🇺🇸 **Train's emergency brake was activated, safety arms at site of GOP train crash appeared to malfunction**
<http://archive.is/2nlZY>
 
Federal investigators said Thursday that data gathered from an Amtrak train carrying Republican lawmakers that hit a garbage truck near Crozet, Virginia, on Wednesday indicates that the engineer activated the emergency brake and the train came to a full stop 20 seconds later.

Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) haven't determined what caused the crash but said they are hopeful they will be able to recover footage from the train's front-facing camera, which could offer insight on whether the truck was moving at the time of impact and whether the signal system at the crossing was functioning properly.

Pete Kotowski, the NTSB's lead investigator at the site, said officials have interviewed one Amtrak crew member and hope to speak with the train engineer and truck driver in coming days. They also have interviewed four witnesses, some of whom indicated there may have been previous problems with the crossing signals.
(Everyone should keep a close eye on this story)

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__***House memo states disputed dossier was key to FBI’s FISA warrant to surveil members of Team Trump***__
*http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/02/02/house-memo-states-disputed-dossier-was-key-to-fbi-s-fisa-warrant-to-surveil-members-team-trump.html*
*A much-hyped memo that shows alleged government surveillance abuse has been released to the public and includes testimony from a high-ranking government official who says the FBI and DOJ would not have sought surveillance warrants to spy on at least one member of the Trump team without the infamous Trump dossier.

Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee on Friday released the memo, which states "concerns with the legitimacy and legality of certain DOJ and FBI interactions” involving FISA, or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, of Trump associates during the 2016 election.

The dossier, authored by former British spy Christopher Steele and commissioned by Fusion GPS, was paid by the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign through law firm Perkins Coie in an effort to conduct opposition research.


Griff Jenkins reports from Washington, D.C..
The memo, which has been at the center of an intense power struggle between congressional Republicans, specifically cites the DOJ and FBI’s surveillance of onetime Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, saying the dossier "formed an essential part" of the application to spy on him.*

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/02/02/house-memo-states-disputed-dossier-was-key-to-fbi-s-fisa-warrant-to-surveil-members-team-trump.html

=====

http://thefederalist.com/2018/02/02/house-intel-memo-fisa-abuse-just-released-read/

link to the memo its self unredacted apparently

Here's a tl;dr of the memo

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🇺🇸 **Charges for man who sold Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock ammunition**
<http://archive.is/VUJzV>
 
An Arizona man, previously identified as a person of interest in the Las Vegas shooting investigation, was charged by authorities Friday for manufacturing and selling armor-piercing bullets without having a proper license, according to court documentsobtained by The Associated Press.

Fingerprints belonging to Douglas Haig, 55, were found by investigators on a stash of unused armor-piercing ammo in the Mandalay Bay hotel room from which Stephen Paddock launched his bloody Oct. 1 assault, the documents said. It wasn’t noted if the bullets were the type used in the attack.

Paddock, the lone gunman in the shooting, fired a stream of bullets into a crowd of concertgoers at the Route 91 Harvest Festival on the Las Vegas Strip. Shooting from his hotel room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, Paddock killed 58 people and wounded more than 500. The massacre is considered to be the worst mass shooting in modern American history.

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(**Looks more like arms trafficking-Dan**)

🇺🇸 **Fortress Minneapolis: Largest Super Bowl security operation in history underway in frigid temperatures with the FBI on high alert to potential extremist threats from the city's Somali community**
<http://archive.is/lnez8>
 
Four layers of aircraft in the sky including armed F-16 jets will be part of the largest security operation in the history of Super Bowl when it kicks off this Sunday.

Black Hawk helicopters and jet fighters will be circling above the U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to force down any aircraft that enters the 30 nautical mile no-fly zone.

Helicopters equipped with infrared cameras will be in the air and there will be tens of thousands of police and FBI agents on the ground.

According to the event organizers they want the streets around the stadium to be the ‘most secure area in the world’ on the day of the Super Bowl.

Due to the risk of a terrorist attack, the Department of Homeland Security has given the Super Bowl a Level 1 ‘special event assessment rating’, the highest security designation available.

This year the FBI is on particular alert because of the number of terrorism cases in the Somali community in Minneapolis.

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<:ancap:280811320541052940>
:: **Britain’s first ‘private police force’ has 100 per cent conviction rate and is now investigating murder and rape**
<http://archive.is/uYHyU>
 
TM Eye is now believed to bring more private convictions than any other organisation except for the RSPCA, Daily Mail reports.

The company has a service called "My Local Bobby", which costs wealthy homeowners around £200 a month and involves a guard patrolling their streets.

TM Eye are also looking three murder cases that cops were unable to solve and are helping out in rape, missing persons, burglary, theft, stalking and blackmail cases.

In two years, the company has successfully convicted 403 criminals for fraud, intellectual property theft and other offences.

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<:shiiiiit:348458410217308170> **Police Release Footage Of Suspects Looting Gas Station Following Eagles’ Super Bowl Win**
<https://archive.fo/XikXe>

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — Philadelphia police have released surveillance footage of a Sunoco gas station being looted following the Eagles’ Super Bowl win on Sunday night.

Police say a large group entered the Sunoco gas station at 801 South Broad St. around 12:30 a.m. on Monday, Feb. 5.

Video shows suspects taking items from the shelves and leaving the premises, throwing food and drinks on the floor and walls. Suspects are also seen throwing shelves down to the ground.

The looting even left a hole in the back wall of the Sunoco store.

https://youtu.be/2ZVNUIXNWBo

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<:trump:284711336934375425> **Trump’s ‘marching orders’ to the Pentagon: Plan a grand military parade**
<https://archive.fo/CSjBl>

President Trump’s vision of soldiers marching and tanks rolling down the boulevards of Washington is moving closer to reality in the Pentagon and White House, where officials say they have begun to plan a grand military parade later this year showcasing the might of America’s armed forces.

Trump has long mused publicly and privately about wanting such a parade, but a Jan. 18 meeting between Trump and top generals in the Pentagon’s tank — a room reserved for top-secret discussions — marked a tipping point, according to two officials briefed on the planning.

“The marching orders were: I want a parade like the one in France,” said a military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the planning discussions are supposed to remain confidential. “This is being worked at the highest levels of the military.”

A White House official familiar with the planning described the discussions as “brainstorming” and said nothing is settled. “Right now, there’s really no meat on the bones,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.

Still, the official said Trump is determined to have a parade. “The president wants to do something that highlights the service and sacrifice of the military and have a unifying moment for the country,” the official said.
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<:moonman:283655821190234122> **South Carolina Black Lives Matter leader shot, killed in New Orleans**
<https://archive.fo/nFBiV>
The man who died at a New Orleans hospital after he was shot on Franklin Avenue Monday night was an activist and organizer of the Black Lives Matter movement in Charleston, S.C.

Muhiyidin d’Baha, better known as Moya or Moye, was found lying on the sidewalk about 9:30 p.m. Monday in the 1700 block of Franklin Avenue with multiple gunshot wounds, the coroner’s office told ABC affiliate WCIV. He died later at a local hospital.

D’Baha is best known for jumping into a crowd and trying to grab a Confederate flag that someone was holding during a heated protest in Charleston in February 2017.

Bree Newsome, the woman who climbed a flagpole and unhooked the Confederate flag at the South Carolina State House in 2015, was giving a speech in downtown Charleston when d’Baha jumped into the crowd on live television.

NOPD has not named a motive or suspect in the activist’s slaying.
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🇷🇺 **Adam Schiff sent his staff to try and collect 'classified materials for the FBI' after Russian pranksters told him Putin has NAKED blackmail pictures of Trump**
<https://archive.fo/NKPFY>

Adam Schiff, the ranking Democratic member of the House Intel Committee was recorded speaking to Russian pranksters who spun elaborate 'kompromat' tale.

He told Vocan and Lexus, two radio pranksters who have also hit Nikki Haley, that he would pass their claims to the FBI in a call made last year.

The duo posed as a fake Ukrainian politician to say Trump had sex with Russian glamour model Olga Buzova after a Miss Universe pageant in 2013. In the call they said Putin had been passed naked pictures of Trump and now-president had used secret codes for talks with Russians.

Duo gave emails to DailyMail.com which showed Schiff's staff trying to arrange to collect 'classified' documents from Ukraine's embassy in D.C.

Schiff's office claimed he was not fooled by the call and reported it to 'authorities' but did not explain why his staff kept up correspondence
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🎂 **Happy Birthday Reagan**
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/961038807658352640

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🇺🇸 **UC Berkeley spent $4 million for free speech event security**
<https://archive.fo/bVJRI>

The University of California, Berkeley spent almost $4 million on security for a month of free speech events last year when the famously liberal campus became a flashpoint for the country’s political divisions.

The university revealed in documents that it spent $3.9 million to bring in outside police forces, pay their room, board and overtime, have ambulances on standby, rent barricades and pay other security costs for three events scheduled from Aug. 27 to Sept. 27.

UC Berkeley spent $190,404 on security costs for an Aug. 27 counter protest billed as the “Rally Against Hate” called to oppose a smaller gathering of right-wing protesters on Aug. 27 in a Berkeley park. Black-clad anarchists stormed the largely peaceful rally and attacked at least five people.

Security costs related to a Sept. 14 appearance by conservative speaker Ben Shapiro cost $836,421. Unprecedented security measures included putting the campus on a virtual lockdown by sealing off campus buildings and nearby parking lots, which critics called overkill but the university defended as effective since no one got hurt.

The priciest event was a Sept. 24-27 event called “Free Speech Week,” organized by Yiannopoulos who said he planned to return to UC Berkeley with a lineup of high-profile conservatives. Ultimately the event was canceled but the university spent nearly $2.9 million on security.
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🇮🇱 **Israel Hits Back at Iran and Syria as Border Region Boils**
<https://archive.fo/M2kII>

Israel launched attacks on Iranian and Syrian positions after it said Iran sent a military drone into its airspace Saturday, raising the prospect of further escalation over the Islamic Republic’s growing presence in Syria.

Israel struck 12 targets in Syria, including four Iranian targets, in a “large-scale attack” after the drone infiltration, the Israel Defense Forces said. An F-16 fighter plane crashed in northern Israel after coming under fire from Syrian anti-aircraft missiles, and the pilots were hospitalized with moderate to severe injuries.

Saturday’s confrontation, the most serious between the sides since the Syrian civil war began, comes amid Israeli warnings that it won’t let Syria become an Iranian base and will intercept weapons shipments bound for Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. Iran and allied militias have fought alongside government troops against rebels and Islamist factions in the seven-year-old Syrian war.
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🇺🇸 **U.S.SECRETLY NEGOTIATED WITH RUSSIANS TO BUY STOLEN NSA DOCUMENTS — AND THE RUSSIANS OFFERED TRUMP-RELATED MATERIAL, TOO**
<https://archive.fo/MWDhV>

THE UNITED STATES intelligence community has been conducting a top-secret operation to recover stolen classified U.S. government documents from Russian operatives, according to sources familiar with the matter. The operation has also inadvertently yielded a cache of documents purporting to relate to Donald Trump and Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Over the past year, American intelligence officials have opened a secret communications channel with the Russian operatives, who have been seeking to sell both Trump-related materials and documents stolen from the National Security Agency and obtained by Russian intelligence, according to people involved with the matter and other documentary evidence. The channel started developing in early 2017, when American and Russian intermediaries began meeting in Germany. Eventually, a Russian intermediary, apparently representing some elements of the Russian intelligence community, agreed to a deal to sell stolen NSA documents back to the U.S. while also seeking to include Trump-related materials in the package.

The CIA declined to comment on the operation. The NSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The secret U.S. intelligence channel with the Russians is separate from efforts by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele to obtain information about Trump and his ties with Russia. Steele worked with Fusion GPS, an American private investigations firm that was first hired by Republican and later Democratic opponents of Trump to dig up information on him during the 2016 campaign.
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<:pepegun:328556579467165696> **Dog meat soup for sale in shadow of Olympic stadium**
<http://archive.is/cJUTN>
 
PYEONGCHANG, South Korea -- Canadian figure skater Meagan Duhamel is hoping to win a gold medal in South Korea this month - though no prize could be more life-changing than her previous Pyeongchang souvenir.

Not after last year, when the two-time world champion pairs skater brought home Moo-tae - an affable miniature dachshund mix with big ears, bowed legs and the bad luck of being born into the Korean dog meat trade. Duhamel, a vegan and animal lover, helped rescue Moo-tae by accompanying him on his flight from South Korea to Canada last February. The 2-year-old pup has been living with her and husband/coach Bruno Marcotte in Montreal since, spending his days doing yoga with Duhamel and making friends at the local dog park.

"He's like a saint," Duhamel said.

Taiwan bans human consumption of cat, dog meat

It's been a different life for Moo-tae. Like roughly 2 million dogs each year, he was supposed to be raised on a Korean dog meat farm, where conditions are often poor. Moo-tae may have been locked in a cage, beaten or left without food or water. Certainly, he would have been sold and slaughtered, then probably served in soup at one of many restaurants still popular among Korea's elderly population.
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<:perfect:348458410783539211> **Israel warns over Iran's presence in Syria after air strikes**
<http://archive.is/xdypl>
 
Jerusalem (AFP) - Israel issued stark warnings on Sunday over Iran's presence in neighbouring Syria after a confrontation threatened to open a new and unpredictable period in the country's seven-year civil war.

Israel carried out major air raids in Syria on Saturday, including against what it described as Iranian targets -- the first time it had publicly acknowledged doing so since the war began.

The raids came after an Israeli F16 fighter was shot down by Syrian air defences. The pilots survived, but it was Israel's first loss of a warplane in battle since 1982.

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🇺🇸 **UC Berkeley to allocate $800K for undocumented students’ needs, pending UCOP approval**
<https://archive.fo/SAfgV>

UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ has promised to establish a new space on campus for undocumented students by early March.

Christ made these promises Tuesday when she met with Luis Mora — a campus junior transfer who was detained by Border Patrol and held in custody for 2 1/2 weeks by Immigration and Customs Enforcement — to discuss efforts to address current concerns in undocumented student communities. Plans include the establishment of an undocumented student resource center as well as the allocation of $800,000 for the DACA Financial Gap, an initiative to cover financial needs of undocumented students under DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

The resources available to undocumented students on campus have been in the spotlight since Mora’s detainment, when campus immigration attorney Prerna Lal stated that they didn’t have an office on campus or rooms to meet with students.

Another one of the university’s objectives is to construct a “sustainable financial strategy,” which will address the financial needs of undocumented students losing their DACA status. The current plan proposes an $800,000 allocation for one semester of the 2018-19 academic year.

Should the proposal receive approval from the UC Office of the President, $2,500 in basic needs grants will be set aside for students whose DACA status has expired. An additional $1,500 will go towards basic needs grants for all other students, and $50,000 will be set aside as a discretionary grant for “special cases.”
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🇸🇦 **Saudi women should not have to wear abaya robes, senior cleric says**
<https://archive.fo/trp5b>

Women in Saudi Arabia could be coming out into the open just a little more.

A senior religious cleric said women should not be forced to wear abayas — the full-length robe that women don in public to cloak their bodies.

Sheikh Abdullah al-Mutlaq, a member of the Council of Senior Scholars, said Muslim women should dress modestly, but abayas should not be a mandate.

“More than 90% of pious Muslim women in the Muslim world do not wear abayas,” al-Mutlaq said on his radio program Friday. “So we should not force people to wear abayas.”

Whether the words translate into a legal change remains to be seen; by law, women must cover their hair and bodies in public. Women in Saudi Arabia face extreme social and personal restrictions because of the kingdom’s strict interpretation of Islam.
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🇺🇸 **High school science fair project questioning African American intelligence sparks outrage**
<https://archive.fo/wIpzF>

Students, parents and staff at C.K. McClatchy High School are upset over a science fair project by a student in its elite magnet program that questioned whether certain races of people lack the intelligence to handle the program’s academically challenging coursework.

The project that started the controversy was titled “Race and IQ.” It raised the hypothesis: “If the average IQs of blacks, Southeast Asians, and Hispanics are lower than the average IQs of non-Hispanic whites and Northeast Asians, then the racial disproportionality in (HISP) is justified.”

The project was put on display with others on Monday afternoon to be judged by a team of community members as part of the fourth annual Mini Science Fair. It was removed Wednesday morning after students, parents and staff complained. The science fair was open to students and parents.

The controversial project also included a bibliography and quotes from five books, one a text from 1904 called “The Essential Kafir” that argued South African blacks were intellectually inferior to whites. The term “kaffir” has since evolved into a racial slur in South Africa, where it is sometimes referred to as the “k-word.”

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🇺🇸 **Trump Motorcade Press Van Drivers Abruptly Replaced After Gun Found in Driver’s Bag**
<http://archive.is/fEkhz>
 
A security scare with the motorcade for President Donald Trump prompted the abrupt replacement of every press van driver Monday morning at Mar-a-Lago after a gun was found in a bag of one of the drivers. The gun was found outside Mar-a-Lago as the driver was being screened by the Secret Service.

ordan Fabian of the Hill filed a pool report on the incident:

*From:* Jordan Fabian 
*Date:* February 19, 2018 at 9:12:37 AM EST
*Subject:**Travel print pool report #2 – Trump International Golf Club*

The presidential motorcade was rolling from Mar-a-Lago at 8:55 AM. Pool did not see POTUS enter motorcade.

Motorcade pulled into Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach at 9:09 AM.


Press vans broke off to hold at lounge at Palm Beach International Airport.

No word on the presidents activities at the golf club. Trump skipped golf the past two days in the wake of last weeks school shooting.

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🇮🇹 __**Italy used to be a tolerant country, but now racism is rising**__

<http://archive.is/ggH6y>
Pape Diaw, originally from Senegal, arrived in Florence to study engineering in the late 1970s. Part of a group of 15 African students, he inspired curiosity among his Italian counterparts and the wider community, but never encountered racism. “I remember walking along the street and people would ask to have a photo taken,” he said.
“We were seen as a novelty, but never insulted. When we went to process our residency permits, the police officers would give us coffee.
“Yes, Italy might have been behind [other countries] when it came to cultural mindset, but we were well-received.”
Different times. Ahead of national elections on 4 March, xenophobic rhetoric is dominating a campaign that has turned nasty and divisive. Matters took a toxic turn earlier this month, when 28-year-old Luca Traini injured six African migrants in a racially motivated shooting spree in the central city of Macerata.
Traini had been a candidate at local elections last year for the Northern League, one of two anti-migrant parties that form part of a motley coalition led by Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia. Both the League and its junior ally, Brothers of Italy, are crusading on an “Italians First” platform, targeting the 600,000 migrants who have landed on Italy’s southern shores over the past four years, fleeing war, poverty and oppression. For immigrants of longer standing, the rising hostility towards outsiders has been a profoundly depressing development after years of gradual integration.

credit to alibaba

🇺🇸 **Billy Graham, America's pastor, has died**
<http://archive.is/yuJUb>
 
The world's best-known evangelist, the Rev. Billy Graham, died Wednesday. He was 99.

From the gangly 16-year-old baseball-loving teen who found Christ at a tent revival, Graham went on to become an international media darling, a preacher to a dozen presidents and the voice of solace in times of national heartbreak. He was America's pastor. 

Graham died at his mountain home in Montreat, N.C., where he retired in 2005 after nearly six decades on the road calling people to Christ at 417 all-out preaching and musical events from Miami to Moscow. His final New York City crusade in 2005 was sponsored by 1,400 regional churches from 82 denominations. In recent years, he was plagued by various ailments, including cancer and pneumonia.

He took his Bible to the ends of the Earth in preaching tours he called "crusades." Presidents called on Graham in their dark hours, and uncounted millions say he showed them the light.

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<:jew:351904133470617610> **US embassy will move to Jerusalem on May14th to celebrate Israel's 70th anniversary**

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<:suicide:280809026944761856> **Students in Louisiana thought this math symbol looked like a gun. Police were called**
<https://archive.fo/ej47o>

A discussion among students at Oberlin High School in Oberlin, La., about a mathematical symbol led to a police investigation and a search of one of the student’s homes, according to the Allen Parish Sheriff’s Office.

On the afternoon of Feb. 20, detectives investigated a report of terroristic threats at the school, where they learned that a student had been completing a math problem that required drawing the square-root sign.

Students in the group began commenting that the symbol, which represents a number that when multiplied by itself equals another number, looked like a gun.

After several students made comments along those lines, another student said something the sheriff’s office said could have sounded like a threat out of context.

Police searched the student’s home, where they found no guns or any evidence that he had any access to guns. Authorities also wrote there was no evidence the student had any intent to commit harm.
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<:overjoyed:384631744571244544> **Facebook pulls violent virtual reality games from CPAC booth after Parkland**
<https://archive.fo/1xc7D>

Facebook pulled violent virtual reality games, including one in which players pretend to shoot people in a train station, from its booth at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference after public criticism.

Facebook's vice president of virtual reality, Hugo Barra, apologized for the demos of violent virtual reality games including "Bullet Train" during CPAC.

Criticism grew on social media of the shooter game demo coming so soon after the shootings at a high school in Parkland, Fla., that left 17 people dead.

"There is a standard set of experiences included in the Oculus demos we feature at public events. A few of the action games can include violence. In light of the recent events in Florida and out of respect for the victims and their families, we have removed them from this demo. We regret that we failed to do so in the first place," Barra said in an emailed statement to USA TODAY.

This is not the first time Facebook has been accused of being tone deaf in demonstrating the capabilities of its virtual reality. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized last year after live streaming a virtual reality tour of hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico to promote Facebook's Spaces app.
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🇺🇸 **GOP Rep: The 2nd amendment does not ‘guarantee that every civilian can bear any and all arms’**
<https://archive.fo/LudP1>

Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.) is throwing his support behind an assault weapons ban, writing in an op-ed on Friday that the Second Amendment guarantee to the right to bear arms does not apply to all guns.

"The Second Amendment is unimpeachable," Mast wrote in The New York Times. "It guarantees the right of citizens to defend themselves. I accept, however, that it does not guarantee that every civilian can bear any and all arms."

Mast's op-ed came days after a gunman opened fire on Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., killing 17 people and injuring 14 others.

Mast similarly called for a ban on bump stocks, and said that background checks should also be stricter.

"The president, House of Representatives, Senate, every state legislature, sheriffs, police officers, school boards, students and parents must unite with one mission: that no one will ever be murdered in school again," he wrote.
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🇺🇸 **Four states agree to share gun registries**
<https://archive.fo/mh6iE>

our northeastern states agreed this week to share registries of people banned from purchasing guns, The New York Times reports.

New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Rhode Island will now share information like the names of individuals with warrants out for their arrest and those with mental health issues who have been barred from buying guns.

The decision came days after a deadly shooting at a South Florida high school renewed an intense debate over the nation's gun control laws.

“This is a federal government that’s gone backwards on this issue,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) said Thursday, according to the Times. “President Trump has pledged allegiance to the [National Rifle Association] and he’s delivered for them.”

Officials said that the effort would expand the information that they share across state lines, according to the Times. States are already supposed to report criminal and other information to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).
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<:trump:284711336934375425> **Border wall work begins in downtown Calexico**
<https://archive.fo/hvt8n>

The federal government began work Wednesday to replace a section of border wall in California, the first wall contract awarded in the Trump administration outside of eight prototypes that were built last year in San Diego.

Customs and Border Protection is replacing a little more than two miles in downtown Calexico, a sliver of the president's plan for a “big, beautiful wall” with Mexico. A barrier built in the 1990s from recycled metal scraps and landing mat will be torn down for bollard-style posts that are 30 feet high, significantly taller than existing walls.

The administration is seeking $18 billion to extend the wall. Efforts to pay for it as part of a broader immigration package that would include granting legal status for people who came to the county as young children failed in the Senate last week.

In November, SWF Constructors of Omaha, Neb., won a contract for $18 million to replace the wall in Calexico, about 120 miles east of San Diego. It encompasses an area bisected by the New River, where smugglers are known to guide people through polluted waters. The project, which includes a bridge over the river, is expected to take 300 days.

The administration cleared the way for construction in September by waiving dozens of environmental and other reviews in Calexico. A 2005 law exempted it from environmental reviews if the Homeland Security secretary deems a wall to be in national security interests.
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🚁 **Kill a communist and receive £340, Philippines leader Duterte tells nation**
<https://archive.fo/M94IH>

Rodrigo Duterte also said the communists are easier to hit than birds because they have bigger heads.

His latest crass remarks, which the government issued to reporters yesterday, came after human rights groups condemned him this week for saying troops should shoot female communist guerrillas in the genitals to render them “useless”.

Mr Duterte said in a speech to troops at an air base in central Cebu city, referring to New People’s Army guerrillas: “You kill an NPA today and I’ll pay you 25,000 pesos.

“I was computing that if this drags on for four years, … it’ll be very expensive because it’s war. If I’ll just pay 25,000 for a life, I can save about 47 percent.”
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<:trump:284711336934375425> **Woman Assumes Olympics Fan Is Flying a Confederate Flag. It Was Norwegian.**
<https://archive.fo/7PDKB>

A news tip earlier this week that reported a Confederate flag flying beneath an American flag in the Greenwood neighborhood of Seattle, Washington was discovered to be a mistake — because the red and blue-striped flag was actually a Norwegian flag.

The Seattle Times received the following tip from New York Times best-selling author Rebecca Morris after she believed that she saw a Confederate flag flying in her neighborhood: “Hi. Suddenly there is a Confederate flag flying in front of a house in my Greenwood neighborhood. It is at the north-east corner of 92nd and Palatine, just a block west of 92nd and Greenwood Ave N. I would love to know what this ‘means’ … but of course don’t want to knock on their door. Maybe others in the area are flying the flag? Maybe it’s a story? Thank you.”

However, a more thorough examination revealed that it was actually a Norwegian flag was flying at the house of Darold Norman Strangeland, who raised it at the start of this year’s Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea as an homage to his Norwegian-American background — his parents emigrated to the states in the mid-1950s.

When Morris found out that she had mistaken the flags, she pointed to the current political climate as a possible reason for her mix-up. “Maybe that’s the story,” she told the Seattle Times. “We’re so stressed by all things political that we see things that aren’t there.”
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🇺🇸 **Six companies dump the NRA in just 24 hours**
<https://archive.fo/IldUc>

As teenage school shooting survivors channeled their anger into a national movement, #BoycottNRA exploded across Twitter this week, and companies that once partnered with the National Rifle Association pulled out one by one.

It started with First National Bank of Omaha on Thursday night, which canceled their NRA-branded Visa cards. This was followed by rental car conglomerate Enterprise Holdings, which revoked its NRA member discounts for Enterprise, National, and Alamo. On Friday, the list grew longer as the hashtag started to blow up.

Symantec, the security company that sells Norton Antivirus and LifeLock identify theft protection, terminated its NRA member discount. Soon after, Chubb, a casualty insurance company, announced that it had stopped underwriting NRA insurance policies.

MetLife announced it was ending its discount program. Then Hertz followed the lead of Enterprise and canceled its car rental partnership.
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