Light News Dump

China is harvesting organs from detainees, UK tribunal concludes
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/17/china-is-harvesting-organs-from-detainees-uk-tribunal-concludes

Paul J. Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman who is serving a federal prison sentence, had been expected to be transferred to the notorious Rikers Island jail complex this month to await trial on a separate state case. But last week, Manhattan prosecutors were surprised to receive a letter from the second-highest law enforcement official in the country inquiring about Mr. Manafort’s case. The letter, from Jeffrey A. Rosen, Attorney General William P. Barr’s new top deputy, indicated that he was monitoring where Mr. Manafort would be held in New York. And then, on Monday, federal prison officials weighed in, telling the Manhattan district attorney’s office that Mr. Manafort, 70, would not be going to Rikers. Instead, he will await his trial at a federal lockup in Manhattan or at the Pennsylvania federal prison where he is serving a seven-and-a-half-year sentence for wide-ranging financial schemes, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/17/nyregion/manafort-rikers.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/04/nyregion/manafort-rikers-island-solitary-confinement.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/us/politics/paul-manafort-sentencing.html

Top Trump health official warned against controversial ObamaCare changes in private memo. One of the three changes was later finalized by the administration, despite the warning from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma in the memo. And the other two have not yet been proposed but remain under consideration. House Democrats said Friday the fact that the administration approved an alteration that could undermine ObamaCare over the objections of one of its own top officials shows that the Trump administration is intent on “sabotage” of the Affordable Care Act. The August 2018 private memo to Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Alex Azar shows Verma was concerned with keeping ObamaCare markets stable and preventing disruption, but on at least one front was overruled by others in the administration.
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/448576-top-trump-health-official-warned-against-controversial-obamacare-changes-in

100 Ugandan Babies Dead - NGO Wants U.S. Missionary Prosecuted For Practicing Medicine Without Any Qualifications
https://allafrica.com/view/group/main/main/id/00068378.html

Russia's manipulation of Twitter was far vaster than believed
https://www.politico.com/amp/story/2019/06/05/study-russia-cybersecurity-twitter-1353543

Supreme Court hands Virginia Democrats a win in gerrymandering case. The Supreme Court has ruled against the Virginia House of Delegates in a racial gerrymandering case that represents a victory for Democrats in the state.
In the 5-4 ruling, the justices found that the House didn't have the standing to appeal a lower court ruling that found that the new district maps must be used ahead of statewide elections later this year. Those new maps are already in use. Democrats had claimed that previous districts were unlawful because they featured too many black voters, diminishing their power across the state and in other districts. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the majority opinion and was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Neil Gorsuch. Justices Samuel Alito, John Roberts, Stephen Breyer and Brett Kavanaugh dissented.
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/448876-supreme-court-hands-virginia-democrats-a-win-in-gerrymandering-case

Trump says he’ll announce a ‘phenomenal’ new health care plan soon. Where was it the last 2 years?
https://thinkprogress.org/trump-announce-phenomenal-new-health-care-plan-b509b7b1844f/

Undocumented immigrants fired from Trump golf clubs to crash his 2020 campaign kickoff in Florida
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-immigrants-fired-trump-golf-2020-kickoff-florida-20190617-5oijvlszabcz3l7rviu3755u5y-story.html

Trump Says He Didn’t Speak to Mueller ‘Because They Were Looking to Get Us for Lies’
https://lawandcrime.com/crazy/trump-says-he-didnt-speak-to-mueller-because-they-were-looking-to-get-us-for-lies/

Trump Calls Fox News ‘Fake News’ for Citing Unfavorable Poll Numbers
https://www.thedailybeast.com/president-trump-calls-fox-news-fake-news-for-citing-unfavorable-poll-numbers

Democrats ask OSC to review whether Kushner violated Hatch Act
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/448895-democrats-ask-osc-to-review-whether-kushner-violated-hatch-act

Iran says it will break the uranium stockpile limit agreed under nuclear deal in 10 days
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/06/17/middleeast/iran-nuclear-deal-stockpile-intl/index.html

More than 300 US executives are flocking to Washington to testify against Trump's next round of China tariffs
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/trump-trade-war-china-tariffs-congressional-testimonies-from-us-businesses-2019-6-1028284638

Hong Kong Police arrested protesters after accessing full details of injured protesters through Hospital Authority's "backdoor"
https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/06/17/police-can-access-full-details-injured-protesters-hospital-says-medical-sector-lawmaker-following-patient-arrests/

Kenya's rape survivors win right to abortion in landmark court ruling
http://news.trust.org/item/20190612183718-i5lj0/

Mohamed Morsi Egypt's democratically-elected and then deposed president, died dead in a court hearing today. The Egyptian authorities basically just let his own body kill him slowly by not treating his ailments.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-48668941

Unconvinced EU foreign ministers call for independent investigation after US claim Iran is behind tanker attack
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/gulf-of-oman-iran-tanker-attack-eu-uk-trump-uk-evidence-investigation-a8961776.html

Harvard College rescinded admissions offers to at least ten prospective members of the Class of 2021 after the students traded sexually explicit memes and messages that sometimes targeted minority groups in a private Facebook group chat. A handful of admitted students formed the messaging group—titled, at one point, “Harvard memes for horny bourgeois teens”—on Facebook in late December, according to two incoming freshmen. In the group, students sent each other memes and other images mocking sexual assault, the Holocaust, and the deaths of children, according to screenshots of the chat obtained by The Crimson. Some of the messages joked that abusing children was sexually arousing, while others had punchlines directed at specific ethnic or racial groups. One called the hypothetical hanging of a Mexican child “piñata time.”
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/6/5/2021-offers-rescinded-memes/

Note: Beto running for the Presidency betters the chances of Texas Democrats to win the other Texas Senate seat (held by John Cornyn) in 2020 because his campaign would be able to focus/channel presidential level resources and attention on Texas and help both the presidential race (win bacl swing states, rural, rustbelt, union blue collar, etc) and help a strong Senate candidate like (D) MJ Hegar over the line to win. With Beto at the top of the ticket, Democrat MJ Hegar is likely to win the Senate in Texas as well.

Monopolist’s Worst Nightmare: The Elizabeth Warren Interview | "The problem is a government that won't get in the fight on the side of the people." | EW: Okay, now let’s move back up to the 10,000 feet where we started this, because I think that’s what this is all about. When we started this conversation, I said that I think the question is who government works for. I think much of the antitrust relaxation over time in the ’60s was confidence the government would handle this. Confidence that we had regulators who knew their stuff and who were technically adept and who had shown that they would be on the side of the American public. And when the big corporations started pushing back, started advancing the academic work that said, “No, let the giant corporations do whatever they want. What could possibly go wrong?”—That it’s taken a long time for people to see the implications of that. Look, for 40 years now, the mantra in Washington and in most of the Republican Party and a big chunk of the Democratic Party has all centered around Ronald Reagan’s “What are the nine worst words in the English language? I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” Ha ha ha. The idea that it’s government that poses the threat to all of the rest of America and must be held at arm’s length, and missing the fact that it’s government that balances out the power of these giant corporations. And without an effective government to enforce antitrust laws—and other laws—we’re all in trouble. | EW: And that’s how we keep hearing lately about self-regulation. Aircraft manufacturers that self-regulated; how did that work out? You know, it’s—But it’s over and over. It’s wait, what? They’re doing what? The oil companies that were doing the drilling offshore were self-regulating? You know, they filed some reports that nobody read. That’s not a government that’s working for the public. So when you say about, is it going to take a movement? The answer’s yes. That is the movement we’re starting to build.
https://prospect.org/article/monopolists-worst-nightmare-elizabeth-warren-interview

"Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down," Trump told Alex Jones Jones. Conspiracy theorist and InfoWars host Alex Jones sent child pornography to the lawyers for the families of the Sandy Hook tragedy, their lawyers said. The law firm representing the families of the 2012 mass shooting, stated in court documents filed Monday they have contacted the FBI after discovering child porn in electronic files Jones recently turned over to the Sandy Hook families as a result of their lawsuit against him for calling the tragedy a hoax. Jones publicly responded on a broadcast of his show that he is being framed by Chris Mattei, the lawyer for the Sandy Hook families and went on making what Mattei and his law firm, Koskoff, Koskoff and Bieder claim are threats against them.
https://www.ctpost.com/local/ctpost/article/Lawyers-Alex-Jones-sent-child-porn-to-Sandy-Hook-14005437.php

House Democrats are largely pursuing flashy, partisan, made-for-TV investigations targeting President Donald Trump, but one panel is taking a different approach — and getting results. The House Foreign Affairs Committee is quietly amassing documents on allegations of politically-motivated retaliation at the State Department; it’s looking into whether Trump has violated foreign emoluments and conflict of interest rules; and lawmakers are working to find out more about the president's relationship with Vladimir Putin and how he leads American foreign policy behind the scenes — all without the fanfare associated with the other committees’ work. The panel has secured wins on a number of fronts, and aides and lawmakers alike attribute that to the under-the-radar support they’re getting from Republicans, many of whom have grown exasperated with the president’s decisions on foreign policy and national security issues. It’s also a historically bipartisan committee that boasts a strong relationship between the top Democrat and Republican on the panel. “People are concerned to know the relationship between Putin and Trump,” Chairman Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) said in an interview. “We’re working our way there.”
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/17/house-foreign-affairs-panel-oversight-trump-1365840