Emma Lazarus "wrote 'The New Colossus' to argue that aiding the poor and oppressed of all lands was the mission of all Americans, the mission of America itself."
https://twitter.com/Acosta/status/1161699136917430272
A federal judge on Wednesday rejected House Democrats' effort to put two key legal cases the Judiciary Committee is pursuing in its impeachment investigation before the same judge. The decision from DC District Court Chief Judge Beryl Howell is a procedural setback for the House Judiciary Committee in its effort to use the courts to obtain information while the panel considers whether to bring forward articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/14/politics/house-democrats-lawsuit-don-mcgahn-judge/index.html
More than half of world’s forest wildlife lost in 40 years | The amount of wildlife in the world’s forests has plummeted by more than half (53 per cent) in just over 40 years, conservationists have found.
https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/wildlife-forest-climate-change-wwf-a9056516.html
https://www.wwf.org.uk/sites/default/files/2019-08/BelowTheCanopyReport.pdf
Residents told to evacuate after rise in radiation levels near Russian blast site
https://www.france24.com/en/20190813-russia-nuclear-blast-explosion-accident-missile-radiation-severodvinsk-residents-leave
China denies Hong Kong port visit for U.S. Navy ships amid tensions
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-protests-usa-navy/china-denies-hong-kong-port-visit-for-u-s-navy-ships-amid-tensions-idUSKCN1V31Z3
Jeffrey Epstein Death: 2 Guards Fell Asleep, Failed to Do Checks
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/13/nyregion/jeffrey-epstein-jail-officers.html
Oregon passes law requiring eggs sold there to come from cage-free hens
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/457341-oregon-passes-law-requiring-eggs-sold-in-the-state-to-come-from-cage
U.S. taxpayers repeatedly paid a Trump hotel in Canada: The Secret Service stayed at a Trump hotel in Vancouver while protecting Donald Trump Jr. on a hunting trip to Canada.
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/14/secret-service-donald-trump-jr-canada-hotel-1459051
The Republican politician Matt Shea connected close allies with a group offering training to young men in “biblical warfare” that includes how to use knives, pistols and rifles, with lessons based in part on the teachings of a Georgia-based neo-Confederate pastor, emails obtained by the Guardian reveal. Shea, who is an elected Washington state representative, later made videos in support of the group, and appeared alongside them at a gathering at a religious community in remote eastern Washington. He also paid the founder of the group money from his campaign fund in 2018.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/13/matt-shea-biblical-war-washington-team-rugged
Beto O’Rourke’s Finest Hour Came Off the Presidential Campaign Trail, in El Paso - In the absence of a fully functioning president, he filled a void and, in the process, reminded people of the man who caught the imagination of his state. | From the moment the Walmart became a morgue, O’Rourke was back where he belonged, amid 680,000 residents of a community that is among the safest in the country. He stopped campaigning immediately, not to make a video of himself at a staged hospital visit, but to live among the mourners, some his neighbors, many his constituents when he served them in Congress. Vigils? He was there. A soccer fundraiser? He and his family were at the one to make up for the one outside Walmart that ended last Saturday with two coaches wounded. He donated blood, hugged everyone, spent time with those wounded while trying to save a child or spouse. He skipped the Iowa State Fair, the nation’s premier political event (and dining event too, if you like deep-fried Twinkies), where 16 other candidates bucking to win the first-in-the-nation caucuses appeared. | When O’Rourke looks back, at the end of his life, at what he did in his public career that made a difference, more than when he was a congressman, more than when he ran a race for the Senate that fell just short, and more than his so-far underwhelming presidential campaign, he will have 11 days, and counting, in El Paso. He showed up. He didn’t send his thoughts and prayers. He gave them himself.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/beto-orourkes-finest-hour-came-off-the-presidential-campaign-trail-in-el-paso
Austin Tice was abducted in Syria seven years ago today. No words can describe his family's suffering, or our awe of their determination and perseverance. Please read their open letter about the efforts to bring him home, and some things we can all do to help. #FreeAustinTice
https://twitter.com/JohnKerry/status/1161679157895618560
An heiress to the Mellon banking and industrial fortune with a half-billion dollars at her disposal, Mrs. May helped create what would become the modern anti-immigration movement. She bankrolled the founding and operation of the nation’s three largest restrictionist groups — the Federation for American Immigration Reform, NumbersUSA and the Center for Immigration Studies — as well as dozens of smaller ones, including some that have promulgated white nationalist views. Today, 14 years after Mrs. May’s death, her money remains the lifeblood of the movement, through her Colcom Foundation. It has poured $180 million into a network of groups that spent decades agitating for policies now pursued by President Trump: militarizing the border, capping legal immigration, prioritizing skills over family ties for entry and reducing access to public benefits for migrants, as in the new rule issued just this week by the administration. From 2005 to 2017, the Colcom Foundation gave millions to anti-immigration and population-control groups, some with close ties to the Trump administration. | In many ways, the Trump presidency is the culmination of Mrs. May’s vision for strictly limiting immigration. Groups that she funded shared policy proposals with Mr. Trump’s campaign, sent key staff members to join his administration and have close ties to Stephen Miller, the architect of his immigration agenda to upend practices adopted by his Democratic and Republican predecessors. | Mrs. May faced criticism even from within her family for the groups she supported. A young cousin asked whether her causes weren’t discriminatory, racist or, as Mrs. May recalled in a letter, “the one that really puts my teeth on edge … ‘elitist.’” She produced a five-page typed response, rife with comments about Filipinos “pouring” into Hawaii and “Orientals and Indians” sneaking across “long stretches of unmanned border” with Canada. She compared medical science’s success in reducing infant mortality rates to veterinarians prolonging the lives “of useless cattle.” Birthrates had dropped in a few areas, she noted, and millions died of starvation every year, but population growth rates continued to climb. “Even wars no longer make much dent; during 11 years of conflict, both North and South Vietnam showed a net increase in population,” she wrote. Legal and illegal immigration led to overpopulation, she said, “the root cause of unemployment, inflation, urban sprawl, highway (and skyway) congestion, shortages of all sorts (not the least of which is energy), vanishing farmland, environmental deterioration and civil unrest.” | Mrs. May left almost everything to the Colcom Foundation. In 2005, $215 million from her family trust poured into the foundation’s coffers, along with another $30 million from her personal estate. As her affairs were wound up, another $176 million transferred from her estate in 2006. In all, since Mrs. May’s death, the anti-immigration groups have received $180 million. The market value of Colcom’s assets is $500 million, more than she bequeathed it in the first place.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/us/anti-immigration-cordelia-scaife-may.html
Fracking in U.S. And Canada Linked to Worldwide Atmospheric Methane Spike
https://www.newsweek.com/fracking-u-s-canada-worldwide-atmospheric-methane-spike-1454205
Ocean-surface garbage bins come to B.C.'s West Coast. They can collect about one and half tons of waste per year. They float and gently pump water into a catchment bin, filtering out pollutants like petroleum-based oils, plastics, and Styrofoam before pumping the water back into the ocean.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/ocean-surface-garbage-bins-come-to-b-c-s-west-coast-1.5246117
The remains of a giant penguin the size of a human have been discovered in New Zealand. The fossilised bones are of an animal thought to have been about 1.6m (5ft 3in) tall, weighing up to 80kg (176lb).
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-49340715?intlink_from_url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world&link_location=live-reporting-story
Russia said on Wednesday it had flown two nuclear-capable TU-160 bombers to a far eastern Russian region opposite Alaska as part of a training exercise that state media said showed Moscow’s ability to park nuclear arms on the United States’ doorstep.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-russia-bombers/russia-flies-nuclear-capable-bombers-to-region-facing-alaska-idUSKCN1V420D
(LOL.....) The Clippers are closing in on the hiring of Tyronn Lue as a top assistant to Coach Doc Rivers, league sources say
https://twitter.com/TheSteinLine/status/1161704194425802752
100,000 sign petition to rename 5th Avenue in front of Trump Tower after Barack Obama | What started out as a joke to rename Trump Tower's address to 725 President Barack H. Obama Avenue now has more than 100,000 signatures, but don't expect a name change any time soon. The petition, posted on the left-leaning moveon.org, addresses New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and the City Council, asking for the block of Fifth Avenue between 56th and 57th Streets to be renamed after the former president. It asks that all addresses would be changed accordingly, meaning Trump Tower's new address would be 725 President Barack H. Obama Ave. | She says the petition will be delivered to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and New York City Council for their consideration, but it fails to meet one of the key guidelines for co-naming streets in the city. Individual prospective honorees must be deceased for at least two years prior to consideration.
https://abc7ny.com/politics/petition-rename-portion-of-5th-ave-near-trump-tower-after-obama/5467121/
Dow drops 800 points as Wall Street suffers worst day of year on recession fears | The market selloff was a response to the yield curve inversion in government bonds, triggered by ongoing geopolitical turmoil and sluggish economic growth worldwide. | The market selloff was the result of an inverted yield curve in government bonds, when the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note falls below the 2-year rate — a phenomenon that has preceded every recession for the past 50 years.
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/wall-street-slides-inverted-yield-curve-rings-recession-alarm-bells-n1042211
Hispanic people “are what is wrong with this country,” a man who allegedly threatened to shoot up a Walmart in the Orlando area told a police officer just days after the El Paso shooting massacre left 22 people dead, according to newly surfaced documents on his arrest and online postings. Richard Dean Clayton, 26, allegedly threatened to pee in his arresting officer’s car until the officer told him he wasn’t Hispanic, according to newly revealed police reports. Clayton was “very uncooperative and belligerent” while in custody, Winter Park Police Officer Greg Gerardi noted in his report. | According to the reports, first surfaced by the journalist Nick Martin on Tuesday, Clayton’s affinity for Nazism and desire to create a white ethnostate had long been evident online.
The police report cites Clayton’s Facebook posts, revealing what’s become a common thread among certain mass shooters and those who threaten mass violence: ultranationalism, racism, and an obsession with guns and violence. For example, in one picture posted on a Facebook page allegedly controlled by Clayton, as described in a police report, a white male is seen wearing a stars and stripes bandana is holding an AR-15 style rifle and a bottle labeled Knob Creek. There’s a Trump banner on the wall. Another post, the report says, displays a swastika. Another asks readers to “imagine for a moment that we’ve established out [sic] enthostate, physically removed all the commies and degenerates, and white birthrates are back in the positives. Who would there be left to make fun of?”
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/fl-man-who-threatened-walmart-attack-had-racist-fb-posts-threatened-to-pee-in-cruiser
Federal officials are investigating two shootings that they say targeted facilities housing Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in San Antonio. Numerous shots were fired into two ICE facilities in private commercial buildings around 3 a.m. on Tuesday, Christopher Combs, special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s San Antonio division, said at a news conference later in the day. It was unknown how many individuals might be involved in the shootings, he said. As a result, the F.B.I. opened an investigation as an “assault on a federal official case,” he said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/us/ice-san-antonio-shooting.html
The House Homeland Security Committee has issued a subpoena to force the owner of fringe social network 8chan, which has been linked to mass shootings, to testify at a deposition on any efforts his platform has made to combat racist and violent content.
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1161750614801571840
The president of the NYPD's second largest police union shared a wildly racist video this weekend likening black people to monsters. He told me this morning that he shouldn't face consequences because it was an "honest mistake" and he does not see color.
https://twitter.com/jangelooff/status/1161685903942791168
The banana as we know it could become extinct: A deadly fungus is on the verge of wiping out the banana forever |For decades a deadly fungus has ravaged Asia's banana plantations. Now it's been found in Latin America, where almost all of the world's export bananas are grown | The banana – or at least the fruit as we know it – is facing an existential crisis. A deadly fungus that has decimated banana plantations in southeast Asia for 30 years has finally done what scientists have long been fearing, and made its way to Latin America – the heart of the global banana export market. On August 8 the Colombian Agricultural Institute announced that it had confirmed that the fungus – a strain of Fusarium oxysporum called Tropical Race 4 (TR4) – had been found in plantations in the north of the country. The country declared a national state of emergency, destroying crops and quarantining plantations in an attempt to avert the spread of the fungus. “What we’re having is an almost apocalyptic scenario where we’ll probably lose Cavendish as well,” says Sarah Gurr, Exeter University’s chair in food security. Initially discovered in Taiwan in 1989, TR4 is rife throughout southeast Asia and has since been found in Lebanon, Israel, India and Australia. But until now, Latin America had avoided the pathogen altogether. “Once it’s in a country it’s very hard to get rid of it,” says Dan Bebber, a senior lecturer in biosciences also at Exeter University. TR4 lives in the soil and can be transmitted on unclean tyres or boots, or spread from banana plants when they are replanted in different farms. Once present in soil, it can stay dormant for years before infecting banana plants through their roots, spreading to the water- and nutrient-conducting tissue and starving them of nourishment. Now it’s in Latin America – and is likely more widespread than is currently understood – it’s a matter of controlling the spread of the fungus, says Bebber. Making sure any plantation employees or visitors disinfect boots and tyres before entering or leaving the site helps, as will trying to maintain the health of the soil, but no countries have managed to successfully contain TR4. In 1997, TR4 was detected in Australia’s Northern Territory, but vigorous quarantine efforts couldn’t prevent the pathogen from spreading to north Queensland in 2015. “We would expect a pretty rapid spread [in Latin America]” says Bebber. In the extremely low-margin banana industry, relatively little funding is directed towards research into new banana varieties that might be resistant to the disease. Over the past decade, the price of bananas in the UK has stayed steady at £0.94 per kilogram. In the same time period, the price of apples went from £1.51 to £2.08 per kilogram – an increase of nearly 40 per cent. This relentless demand for extremely cheap fruit produced thousands of miles away has driven the industry to concentrate on only a single banana crop, as that allows for more standardised, and thus cheaper, farming and transportation. But growing only a single variety of banana has serious drawbacks. “Monocultures are divine feeding grounds for pathogens,” says Gurr. When a pathogen arrives that infects a certain variety, such as the Cavendish, there is no reprieve in sight. | While things in Latin America look dire, there is a little hope on the horizon. Work is already underway to use CRISPR gene-editing to create Cavendish bananas that are resistant to TR4. In 2018, the plant biologist James Dale demonstrated that it’s possible to modify the Cavendish genome using CRISPR, and in Norwich a firm called Tropic Biosciences is also experimenting with using CRISPR to engineer resistant bananas.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/banana-disease-tr4-latin-america
Statue of Liberty shown cuffed and arrested by immigration officials in new mural
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/14/statue-of-liberty-mural-las-vegas-ice-immigration-arrest
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