahA>
People-smugglers are transporting “desperate” illegal migrants to the European Union via Turkey in limousines and luxury cars at up to 3,000 euros a time.
Greek police have arrested five suspected people-smugglers from Georgia, a European country outside the EU bloc in the Caucasus, who they believe to be part of a more substantial and only partly dismantled criminal network, Ekathimerini reports.
The Athens-based newspaper describes the smugglers as transporting illegal migrants through Turkey in limos and other luxury cars fitted with licence plates from Bulgaria — which joined the European Union in 2007 — with the plates being switched for Greek ones near the Islamist-led country’s land border with the EU in East Thrace.
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🇹🇷 **Recordings prove Jamal Khashoggi was killed, Turkish investigators claim **
*The Guardian* - <http://archive.is/uQ8ts>
Turkish investigators have claimed video and audio recordings exist that prove Jamal Khashoggi was killed, a sign that Ankara is willing to keep up the pressure on Riyadh to back up its claims it has nothing to do with the dissident journalist’s disappearance.
US government officials told the Washington Post late on Thursday that their Turkish counterparts claimed the recordings from 2 October proved Khashoggi was murdered and his body dismembered during a visit to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to pick up marriage paperwork.
The alleged audio evidence – which Turkish sources have also suggested exists in comments to the Guardian – is particularly strong, according to officials.
“You can hear his voice and the voices of men speaking Arabic,” a source told the Washington Post. “You can hear how he was interrogated, tortured and then murdered.”
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🇸🇦 **Fight at Consulate Led to Journalist’s Death, Saudis Say - 18 Saudi citizens have been detained pending final results of investigation**
🇹🇷 *The Wall Street Journal* - <https://archive.fo/d5hCT>
Saudi Arabia’s government acknowledged that journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed inside its consulate in Istanbul, saying he died after a brawl.
In a statement carried by Saudi state television early Saturday, the government’s attorney general said 18 Saudi citizens have been detained pending the final results of a continuing investigation into the death of Mr. Khashoggi, a prominent Saudi journalist and government critic.
“Discussions between citizen Jamal Khashoggi and those who met him while he was in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul led to a brawl and a fist fight, which led to his death,” the statement said, citing the preliminary findings of the investigation.
Mr. Khashoggi was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2. He was accompanied to the entrance by his fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, who first raised the alarm of his disappearance.
The Saudi monarch, King Salman, ordered the formation of a new committee responsible for overhauling the country’s intelligence agency to be led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. That was a clear indication that the crown prince won’t face immediate repercussions for Mr. Khashoggi’s death.
In a royal order carried by state-run media, King Salman also announced that two senior government officials—both close aides of the crown prince—have been relieved of their posts. They are Maj. Gen. Ahmed al-Assiri, the deputy chief of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence, and Saud al-Qahtani, who was in charge of media affairs at the royal court.
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🇿🇦 **South African city set to seize land in national ‘test case’**
*AP* - <https://archive.fo/vZQsN>
As South Africa’s passionate debate over land redistribution grows, one city outside Johannesburg is preparing what the mayor calls a “test case” for the nation — the seizure of hundreds of acres of land from private owners, without paying for it, to build low-cost housing.
Like other South African cities, Ekurhuleni faces a dire housing crunch, with some 600,000 of its nearly 4 million people living in “informal settlements” and a shortage of land to build homes.
Last month, Ekurhuleni’s city council voted in favor of forging ahead with “expropriation without compensation,” a legal tool that the ruling African National Congress says is necessary to correct the historic injustices of apartheid and distribute land more equitably.
Nearly a quarter-century after the end of white-minority rule, white South Africans comprise just 8 percent of the population but still hold most of the individually owned private land, keeping most economic power in the hands of a few and making the country one of the most unequal societies in the world.
In July, President Cyril Ramaphosa said the ANC planned to amend the constitution to allow for expropriation without compensation, sparking concerns that the move could destabilize the fragile economy and spur conflict in an already socially divided nation.
----------------
🇬🇹 **The indigenous people genocide case in Guatemala: justice delayed, justice denied?**
*opendemocracy.net* - <http://archive.is/3MUI1>
There was a military structure that designed, planned and executed operations aimed at eradicating Guatemala’s indigenous peoples. On Wednesday September 26, at about 7pm, in a courtroom filled to bursting point, the High Risk Court B declared, for the second time in five years, that genocide was committed in Guatemala.
Following more than two years of witness testimonies, forensic evidence and expert reports the court declared that they had sufficient evidence to prove that the Guatemalan army committed genocide and crimes against humanity against the Mayan Ixil people between 1982 and 1983, one of the most violent eras of the 36 year internal armed conflict in Guatemala.
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🇬🇹 **Mexico slowly processes caravan migrants at Guatemala border**
🇲🇽 *AP* - <https://archive.fo/gVKE7>
Mexican authorities for a second straight day Saturday refused mass entry to a caravan of Central American migrants held up at the border with Guatemala, but began accepting small groups for asylum processing and gave out some 45-day visitor permits that would theoretically allow recipients time to reach the United States.
Seeking to maintain order after a chaotic Friday in which thousands rushed across the border bridge only to be halted by a phalanx of officers in riot gear, authorities began handing out numbers for people to be processed in a strategy seen before at U.S. border posts when large numbers of migrants show up there.
Once they were processed, migrants were bused to an open-air, metal-roofed fairground in the nearby city of Tapachula, where the Red Cross set up small blue tents on the concrete floor. Easily 3,000 people or more the previous day, the crowd on the bridge thinned out noticeably.
Some migrants tore open a fence on the Guatemala side of the bridge and threw two young children, perhaps age 6 or 7, and their mother into the muddy waters about 40 feet below. They were rafted to safety in on the Mexican bank.
Some on the bank yelled warnings to migrants on the bridge not to get on buses organized by Mexican authorities, claiming it was a ruse to deport them. There was no evidence of anyone being deported through such trickery, but the warnings made plenty leery of boarding, like Fidelina Vasquez, a grandmother traveling with her daughter and 2-year-old grandson.
A Mexican migration official who declined to give his name because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly said that between Friday and Saturday, authorities had deported by bus about 500 people who voluntarily decided to return.
----------------
🇩🇪 **Germany urges global minimum tax for digital giants**
*Yahoo/AFP* - <https://archive.fo/4Y9Ey>
German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said in an interview for publication Sunday he backed a global minimum fiscal regime for multinationals as Europe looks to levy tax notably on US tech giants.
"We need a minumum tax rate valid globally which no state can get out of (applying)," Scholz, a social democrat in conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government, told the "Welt am Sonntag" weekly.
Europe is trying to devise a strategy to tax profits from the likes of Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and digital platforms such as YouTube and Airbnb which currently manage to keep fiscal exposure to a bare minimum.
Digital platforms "aggravate a problem which we know well from globalisation and which we are trying to counter -- the shifting of profits to fiscally beneficial regions," said Scholz.
----------------
🇺🇸 **Trump says US will withdraw from nuclear arms treaty with Russia**
🇷🇺 *The Guardian* - <https://archive.fo/x9yW1>
Donald Trump has confirmed the US will leave an arms control treaty with Russia dating from the cold war that has kept nuclear missiles out of Europe for three decades.
“We’ll have to develop those weapons,” the president told reporters in Nevada after a rally. “We’re going to terminate the agreement and we’re going to pull out.”
Trump was referring to the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty (INF), which banned ground-launch nuclear missiles with ranges from 500km to 5,500km. Signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, it led to nearly 2,700 short- and medium-range missiles being eliminated, and an end to a dangerous standoff between US Pershing and cruise missiles and Soviet SS-20 missiles in Europe.
The Guardian reported on Friday that Trump’s third national security adviser, John Bolton, a longstanding opponent of arms control treaties, was pushing for US withdrawal. The US says Russia has been violating the INF agreement with the development and deployment of a new cruise missile. Under the terms of the treaty, it would take six months for US withdrawal to take effect.
US hawks have also argued that the INF treaty ties the country’s hands in its strategic rivalry with China in the Pacific, with no response to Chinese medium-range missiles that could threaten US bases, allies and shipping.
----------------
🇭🇳 🇬🇹 🇲🇽 **Migrant caravan swells to 5,000, resumes advance toward US**
🇺🇸 *AP* - <https://archive.fo/rcVyk>
A growing throng of Central American migrants resumed their advance toward the U.S. border in southern Mexico on Sunday, overwhelming Mexican government attempts to stop them at the border.
Their numbers swelled to about 5,000 overnight and at first light they set out walking toward the Mexican town of Tapachula, 10 abreast in a line stretching approximately a mile (1.5 kilometers).
Several hundred more already had applied for refugee status in Mexico and an estimated 1,500 were still on the Guatemalan side of the Suchiate River, hoping to enter legally.
It was not immediately clear where the additional travelers had materialized from since about 2,000 had been gathered on the Mexican side Saturday night. They seemed likely to be people who had been waiting in the Guatemalan town of Tecun Uman and who decided to cross during the night.
They marched on through Mexico like a ragtag army of the poor, shouting triumphantly slogans like “Si se pudo!” or “Yes, we could!”
As they passed through Mexican villages on the outskirts of Ciudad Hidalgo, they drew applause, cheers and donations of food and clothing from Mexicans.
Maria Teresa Orellana, a resident of the neighborhood of Lorenzo handed out free sandals to the migrants as they passed. “It’s solidarity,” she said. “They’re our brothers.”
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🇺🇸 **Trump approval jumps ahead of Obama’s midterm approval rating**
*The Hill* - <https://archive.fo/iWgwb>
President Trump's approval rating before the November elections has jumped to a higher level than former President Obama's ahead of the 2010 midterms, according to a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll.
The poll found Trump's approval rating at its highest level for that poll yet, at 47 percent. Obama's approval rating was 45 percent around the same time in 2010, according to a similar NBC/Wall Street Journal poll taken in late October 2010.
Obama's approval rating was reaching a record low in October 2010, just before his party lost a significant number of seats in the House and Senate.
Trump is a historically unpopular president among the general U.S. population, but consistently retains extremely high levels of Republican support. Recent polls have put him at around a 90 percent approval rating among Republicans.
Many see the midterm elections as a referendum on the current president.
Republicans and Democrats are facing a particularly tough election year, with vulnerable Democratic senators seeking to retain their seats in states Trump won by double digits in 2016 as Republicans deal with widespread Trump disapproval among suburban women and other groups.
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🇺🇸 **‘Transgender’ Could Be Defined Out of Existence Under Trump Administration**
*NY Times* - <https://archive.fo/oXnZ2>
The Trump administration is considering narrowly defining gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth, the most drastic move yet in a governmentwide effort to roll back recognition and protections of transgender people under federal civil rights law.
A series of decisions by the Obama administration loosened the legal concept of gender in federal programs, including in education and health care, recognizing gender largely as an individual’s choice and not determined by the sex assigned at birth. The policy prompted fights over bathrooms, dormitories, single-sex programs and other arenas where gender was once seen as a simple concept. Conservatives, especially evangelical Christians, were incensed.
Now the Department of Health and Human Services is spearheading an effort to establish a legal definition of sex under Title IX, the federal civil rights law that bans gender discrimination in education programs that receive government financial assistance, according to a memo obtained by The New York Times.
The department argued in its memo that key government agencies needed to adopt an explicit and uniform definition of gender as determined “on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable.” The agency’s proposed definition would define sex as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that a person is born with, according to a draft reviewed by The Times. Any dispute about one’s sex would have to be clarified using genetic testing.
“Sex means a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth,” the department proposed in the memo, which was drafted and has been circulating since last spring. “The sex listed on a person’s birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a person’s sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence.”
----------------
🇬🇧 **Groups Promoting Anti-Brexit ‘People’s Vote’ March Funded by the EU**
*Breitbart* - <http://archive.fo/Nx6Sl>
Some of the groups promoting the march for a so-called ‘People’s Vote’ for another Brexit referendum were directly funded by the EU, according to reports. The People’s Vote campaign has been dubbed the ‘Losers’ Vote’ by critics, after the fact that ‘The People’ already voted against EU membership in the 2016 referendum on the issue.
It has also been described as ‘The Soros Vote’ by Nigel Farage, in a nod to the fact that many the people pushing hardest for a second referendum are super-rich establishment figures — billionaire plutocrat and open borders campaigner George Soros being foremost among them. However, there is evidence that some of the groups promoting the campaign’s march through metropolitan London on October 20th were directly funded by the EU itself — to the tune of hundreds of thousands of euros, according to Guido Fawkes.
The European Alternatives group received 300,000 euros — covering most of its 500,000 euro budget — from European Commission citizenship and justice programmes in 2016-17, according to EU documents, while the European Movement received an even more substantial sum of 350,000 euros from the bloc.
The European Movement, which is dedicated to “the establishment of a united, federal Europe” similar to the United States of America, and described its remit as “propaganda and other activities” in its memorandum of association, has played an interesting role in the Brexit story so far.
The official Remain campaign, Britain Stronger in Europe, was set up as the Interim Campaign Ltd by the European Movement’s chairwoman, Laura Sandys.
----------------
🇭🇳 🇬🇹 🇲🇽 **Caravan of migrants swells to 7,000 and stretches more than a mile long as they continue marching towards the U.S. border - but Trump warns full efforts are being made to stop the 'onslaught of illegal aliens'**
🇺🇸 *Daily Mail/AP* - <https://archive.fo/F6iT9>
The throng of Central American migrants advancing toward the U.S. border in southern Mexico has now swelled to a whopping 7,000 people as they defy the efforts of four governments to break them up.
Thousands of mostly Honduran migrants rose at dawn on Sunday from the shores of a river between Guatemala and Mexico and continued their trek northward, overwhelming Mexican government attempts to stop them at the border.
Their numbers swelled from 2,000 to about 5,000 overnight and at first light they set out walking toward the Mexican town of Tapachula, 10 abreast in a line stretching approximately a mile. That number has now reportedly risen to 7,000.
Several hundred more already had applied for refugee status in Mexico and an estimated 1,500 were still on the Guatemalan side of the Suchiate River, hoping to enter legally.
It came as President Donald Trump fired off a tweet on Sunday afternoon, saying: 'Full efforts are being made to stop the onslaught of illegal aliens from crossing our Southern Border.
'People have to apply for asylum in Mexico first, and if they fail to do that, the U.S. will turn them away. The courts are asking the U.S. to do things that are not doable!'
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🇯🇴 **World War 3: Jordan demands Israel RETURN land leased under 1994 peace treaty**
🇮🇱 *Express* - <https://archive.fo/CiZfj>
After immense pressure from activists and civil society groups, Jordan said that it would be reclaiming al-Ghumar and al-Baqura after ending its lease agreement with Israel.
According to the 1994 peace agreement, Israel was leased 405 hectares of land so that Israeli farmers could use the water-rich farmland for at least 25 years.
The King said: “We have informed Israel of an end to the application of the peace treaty annexes regarding al-Baqura and al-Ghumar.
"Al-Baqura and al-Ghumar have always been on top of my priorities.
Our decision is to end the annexes of the peace treaty based on our keenness to take all that is necessary for Jordan and Jordanians.
"Al-Baqura and al-Ghumar are Jordanian land and will remain Jordanian."
The deadline to renew the lease is October 25.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel would reach out to Jordan in order to negotiate an extension on the leases which are set to expire next year.
----------------
🇷🇺 **Trump says U.S. to exit landmark nuclear arms pact, Russia threatens retaliation**
🇺🇸 *Reuters* - <https://archive.fo/0w6zd>
President Donald Trump said Washington would withdraw from a landmark Cold War-era treaty that eliminated nuclear missiles from Europe because Russia was violating the pact, triggering a warning of retaliatory measures from Moscow.
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, negotiated by then-President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987, required elimination of short-range and intermediate-range nuclear and conventional missiles by both countries.
“Russia has not, unfortunately, honored the agreement so we’re going to terminate the agreement and we’re going to pull out,” Trump told reporters on Saturday after a rally in Nevada.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Sunday that a unilateral withdrawal by the United States would be “very dangerous” and lead to a “military-technical” retaliation.
Gorbachev, now a frail 87-year-old, said it would be a mistake for Washington to quit the treaty, and it would undermine work he and U.S. counterparts did to end the Cold War Arms race.
“Do they really not understand in Washington what this could lead to?” Interfax news agency quoted Gorbachev as saying.
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🇺🇸 **Judge bars New Hampshire proof of residency requirement for new voters**
*Reuters* - <https://archive.fo/ukpFs>
A New Hampshire judge on Monday put on hold a law requiring some voters to present proof of residency when they register, saying it would lengthen lines at polling places and make it difficult for students, disabled voters and others to cast ballots.
The temporary injunction against the Republican-backed law comes two weeks before U.S. Congressional elections that will determine whether opposition Democrats or U.S. President Donald Trump’s Republicans retain full control of the federal government’s legislative branch.
The measure, which passed largely along party lines and went into effect last year, required those seeking to register within 30 days of an election to present documents proving that they live in the area where they intend to vote. Without such proof, they must agree to either send it in within 10 days or the state will seek to verify their domicile.
The law does not require proof of address when voting.
“Where the law threatens to disenfranchise an individual’s right to vote, the only viable remedy is to enjoin its enforcement,” Presiding Justice Kenneth C. Brown wrote in his decision for the Hillsborough Superior Court Northern District in Manchester.
He added that the registration form is too complicated for many people to understand.
----------------
🇪🇺 **YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki warns users about EU 'meme ban' **
*Mashable* - <https://archive.fo/YQyAP>
YouTube is sounding the alarms at the highest level over new controversial copyright legislation in the EU.
In a new blog post updating YouTube creators on the company’s priorities for the remainder of the year, CEO Susan Wojcicki focused on Article 13 of the European Union Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market.
While there are a number of problematic parts to this new legislation, such as Article 11 — which the EFF described as akin to a “link tax,” requiring internet platforms "to obtain a license before linking to news stories" — YouTube is putting the spotlight on Article 13, which has been widely referred to as a “meme ban.”
Article 13 of this new EU copyright law update, also known as the EU Copyright Directive, places copyright liabilities on sites with user-generated content, basically requiring them to scan uploads for copyrighted content. It’s been compared to YouTube’s own Content ID system for copyrighted material, but even YouTube believes it extends further than that.
Memes, parodies, educational videos, or any sort of remixes — all kinds of content that makes up the YouTube community that would currently pass as fair use — could be in danger. This would have sprawling effects on the internet as a whole.
Wojcicki did not mince words, saying that “Article 13 as written threatens to shut down the ability of millions of people — from creators like you to everyday users — to upload content to platforms like YouTube.” She also highlighted the economic impact of the legislation stating that “hundreds of thousands of jobs” are threatened by Article 13. The YouTube CEO continued: “This legislation poses a threat to both your livelihood and your ability to share your voice with the world.”
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🇺🇸 **Explosive Device Found in Mailbox at George Soros’s Westchester County Home**
*New York Times* - <https://archive.fo/eCgs9>
An explosive device was found on Monday in a mailbox at the Westchester County home of George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist who is a favorite target of right-wing groups, the authorities said.
A law enforcement official confirmed that the device was found near Mr. Soros’s home. It did not explode on its own, and bomb squad technicians “proactively detonated” it, the official said.
Federal and state law enforcement officials responded to the scene in Katonah, N.Y., a hamlet in the upscale town of Bedford in northern Westchester, after the Bedford Police Department received a call about a suspicious package at about 3:45 p.m.
“An employee of the residence opened the package, revealing what appeared to be an explosive device,” the police said in a statement. “The employee placed the package in a wooded area and called the Bedford police.”
Mr. Soros was not home at the time.
The police said they had turned the case over to the F.B.I., which did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In a tweet late Monday night, the bureau’s New York office said it was conducting an investigation “at and around a residence in Bedford” and that there was no threat to public safety.
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🇸🇦 🇬🇧 **Saudi Arabia pays UK firms millions to boost image - PR agency Freud’s, the Independent, Vice and Tony Blair Institute for Global Change among those with links**
*The Guardian* - <http://archive.fo/HGaXO>
London has become a hub for global Saudi public relations and media influence campaigns, with British firms earning millions of pounds from efforts to improve the image of the kingdom and its regional allies in recent years, a Guardian investigation has found. The reputation of Saudi Arabia, always controversial due to its record on human rights and involvement in the ongoing Yemeni war, has taken a battering in the past fortnight following the apparent murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
The investigation into how London has become a focus of lobbying efforts in recent years to burnish the country’s image reveals:
Major PR agency Freud’s, which has worked with Saudi Arabia, is now distancing itself from the kingdom. There are fresh concerns over the Independent’s decision to establish a partnership with a Saudi publisher with close links to the Saudi government.
The London office of online publisher Vice has been working on a series of films to promote Saudi Arabia. A Saudi publishing company that is signing partnerships with western media firms has donated to the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change in return for his advice to the country. A company largely staffed by former employees of the collapsed PR firm Bell Pottinger has advised the Saudi state on communications strategy.
Although some media companies have longstanding relationships with the country, many advertising and PR groups rushed into the kingdom during the rise to power of Mohammed bin Salman, who became crown prince in June 2017. His recent attempts to improve the country’s overseas image have been undermined by Khashoggi’s disappearance.
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🇺🇸 **Trump embraces 'nationalist' title at Texas rally**
*CNN* - <https://archive.fo/NPwYK>
President Donald Trump railed against "globalists" and declared himself "a nationalist" during his rally Monday night in Houston -- prompting "USA" chants.
"A globalist is a person that wants the globe to do well, frankly not caring about the country so much," Trump said, prompting boos from the crowd. "You know, we can't have that."
"You know they have a word, it sort of became old fashioned, it's called a nationalist," Trump continued. "And I say really, we're not supposed to use that word."
"You know what I am, I'm a nationalist," Trump said, as the crowd erupted in "USA! USA!" chants. "Use that word."
Trump then touted the fact that his unfavorable ratings in other countries are sky high.
"Of course I'm unpopular with foreign nations, because we're not letting them rip us off anymore," he said.
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🇬🇧 **Government bans phrase 'fake news'**
*Telegraph* - <https://archive.fo/brpQL>
The government has banned the term “fake news” after urging ministers to use “misinformation” or "disinformation" instead.
The phrase - a favourite of US President Donald Trump - will no longer appear in policy documents or official papers because it is “a poorly-defined and misleading term that conflates a variety of false information, from genuine error through to foreign interference in democratic processes,” officials said.
While ministers may speak freely in the House of Commons, any strategy documents referring to election meddling or internet safety will need to use the new definition.
The ban on the phrase was prompted by an inquiry into "fake news" led by the Digital, Culture, Media and Sports Committee to address the potential for social media to be misused to sway elections. It followed concerns that Russia meddled with the 2016 US presidential election and the UK referendum to leave the EU.
Facebook's technology chief, a former Google designer, Cambridge Analytica employees and Arron Banks, the Leave.EU chief linked to the now defunct data analytics company appeared before MPs to give evidence.
After completing the probe in July, the DCMS Committee released an interim report that warned of a “democratic crisis founded upon the manipulation of personal data which targeted users with pernicious views, particularly during elections and referenda”.
“We recommend that the Government rejects the term ‘fake news’, and instead puts forward an agreed definition of the words ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’. With such a shared definition, and clear guidelines for companies, organisations, and the Government to follow, there will be a shared consistency of meaning across the platforms, which can be used as the basis of regulation and enforcement,” it stated.
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🇺🇸 **2,100 mostly unarmed Guard troops on border as Trump vows to send more to stop migrant caravan**
*Military Times* - <https://archive.fo/AvU69>
The National Guard has about 2,100 troops working along the U.S.-Mexico border as a caravan of thousands of migrants approach from Central America in a direct challenge to President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.
The now estimated 7,000 migrants have reached southern Mexico. They are traveling mostly by foot on a route that originated with about 200 initial migrants seeking to escape gang violence in Honduras.
In April, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis authorized that as many as 4,000 troops could be sent to the border pending approval of participating state governors. The memo allowed for the cost of the deployment to be reimbursed through federal funds, but also limited the National Guard’s role, prohibiting guard forces from interacting with any of the migrants or taking on a law enforcement role.
DoD has not received a request from the White House for additional forces beyond the 4,000, a defense official said.
Almost all of the 2,100 Guard forces already dispatched to the border were sent by four states: Texas, California, New Mexico and Arizona; with Texas supplying about 1,000 of the total Guard presence.
The 1,000 Texas Army National Guardsmen dispatched are not armed, said spokesman Maj. Joshua G. Amstutz. The forces are not in law enforcement roles, they are back-filling key roles such as running motor pools, so most Customs and Border Protection Agents can be working the border.
Those support roles include “aerial detection, maintaining and repairing vehicles, and providing logistical support so that the Border Patrol is able to get badges back on the border to enforce the law,” Amstutz said.
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<:shiiiiit:348458410217308170> **White nationalist Richard Spencer accused of abusing wife over 8 years: divorce filings**
*Global News* - <http://archive.fo/YQHhW>
The wife of white nationalist leader Richard Spencer has accused him of physically, verbally and emotionally abusing her throughout their eight-year marriage.
In a court filing for the couple’s divorce proceedings in Montana, Nina Koupriianova said Spencer once left her with bruises after dragging her off a bed and down stairs in 2011.
She also said he “attacked” and bruised her again in 2014, when she was four months pregnant with their first child.
Spencer told The Associated Press on Tuesday that he is “not an abusive person” and said his wife was “never in a dangerous situation.”
----------------
No way not Dickie spence
🇸🇪 **Thousands of Swedes are getting microchip IDs inserted into their hands to swipe into homes, offices, concerts and even to access social media**
*Daily Mail* - <https://archive.fo/WSpo7>
More than 4,000 Swedes are being implanted with a microchip that contains details about their identity.
The miniature technology bypasses the need for cash, tickets, access cards and even social media.
BioHax International is the market leader in the innovate industry and has captured public imagination since it was started five years ago by Jowan Osterlund, a former professional body piercer.
Some people argue the conveniences gained from the procedure by so-called 'body-hackers' do not outweigh the risks to their private data.
In June 2017, SJ Rail, the Swedish train operator, announced that around 100 people were using microchips to pay for their journey.
Commuters with a microchip in their hand are able to have their ticket loaded directly onto the device.
The train conductor can then read the chip with a smartphone to confirm the passenger has paid for their journey.
This was one of the most widespread and mainstream uses of the technology and has seen it be adopted by a plethora of forward-thinking companies.
Microchipping has even been adopted by professional social media platform LinkedI.
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🇭🇳 🇬🇹 🇲🇽 **Mexican News Outlet: Officials Say 14,000 Honduran Migrants Heading to U.S.**
🇺🇸 *Breitbart* - <https://archive.fo/zVbNY>
The Mexican El Universal news outlet is reporting that more than 14,000 Hondurans — not counting people from other countries who are marching toward the United States — are leaving that Central American nation to seek asylum here.
The news outlet reported that “municipal authorities,” the Catholic Diocese in the Mexican city of Tapachula, and the Mexican National Migration Institute (INM) provided the 14,000 figure.
“The first group walked for 37 kilometers from Ciudad Hidalgo to Tapachula on Sunday afternoon and was comprised by 5,333 children, women and men,” El Universal reported.
Later that afternoon 3,000 more men, women and children started “to walk under the rain.”
“Meanwhile, there are 3,000 children, women and men in the Ciudad Hidalgo International bridge, shared by Mexico and Guatemala, who are looking to enter Mexico with documents provided by the INM,” the news outlet reported.
----------------
It will be a cold fucking day in hell before I EVER get a fucking microchip implanted in my body willingly. Having a smart phone is bad enough. How long will it be from paying for shit to "we now track and monitor individuals for "safety". Cops wont even need to ask you where you were on friday of october,they will just scan your hand! Yeah,if you get that done you may as well hand over your freedoms and piss on the constitution. I'm really hoping a super solar flare will happen and just fucking kill all tech for the next few decades.
🇫🇷 **In France, a Push to Teach Arabic in Public Schools, Not Mosques **
*WSJ* - <http://archive.fo/9KIvh>
PANTIN, France—Every Sunday, parents in this working-class neighborhood just north of Paris bring their children to a small school operated by the local mosque. Half of the three-hour lesson is devoted to learning Arabic, the other half to learning the Quran.
Now President Emmanuel Macron’s government is considering giving parents a secular alternative to that intertwining of Arabic and Islam by prodding more of France’s public schools to offer children as young as age 6 Arabic lessons—without religious content.
France is home to one of the world’s biggest Arab diasporas, but only a fraction of the country’s public schools have the resources to offer Arabic courses. Instead, tens of thousands of children attend classes partly funded by Arabic-speaking countries, according to the government. Countless others attend private schools linked to mosques, where instruction ranges between teachers with a clear command of Arabic and those who don’t fully understand the language and encourage rote memorization of Quranic verses.
For senior French officials, the absence of Arabic in most public schools has had the unintended consequence of fueling communautarisme, a term the French use to describe the social divide between France’s Muslim-minority community and the rest of the country.
----------------
⚠ **Attention Outer Heaven Gamers!!! ** ⚠
Captain Kirk needs your help. (((Discord))) moderators are at his door, and if he doesn't gun them down before they get into his home, they'll find the 284 terabytes of child porn on his multiple hard drives.
But there's one problem. Kirk has forgotten the combination to the safe he keeps his My Little Pony custom AR-15 in. All you have to do to help him is send him your credit card number, the three wacky numbers on the back, and the expiration month and year.
But hurry, or the Jews will get porn *and* his server!
HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA
@w7 welfare,I mean migrant caravan update please.
🇺🇸 **Obama, Clinton among targets of suspected bombs ahead of U.S. election**
*Reuters* - <https://archive.fo/360CP>
Former U.S. President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were among the targets of suspected package bombs delivered to several high-profile Democrats and CNN, which the FBI said it was investigating as an act of terrorism.
At least eight suspicious parcels were intercepted before reaching any intended recipients, including Obama's attorney general, Eric Holder, former CIA Director John Brennan and prominent Democratic Party donor George Soros.
Two packages were sent to California Congresswoman Maxine Waters, the FBI said. Investigators were trying to track down another suspicious parcel they believe was addressed to Obama's vice president, Joe Biden, a federal official told Reuters late on Wednesday.
None of the eight packages detonated, and nobody was hurt. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
But news of the bomb threats heightened tension in a nation deeply polarized ahead of elections on Nov. 6 that will decide whether Democrats take control of one or both houses of Congress from Republicans and deny President Donald Trump the majority his party now holds in both.
Some leading Democrats were quick to accuse Trump himself of stoking the potential for political violence by frequently engaging in hyper-partisan, vitriolic rhetoric.
----------------
🇬🇹 🇭🇳 **Second migrant caravan gathering in Guatemala, report says**
*Fox News* - <https://archive.fo/wXQ37>
A second migrant caravan is forming at the Honduran border and is expected to follow the larger caravan of more than 7,000 from Central America towards the U.S.-Mexico border, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.
Guatemalan authorities on Sunday estimated the new group -- which gathered in a Guatemalan city near the border of Honduras -- to be at 1,000. But the group appears to be growing. The Journal, citing estimates from church-run charities and activists, reported that the group is now made up of about 2,500.
The new caravan reportedly plans to follow in the footsteps of the larger group, who passed through the southern Mexico border over the weekend.
The vast majority of the migrants are from Honduras who are escaping crime and extreme poverty. Activists say migrants opt to travel in large numbers to avoid the dangers of crime and human traffickers.
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🇸🇦 🇹🇷 **Saudi Arabia says Khashoggi murder premeditated: state media**
*Reuters* - <https://archive.fo/4ryDV>
Saudi Arabia’s public prosecutor said on Thursday the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi was premeditated, citing a joint Saudi-Turkish investigation, state media reported.
Saudi officials had earlier said an internal investigation suggested Khashoggi was killed in a botched operation to “negotiate” his return to the kingdom. Initially, Riyadh denied having anything to do with Khashoggi’s disappearance after he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2.
Turkey and Western allies of Riyadh have voiced deep doubt toward Saudi explanations of the killing. Turkey has dismissed Saudi efforts to blame rogue operatives and urged the kingdom to search “top to bottom” for those responsible for the killing.
“Information from the Turkish side affirms that the suspects in Khashoggi’s case premeditated their crime,” a statement from the Saudi public prosecutor said.
Saudi prosecutors are interrogating suspects on the basis of information provided by a joint Saudi-Turkish task force, the statement carried by the Saudi state news agency added.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan spoke to Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and the two discussed the steps needed to bring to light all aspects of the killing, Saudi and Turkish media said on Wednesday.
----------------
🇵🇭 **Philippines' Duterte sacks all top customs officials over drugs**
*Reuters* - <https://archive.fo/tjbDQ>
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte fired the head of the Bureau of Customs on Thursday and ordered all top bureau officials replaced after the agency failed to intercept more than a ton of drugs, the second such case in two years.
Duterte has made a bloody fight against drugs the centerpiece of his administration since he won a presidential election in 2016. Thousands of people have been killed in the crackdown.
Duterte said Customs Commissioner Isidro Lapena was being removed from his post and all his deputies and top officials would be transferred.
“The commissioners are out, the department heads are out,” Duterte said during a speech at a ceremony commemorating the founding of the coastguard.
He said he was appointing retired army general to take over the bureau and soldiers and members of the coastguard would help him.
----------------
🇺🇸 **'I ain't scared': Maxine Waters speaks out on receiving bomb threats**
*Blavity* - <https://archive.fo/7mxMg>
Several U.S. Democrat leaders had suspicious packaging sent to their offices on Wednesday.
Both current and former elected officials were targeted including Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder and Rep. Maxine Waters. In regards to Waters, a Maryland mail facility intercepted a package that was headed to the representative's office in Washington while similar makeshift pipe bombs were also found addressed to others.
In a Blavity Politics exclusive interview on Wednesday, Waters sounded off on finding out she was one of the intended victims. It was also discovered that, later that same day, South Los Angeles postal workers found a suspicious package addressed to the representative.
Waters has become a target of the right-wing base because of her vocal stance against the Trump administration and its policies. She’s also been leading the fight for impeachment against Trump.
But when it comes to being threatened, Waters is not one to back down. Earlier this year when Waters responded to threats of right-wingers threatening to shoot her, she said, “if you shoot me you better shoot straight.”
----------------
🇺🇸 **New copyright exemptions let you legally repair your phone or jailbreak voice assistants**
*The Verge* - <http://archive.fo/QIp9Y>
In a big victory for hacker, tinkerers, and the right to repair movement, the US Copyright Office has ruled some major changes to the legal exemption to the DMCA, making it far easier for owners to build software tools to hack, modify, and repair their own devices, as explained by iFixit founder Kyle Wiens.
Under section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), it is “unlawful to circumvent technological measures used to prevent unauthorized access to copyrighted works.” Because software has become so integral to all the devices we use — everything from phones to speakers to even trackers — device manufacturers have long used section 1201 to prevent owners from taking apart or repairing their own devices, arguing that breaking the software locks as part of replacing parts or modifying your gadgets is a violation of that statute.
But as part of that law, citizens are allowed to petition for exemptions to section 1201 every three years, when the Copyright Office rules what kind of repairs and software tools are and aren’t allowed by the law. The final ruling for this cycle was just released (it goes into effect as law on October 28th), and it enacts broad new protections for repairing devices.
----------------
🇬🇧 **All roles in UK military to be open to women, Williamson announces**
*The Guardian* - <http://archive.fo/wIHJC>
Women will be allowed to apply for all military roles in the British armed forces, including in frontline infantry units and the Royal Marines, the government has announced.
Women will also be able to put themselves forward for selection for specialist units including the SAS and SBS. The Ministry of Defence described the move as historic.
He said that with immediate effect, women already serving in the army could transfer into infantry roles. Those not currently serving would be able to apply for infantry roles in December, with new recruits starting basic training in April 2019.
----------------
🇺🇸 **Pipe bomb suspect Cesar Sayoc is charged with sending explosive packages**
*NBC News* - <https://archive.fo/sxEFl>
A Florida man was charged Friday in connection with the series of bombs found this week addressed to critics of President Donald Trump, law enforcement officials said shortly after more devices were found.
Cesar Sayoc, 56, who has been arrested before, was in custody, law enforcement officials said. DNA evidence played a role in the arrest, law enforcement told NBC News.
He was charged with five federal counts: interstate transport of explosives, mailing of explosives, threats against former presidents, making threatening interstate communications and assault of current or former officials.
Sayoc faces up to 48 years behind bars if convicted of all counts, officials said.
Each device was made up of a 6-inch PVC pipe, a small clock, battery, wiring and “energetic material” that could have set off an explosive, FBI Director Christopher Wray said at a press conference.
“Though we are still analyzing the devices in our laboratories, these are not hoax devices," he said.
----------------
🇪🇺 **Defaming Muhammad does not fall under purview of free speech, European court rules**
*FOX* - <http://archive.is/2ozx4>
The freedom of speech does not extend to include **defaming** the prophet of Islam, the European Court of Human rights ruled Thursday.
The Strasbourg-based ECHR ruled that insulting Islamic prophet Muhammad “goes beyond the permissible limits of an objective debate” and “could stir up prejudice and put at risk religious peace.”
The court’s decision comes after it rejected an Austrian woman’s claim that her previous conviction for **calling Muhammad a pedophile**, due to his marriage to a 6-year-old girl, violated her freedom of speech.
The ECHR ruled Austrian courts had “carefully balanced her right to freedom of expression with the right of others to have their religious feelings protected.” The woman, in her late 40s and identified only as E.S., claimed during two public seminars in 2009 that Muhammad’s marriage to a young girl was akin to “pedophilia.” According to Islamic tradition, the marriage between Muhammad and a 6-year-old girl was consummated when she was 9 years old and he was about 50.
**The Austrian woman stated in her seminars that Muhammad “liked to do it with children” and “… A 56-year-old and a 6-year-old? … What do we call it, if it is not pedophilia?”** A Vienna court convicted her in 2011 of disparaging religious doctrines, ordering her to pay a $547 fine, plus legal costs. The ruling was later upheld by an Austrian appeals court.
**The ECHR said the Austrian court’s decision “served the legitimate aim of preserving religious peace.”**
----------------
Lol
🇮🇱 **4 Dead, Several Others Shot At Pittsburgh Synagogue**
*CBS Local* - <http://archive.fo/Gs1NH>
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – Police from across the city of Pittsburgh are responding to an active shooting situation at the The Tree of Life Synagogue in Squirrel Hill.
KDKA’s Andy Sheehan reports that at least four people have been confirmed dead, possibly as many as 7 to 8 could be dead.
Police have requested that residents stay inside their home as they have exchanged gun fire with a suspected gunman.
When officers arrived the gunman reportedly shot at them, forcing officers to use their vehicles as a shield.
Two police officers were reportedly shot.
The Synagogue was reportedly full of people for a Saturday service and police say they’ve received several calls from people barricaded inside the Synagogue.
Several people have been rescued, but police are still trying to rescue others.
Nearby Carnegie Mellon University was also reportedly on lockdown, students receiving texts telling them to stay inside.
Mayor Bill Peduto is rushing to the scene.
----------------
@Double Negative update
@w7 welfare caravan update
<:jewstar:348458410141941760> **Gunman kills 11 in Pittsburgh synagogue massacre investigated as a hate crime**
*Washington Post* - <http://archive.fo/ew0bx>
A gunman armed with an assault rifle killed 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue during Saturday-morning services in what the Anti-Defamation League called "likely the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in the history of the United States.”
Law enforcement officials said Robert Bowers — a 46-year-old man with a history of making virulently anti-Semitic statements online — was taken into custody after a gun battle with police and is expected to face federal hate crime charges.
“Justice in this case will be swift and it will be severe,” said Scott W. Brady, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania. Brady said Bowers could be charged sometime Saturday for what he called a “terrible and unspeakable act of hate."
Authorities described a rampage at the Tree of Life synagogue, the city’s oldest Jewish congregation, that was stunning in its savagery.
“This is the most horrific crime scene I’ve seen in 22 years with the Federal Bureau of Investigation," said Robert Allan Jones, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office. "Members of the Tree of Life synagogue conducting a peaceful service in their place of worship were brutally murdered by a gunman targeting them simply because of their faith.”
All 11 people killed were adults, Pittsburgh Public Safety Director Wendell Hissrich said. Six people were also wounded, four of them police officers responding to the gunfire, he said.
Witnesses told police Bowers burst into the synagogue shouting anti-Semitic statements and began firing. Hissrich said authorities began to receive calls about an active shooter at the synagogue at 9:54 a.m. and officers were dispatched one minute later.
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🇲🇽 **Migrant Caravan Continues for U.S. Border After Rejecting Mexico's Offer to Stay**
*Time* - <http://archive.fo/SmFkv>
(ARRIAGA, Mexico) — More than a hundred Mexican federal officers carrying plastic shields abandoned a blockade they had formed on a bridge Saturday, allowing a caravan of thousands of Central American migrants to advance toward the United States.
The officers ended the standoff after representatives from Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission told police that a rural stretch of highway without shade, toilets or water was no place for migrants to entertain offers of asylum in Mexico. Police boarded buses and headed further down the highway, while migrants cheered and vowed to trek all the way to the U.S. border.
Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto launched a program on Friday dubbed “You are home,” which promises shelter, medical attention, schooling and jobs to Central Americans who agree to stay in the southern Mexico states of Chiapas or Oaxaca.
Police commissioner Benjamin Grajeda said that authorities only blocked the highway Saturday to tell people about the government’s offer. “Here in this truck right now you can get help,” he said.
Thousands of migrants in the city of Arriaga rejected the plan Friday night, but said they could be willing to discuss it again once they reach Mexico City. Some fear they will be deported if they take advantage of the program.
The caravan is now trying to strike out for Tapanatepec, about 29 miles (46 kilometers) away after an arduous 60-mile (100 kilometer) journey to the city of Arriaga.
Orbelina Orellana, a migrant from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, said she and her husband left three children behind and had decided to continue north one way or another.
“Our destiny is to get to the border,” Orellana said.
----------------
🇬🇧 **Queen’s last corgi Whisper passes away**
*The Independent* - <http://archive.fo/Hpd8g>
The Queen's last corgi, a 12-year-old called Whisper, has died following several weeks of illness.
The monarch adopted the dog two years ago after his owner, former Sandringham gamekeeper Bill Fenwick, passed away.
According to The Daily Mail, the corgi died last week at Windsor Castle, leaving the Queen "deeply saddened".
"Whisper was a friendly chap and followed her everywhere," a source said.
"The Queen has quickly become very attached to the dog."
The Queen still has two dorgis called Candy and Vulcan, who are crossbreeds between daschunds and corgis.
She received her first corgi as a gift on her 18th birthday, who she named Susan.
The Queen has owned more than 30 corgis since she became Queen of the United Kingdom in 1952, with all of them apart from Whisper related to Susan.
In April this year, the last of the Queen's royal corgis that could trace its lineage back to Susan passed away.
----------------
🇪🇺 **EU Parliament Passes Resolution Demanding Ban of ‘Neo-Fascist’ Groups, Lists Identitarian Movement**
*Breitbart* - <http://archive.is/QQ7cc>
The European Union Parliament passed a motion this week to demand member-states ban ‘neo-fascist’ parties and groups and have **intelligence agencies fully co-operate with ‘anti-racism’ NGOs**.
The motion, which was introduced at the request of Italian MEP Eleonora Forenza, was passed by a vote of 355 MEPs. Many MEPs were not present in the 751-seat chamber for the vote. The resolution cited several high-profile acts of violence including the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox in 2016, the murder rampage of Norwegian extremist Anders Brevik, along with other cases like the recent arrest this year of members of the Action des Forces Opérationnelles (AFO), who allegedly plotted to attack Muslims they deemed extremists.
While most of the incidents listed in the report were acts of violence, the authors also added the French branch of the Identitarian movement **Generation Identitaire**, as members had been taken to court and convicted of ‘hate speech’.
The report not only demands the banning of groups like the far-right Italian group Casapound whose members attacked Ms Forenza in September but also recommended anti-hate crime units be set up in police forces across the EU, and that intelligence and law enforcement agencies should fully co-operate with anti-racism NGOs.
Breitbart London spoke to British independent MEP Janice Atkinson, vice-president of the populist Europe for Nations and Freedom (ENF) parliamentary group, who said the motion was “a very disturbing example of the growing tendency of shutting down free speech under the guise of claiming that the European Parliament is concerned about the growing acceptance of fascism, racism, and xenophobia.”
----------------
(bare in mind 'Hate Speech' in France can now equate to saying you dont want illegal immigration. “French first, illegals out.” A report of a woman charged from this summer <http://archive.is/yVRgA>)
🇩🇪 **German Chancellor Angela Merkel to step down as party leader**
*CNN* - <http://archive.fo/YbS1P>
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has announced she will give up leadership of her center-right Christian Democrat Union (CDU) party after 18 years in the post, German media has reported.
Merkel announced during a meeting with officials that she will not seek to run for re-election at the party's convention in December. But she made clear that she wanted to remain as chancellor, a position she has held since 2005, CNN affiliate RTL reported, citing party sources.
The announcement is a sign of Merkel's weakened power within her own party, and waning popularity in the country.
----------------
🇺🇸 **Trump ‘not welcome in Pittsburgh’ until he denounces white nationalism, Jewish community leaders say**
*Independent* <https://archive.fo/WhSEy>
Eleven Jewish community leaders have said that Donald Trump is not welcome in Pittsburgh until he decides to “fully denounce white nationalism”, following a shooting in a synagogue on Saturday.
The group are all affiliated with the Pittsburgh branch of Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership, a liberal movement made up of “tens of thousands” of progressive Jewish members across the US, according to its website.
“For the past three years your words and your policies have emboldened a growing white nationalist movement,” the leaders said in an open letter to Mr Trump.
“You yourself called the murderer evil, but yesterday’s violence is the direct culmination of your influence.”
“He killed Jews in order to undermine the efforts of all those who find shared humanity with immigrants and refugees,” the Bend the Arc members said, in reference to Bowers.
“President Trump, you are not welcome in Pittsburgh until you stop targeting and endangering all minorities.”
The community leaders stressed that they could not speak for all Jewish people in Pittsburgh but were publishing the letter knowing that they represented “a diverse and unified group”.
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🇺🇸 **Right-wing social network Gab.com goes offline after Pittsburgh synagogue shooting**
*Venture Beat/Reuters* <https://archive.fo/UMfiM>
Gab.com, the website where the suspected Pittsburgh synagogue gunman posted anti-Semitic views, said on Sunday it was offline for a period of time after being asked by its domain provider to move to another registrar.
The move comes after GoDaddy asked Gab to change the domain, while PayPal, Stripe, and Joynet blocked the website.
“We have informed Gab.com that they have 24 hours to move the domain to another registrar,” a spokesman for GoDaddy said, adding the site violated its terms of service and hosted content that “promotes and encourages violence against people.”
The 46-year-old suspect Robert Bowers in the shooting incident has been charged with murdering 11 people on Saturday in the deadliest attack ever on the Jewish community in the United States. Hours earlier, he posted on Gab.com, saying a non-profit that helps Jewish refugees relocate to the country was helping to kill “my people.”
“Gab.com is under attack. We have been systematically no-platformed by App Stores, multiple hosting providers, and several payment processors,” the website said, adding that it was working around the clock to get Gab.com back online.
PayPal banned the website from using its money-sending services on Saturday. Gab said on Saturday it received notice it would be blocked by another payments website, Stripe Inc, and had switched to a new web-hosting service after Joyent Inc warned it would cut off the website.
Gab did not say who the new web host was. The company posted on Twitter on Sunday, “FREE SPEECH WILL ALWAYS WIN.”
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🇷🇺 **Russia's only aircraft carrier damaged after crane falls on it**
*Reuters* - <http://archive.fo/Nx5Ue>
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia’s only aircraft carrier was damaged while undergoing repairs in the north of the country after the floating dock holding it sank in the early hours of Tuesday and a crane crashed onto its deck, tearing a gash up to 5 meters wide.
The Admiral Kuznetsov has seen action in Russia’s military campaign in Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad with its planes carrying out air strikes against rebel forces.
It was being overhauled on one of the world’s biggest floating docks in the icy waters of the Kola Bay near Murmansk close to where Russia’s Northern Fleet is based and was due to go back into service in 2021.
Maria Kovtun, Murmansk’s governor, said in a statement that a rescue operation had been launched and 71 people evacuated after the floating dock holding the ship had begun to sink.
The warship had been successfully extracted from the dock before it completely sank, she said.
Investigators, who said they had opened a criminal investigation into the incident that would look at whether safety rules had been violated, said one person was missing and four others were being treated for hypothermia after being plucked out of the water.
Alexei Rakhmanov, head of Russia’s United Shipbuilding Corporation, told the TASS news agency that the ship’s hull and deck had been damaged, although what he called the vessel’s vitally important parts had not been harmed.
“There is a jagged hole 4-5 meters wide,” Rakhmanov was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.
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🚀 **NASA Retires Kepler Space Telescope**
*NASA* - <http://archive.fo/zlTRJ>
After nine years in deep space collecting data that indicate our sky to be filled with billions of hidden planets - more planets even than stars - NASA's Kepler space telescope has run out of fuel needed for further science operations. NASA has decided to retire the spacecraft within its current, safe orbit, away from Earth. Kepler leaves a legacy of more than 2,600 planet discoveries from outside our solar system, many of which could be promising places for life.
Kepler has opened our eyes to the diversity of planets that exist in our galaxy. The most recent analysis of Kepler's discoveries concludes that 20 to 50 percent of the stars visible in the night sky are likely to have small, possibly rocky, planets similar in size to Earth, and located within the habitable zone of their parent stars. That means they're located at distances from their parent stars where liquid water - a vital ingredient to life as we know it - might pool on the planet surface.
Launched on March 6, 2009, the Kepler space telescope combined cutting-edge techniques in measuring stellar brightness with the largest digital camera outfitted for outer space observations at that time. Originally positioned to stare continuously at 150,000 stars in one star-studded patch of the sky in the constellation Cygnus, Kepler took the first survey of planets in our galaxy and became the agency's first mission to detect Earth-size planets in the habitable zones of their stars.
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🇺🇸 **Facebook is banning far-right militia The Proud Boys after a violent attack in New York**
*Business Insider* - <https://archive.fo/C5owa>
Facebook is banning accounts and pages associated with the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group whose members assaulted protesters in New York City earlier in October.
On Tuesday, Twitter users began reporting that Facebook was taking down groups and accounts (both public-facing and personal) linked to members of the organisation, which has been involved in instances of political violence in the US.
A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to Business Insider that the company is banning The Proud Boys and founder Gavin McInnes from both Facebook and Instagram, pointing to Facebook's rules against hate groups.
The takedowns come after members of the Proud Boys allegedly attacked protesters following an event in New York on October 12. Members of the group reportedly shouted homophobic slurs as they beat and kicked protesters, and at least five Proud Boys have since been arrested.
The move by Facebook will deprive the extremist organisation of its primary channel for recruitment and publicity — but it only comes months after other tech firms took action against the group.
Proud Boys was founded by Gavin McInnes, also known as a cofounder of the media organization Vice, and describes its members as "Western Chauvinists." The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an extremism watchdog organisation, designates it as a hate group. One of the Proud Boys' initiation rites involves physical violence against left-wing antifascists.
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🇺🇸 **Exclusive: FedEx drops NRA deal by snail-mail**
*Reuters* - <https://archive.fo/H8siU>
Mass shootings happen in an instant and grab headlines. A business and investment shift away from the firearms industry is happening more subtly. FedEx, the U.S. shipping group, is ending a program that offers discounts for business members of the National Rifle Association, the company confirmed to Breakingviews.
It’s a quiet reversal: eight months ago, FedEx stood by the gun-rights lobby group as other companies scrapped deals. They were reacting to the NRA’s stance after 17 students and staff members were murdered at a Florida high school by a former student. Companies including Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and car-rental firm Enterprise swiftly ended member discounts. At the time, FedEx said that while assault rifles of the kind used in most American mass shootings shouldn’t be in civilian hands, it did not believe in “discriminating” between organizations it works with.
The change of tack comes just days after a gunman killed 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue. The $56 billion logistics company says the closure of its NRA discount program from Nov. 4 has no connection to that incident or any other shooting. Rather, the NRA just didn’t bring in enough business to merit its own deal. It’s among dozens of organizations FedEx plans to move to new pricing programs, and the company has been notifying customers since early October.
That, though, is still significant – perhaps more so than largely political gestures. It suggests the NRA no longer has the economic clout to inspire fear in the corporate world. The group nearly put gunmaker Smith & Wesson out of business in 2000 when it branded the company a “sellout” for agreeing to back stronger gun controls. Boycotts from NRA members followed, and Smith & Wesson’s chief executive lost his job.
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🇩🇪 **9/11 terrorist back on the streets... and treated like a hero: Freed early from his cell, the twisted money man behind attack that killed 2,996 is mobbed by well-wishers back home in insult to those who died**
*Daily Mail* - <https://archive.fo/lrpZQ>
One of only two men to be jailed over the 9/11 terror attacks is back in his home country as a free man – where he is being given a hero's welcome.
The Daily Mail tracked down Mounir el-Motassadeq to a suburb of Marrakesh where he is now living in the family home with his wife and children.
In the first sighting of him since he was deported from Germany following his early release from prison, he was seen being greeted by well-wishers as he returned from prayers at his local mosque.
A friend of the family described scenes of jubilation on his return and said people were coming from all over Morocco to see him.
El-Motassadeq, 44, who was described in German courts as the 'treasurer' for the 9/11 hijackers, spent less than 15 years in prison for his part in the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon which killed 2,977 people in September 2001.
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🇺🇸 **Four shots fired into a Republican Party office in Florida**
*Washington Post* - <https://archive.fo/cygbq>
A person with a gun fired at least four bullets into a Republican Party office in Florida, officials said Monday as concerns about political violence have risen in advance of the midterm elections.
The Volusia County Republican Party office in South Daytona was empty at the time of the shooting, and no one was injured, South Daytona Police Capt. Mark Cheatham told The Washington Post.
A volunteer arrived at the headquarters, which is located in a small strip mall, on Monday morning to find that a front window was smashed into pieces. Police determined that the window had been shot through after finding four bullets inside the office, in the wall and on the floor, Cheatham said.
Police believe that the shooting occurred between 4 p.m. Sunday, the last time a person was at the office, and 9 a.m. Monday, Cheatham said. Photographs of the office posted by reporters online show that its windows are plastered with signs supporting the Republican Party and GOP candidates.
Cheatham said the office had yet to confirm a motive or identify a suspect in the shooting and had not yet found video evidence or any witnesses.
The shooting follows high-profile events of politically motivated violence that have raised concerns about whether the country’s bitter divide has turned into something even more malignant.
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🇫🇷 **Police Officer in Charge of Security for Charlie Hebdo Boss Allegedly Linked to Islamic Radicalism**
*Breitbart* - <http://archive.is/mefgj>
A French police officer in charge of security for Charlie Hebdo managing editor Riss has been relieved of duty after investigators found he had viewed radical Islamic material and feared he may have become radicalised himself. The officer, who was a member of the Service de la protection (SDLP) which protects high-profile dignitaries, was suspected of radicalisation following concerns from the Directorate General of Internal Security (DGSI), France’s domestic intelligence agency, BFMTV reports.
The DGSI found that the officer, who is a Muslim, had viewed and interacted with known Islamist websites and said that the officer’s colleagues had reported a change in his behaviour which they labelled as “disturbing”. A source from within the police said that the evidence proved that the policeman was “incompatible” with the task of protecting the Charlie Hebdo writer who, along with his colleagues, was targetted for death by radical Islamic terrorists in January 2015. Riss had been shot in the shoulder while 12 others were killed, the majority of whom being the staff of the satirical newspaper. The officer is planning to appeal the decision to remove him from his assignment, according to the officer’s lawyer who said that a formal complaint had been filed.
While Charlie Hebdo has not been directly targetted by radical Islamists since 2015, the magazine has received a number of threats including a bomb threat following an issue which mocked the ban on the sharia-compliant
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🇺🇸 **Border surge highest since 2011, each illegal immigrant costs $70,000, 7x deportation price**
*Washington Examiner* - <https://archive.fo/ujJls>
The net costs to taxpayers for every illegal immigrant who sneaks into the United States has reached nearly $70,000, about seven times the cost of deporting them, and about $70 billion, according to a new report.
And, according to federal Census data, the surge of legal and illegal immigrants across the Mexico-U.S. border has reached a new high since 2011 and matched the historic high of 1.75 million set in 1999.
The latest Census data from 2016 shows that immigrants continue to come into the United States, both legally and illegally, and the costs to taxpayers in enforcement and social services continues to rise — even when offset by the taxes they pay.
In two timely reports from the Center for Immigration Studies, the surge in numbers and price in the hit to taxpayers was revealed at a time when a new caravan from Latin America easing its way through Mexico is heading to the U.S. border and prompting threats from President Trump to block it from entering and ending birthright citizenship.
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🇰🇷 **South Korea Leads The World In Robo-Workers**
*Zero Hedge* - <http://archive.fo/MZ24r>
The rise of the machines has well and truly started.
Data from the International Federation of Robotics reveals that the pace of industrial automation is accelerating across much of the developed world with 66 installed industrial robots per 10,000 employees globally in 2015. A year later, as Statista's Niall McCarthy notes, that increased to 74. Europe has a robot density of 99 units per 10,000 workers and that number is 84 and 63 in the Americas and Asia respectively.
China is one of the countries recording the highest growth levels in industrial automation but nowhere has a robot density like South Korea.
In 2016, South Korea had 631 installed industrial robots per 10,000 employees. That is mainly due to the continued installation of high volume robots in the electronics and manufacturing sectors.
90 percent of Singapore's industrial robots are installed in its electronics industry and it comes second with a density of 488 per 10,000 employees. Germany and Japan are renowned for their automotive industries and they have density levels of just over 300 per 10,000 workers. Interestingly, Japan is one of the main players in industrial robotics, accounting for 52 percent of global supply.
In the United States, the pace of automation is slower with a density rate of 189. China is eager to expand its level of automation in the coming years, targeting a place in the world's top-10 nations for robot density by 2020. It had a density rate of 25 units in 2013 and that grew to 68 by 2016. India is still lagging behind other countries in automation and it has only three industrial robots per 10,000 workers in 2016.
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🇺🇸 **Howard Dean: Gab should be tried as accomplice to murder in synagogue slayings**
*The Hill* - <https://archive.fo/K4CLV>
Former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean said late Sunday that Gab, the social media platform used by the suspect in the Pittsburgh synagogue mass shooting, "should be tried for being an accomplice to murder."
"You are a facilitator of neo nazis and other haters. You should be tried for being an accomplice to murder," Dean, a former governor of Vermont, wrote in a tweet. "You’re lucky shutting you down is all you get. A lot luckier than the 11 Jews in Pittsburgh were or the two African Americans murdered in Kentucky were."
Dean was replying to a tweet from Gab that called on President Trump to "ACT" after the social media company said it had been "no-platformed" by online companies including Paypal and Stripe, two payment-processing platforms. Gab said it would be offline until it can transition to a new hosting provider.
Gab has been criticized for allowing right-wing extremists to use the website. The social media platform describes itself as “The Home Of Free Speech Online."
Robert Bowers, the man charged in the shooting deaths of 11 people at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, wrote on his bio on the site that “jews are the children of satan.” His bio also included an image with the number 1488, a reference to Nazism, according to The New York Times.
In a statement Saturday following the shooting, Gab denied any responsibility for the shooting, saying that it has "zero tolerance" for terrorism and violence.
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🇮🇹 **Italy's populist government plans to reward fertile families with state land in bid to boost birth rate**
*The Telegraph* - <https://archive.fo/tNzB2>
Italy's populist government wants to reward parents who have a third child with the offer of free farmland, in a new plan aimed at reviving the country’s low birth rate.
The children-for-land incentive, inserted into Italy’s latest draft budget, aims to give parcels of state-held agricultural land for 20 years to parents who give birth to a third child between 2019 and 2021.
Families also would be eligible for zero-interest loans for up to €200,000 (£175,000) if they opt to buy their first home near their newly acquired land.
"They say that Italians have few children and that something is needed to turn the trend around," said Gian Marco Centinaio, the agriculture minister.
"That's why the ministry wants to contribute, favouring rural areas in particular, where people still have children," he told the media.
Foreigners interested in the offer would need to have been resident in Italy for at least 10 years.
Left-leaning newspaper il Fatto Quotidiano described the initiative as “a little bit ‘Gone with the Wind’ while at the same time something romantically Soviet.”
It is just one of several controversial measures in the latest draft of the budget being negotiated by Italy's government, which has vowed to push ahead with expansive plans despite warnings from the European Commission to reduce deficit spending.
The idea is being pushed ahead by the families and agriculture ministers, both members of the far-Right League party. Italy has the lowest birthrate in Europe, with some 464,000 births registered last year, a record low.
----------------
🇺🇸 **YouTube Defends Right To Censor Conservative Clips**
*MediaPost* - <https://archive.fo/BFJZp>
Prager University has no valid grounds to sue Google's YouTube for allegedly discriminating against conservative video clips, the company argues in new court papers.
“YouTube is not the government, and its efforts to regulate content posted to its private online service are not limited by the First Amendment,” Google writes in papers filed Wednesday with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The company argues that the First Amendment prohibits the government from censoring speech, but doesn't prevent Google from deciding how to treat content posted to its platform. What's more, Google writes, any attempt to subject non-governmental platforms like Google to the First Amendment would result in “disastrous practical consequences.”
“If they are bound by the same First Amendment rules that apply to the government, YouTube and other service providers would lose much of their ability to protect their users against offensive or objectionable content -- including pornography, hate speech, personal attacks, and terrorist propaganda,” Google writes.
The company's papers come in response to attempts by Prager University to revive its lawsuit against Google. Prager initially sued last year, alleging that Google wrongly applied its "restricted mode" filter to the school's videos, effectively making them unavailable to some students and library patrons. Prager also alleged that Google "demonetized" some conservative videos, like a clip that posed the question "Pakistan: Can Sharia and Freedom Coexist?"
U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh in the Northern District of California dismissed the complaint earlier this year. She said that because Google is a private business, as opposed to a government entity, it can decide how to treat content on its platform.
----------------
🇺🇸 **Alleged victim is a no-show for news conference claiming Mueller 'sex assaults'**
*NBC* - <https://archive.fo/ym8oV>
Jacob Wohl, a pro-Trump fan of conspiracy theories, and Jack Burkman, a conservative lobbyist and radio host, stood in front of a half-full room of reporters and activists at a D.C.-area Holiday Inn Thursday to detail their allegations of sexual misconduct against Robert Mueller, the special counsel probing Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The woman who they said has made those allegations, a Los Angeles native in her 30s, was slated to attend the news conference and give her own account. But, Wohl said, she feared for her life and on arriving in Washington, "panicked and boarded a flight to another location." Burkman promised she would appear at another news conference in the near future.
Wohl and Burkman took turns speaking at the podium, detailing the allegations, complimenting each other, and defending their professional records against charges of conspiracy peddling and political bias.
The conference was streamed by several reporters in the room. A pickup truck parked in the lot outside by protesters carried a giant inflatable rat wearing a blonde Trump toupee.
Earlier this week, several journalists reported on Twitter that they had received suspicious emails from a woman claiming someone had offered to pay her for making sexual misconduct allegations against Mueller. The journalists said those offers had come from SureFire Intelligence, a company NBC News connected to Jacob Wohl through telephone and domain records. Their claims were later bolstered by a second woman who came forward with an email offering similar payments in exchange for smearing Mueller, signed by a SureFire agent.
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🇮🇱 **Ben & Jerry’s Israel Distances Itself From Anti-Trump Ice Cream Flavor**
*Breitbart* - <https://archive.fo/WjYjx>
Ben & Jerry’s controversial decision to release a new anti-Trump flavor in collaboration with, among others, Women’s March leader Linda Sarsour, has prompted the company’s Israel franchise, which is owned independently, to distance itself from the ice cream giant.
The limited edition flavor, entitled Pecan Resist, “supports groups creating a more just and equitable nation for us all, and who are fighting President Trump’s regressive agenda,” the American company said in a statement Tuesday.
Proceeds from the new flavor will go to four groups, including Women’s March, whose leaders are rabidly anti-Israel. Linda Sarsour, who was pictured in a tweet with the company’s eponymous founders, has in the past accused Israel of “apartheid” and shared a stage with Palestinian terrorist Rasmea Odeh. Another Women’s March leader, Tamika Mallory, recently accused Israel of committing a “human rights crime” when the state was established by “killing, stealing” and “taking the lives of people who were there first.” Mallory is an ardent supporter of virulently antisemitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
On Wednesday, Ben & Jerry’s Israel arm distanced itself from the move.
“Ben & Jerry’s Israel is an independent and Israeli company,” it wrote on Facebook, noting that all of its products and ingredients are manufactured and sourced locally.
“We have no connection to the decisions made by the global brand, and we don’t get involved in local or world politics.”
The company said that it would not be selling “Pecan Resist” and will “continue to work and act for the community and for Israeli society.”
----------------
🇹🇿 **Tanzania launches anti-gay squad to ‘hunt down LGBT community’**
*RT* - <https://archive.fo/P2Lq3>
Tanzania’s gay community is living in fear after the governor of Dar es Salaam called on citizens to report gay people, and announced an anti-gay squad that will hunt them down by tracking social media.
Paul Makonda announced the 17-member squad at a press conference this week, promising it would “get their hands on them.”
“These homosexuals boast on social networks,” Makonda said, AFP reports. “Give me their names.”
By Tuesday, Makonda claimed to have received over 5,763 reports from the public, and more than 100 names.
Tanzania’s 1998 Sexual Offences Special Provisions Act states homosexuality is illegal and anyone who has “carnal knowledge of any person against the order of nature” is punishable by 30 years in prison. This was based on the 1945 Penal Code created under British rule, which also deemed homosexuality against the law.
Tanzania President John Magufuli has cracked down on the LGBT community since his election in 2015, going so far as to claim “even cows disapprove” of homosexuality.
In 2017, 40 HIV testing and treatment centers were closed down, and a number of lawyers and activists were arrested for “promoting sexuality.”
The country also engages in forced anal examinations. The discredited practice, which claims to detect homosexuality, has been condemned by human rights groups.
----------------
🇪🇺 **Fury over plans to give Brussels MORE powers to meddle in nations’ economies **
*The Express* - <http://archive.fo/2yllx>
BRUSSELS needs to be given more powers to meddle in the economies of nation states and set budgets according to a group of leading European nations – in yet another step to a federal Europe.
The EU group – which included Ireland and Holland - demanded the eurozone’s bailout fund was handed more powers to deliberately intervene in national budgets, in a move that will provoke fury among eurosceptic member states who reject further intervention by Brussels.
In a document published yesterday, 10 countries insisted that the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) should be given the authority to check the finances of eurozone countries. But the move would give greater power to Brussels, as the European Commission is currently the only EU institution that assesses eurozone economies.
The ESM - which was set up to help euro countries in financial crisis - must be given “full access to information of the economic and financial situation” of eurozone governments, according to the document. It comes at a time when Italy, the eurozone’s third largest economy, is locked in a bitter deadlock with the EU over the country’s 2019 budget.
Italy’s eurosceptic coalition government - made up of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement and right-wing League - has proposed a new budget which includes higher levels of borrowing and spending despite its huge debt.
The draft budget would increase the deficit - the amount spending exceeds revenue - but the EU has rejected this as it breaches previous agreements to reduce the deficit. And the budgets of member states must be approved by the EU, prompting the stand off between Italy and the bloc.
----------------
🇬🇧 **Met chief: Let's tackle violence before hate crime**
*The Express* - <http://archive.fo/gfqib>
BRITAIN'S top police officer yesterday backed calls to prioritise tackling violence and burglaries over misogyny. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick said her officers were "very busy very stretched".
Earlier this week Sara Thornton, chair of the National Police Chiefs' Council, urged officers to focus on violent crime and burglars **before recording non-crime incidents, such as misogyny or wolf-whistling.**
Officer numbers across England and Wales have fallen by 20,000 since 2010 while crime in recent years has surged. Police call handlers are increasingly having to choose which crimes they can respond to. With Britain in the midst of a violent crime epidemic, Commissioner Dick said yesterday: "My officers are very busy, they are very stretched.
"This is not a good place to be and it is being played out in violence between drugs gangs on the streets of our cities and towns across the country, not just in the big cities."
And the Met boss repeated her summer criticism of the middle classes for fuelling a "considerable part" of the cocaine market. She said: "I simply think they need to think about the misery at every step of the chain that gets them their drugs after dinner. It is a social recreational habit for some people, and they don't think about the impact it has."
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🇺🇸 **Neo-Nazi Graffiti Found In Brooklyn Synagogue — Suspect Is A Black Male**
*Daily Caller* - <https://archive.fo/dZe7P>
Neo-Nazi graffiti was found Thursday inside a Brooklyn synagogue, forcing officials to cancel a political event that had been scheduled that night.
NYPD officials told Breaking911 that the suspect entered Brooklyn’s Union Temple around 8:30 p.m. Thursday night and used a black marker to deface three different locations with the messages, “die Jew rats we are here,” “Jews better be ready,” and “Hitler.”
Surveillance footage released by authorities captured a photo of the suspect, “described as a male Black, approximately 20-years-old, 5’8″, 140 lbs, with black hair and last seen wearing a red suit jacket,” according to Breaking911.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo issued a statement following the discovery calling for New Yorkers to stand with the Jewish community “against hate in all its forms.”
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🇺🇸 **YouTuber Blames YouTube, WSJ For $26k In Canceled Donations To St. Jude Children’s Hospital**
*Daily Caller* - <https://archive.fo/y9cp3>
YouTuber Ethan Ralph accused The Wall Street Journal of sabotaging a fundraiser he held in September to benefit St. Jude Children’s Hospital.
On September 29, the host of the popular YouTube show #Killstream utilized a new YouTube feature called “Super Chat” to fundraise for St. Jude Children’s Hospital. The show, said to focus largely on free speech absolutism and “drama, news, and politics,” raised a total of $26,000 for the charity to support children battling cancer, according to Ralph.
The Super Chat feature, introduced last year, allows users to pay for their comments to be specially featured during live streams. Paid comments get pinned to the top of the chat stream, which is often quickly updating with comments that may not be read otherwise. More money means more time at the top of the stream.
Ralph said he was contacted Wednesday evening, over a month after his #Healstream fundraising event, by WSJ reporter Yoree Koh. Koh allegedly informed him that she was working on a story “about how alt-right personalities have utilized YouTube’s Super Chat function,” and told Ralph that she would be “mentioning” instances of Ralph’s viewers attempting to promote anti-Semitic rhetoric through the Super Chat function on multiple of his past streams.
On Friday, Ralph reported that donors were receiving notification from YouTube that their donations from over a month prior had been refunded by St. Jude’s. Ralph asserted that the refunds were issued “due to pressure from The Wall Street Journal.” Though no article had yet been published, Ralph started the hashtag campaign #WSJKillsKids, noting the likely connection between the timing of article and refund of old donations.
YouTube originally responded to the reported comments by revoking Super Chat capabilities for Ralph’s channel and taking individual episodes of the show, but later went further. The company confirmed Friday evening that they had permanently removed Ralph from the platform.
Koh’s original email to Ralph listed her deadline as 10 p.m. Thursday night, but the article was not published until late Friday evening. The published piece focused largely on Ralph and the events that unfolded after Koh contacted him, including returned donations and the removal of Ralph’s channel from YouTube. Koh reported that when she contacted St. Jude’s “earlier in the week,” she was informed that the organization “was aware of the chats and was making arrangements to reverse any donations.”
“We had no intention of receiving or accepting any of the funds associated with the live stream,” a St. Jude’s spokesperson told WSJ Friday.
In his Friday night live stream, which was hosted on an alternative website, Ralph said that he “didn’t believe” that St. Jude’s had plans to return the money before being contacted by WSJ.
----------------
CAN'T ABORT THE RETORT <https://dlive.tv/theralphretort>
🇪🇺 **UN, EU and Soros provide migrants with prepaid debit cards to fund their trip to and through Europe **
*Voice of Europe* - <http://archive.fo/kYPki>
How illegal migrants cope financially during their long journeys to and through Europe has been revealed by the Slovenian site Nova24. <http://archive.fo/GIF8S>
According to the site, UNHCR and the EU, in cooperation with MasterCard and Soros, generously hand out prepaid debit cards to the migrants.
The cards are equipped with both EU and UNHCR logos. No identity documents are required to obtain or use the cards – instead of the name of the cardholder, “UNHCR” and a number is printed on the card.
According to Nova24, the information comes from a source within the Croatian police, which states that the migrants are well-equipped with newly purchased, high-quality boots, hiking clothes, smartphones and even weapons.
During the stopover in the Eastern European countries, they withdraw cash from ATMs to stock up on supplies.
MasterCard announced in 2016 that they issued prepaid debit cards to “give refugees mobility, flexibility and dignity”.
In a press release last year, MasterCard also announced a cooperation with George Soros with the aim to “catalyse and accelerate economic and social development for vulnerable groups in the world, especially refugees and migrants”.
The press release further stated that George Soros had earmarked up to $500 million for private investment that will increase capacity to meet the challenges faced by migrants, including refugees, and their host communities across the world.
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🇺🇸 **Trump Ridicules Antifa’s ‘Little Arms’ And Clubs**
*Daily Caller* - <https://archive.fo/4jqtS>
President Donald Trump ridiculed far-left violent Antifa protesters alleging that they represent a broader Democratic Party-backed mob movement, in a Sunday afternoon campaign rally.
“Antifa … You have seen it … they take the helmet off, and they take the armbands and you see these little arms … and then you see the clubs,” Trump said, adding “you see these guys, you take off their black helmet and black outfit with the pads. Tough guys. Swinging clubs viciously.”
The president referenced the far-left protesters’ penchant for dressing up in all black and violently attacking others, often with weapons.
Trump preceded his riff on Antifa saying, “Republicans produce jobs. Democrats produce mobs.”
(video in original story)
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🇺🇸 **Kanye West Writes Massive Check For Democratic Candidate**
*Daily Caller* - <https://archive.fo/HVaIO>
Kanye West wrote a six-figure check for Democratic Chicago mayoral candidate Amara Enyia just less than a week after he said he was “distancing” himself “from politics.”
The rapper and designer, donated $126,460 to Enyia’s campaign, who is trying replace Mayor Rahm Emanuel in the 2019 February election. Emanuel announced on Sept. 4 that he would not be running again. West previously donated $74,000 to Enyia’s campaign and also showed up at a campaign event for Enyia on Oct. 23 in Chicago.
West announced he was jumping out of the political world in a tweet Tuesday, saying he will completely focus on being creative. Just weeks before, West was in the Oval Office with President Donald Trump, thanking him for his work while wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat. West has been a vocal supporter of Trump for over a year.
“Celebrity endorsements are great, but in my view they have to be tied to something of substance,” Enyia told the Chicago Tribune after the October campaign event. “And the specific conversation was warranted with Kanye, to make sure there was alignment on the policy platform and issues I’ve advocated for.”
“So we definitely had a conversation, and when we talk about what Chicago needs and what it will take to get us there, he sees this campaign as a vital part of that, and that is what prompted him to support us and get over this financial barrier we have had,” Enyia added.
West has not yet publicly said why he is supporting Enyia for mayor of his hometown city.
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🇺🇸 **Limbaugh, Hannity joining Trump on campaign trail**
*The Hill* - <https://archive.fo/DhykX>
Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity will join President Trump at a rally on the eve of this week's midterm elections, the Trump campaign announced Sunday.
The two conservative media personalities will join Trump for a rally Monday night in Cape Girardeau, Mo.
The campaign noted in a statement that Hannity and Limbaugh are "longtime friends" of Trump and "strong advocates for the President’s America First agenda."
"We’re glad to welcome Cape Girardeau native Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity as special guests to this final stop on the tour where President Trump will make his case to the American people to support GOP candidates on Election Day in order to continue our great American comeback under his leadership,” Michael Glassner, chief operating officer of the Trump campaign, said in the statement.
A spokesperson for Fox News told The Hill that Hannity will be hosting his show from the rally location and interviewing Trump, but did not indicate whether Hannity would appear on stage.
The campaign also announced that country music star Lee Greenwood will join Trump at that rally as well as a rally earlier in the evening in Chattanooga, Tenn.
Missouri and Tennessee feature two of the key Senate races in Tuesday's midterm elections, when Republicans will look to maintain their slim majority in the upper chamber.
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🇺🇸 **US troops lay down barbed wire along border ahead of caravan**
*NY Post* - <https://archive.fo/wUQcr>
As three separate migrant caravans slowly made their way north through Mexico on Saturday, newly arrived US troops worked to lay a barbed-wire fence along the Texas side of the Rio Grande.
The soldiers worked with US Customs and Border Patrol officers to lay about 1,000 feet of fencing along the river, the Defense Department said. The makeshift barrier was installed underneath the McAllen-Hidalgo International Bridge, which crosses into Mexico. The overpass is in the small town of Hidalgo, about 250 miles south of San Antonio.
“I saw that beautiful barbed wire going up,” Trump said at a Saturday campaign rally in Montana. “Beautiful sight.”
A Border Patrol spokesman said in an email to The Post the fencing was part of “necessary preparations” for the caravans.
Roughly 900 troops have reached the US-Mexico border since the Trump administration began the deployment Oct. 26. The president vowed the forces would block the caravans, which contain thousands of migrants, from entering US turf.
Military units are heading to outposts along the border from Texas to California.
After saying about 5,000 active-duty troops would be deployed as part of Operation Faithful Patriot, Trump on Wednesday boosted the number from 10,000 to 15,000.
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🇺🇸 **Democrats traumatized by 2016 are having pre-midterms nightmares**
*Politico* - <http://archive.fo/aWBYG>
Despite forecasts of a Democratic House takeover, liberals grappling with 'PTSD' are braced for another surprise election disaster. On the eve of the midterms, President Donald Trump’s approval is falling, young voters are energized, and Republicans look poised to lose their House majority. It’s enough to make Democrats nervous, miserable wrecks.
Haunted by memories of 2016, liberals around the country are riven with anxiety in the campaign’s home stretch. They’re suspicious of favorable polls and making election night contingency plans in case their worst fears come true. Some report literal nightmares about a Democratic wipeout. **“We're kind of just in the bed-wetting phase now,"** said Democratic pollster John Anzalone, a Hillary Clinton campaign alumnus who spent election night 2016 in Clinton’s Manhattan war room.
Anzalone said the shock of Donald Trump’s upset victory, contrary to most forecasts, still hangs over many in the party. **“There’s some PTSD,” he said.**
**That is not an exaggeration. A study published last month in the Journal of American College Health found that one quarter of college students experienced “clinically significant” symptoms of trauma from the 2016 election results. **
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🇺🇸 **World’s largest dorm-style ‘co-living’ apartment building coming to San Jose**
*The Mercury News* - <https://archive.fo/NsZ3y>
The latest trendy new apartment building coming to downtown San Jose will offer plenty of luxury amenities, including cleaning services, laundry and dog walking. The catch? Each resident will share a kitchen and living room with at least a dozen other strangers.
The nearly 800-unit building, set to break ground early next year, is the latest project to embrace “co-living” — a dorm-like set-up where residents sleep in small private bedrooms and share common spaces, as a way to pack more people into a building and keep rents down. It’s a lifestyle that’s becoming increasingly popular as Bay Area residents, grappling with sky-high housing costs, are forced to find ever-more creative ways to stay afloat, and developers are encouraged to come up with innovative methods to house more people faster.
The San Jose project will be the largest co-living building in the world, according to its developer, San Francisco-based communal housing startup Starcity. The company also has a 270-unit co-living building in the works in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood. The two projects, both slated to open in 2021, will be the startup’s first attempts at building from the ground up instead of renovating existing buildings. Together they mark a major expansion by Starcity, and would increase the company’s existing inventory by more than 10-fold.
The co-living trend is part of a broader creative movement sweeping the Bay Area’s housing market. Entrepreneurs are finding a range of innovative solutions to the region’s housing shortage — from turning shipping containers into tiny homes, to building micro-houses in people’s backyards, to providing new ways for renters to build equity and save for down payments.
Starcity’s upcoming San Jose building, located at 199 Bassett — three blocks from the Diridon Caltrain station, near where Google has proposed a new campus for up to 20,000 workers — will have up to 790 units. **Each renter will have his or her own private bedroom and adjoining bathroom, or will share a bathroom with a family member or pre-selected friend. Between 12 and 18 people will share each kitchen and living room, and there will be four kitchens and living rooms per floor.**
Both the San Jose building and the San Francisco building will cater to residents making between $40,000 and $120,000 a year. Rooms likely will rent for $800 to $2,500 — below the current market rates for one-bedroom apartments in both cities.
The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in San Jose is $2,364, according to RentCafe. It’s $3,261 in San Francisco.
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🇯🇵 **Japan expects to accept up to 40,000 foreign workers under new residency statuses**
*Mainichi* - <http://archive.fo/ffNiJ>
Japan is expected to accept up to around 40,000 foreign workers under two new residency statuses in the fiscal year following their introduction, according to individuals close to the government.
The administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants to introduce the new measure by the spring of next year to alleviate acute labor shortages in certain industries, such as construction and nursing. The Cabinet has approved a package of relevant legal revisions to be submitted to the current extraordinary session of the Diet.
The number is based on estimates by government ministries and agencies overseeing 14 industries being considered to accept the workers, they said. Many of those workers are likely to be foreign technical trainees already in Japan who could switch their residency status. Under a bill to revise the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act, foreign technical trainees who have completed three years of on-the-job training could obtain the new "category 1" residency status without passing Japanese language and job skill tests.
Under the new system, workers with certain knowledge and experience could apply for category 1 status allowing the holder to work in Japan for a maximum of five years, unaccompanied by family members. Those with expert skills could get the renewable "category 2" status, which also allows accompaniment by spouses and children. Applicants for these categories must pass the language and skill tests.
Some of the job skill tests, to be prepared under the supervision of relevant government offices, may not be ready in time for the first fiscal year of the new statuses. The government projects that this will mean many initial category 1 status applicants will likely be qualified foreign technical trainees already in the country.
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🇺🇸 **47% of Americans 'feel like a stranger in their own country,' cultural alienation survey finds**
*The Washington Times* - <https://archive.fo/zmpax>
The sense that the nation’s culture and way of life have dramatically changed is reflected in a PRRI “American Values” survey that gauged both political opinions and “cultural alienation.”
It found that 47 percent of Americans now say that things have changed so much, they “feel like a stranger in their own country.” A slim majority (51 percent) disagree.
Nearly six in 10 Republicans say that things have changed so much they feel alienated; 42 percent of Democrats agree.
Was there a better era to live in? Americans are divided on whether the country’s culture and way of life has changed for the better or worse since the 1950s. Fifty percent say such change is for the better, while 47 percent say culture has gotten worse according to the survey survey.
“There are significant partisan divides on this question, with 60 percent of Democrats and just 34 percent of Republicans believing American culture and way of life have improved since the 1950s; by contrast, 64 percent of Republicans say things have mostly changed for the worse,” the poll analysis said.
“The survey finds that partisans see two entirely different American futures. The survey shows Republicans’ vision for the country’s future is increasingly distant from the vision largely shared by Democrats and independents,” the analysis said.
The survey of 2,509 U.S. adults was conducted from Sept. 17 to Oct. 1 and released Monday.
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🇺🇸 **Democratic Party of GA accused of hacking voter registry; Abrams calls it desperate ploy**
*WSB-TV Atlanta* - <https://archive.fo/q1ADY>
The Georgia Secretary of State’s Office says it is investigating a failed attempt to hack the state’s voter registration system by the Democratic Party of Georgia, the office said in a news release.
The state has not said what evidence they have that a hack occurred.
"While we cannot comment on the specifics of an ongoing investigation, I can confirm that the Democratic Party of Georgia is under investigation for possible cyber crimes," said secretary of state office press secretary Candice Broce. "We can also confirm that no personal data was breached and our system remains secure."
Secretary of State Brian Kemp is running for governor of Georgia against Democrat Stacey Abrams. The investigation comes just two days before the election.
Channel 2's Mike Petchenik sat down one on one with Stacey Abrams just hours after the announcement of the investigation.
She called the investigation a desperate political ploy.
The secretary of state's office released more information about the alleged hack Sunday afternoon.
"We opened an investigation into the Democratic Party of Georgia after receiving information from our legal team about failed efforts to breach the online voter registration system and My Voter Page. We are working with our private sector vendors and investigators to review data logs. We have contacted our federal partners and formally requested the Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate these possible cyber crimes. The secretary of state's office will release more information as it becomes available," Broce said.
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🇬🇧 **Police launch investigation into 'vile' video of Grenfell Tower model burnt on bonfire**
*Independent* - <https://archive.fo/HjsfI>
Scotland Yard have launched an investigation into a “vile” video of a model of Grenfell Tower being burned on a bonfire.
The prime minister, home secretary, fire chiefs and survivors have all strongly condemned party-goers who laughed and joked as they mocked the Grenfell tragedy.
The Metropolitan Police are appealing for information on who was at the event that has been widely condemned as “sick” and racist.
The footage, apparently shot for bonfire night in a private garden, shows the 3ft cardboard model with brown faces at the windows – and a woman in a niqab – being lifted onto a fire.
Commander Stuart Cundy, who is leading the investigation into the Grenfell Tower fire, said: “I am frankly appalled by the callous nature of the video posted online.
“So many people lost so many loved ones, and many more have been deeply affected. To mock that disaster in such a crude way is vile.
“I can’t imagine the distress this video will undoubtedly cause to bereaved families and survivors.
“The Met’s Grenfell Tower investigation team is taking this matter very seriously. Any offences that have been committed will be fully investigated.”
Theresa May said: “To disrespect those who lost their lives at Grenfell Tower, as well as their families and loved ones, is utterly unacceptable.”
They refer to “ninjas”, thought to be a substitute for either Muslim women who wear a face veil or the offensive term “n*****”.
Men in the group call mockingly: “Help me!” and “Stay in your flat” – the advice given to residents during the UK’s worst residential fire since the Second World War, which engulfed Grenfell Tower in north Kensington last summer, leaving 72 people dead.
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🇺🇸 **NBC, Fox News pull Trump immigration ad, Facebook blocks paid promotion**
*NBC News* - <https://archive.fo/k2eDd>
NBC and Fox News said on Monday morning that they would no longer air an immigration ad from President Donald Trump that has been widely derided as racially divisive.
"After further review, we recognize the insensitive nature of the ad and have decided to cease airing it across our properties as soon as possible," said Joe Benarroch, a spokesperson for NBC's advertising sales department.
Facebook also took action on Monday, blocking the ad from getting promoted through the company's paid distribution network, though it allowed the ad to remain on Trump's verified Facebook page, where it has been viewed more than one million times.
NBC came under fire for airing the commercial during its Sunday night NFL game between the New England Patriots and the Green Bay Packers.
The decision to run the ad quickly drew criticism on social media, including from actress Debra Messing, who stars in the NBC comedy "Will and Grace."
"I want you to know that I am ashamed that my network aired this disgusting racist ad," Messing tweeted. "It is the antithesis of everything I personally believe in, and what, I believe, our show is all about."
The ad aired 18 times across multiple networks including Fox News and Fox Business Network, according to advertising tracking firm iSpotTV, which noted it also aired on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Monday.
Shortly after NBC made its announcement, Fox News said it had decided on Sunday to stop showing the ad.
“Upon further review, Fox News pulled the ad yesterday and it will not appear on either Fox News Channel or Fox Business Network," Marianne Gambelli, president of ad sales for Fox News, said in an email.
Facebook said it had blocked the ad from receiving paid promotion because the video violated company advertising policy around "sensational content."
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🇺🇸 **Exclusive poll: Only half of Americans have faith in democracy**
*Axios* - <https://archive.fo/y86wB>
Just 51% of Americans said they have faith in democracy, and 37% say they have lost faith in democracy, according to a new Axios/SurveyMonkey poll conducted in late October.
Why it matters: It suggests that recent political turmoil has caused people to doubt the very foundation of American society, particularly leading up to election day.
Since October 2016, just before the last presidential election, SurveyMonkey has tracked Americans' views toward democracy.
What's happening: Despite the political turbulence over the past two years, Americans' faith in democracy has been relatively stable — with two exceptions.
-Just before heading to the polls in 2016, 52% of voters had faith in democracy.
-That number grew from pre-election numbers (by 8 percentage points) immediately following the election in November 2016 and in February 2017, after President Trump's inauguration.
-One year ago, in October 2017, faith in democracy dropped by 7 percentage points and has held fairly steady since then.
-The other half of Americans have either lost faith in democracy or never had faith in it to begin with, according to the poll.
The big picture: SurveyMonkey also found that half the country believes America is more divided today than ever before — and that these divisions will probably continue far into the future (ranging between 46% and 51% over the past two years).
-About one-third of Americans agree America is more divided today, but are optimistic that Americans will come together in the near future.
-18% say America is not more divided today than it has been in the past.
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🇬🇧 **Grenfell Tower bonfire: Five men arrested over video**
*BBC* - <https://archive.fo/2SWai>
Five men have been arrested on suspicion of a public order offence in connection with a model of Grenfell Tower being burned on a bonfire.
A video shared on social media shows a cardboard model of the tower being set alight by a laughing crowd.
The Metropolitan Police said the men - two aged 49 and the others aged 19, 46 and 55 - handed themselves in at a south London station on Monday night.
Prime Minister Theresa May had called the video "utterly unacceptable".
The men have been arrested under section 4a of the Public Order Act 1986, which covers intentional "harassment, alarm or distress" caused via the use of "threatening, abusive or insulting" words or signs.
Offences committed on a private residence where a person "had no reason to believe" it would be "heard or seen by a person outside that or any other dwelling" are protected from prosecution under the act.
Under the Public Order Act, racially or religiously aggravated offences carry a prison sentence of up to two years, a fine or both.
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