Man Arrested For Stealing Vehicle From Arkansas Ksst Radio
Man Arrested For Stealing Vehicle From Arkansas – Ksst Radio https://digitalarkansasnews.com/man-arrested-for-stealing-vehicle-from-arkansas-ksst-radio/
Only after a second encounter with officers was a 51-year-old man arrested for stealing a vehicle from Arkansas. A communications operator’s mistake in running the truck’s license plate incorrectly and slow response in response to queries about a checkbook in the man’s possession Friday resulted in sheriff’s officers not learning the vehicle had been stolen from Hot Springs, Arkansas until Sunday morning, according to arrest reports.
No HCSO jail photo available Sept. 26, 2022, for Roy Russell Montgomery
Hopkins County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Elijah Fite was dispatched at 10:28 a.m. Friday, Sept. 23, 2022, to mile marker 115 on I-30 west in Brashear, where an older gentleman was reported to be slumped over the wheel of a red Chevrolet pickup. Fite reported finding a red S10 truck and called the license plate number to dispatchers for a records check.
The man with the truck, appeared to the deputy to be disoriented, supported by his claim to be on his way to Texarkana from Malvern, Arkansas. The man, identified in arrest reports as Roy Russell Montgomery, claimed he’d run out of gas and didn’t have any way of getting more gas.
Montgomery reportedly agreed to let the deputy search his clothing and the truck. Fite reported finding a check book and miscellaneous checks issued to Little Rock, Arkansas business. The deputy contacted the bank the checks were issued for. Bank personnel then indicated they’d contact the account holder and have them get in touch with the HCSO to confirm whether or not Montgomery was in fact allowed to possess the checkbook. After providing the accountholder with what he considered adequate time to contact him, a citizen arrived and provided a gallon of fuel for the man to put into the truck, so the deputy released him after seizing the checkbook and checks that did not have his name on them, Fite alleged in arrest reports.
Sunday, Sept. 25, night shift deputies reported contacting the a man fitting Montgomery’s description on South Hillcrest Drive in the area of the truck stops, but said they hadn’t seen the red pickup in the area where they contacted him. Reviewing bodycam and dashcam footage from Friday, deputies discovered the dispatcher had incorrectly entered the vehicle license plate. Running the correct number, it was learned the truck had been reported stolen in Hot Springs, Arkansas on Friday, Sept. 23, at 3:34 a.m.
unauthorized use of a vehicle. He remained in the county jail Monday, Sept. 26, 2022, on the felony charge; bond was set at $5,000, according to jail reports.
The Hopkins County Sheriff’s Office is located at 298 Rosemont St., Sulphur Springs, TX 75482.
Non-emergency calls can be made to (903) 438-4040.
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China's Flood Of New Electric Cars Cost 20% More To Insure Than Fuel-Powered Cars
China's Flood Of New Electric Cars Cost 20% More To Insure Than Fuel-Powered Cars https://digitalarkansasnews.com/chinas-flood-of-new-electric-cars-cost-20-more-to-insure-than-fuel-powered-cars/
In China, new energy vehicles typically receive green license plates – which is often easier for residents to apply for versus the blue license plate of a traditional fuel-powered car.
Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images
BEIJING — While Chinese companies churn out new electric cars, local insurance firms think they’re more expensive to cover.
In general, the insurance premium for new energy cars — which includes electric — is about 20% higher than it would be for comparable traditional fuel-powered cars, said Wenwen Chen, director at S&P Global Ratings, who leads the firm’s research for China insurance.
Many factors go into determining pricing. But Chen said insurance companies find that the loss ratio — a measure of cost for insurers — tends to be higher for new energy vehicles than for internal combustion engine cars.
One of the main reasons she cited for a higher loss ratio is more accidents, especially more costly ones — since new energy vehicles often use parts that aren’t mass-produced yet.
In the U.S., insurance for electric cars also tends to be about 15% more expensive than that for combustion engine cars — primarily because electric cars in the U.S. tend to be luxury vehicles, according to Chase Gardner at Insurify, which compares car insurance rates in the U.S.
But repair costs are another reason for higher insurance prices, since “fewer places have the capability to service electric cars in the U.S.,” Gardner said. “Generally people who drive EVs end up paying lower maintenance costs over time. Again, the big question is, do you get into an accident?”
In the U.S., Insurify’s analysis of the U.S. market found there was no difference in accident rates among electric cars, hybrids and combustion engine cars.
But by official Chinese statistics, new energy vehicles in the country are more prone to fires than traditional fuel-powered ones. In the first quarter, 640 new energy vehicles reported fires, 32% higher than a year ago, according to the Ministry of Emergency Management’s Fire and Rescue Department.
That increase was far more than the 8.8% increase in fires for transportation vehicles overall, the ministry said. More recent figures weren’t available. The ministry didn’t respond to a CNBC request for comment.
For all of 2021, the ministry reported at least 3,000 new energy vehicle fires. It said the risk of fire was generally higher for such cars than for traditional vehicles, without disclosing specific figures.
The growing number of fires comes as the number of new energy vehicles has surged in China.
From January to August, 3.26 million new energy passenger cars were sold — more than double the same period last year and about 25% of all passenger cars sold in the country, according to the China Passenger Car Association. That share was about 15% last year.
In contrast, new energy vehicles remain a far smaller part of the U.S. auto market.
Hybrid, plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles accounted for 11% of light-duty vehicle sales in the U.S. in the fourth quarter of 2021, said the U.S. Energy Information Administration, citing data from Wards Intelligence. A more recent report wasn’t available. Light-duty vehicles also include pick-up trucks and vans.
A surge of new cars
China, home to the world’s largest auto market, has supported growth in new energy vehicles with policies that make it easier to get license plates, as well as subsidizing purchases.
For the first seven months of this year, tax exemptions for new energy vehicle purchases totaled 40.68 billion yuan ($5.9 billion) — and the equivalent of more than $1 billion in July alone, according to official figures. The tax administration said both amounts were more than twice what they were from a year ago.
Many Chinese companies have rushed to launch new energy vehicles, although it’s unclear what their specific accident risk is.
New energy vehicles tend to be simpler, especially in design, than internal combustion vehicles, said Cui Dongshu, secretary-general at the China Passenger Car Association.
Electric cars are based on a platform system, and certifying safety can be faster, he said, noting potential use of virtual testing scenarios, or the ability to test individual parts.
Read more about electric vehicles from CNBC Pro
In less than a year, Chinese telecommunications and smartphone giant Huawei partnered with automaker Seres to launch three new energy vehicles under the Aito brand. The cars are the first to use Huawei’s HarmonyOS operating system.
At a launch event in July, Huawei Consumer Business Group CEO Richard Yu boasted how quickly his team and Seres were able to conduct many vehicle safety tests in such a short period of time, to develop and launch two models in just over a year.
“In the hundred years of the auto industry, there’s no record of anyone doing it so fast before,” Yu said in Mandarin, translated by CNBC.
Two of the three cars have already reached consumers. Deliveries of the first model topped 10,000 units in just 87 days — an industry record for a new car brand, Huawei claimed in August.
Typically it takes three to four years for the manufacture and development of a car, said Helen Chai, consulting director at China Insights Consultancy. She said if the car is based on an existing one, a new model would only take two to three years.
She said the steps for developing and certifying a new energy vehicle and an internal combustion engine car are generally the same.
Other local players are quickly launching new models, although, notably, Tesla hasn’t.
For example, in the last 12 months, Nio began deliveries of its first electric sedan, launched a second sedan — and launched and delivered a new SUV.
Last year, Baidu and Geely announced the launch of their joint electric car project, Jidu. Next year, the first Jidu car is set to begin customer deliveries.
Huawei had no comment. Nio and Jidu did not respond to a CNBC request for comment.
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Maggie Hassan, Closet Democrat? – NH Journal https://digitalarkansasnews.com/maggie-hassan-closet-democrat-nh-journal/
Sen. Maggie Hassan wants voters to know she’s a “fighter.” Hassan wants them to know she “delivers for New Hampshire.” But the is one thing she apparently doesn’t want them to know.
She’s a Democrat.
An NHJournal review of Hassan’s TV ads over the past three months found no reference to “Democrat Maggie Hassan” even a single time, either in the text or graphics. And while President Joe Biden is warning about “MAGA Republicans” posing a threat to democracy, Hassan has been running campaign ads bragging about “working with Republicans” while “taking on” Democrats and even “pushing Joe Biden.”
In fact, while she has brought up Republicans in both positive and negative contexts, Hassan’s only references to her own party and president are how she has worked against them.
It’s a telling strategy, political pros say, running contrary to the narrative that Democrats are on the rise and the GOP’s brand is fading under the impacts of former President Donald Trump and the abortion issue. If Democrats are doing so well, they ask, why isn’t Maggie Hassan running as one?
Instead, she is bombarding airwaves with the message that she’s “independent” and “bipartisan” — words that appear far more in her messaging than “Democrat” or Biden. In fact, in a single ad, the Hassan campaign calls her “independent” or “bipartisan” six times in 30 seconds.
Republicans are mentioned five times in three different Hassan ads. One released in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade makes three references to “anti-choice Republicans.” However, the rest of her ads claim she has worked with GOP lawmakers on issues like the budget and prescription drug benefits.
At the same time, she disses Democrats. In one ad, she brags about “taking on members of my own party” without naming that party. In another, she notes that she was one of just two Democrats to oppose earmarks — a clear slight to the other members of her party.
The name “Joe Biden” is only mentioned once, as Hassan says she was “pushing” the president to open the strategic petroleum reserves.
“This is a classic move for most Senate candidates in a midterm to run away from the president of their party,” Andy Smith, a political science professor and director of the Survey Center at the University of New Hampshire, said. “It’s usually done with a nod, nod, wink, wink back to their party. Her hope is this diminishes the damage that Biden could do with his unpopularity in the state.”
Biden has a 41 percent approval rating in New Hampshire according to the UNH Survey Center’s Granite State Poll released last week. Hassan’s job approval has hovered around the same level, another sign her party affiliation may be a problem in November. And in the new Washington Post poll, Biden’s approval has fallen once again to 39 percent.
Based on her campaign messaging, Hassan appears to know it.
Asked if she would campaign with Biden in New Hampshire, Hassan has been careful to say the president is “welcome” in the state without making a commitment. And when Biden visited Portsmouth in April Hassan was notably absent from the platform, never appearing on stage with the president.
Polls show Hassan with a solid lead over Republican Don Bolduc, and she has millions more cash on hand than her underfunded opponent. Still, Smith said, Bolduc could be a tougher opponent than expected, particularly since neither Biden’s approval nor the economy are likely to improve between now and Election Day.
“This will be a competitive Senate race. It’s a good year for Republicans and the economy is not going to get much better,” Smith said.
“Bolduc has been caricatured a certain way in the national press. He’s not really a Trump guy. He ran and lost in a 2020 primary, and his opponent got the Trump endorsement,” Smith continued. “He’s good on the stump and, much like other Republicans, he’s walking that thin line not to antagonize Trump but not be too close to him for the general election, either.”
Bolduc’s other strength? He’s not a Democrat. A new ABC News poll of voters in competitive congressional districts — like the two in New Hampshire — found registered voters favor Republican candidates by 55 to 34 percent.
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FBI Changes Total Number Of Documents Seized From Trump's Estate
FBI Changes Total Number Of Documents Seized From Trump's Estate https://digitalarkansasnews.com/fbi-changes-total-number-of-documents-seized-from-trumps-estate/
The FBI on Sept. 26 changed the total number of documents it said it seized from former President Donald Trump’s estate.
Sixty-three additional documents or photographs without classification markings were taken from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort than previously listed by the FBI, according to an updated inventory list.
The revised inventory was submitted to the federal court in southern Florida on orders from U.S. District Judge Raymond Dearie, a Reagan appointee who was inserted into the case as a special master, or an independent third party to handle disputes and other matters.
Dearie ordered a government official “with sufficient knowledge of the matter” to submit a declaration or affidavit stating whether the detailed property inventory released on Sept. 2 “represents the full and accurate extent of the property seized from” Trump’s home in August when FBI agents executed a search warrant there.
An FBI supervisory special agent, whose name was redacted, fulfilled the order. The agent, based in Washington, said he or she leads a squad of special agents, intelligence analysts, and other personnel in carrying out counterintelligence and espionage investigations, and that their team executed the warrant.
The earlier inventory was performed by the agent and workers under their direction but, wanting to make sure the inventory was accurate, “I and FBI personnel working under my direction conducted an additional review and recount of the Seized materials in order to make this declaration,” the agent told Dearie.
That resulted in some “minor revisions,” the agent acknowledged.
An Epoch Times review of the earlier and current inventory list showed the differences included 63 non-classified documents or photographs being added to the total the FBI said it seized. Additionally, the new list contains two fewer magazines/newspapers/press articles and two fewer empty folders with “CLASSIFIED” banners.
Some of the boxes seized from Trump’s home were said to contain more documents now; others were said to contain fewer.
The update, if accurate, means the government seized over 11,200 non-classified materials from Mar-a-Lago.
The agent said he or she declared, under the penalty of perjury, that they were “not aware of” any documents or other materials seized from Trump’s home that are not listed in the updated inventory, with the exception of materials taken by the government’s filter team.
That squad was focused on identifying and segregating materials they thought could fall under attorney-client privilege.
The updated inventory excludes documents marked classified, based on a recent appeals court order that blocked Dearie and Trump’s lawyers from reviewing the said documents. The earlier inventory listed 103 documents with classification markings.
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Zachary Stieber covers U.S. and world news. He is based in Maryland.
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DOJ Asks Judge To Compel Peter Navarro To Return Trump White House Emails
DOJ Asks Judge To Compel Peter Navarro To Return Trump White House Emails https://digitalarkansasnews.com/doj-asks-judge-to-compel-peter-navarro-to-return-trump-white-house-emails/
The Department of Justice filed a motion Monday asking a judge to order former White House adviser Peter Navarro to return government email communications he allegedly handled through a private account while serving in the Trump administration.
Driving the news: “While serving as a presidential advisor, [Navarro] used at least one non-official email account, namely a ProtonMail account, to send and receive messages in the course of discharging his official duties,” the DOJ said in its filing to the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.
“There is no genuine dispute of fact that Dr. Navarro used at least one unofficial email account to conduct official business, that those records are the property of the United States, and that Dr. Navarro has refused to return the records to the United States,” the Justice Department said.
“Indeed, his counsel has expressly admitted as much. Because Dr. Navarro remains in possession of property that belongs to the United States, this Court should issue a writ of replevin requiring Dr. Navarro to return what he wrongfully continues to possess.”
The other side: Representatives for Navarro did not immediately respond to Axios’ request for comment, but his lawyers told The Hill when the DOJ filed the lawsuit last month that he “never refused to provide records to the government” and he had “instructed his lawyers to preserve all such records.”
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Why Did This DeSantis Flack Delete All His Anti-OAN Tweets?
Why Did This DeSantis Flack Delete All His Anti-OAN Tweets? https://digitalarkansasnews.com/why-did-this-desantis-flack-delete-all-his-anti-oan-tweets/
This reporting appears as one of several scoops featured in this week’s edition of Confider, the newsletter pulling back the curtain on the media. Subscribe here and send your questions, tips, and complaints here.
Confider reported last week that Robert Herring, the Trumpy boss of far-right channel One America News, showed some love for Ron DeSantis, cutting a fat $20,000 check to the Florida governor’s re-election PAC and declaring he wants to see the governor as a Trump veep.
But that admiration may not be entirely mutual from the governor’s camp.
DeSantis’ deputy spokesperson Jeremy Redfern—an outspoken Twitter presence—has a history of relentlessly trashing the MAGA cable outlet, especially after the Capitol insurrection.
“OAN. The most trusted leader in Fake News,” Redfern posted on Jan. 6, 2021, reacting to a Twitter user sharing an One America News graphic claiming Trump won in a landslide. “This is an OAN reporter. She is delusional,” he tweeted two weeks later in response to then-OAN host Christina Bobb’s claim that “Biden will never be president.” (Bobb eventually ditched OAN to work for Trump.)
Like what you’re reading? Subscribe to the Confider newsletter here and have The Daily Beast media team’s stellar reporting sent straight to your inbox every Monday night.
Elsewhere, in Oct. 2021, Redfern declared: “I’ve never watched OANN in my life.” How sad for Herring! (The OAN boss did not respond to a request for comment.)
The former Florida Department of Health spokesperson joined the DeSantis team this year after infamous troll Christina Pushaw left to join the governor’s campaign.
In typical DeSantis World fashion, Redfern wrote to Confider: “You’re right. I was wrong – the Daily Beast is actually the head of the Fake News Brigade. I won’t make that mistake again.”
The DeSantis flack then quietly proceeded to delete each of these tweets, plus one from 2020 that previously eluded Confider: “OAN. (Something that starts with an O) qAnon Network? Help me out here.”
Redfern did not respond when Confider followed up to ask why he’d deleted the posts.
Subscribe to the Confider newsletter here and have The Daily Beast media team’s stellar reporting sent straight to your inbox every Monday night.
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Trump Nominee Is Voted Out As Head Of Inter-American Development Bank
Trump Nominee Is Voted Out As Head Of Inter-American Development Bank https://digitalarkansasnews.com/trump-nominee-is-voted-out-as-head-of-inter-american-development-bank/
The Inter-American Development Bank, the hemisphere’s premier international lending institution, voted Monday to fire its president. Mauricio Claver-Carone was terminated following a unanimous recommendation by the 14-member executive board, the organization said.
The termination was first reported by Reuters.
In a statement, the IDB said Claver-Carone, whose term was set to expire in 2025, “will cease to hold the office of President of the Bank” effective Monday.
The statement did not refer to a well–publicized investigation into him. Two sources familiar with the probe said it was the results of that investigation that led to the vote. The sources were not authorized to speak about the inner workings of IDB nor the results of the investigator’s report, which has not been made public.
One source said investigators found evidence to conclude Claver-Carone had a relationship with a staff member who reported directly to him, and to whom he gave raises totaling more than 45 percent of base pay in less than one year. Claver-Carone’s leadership of the organization also resulted in employees fearing retaliation from him, the source said.
Vice President Reina Irene Mejía Chacón will lead the organization until a new president is elected, the statement said.
The Biden administration appeared to welcome Claver-Carone’s ouster.
A spokesperson for the Treasury Department said the United States “supports the dismissal of the IDB President.” The department said Claver-Carone’s “refusal to fully cooperate with the investigation, and his creation of a climate of fear of retaliation among staff and borrowing countries, has forfeited the confidence of the Bank’s staff and shareholders and necessitates a change in leadership.”
Claver-Carone had previously criticized the nature of investigation, saying in a statement to the Associated Press that the probe “failed to meet international standards of integrity that both the IDB and the region strive to exemplify.”
He had added: “In clear and direct contravention of IDB ethics rules, neither I nor any other IDB staff member has been given an opportunity to review the final investigative report, respond to its conclusions, or correct inaccuracies.”
In a statement after the vote, Claver-Carone also claimed without evidence that ousting him from his position would embolden China, the AP reported.
In June 2020 President Donald Trump announced the nomination of Claver-Carone, then senior figure at the National Security Council whom the Trump administration credited with boosting private sector investment in Latin America and the Caribbean. His election that September marked the first time the United States — by far the bank’s biggest donor — held the top position at the six-decade-old organization.
Claver-Carone’s defenders described him as a reformer leading a long-beleaguered organization rife with corruption. According to his biography on the IDB’s website, he had led “a comprehensive reform of the Bank’s business model,” and was “overseeing a broad effort to improve operational efficiency, productivity and transparency to facilitate better results, impact and monitoring effectiveness.”
Critics describe him differently. Investigators said there was evidence he conducted an affair with a staffer at the National Security Council, which prompted one official to warn that it posed a counterintelligence security risk, the AP reported. The Biden administration — which has sought to reaffirm America’s relationship with multinational organizations — had indicated it was taking the allegations against Claver-Carone seriously.
Michael Shifter, former president of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, said Claver-Carone’s lack of high-level diplomatic expertise made him an unusual choice for the IDB role. “There was a basic question of how qualified was he, given his background,” Shifter said in an interview. “There was always a cloud, or at least a big question.”
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Bidens Support For Iran Protesters Comes After Bitter Lessons Of 2009
Biden’s Support For Iran Protesters Comes After Bitter Lessons Of 2009 https://digitalarkansasnews.com/bidens-support-for-iran-protesters-comes-after-bitter-lessons-of-2009/
President Biden has quickly backed demonstrators in Iran. When the country faced similar unrest 13 years ago, U.S. officials feared such a strong approach would be counterproductive.
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Protests in Tehran last week. The Biden administration has pushed to get satellite systems into the hands of anti-government officials in Iran.Credit…Wana News Agency/Via Reuters
Sept. 26, 2022, 7:46 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON — The last time waves of protests swept Iran, after the killing of a young woman who was standing on the sidelines of an anti-government rally in 2009, Barack Obama hesitated to back the anti-government movement publicly for fear that Tehran would claim the C.I.A. was secretly sparking the unrest.
Thirteen years later, under remarkably similar circumstances, President Biden has taken a dramatically different approach. He publicly sided with the protesters in his speech to the United Nations last week. The United States moved quickly last week to impose sanctions on the country’s morality police. And the administration has permitted the activation of satellite links and other internet services in hopes of restoring communications among the protesters, despite attempts by Iranian officials to keep them in the dark.
Now the race is on to get the communications equipment into the hands of the protesters — no small task in a country where the government is determined to shut down any view the outside world may have into the depth of its crackdown after the death in police custody of the 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was accused of violating the law on head scarves.
On Friday, the State Department and the Treasury raced to lift sanctions that prevented much of that American-designed technology from flowing into the country — sanctions that were part of a broader effort to cut Iran off from the world until a new nuclear deal was negotiated and the country halted aid to terror groups.
The nuclear deal — which President Trump exited in 2018 — now appears all but dead anyway. And over the weekend, Mr. Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, who served as a top adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the time of the 2009 uprising, acknowledged that he and others had learned a bitter lesson about the cost of being overly cautious.
“Part of the reason that there was a different kind of approach in 2009 was the belief that somehow if America spoke out, it would undermine the protesters, not aid them,’’ he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“What we learned in the aftermath of that is that you can overthink these things, that the most important thing for the United States to do is to be firm and clear and principled in response to citizens of any country demanding their rights and dignity.”
But openly supporting the protesters is one thing. Defeating Iran’s well-honed ability to switch off the internet is another. Within hours of the administration’s suspension of the sanctions regulations, Elon Musk released a statement, through Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment, declaring that his Starlink satellite systems were “activated in Iran.”
That seemed like a major accomplishment: After Russia took out a European satellite system used by the Ukrainian government, part of a broader effort to blind the country just before the Feb. 24 invasion, it was Starlink that got Ukraine connected again. Senior American intelligence officials have marveled at the speed at which Ukrainians obtained and activated the Starlink boxes, which have small antennas — about 12 inches across — that connect to thousands of low-Earth-orbit satellites.
Within days, Ukrainian ministries were back online. Today, those boxes provide some of Ukraine’s most reliable internet service.
But in Ukraine, the government was eager to get the boxes in. They were airlifted to nearby countries, loaded into trains and trucks and shipped over the border.
Mr. Sadjadpour noted on Twitter that Mr. Musk and the United States government “have sent more than 15,000 Starlink kits to Ukraine, but Ukraine’s government is a close ally and eagerly cooperated. Iran’s regime wants to keep the internet off so it can repress people in the dark.”
Indeed, there is no such access to Iran — and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the mullahs and the Basij, the forces combining to suppress the protests, are determined to keep them out. And it is far from clear that the United States or Israel would put the kind of effort into smuggling in Starlink systems and less sophisticated “internet in a box” technologies that they have devoted to a series of covert programs to undermine the country’s nuclear enrichment facilities.
But that task may soon fall to American intelligence agencies. On Monday there were hints that the administration was looking for ways to get Starlink, in particular, into the hands of protesters.
Officials would not say how, but they acknowledged that the administration had been in contact with Starlink, and clearly discussions were underway about how to put the powerful satellite systems into the hands of the anti-government officials. Different options were being kicked around, with some exploring whether the systems could be driven in — along with many other smuggled goods — or dropped by drones. Satellite systems are illegal in Iran, though television dishes are ubiquitous.
Regardless of whether the Biden administration is successful in helping the protesters communicate and organize, U.S. officials seem driven by one unifying thought: To move faster than they did in 2009.
On June 20 of that year, a 26-year-old philosophy student, Neda Agha-Soltan, stepped out of a car to watch street unrest that followed an election that had clearly been rigged. She was shot through the chest by a sniper, and videos showed her dying on the street. As the images went viral, the demonstrations accelerated.
It was the first major human rights crisis of the new Obama administration, and the incident came just as Mr. Obama was in a secret exchange of letters with Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that ultimately led to the negotiations behind the 2015 nuclear deal.
Dennis Ross, a top adviser on Iran at the National Security Council at the time, said on Monday that while getting negotiations underway was a consideration, “we were hearing from people in the green movement” — the anti-government movement — “outside of Iran that we would play into the government’s narrative that the protests were instigated by the U.S.” if Mr. Obama forcefully backed the protesters.
“People on the inside of the movement, in Iran, told us the opposite,’’ he said. “We should have taken them more seriously. A lot of us regret that we moved too slowly.”
Mr. Biden’s advisers, many of whom were involved in those early discussions, seem to agree. They say that they have decided not to pull any punches or worry about the fate of reviving the nuclear deal.
Iran’s own leadership seems determined to crush the protests; the country’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, seemed visibly angry when the subject came up at a news conference at the United Nations General Assembly last week in New York.
In an interview with The New York Times over the weekend, Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, acknowledged that “one of our daughters, a child of my country, was in detention for a short time and she died after three days.” He offered no theories about how that happened and said the country had to put down any violent protests.
“We are not going to allow the instigations and also the propaganda from the outside and from the media to endanger the stability and the security and the safety of our people,” he added.
Alan Yuhas contributed reporting from New York.
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Firm To Hear Public Comment This Week About E.L. Police Practices
Firm To Hear Public Comment This Week About E.L. Police Practices https://digitalarkansasnews.com/firm-to-hear-public-comment-this-week-about-e-l-police-practices/
EAST LANSING − A company hired by the East Lansing police department will hold a “virtual listening session” Wednesday to gather public opinion about the agency’s performance.
CNA, formerly known as CNA Corporation, will hear comments during a Zoom session beginning at 7 p.m. Sept. 28, officials said. Anyone who wants to participate can register here or at https://tinyurl.com/mpmy2cdd or by calling Rachel Johnston at JohnstonR@cna.org at (703) 824-2380.
It’s one of the final steps in an independent study of the police department’s policies and practices, Capt. Chad Pride said. CNA talked to employees and needs community feedback before it presents its findings to police administrators, the city manager and the City Council later this fall, he said.
“I might have my own ideas about we should be doing, but this will allow us to get that outside look at what we’re doing and how we can bring better service to our community,” Pride said. “We need to know what our community expects from us.”
The “Fair and Impartial Policing” study has been underway since early this year and was initiated by the police department, he said. It will cost about $110,000, which will come out of the department’s budget, he said.
Virginia-based CNA is an independent, nonprofit research firm focused on the military, police departments and other federal, state and local agencies, according to its website The company has experience in “data-driven and collaborative assessments” on law enforcement policies and practices, it said.
CNA said it performed audits of the Little Rock, Arkansas and Charleston, South Carolina police departments and also reviewed policing practices in Philadelphia and Fayetteville, North Carolina.
“We invite all interested individuals, whether they live in East Lansing or visit East Lansing, to participate in this virtual listening session and express their thoughts and feedback about their experiences with our department,” police Chief Kim Johnson said in a news release
Contact Ken Palmer at kpalmer@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @KBPalm_lsj.
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Worker Protests At Airports Spread Nationwide Over Staffing And Pay
Worker Protests At Airports Spread Nationwide Over Staffing And Pay https://digitalarkansasnews.com/worker-protests-at-airports-spread-nationwide-over-staffing-and-pay/
Cashiers, baristas, bartenders, cooks and lounge attendants at San Francisco International Airport launched an open-ended strike Monday over staffing levels and wages, shutting down most of one of the nation’s busiest airport’s food concessions.
Flight attendants at United and Southwest airlines on Tuesday are expected to demonstrate at 21 airports around the United States, including Guam, as well as in London, to draw attention to workplace problems made worse by understaffing.
Across the country, flight attendants and airport workers are responding to a hailstorm of workplace issues related to pay and staffing levels. Airline travel during the pandemic recovery has been marred by hundreds of thousands of canceled and delayed flights, attacks on flight attendants and widespread desperation among airport workers and travelers.
While neither the strike by airport concession workers nor the protests by flight attendants are expected to disrupt air travel this week, they’re the latest signs of upheaval in the nation’s transportation sector, coming just weeks after rail workers narrowly averted a strike fueled in large part by nationwide labor shortages.
In the airline industry, the airlines and air traffic controllers keep pointing at each other, to fend off blame for disruptions as demand for air travel has rebounded. Airlines in particular are struggling to attract workers in a red-hot labor market where less-grueling jobs are easier to come by, and federal data shows that airlines are responsible for the high rate of cancellations. The air transportation industry is still down 54,000 workers compared to February 2020.
Lucinda To is among the 1,000 workers on strike at San Francisco International, where she has worked for 20 years. She prepares buffets, washes dishes and clears tables at restaurants and the United Club lounge for weary travelers. It is draining work that has only gotten harder this year, she said. With inflation at 40-year-highs, To said she has to work 60 hours a week at two food service jobs at the airport for $16.99 an hour to afford a two-bedroom unit in the Bay Area. Her mortgage is $2,800 a month.
“Right now, on my wage, I make so little that I couldn’t even buy one meal at this airport, where hamburgers are $22,” To said. “I need to work two jobs to support my family, and I’m always working double shifts.”
To, 61, regularly spends the night in her car at the airport, to save on gasoline and pass the time between shifts that stretch late into the night and start early the next day.
The strike at San Francisco International is expected to shut down “virtually every food and beverage outlet within the airport,” Unite Here Local 2 union leaders said, and the union is urging travelers to bring their own food. The food service workers are employed by more than 30 companies at 84 food and beverage outlets.
“The San Francisco International Airport advises travelers that a labor action by airport food workers is impacting staffing [at] restaurants and lounges,” said Doug Yankel, a spokesperson for the airport. “Some food and beverage outlets are closed, while others remain open with limited hours and offerings.”
Additional protests among food service workers are being planned, union officials said.
Flight attendants for United and Southwest will demonstrate on Tuesday amid drawn-out contract negotiations over wages, staffing levels and rescheduling of workers when flights are delayed or canceled. The protests will happen outside airports in Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Washington and other cities.
At United, flight attendants said their lives have been upended by cancellations and delays, which routinely force them to spend hours, unpaid, waiting on the phone with the airline’s scheduling services. Some attendants slept on cots in airports this summer because hotels were overbooked.
The workers said the delays are caused by understaffing within the scheduling division.
Scott Pejas, a United flight attendant in Chicago and president of his local chapter of the Association of Flight Attendants, said disruptions to schedules have become the norm for flight attendants.
“We are mentally and physically exhausted, because instead of getting rest, we’re on hold, on the phone, trying to find out where we’re going to spend the night or layover,” Pejas said. “Flight attendants will land somewhere at 10 p.m. and have to wait until 1 a.m. on the phone to find out where they’re going to sleep. We’re not getting rest.”
Joshua Freed, a spokesperson for United, said the company is eager to reach a contract agreement with the union to address flight attendants’ concerns.
“We’ve worked hard to reduce wait times for flight attendants to talk to a crew scheduler, including more hiring and adding digital options for some items,” he added.
Lynn Montgomery, the president of TWU Local 556, which represents 18,000 Southwest flight attendants nationwide, said flight disruptions have become so routine that “workers are constantly working outside their normal schedule.”
“I’ve never seen flight attendants so disheartened,” said Montgomery, who has also worked as a Southwest flight attendant for 30 years. “They feel like they’ve given and given, and the company isn’t giving back to them. It’s way more investor-focused these days than employee-friendly.”
A spokesperson for Southwest said the airline encouraged employees to express their opinions.
“Informational picketing is common during contract negotiations, and we do not anticipate any disruption in service resulting from the demonstration planned by off-duty flight attendants,” the spokesperson said.
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Arkansas Electrical Crews Deploy To Florida For Hurricane Ian
Arkansas Electrical Crews Deploy To Florida For Hurricane Ian https://digitalarkansasnews.com/arkansas-electrical-crews-deploy-to-florida-for-hurricane-ian/
Residents throughout the gulf coast are moving quickly to guard against Hurricane Ian. And when it hits, Arkansas and Oklahoma electric crews will be there to help.“We know that electricity is a vital part of everybody’s life and we want to make sure that any customers that are impacted by the storm are restored as quickly as possible,” said Andrea Dennis, Vice President of transmission and distribution operations with Oklahoma Gas and Electric.A team of 95 electrical workers in 60 vehicles deployed from OG&E Monday morning from Oklahoma. Around a dozen from Fort Smith. They all will assist Tampa Electric. “A deployment process is typically around 14 days,” said Dennis. “After 14 days we would bring this group of people home. If utilities are down there and they need more help, we will consider sending additional people.” Southwestern Electric Power Company crews will ship out Tuesday morning, bringing 261 crew members. 20 of them from their Fayetteville center. “The process after that is to just ride the storm through until the damage does what it is going to do, then they send us where they need us to go to work,” said Todd Nottingham, SWEPCO planning supervisor. It’s a team effort when weather emergencies strike. Arkansas and Oklahoma will be well represented.“In Arkansas and Oklahoma, we have our fair share of weather events and we’ve asked for help in the past and many of these utilities have supported us and it’s important that we return the favor,” said Dennis.
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. —
Residents throughout the gulf coast are moving quickly to guard against Hurricane Ian. And when it hits, Arkansas and Oklahoma electric crews will be there to help.
“We know that electricity is a vital part of everybody’s life and we want to make sure that any customers that are impacted by the storm are restored as quickly as possible,” said Andrea Dennis, Vice President of transmission and distribution operations with Oklahoma Gas and Electric.
A team of 95 electrical workers in 60 vehicles deployed from OG&E Monday morning from Oklahoma. Around a dozen from Fort Smith. They all will assist Tampa Electric.
“A deployment process is typically around 14 days,” said Dennis. “After 14 days we would bring this group of people home. If utilities are down there and they need more help, we will consider sending additional people.”
Southwestern Electric Power Company crews will ship out Tuesday morning, bringing 261 crew members. 20 of them from their Fayetteville center.
“The process after that is to just ride the storm through until the damage does what it is going to do, then they send us where they need us to go to work,” said Todd Nottingham, SWEPCO planning supervisor.
It’s a team effort when weather emergencies strike. Arkansas and Oklahoma will be well represented.
“In Arkansas and Oklahoma, we have our fair share of weather events and we’ve asked for help in the past and many of these utilities have supported us and it’s important that we return the favor,” said Dennis.
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Tropics | Hurricane Ian Now Has Winds Of 100 Mph https://digitalarkansasnews.com/tropics-hurricane-ian-now-has-winds-of-100-mph/
Hurricane Ian is forecasted to be a Category 4 storm in the Southeast Gulf of Mexico as early as late Tuesday.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Hurricane Ian: At this time, the largest impacts look to be in the Tampa area as the right front of the storm is expected to pass over the metro area Wednesday bringing a 5 to 10 ft+ surge and winds over 100 mph possibly. Ahead of the storm the First Coast and all of Florida for that matter will see prolonged rainfall creating a large flood threat and gusty winds with a chance of tornadoes.
For the First Coast: The forecast is coming into better focus. For the First Coast, we are confident the storm will interact with a front to the producing a steady onshore wind and rain starting Wednesday and ending Friday.
Wednesday the rain will begin to build in from the South.
As the coastal winds set up it will bring gusty conditions along coastal areas with the risk of beach erosion, rip currents, and high surf ahead of and during the storm. Plan on winds of 25-40 out of the northeast with isolated gusts to 65 later Thursday into early Friday.
The worst of the weather will be on 1am Thursday – 7am Friday with a combination of heavy rain, onshore wind, and high river levels. Thus, the threat of river flooding along the St. Johns and its tributaries is possible.
Flooding from this threat will be our highest risk vs. flooding at the beach from the surge only. This means for areas inland away from the coast as well in the city and poor drainage areas we could see water pool up and cause flooding from the heavy rainfall. Especially in those areas where we may see banding set up creating a “training effect” of rain showers.
The models are coming in to focus 72 hours out but are struggling the 5-day outlook as the storm starts to interact with the front moving in across the Southeast.
Download the First Coast News app and sign up for severe weather alerts
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17 Dead 24 Wounded In Russia School Shooting By Gunman With Converted Pistols And A Shirt With
17 Dead, 24 Wounded In Russia School Shooting By Gunman With Converted Pistols And A Shirt With https://digitalarkansasnews.com/17-dead-24-wounded-in-russia-school-shooting-by-gunman-with-converted-pistols-and-a-shirt-with/
At least 17 killed in Russian school shooting
At least 17 killed in Russian school shooting 00:18
A gunman killed at least 17 people and wounded 24 more after opening fire inside a school in the Russian city of Izhevsk, about 600 miles east of Moscow, on Monday, authorities said. The gunman took his own life.
The government of Udmurtia said 17 people, including 11 children, were killed in the shooting. According to Russia’s Investigative Committee, 24 other people, including 22 children, were wounded in the attack.
Russia’s Investigative Committee identified the gunman as 34-year-old Artyom Kazantsev, a graduate of the same school, and said he was wearing a black t-shirt bearing “Nazi symbols.” No details about his motives have been released.
Kazantsev entered School No. 88, which teaches children from elementary age up to high school, armed with two “traumatic” pistols — non-lethal firearms often used by law enforcement — which had been converted to fire live ammunition. The weapons were obtained illegally, according to the regional office of the National Guard.
Law enforcement officers inspect a classroom at School No. 88, in the city of Izhevsk, Russia, about 600 miles east of Moscow, on September 26, 2022, after a gunman opened fire in the school, in an image provided by Russia’s national Investigative Committee. Russian national Investigative Committee
The governor of Udmurtia, Alexander Brechalov, said the gunman, who he said was registered as a patient at a psychiatric facility, killed himself after the attack.
“Currently the investigators are conducting a search of his residence and studying the personality of the attacker as well as his views and surrounding milieu,” Russia’s Investigative Committee said in a statement earlier Monday. “Checks are being made into his adherence to neo-fascist views and Nazi ideology.”
A short video released by police showed the gunman’s body, dressed in black, on the bloodstained floor of a classroom.
Law enforcement officers inspect an entrance to School No. 88, in the city of Izhevsk, Russia, about 600 miles east of Moscow, on September 26, 2022, after a gunman opened fire in the school, in an image provided by Russia’s national Investigative Committee. Russian national Investigative Committee
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said President Vladimir Putin “deeply mourns” the deaths and had ordered “doctors, psychologists, neurosurgeons and other specialists” to be sent to the scene.
The regional governor, Aleksander Brechalov, declared three days of mourning.
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Meredith Tax Feminist Author And Activist Dead At Age 80
Meredith Tax, Feminist Author And Activist, Dead At Age 80 https://digitalarkansasnews.com/meredith-tax-feminist-author-and-activist-dead-at-age-80/
NEW YORK (AP) — Meredith Tax, a prominent activist and writer of second-wave feminism who challenged herself, her peers and the world at large to rethink long-held ideas about gender, race and class, has died. She was 80.
Tax died Sunday, according to her friend Frances Kissling, who did not immediately provide additional details. Her death had been announced on Facebook by the activist Ariane Brunet.
“A true activist who could perceive the importance of a women’s struggle anywhere in the world and would make damn sure we would know about it and join the cause,” Brunet wrote. “We are blessed that such a companion lived and refused to give up on life till death said ‘Enough you did your best.’”
The life of Tax, born into an upwardly mobile Jewish family in Milwaukee, was often a story of self-discovery. She was a graduate of Brandeis University and a fellowship student in London who had dreams of a gilded career in the arts, “a glass cage,” before the 1960s politicized her, then radicalized her into “studying the world instead of literature.” Contentious even within communities of activists, she confronted Planned Parenthood and other abortion rights supporters over the issue of sterilization abuse and was thrown out of the Leninist October League after criticizing their treatment of women. She faced her own reckoning in the 1970s when she worked in a Zenith TV factory in Chicago and was the only white person on the assembly line.
“The first thing I had to learn how to do was hard physical labor; the second was to shut up,” she wrote in a mini-autobiography on her blog. “I had always been such a bright girl, in love with my own ideas. Now I had to learn how to listen very deeply, listen the way people do when they are in the minority, taking in not only what people said but what they didn’t say, the changes in their voices, their body language.”
Earlier in 2022, Tax lamented what she regarded as the lack of a feminist equivalent to Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street. Writing in The Nation, she alleged that “young feminists concentrate on social media, blogs, and campaigns — an emphasis that entails paying a lot of attention to personalities, branding, and celebrity.”
“While #Me Too is unquestionably a powerful movement against job-related sexual harassment and assault, it is not a membership organization, so there is no way for people who support it to ensure its consistency or change its public face,” she wrote.
Rachel Carmona, executive director of Women’s March, disputed Tax’s perspective. In a letter to The Nation, she cited the massive 2017 gatherings held soon after President Donald Trump’s inauguration as “an example of online activism transforming itself into activism in the streets, on the ground, where and when it was needed most.”
Tax’s books included the nonfiction “The Rising of the Women” and the novels “Rivington Street” and its sequel “Union Square.” She wrote for The Nation, The Guardian and The Village Voice among other publications, and has been praised for her 1970 pamphlet “Woman and Her Mind,” a founding text of second-wave feminism, in which she explored how society conditioned the behavior of men and women.
“Men are taught to be active, to go and seek what they need; not to look pretty and wait for it to come into their vicinity. Men don’t observe each passing cloud over human relations as if their whole future depended on it,” she wrote. “There’s a reason for that. It doesn’t. Women are hyper-aware of their surroundings. They have to be. Walk down a street without being tuned in and you’re in real danger; our society is one in which men rape, mug and murder women whom they don’t know every day.”
Tax helped found the PEN American Center Women’s Committee, the Committee for Abortion Rights and Against Sterilization Abuse (CARASA) and the Women’s World Organization for Rights, Literature, and Democracy (Women’s WORLD). More recently, she chaired the board of The Center for Secular Space, founded in 2011 “to strengthen secular voices, oppose fundamentalism, and promote universality in human rights.”
Tax was married twice, most recently to the author and philosopher Marshall Berman, and had a child with each husband.
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Cant Stand Right-Wing Rhetoric? Here Are Five Books For Left-Leaning Readers
Can’t Stand Right-Wing Rhetoric? Here Are Five Books For Left-Leaning Readers https://digitalarkansasnews.com/cant-stand-right-wing-rhetoric-here-are-five-books-for-left-leaning-readers/
The current tumultuous state of politics in America has understandably turned off — quite literally — a large number of citizens from tuning in to political-based television shows and documentaries. With many Americans forgoing the choice to form opinions based on televised coverage, RadarOnline has compiled a list of five books for the left-leaning crowd that discusses recent events, scandals and political history without the pomp and circumstance of on-air coverage.
Scroll to see and shop our picks on the best books for leftwing enthusiasts.
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The Big Lie: Election Chaos, Political Opportunism, and the State of American Politics After 2020 by Jonathan Lemire retails for $19.49 (hardcover) at amazon.com.
The Big Lie: Election Chaos, Political Opportunism, and the State of American Politics by White House Bureau Chief of Politico and MSNBC Host, Jonathan Lemire, discusses the state of politics in the country post-2020. Diving into the ‘big lie’ statements first made by Donald Trump in 2016, Lemire dissects not only the impact of pushing an unfounded allegation of widespread election fraud to the masses, but also the cause for and shift of politics since in current day America. The Big Lie uses thoughtful interviews to construct unique perspectives to the damage cause by opportunistic politicians.
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What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism by Dan Rather retails for $13.54 (hardcover) at amazon.com.
From acclaimed journalist Dan Rather comes What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism. Through a series of poignant essays, Rather walks through what it means to be an American and the present dangers that threaten democracy. What Unites Us brings the bigger picture in view as Rather reflects on issues such as public education, the power of voting and the free press, as well as the sacrifices that generations of Americans have made to secure our nation’s democratic values. What Unites Us is available on Kindle, Audiobook, paperback and hardcover formats.
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Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America by Sarah Kendzior retails for $24.99 at amazon.com.
Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America by Sarah Kendzior looks at the calculated rise to power by Donald Trump since the 1980s. Pulling back the layers of American history that allowed the popularity of Donald Trump to happen, Hiding in Plain Sight discusses the ‘inherent fragility of American democracy’ and the overall threat that losses of freedom pose to the future of the country. Using the country’s own historical events, as well as recent incidents of taking queues from corrupt foreign powers, the eradication of democracy bit by bit is outlined in Hiding in Plain Sight.
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Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism by Anne Applebaum retails for $11.89 (paperback) at amazon.com.
Released after the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism by Anne Applebaum looks at the rise of authoritarianism not only in the United States but across the world. As democracy is threatened by power-hungry leaders, Applebaum analyzes antidemocratic trends while diving deep into the appeal of nationalism and autocracy. Twilight of Democracy is available on Kindle, Audiobook and paperback formats.
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How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them by Jason Stanley retails for $15.30 at amazon.com.
As the son of European World War II refugees and a scholar and philanthropist, Jason Stanley powerfully delivers first-hand accounts of the impact of fascism in How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. Plainly laying out divisive rhetoric, political stunts and other tactics used by leaders, Stanley makes an argument that a nation does not have to be fascist to fall victim to its ideals. Through reflections on culture, race issues such as critical race theory as well as historical events from around the world, Stanley answers a question many Americans have pondered — how did we get here?
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Arkansas High School Football Statewide Rankings For Week 5
Arkansas High School Football Statewide Rankings For Week 5 https://digitalarkansasnews.com/arkansas-high-school-football-statewide-rankings-for-week-5/
The following are the overall top 10 high school football teams in Arkansas and the top five in Classes 7A, 6A, 5A, 4A, 3A, 2A, and the top three in the two 8-man divisions as voted by a panel of sports media from around the state for Week 5 of the 2022 season. The ranking is given with first-place votes received, records, total points, and last week’s ranking:
OVERALL
Record
Points
Last Week
1. Bryant (22)
3-0
200
1
2. Conway
4-0
177
2
3. Bentonville
3-1
132
3
4. Cabot
3-1
131
4
5. Pulaski Academy
4-0
128
5
6. Fayetteville
3-1
101
6
7. Greenwood
4-1
74
7
8. Lake Hamilton
5-0
59
8
9. LR Catholic
4-0
31
10
10. North Little Rock
2-2
14
—
Others receiving votes: Bentonville West 9, Springdale Har-Ber 8, Little Rock Parkview 7, Joe T Robinson 7, Benton 7, Harding Academy 5, Arkadelphia 4, Rogers 3, Little Rock Christian 1, Marion 1, West Memphis 1.
TOP FOOTBALL PERFORMERS WEEK 4:Top performers in Fort Smith-area football for Week 4 in Arkansas and Oklahoma
CLASS 7A
Record
Points
Last Week
1. Bryant (20)
3-0
100
1
2. Conway
4-0
79
2
3. Bentonville
3-1
52
3
4. Cabot
3-1
42
4
5. Fayetteville
3-1
23
5
Others receiving votes: North Little Rock 4.
LAVACA TOPS CEDARVILLE:‘The next six weeks are going to be a war’: Fischer Martin, Lavaca football facing tests
CLASS 6A
Record
Points
Last Week
1. Pulaski Academy (18)
4-0
96
1
2. Greenwood (1)
3-1
73
2
3. Lake Hamilton
5-0
62
3
4. LR Catholic
4-0
35
5
5. LR Christian
3-2
10
5
(tie) Benton (1)
2-2
10
—
(tie) West Memphis
4-0
10
—
Others receiving votes: El Dorado 2, Marion 2
BULLDOGS RALLY LATE TO TOP GRIZZLIES:How Greenwood high school football erased 2-touchdown deficit in last 1:19, beat Northside
CLASS 5A
Record
Points
Last Week
1. Joe T. Robinson (10)
3-1
83
1
2. LR Parkview (9)
2-2
82
2
3. Shiloh Christian (1)
3-1
40
3
4. Magnolia
4-0
31
5t
5. LR Mills
5-0
26
4
Others receiving votes: Camden Fairview 21, Wynne 12, Harrison 4, Batesville 1.
TRUSTY LEADS AIREDALES:Alma football ends losing streak to Van Buren behind quarterback Joe Trusty
CLASS 4A
Record
Points
Last Week
1. Arkadelphia (18)
4-0
98
1
2. Ashdown (1)
5-0
61
2
3. Harding Academy (1)
4-0
59
3
4. Warren
3-1
38
4
5. Malvern
3-1
20
5
Others receiving votes: Star City 10, Stuttgart 9, Clinton 2, Gentry 2, Lamar 1.
TOP PERFORMERS OF THE WEEK:Fort Smith area top performers in high school sports for the week of Sept. 19
CLASS 3A
Record
Points
Last Week
1. Prescott (19)
4-0
98
1
2. Booneville (1)
3-1
65
3
3. Rison
4-0
51
2
4. Melbourne
4-0
44
4
5. Charleston
3-1
31
—
Others receiving votes: Gurdon 6, Hoxie 2, Camden Harmony Grove 1, Newport 1, Lavaca 1.
BOONEVILLE’s PEYTON TAKES THE LEAD:Despite loss, Peyton Tatum embraces his chance to lead Booneville offense
CLASS 2A
Record
Points
Last Week
1. Hazen (22)
3-0
110
1
2. Marked Tree
3-0
67
4
3. Carlisle
3-0
57
5
4. Mount Ida
2-1
38
2
5. Bigelow
3-1
33
3
Others receiving votes: Des Arc 16, Clarendon 10, East Poinsett County 10, Poyen 8, Dierks 2, Hector 2, Little Rock Episcopal 2.
AUTHENTIC GEORGE LOSS:Remembering ‘authentic’ George Loss
8-MAN (4A-3A)
Record
Points
Last Week
1. Mountain View (16)
4-0
52
1
2. Fountain Lake (2)
3-1
40
2
3. Genoa Central (1)
3-1
19
3
Others receiving votes: Subiaco Academy (1) 7, Marshall 2.
WEEK TOP PERFORMERS:Top performers for Week 3 from Fort Smith-area in Arkansas and Oklahoma football
8-MAN (2A-1A)
Record
Points
Last Week
1. Mountain Pine (19)
4-0
59
1
2. Spring Hill
5-0
34
2
3. Woodlawn
3-0
15
—
Others receiving votes: Strong-Huttig (1) 5, Brinkley 4, Rector 3.
WEEK 2 TOP PERFORMERS:The top football performers for Week 2 in Arkansas and Oklahoma
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Putin Grants Russian Citizenship To U.S. Whistleblower Snowden
Putin Grants Russian Citizenship To U.S. Whistleblower Snowden https://digitalarkansasnews.com/putin-grants-russian-citizenship-to-u-s-whistleblower-snowden/
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Sept 26 (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin on Monday granted Russian citizenship to former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, nine years after he exposed the scale of secret surveillance operations by the National Security Agency (NSA).
Snowden, 39, fled the United States and was given asylum in Russia after leaking secret files in 2013 that revealed vast domestic and international surveillance operations carried out by the NSA, where he worked.
U.S. authorities have for years wanted him returned to the United States to face a criminal trial on espionage charges.
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Snowden’s name appeared without Kremlin comment in a Putin decree conferring citizenship on 72 foreign-born individuals.
Snowden later issued a message, essentially an updated version of a November 2020 tweet, saying he wanted his family to remain together and asking for privacy.
“After years of separation from our parents, my wife and I have no desire to be separated from our SONS,” the tweet read.
“After two years of waiting and nearly ten years of exile, a little stability will make a difference for my family. I pray for privacy for them – and for us all.”
The new tweet made no reference to the Kremlin leader’s decree, but it was attached to a 2020 Twitter thread in which Snowden said he and his family were applying for dual U.S.-Russian citizenship.
Former contractor of U.S. National Security Agency Edward Snowden is seen on a screen during his interview presented via video link at the New Knowledge educational online forum in Moscow, Russia September 2, 2021. REUTERS/Olesya Astakhova
The news prompted some Russians to jokingly ask whether Snowden would be called up for military service, five days after Putin announced Russia’s first public mobilization since World War Two to shore up its faltering invasion of Ukraine.
“Will Snowden be drafted?” Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of the state media outlet RT and a vocal Putin supporter, wrote with dark humour on her Telegram channel.
Snowden’s lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, told RIA news agency that his client could not be called up because he had not previously served in the Russian army.
He said that Snowden’s wife Lindsay Mills, who gave birth to a son in 2020, would also apply for citizenship.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said he was unaware of any change to Snowden’s status as a U.S. citizen.
“I am familiar with the fact that he has in some ways denounced his American citizenship. I don’t know that he’s renounced it,” Price said in a press briefing.
Russia granted Snowden permanent residency rights in 2020, paving the way for him to obtain Russian citizenship.
That year a U.S. appeals court found the program Snowden had exposed was unlawful and that the U.S. intelligence leaders who publicly defended it were not telling the truth.
Putin, a former Russian spy chief, said in 2017 that Snowden, who keeps a low profile while living in Russia, was wrong to leak U.S. secrets but was not a traitor.
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Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Mark Trevelyan, Grant McCool and Rosalba O’Brien
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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The JOI Jazz Orchestra Celebrates Local Singers With JOI Jazz Orchestra And Friends Concert
The JOI Jazz Orchestra Celebrates Local Singers With JOI Jazz Orchestra And Friends Concert https://digitalarkansasnews.com/the-joi-jazz-orchestra-celebrates-local-singers-with-joi-jazz-orchestra-and-friends-concert/
WHERE: The Performing Arts Center on the campus of Pinecrest Academy Sloan Canyon
ADDRESS: 675 E Dale Ave, Henderson, NV 89044
WHEN: Sunday October 9th, 7pm
TICKETS: www.joi-lv.org
PRICES: $45 Adults; $35 Seniors & Military with ID; $20 Students with ID
Jazz Outreach Initiative is thrilled to bring our fans another outstanding and memorable performance of the JOI Jazz Orchestra, a full big band comprised of some of the best first-call jazz musicians around!
The JOI Jazz Orchestra has sold out every performance and this one will as well with an incredible lineup of exceptional vocalists as we celebrate them with arrangements by local composers, standards, and more! We’re even bringing in a string section!
The evening will feature performances from the following:Clint HolmesGRAMMY® nominated legendary singer, songwriter, entertainer, Clint Holmes has advocated for and supported the arts in Las Vegas for decades. He’s been a strong supporter of Jazz Outreach Initiative’s many youth-based programs for over five years. The son of an African-American jazz musician and a classically trained British opera singer, Clint was raised with the best of two musical worlds. His 40-plus year career has taken him from the top of the charts to concert calls, TV screens, sold-out showrooms, and cemented his legacy as a veritable Las Vegas institution. Clint has been a member of JOI’s Board of Directors and currently serves on JOI’s Advisory Board as well as the JOI Jazz Orchestra Leadership Committee.
Jonathan Karrant
Jazz Corner states, “Jonathan Karrant is one hip jazz vocalist, born to sing and swing with style.” Jonathan was born in Fort Smith, Arkansas and raised in a home filled with music and theatrics. His mother is an artist and for several years owned a ballet school and his father is a businessman and hobby farmer. Growing up, Jonathan studied music and performed in several local variety shows, plays, commercials and was guest vocalist with a big band. He studied performance in New York City at the William Esper Performing Arts Academy, and vocal technique with Seth Riggs in Los Angeles. He also studied privately under the direction of Marilyn Maye and Kurt Elling. His album, “On and On” hit #4 on the Jazz charts and his album, “Live” recorded at The Smith Center reached #2 on the iTunes jazz charts. Jonathan has received several honors including the New York City Jazz Cabaret Honors, “Best Singer” for the Bravo California Awards and was named one of the top 12 rising jazz vocalists by Downbeat. Jonathan has supported Jazz Outreach Initiative’s Las Vegas Youth Jazz Orchestra for more than a year before joining JOI’s Advisory Board. The Las Vegas Youth Jazz Orchestra was recently again invited to share his stage at his September 11 “Sunday Funday” concert at Notoriety.
Naomi Mauro
Naomi Mauro is a veteran performer and musician who began her music career in Las Vegas in 1997. An accomplished songwriter and pianist and a proud UNLV music graduate, she has been featured in corporate events and headliner shows at virtually every Las Vegas hotel on The Strip. She has had the pleasure of performing with such artists as Deniece Williams, Michael Buble, John Michael Montgomery, The Manhattans, Crystal Gayle, Clint Holmes, and Céline Dion, and she continues to be featured regularly at the Smith Center for the Performing Arts’ Cabernet Jazz venue and other local venues in Las Vegas.
Toscha Comeaux
A 2018 finalist in the prestigious Sarah Vaughan Competition, Toscha Comeaux began like many successful singers do, in her Hartford Connecticut church choir. She is a graduate of Daytona Beach’s Bethume-Cookman University and classically trained in opera, performing in such productions as “Porgy and Bess”, and “Rigoletto.” While he enjoys accolades for her performances with The Orlando Philharmonic and other classical settings, she shows her love and well-rounded talents in her jazz and R&B sets. She has performed with Lou Rawls, Ray Charles, Diana Ross, Max Roach, and Nat Adderley. A resident of Las Vegas, Toshca can be seen at many local venues, always with an enthusiastic packed house. You’ll also find Ms. Comeaux on all major music streaming services, YouTube, social media, and more.
The JOI Jazz Orchestra members are a veritable who’s who of local musicians who have performed with Sinatra (senior and junior), Elvis, Tony Bennett, Lady Gaga, Celine Dion, and countless others. The base of the big band is formed from a group of dedicated volunteer mentors to our Las Vegas Youth Jazz Orchestra, giving their time and talents to help our students achieve their highest potential. The band was formed in fall 2020. Las Vegas Review Journal columnist, John Katsilometes attended our Jazz Routes presentation at a JJO concert where he helped present a trumpet and a free year of music lessons to one of our local disadvantaged youth. Looking over at the band he said, “I don’t think there’s anything else happening in Vegas tonight… all the best cats are here!”
The JJO members are:Reeds: Alto Sax 1 – Phil Wigfall; Alto Sax 2 – Eddie Rich; Tenor Sax 1 – Wayne DeSilva; Tenor Sax 2 – Rob Mader; Bari Sax – John SummersTrumpets: Trumpet 1 – Daniel Falcone, Trumpet 2 – Gary Cordell, Trumpet 3 – Wes Marshall, Trumpet 4 – Jorge MachainTrombones: Trombone 1 – Curt Miller; Trombone 2 – Nathan Tanouye, Trombone 3 – Dave Phillipus, Trombone 4 – Sonny HernandezViolin: – Lauren CordellRhythm Section: Guitar – Jimmy Tripi, Piano – Dave Loeb, Bass – David Ostrem, Drums – Yolandus (YL) Douglas Added Strings for Oct 9th Concert: Violin – Geri Thompson; Viola – Omar Shelley, Cello – Jeremy RussoArtistic Director: Kenny Rampton (JOI Founder & Member of Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton MarsalisBand Manager: Gary Cordell (JOI Co-founder & V.P. of Education & Programming)
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TikTok Seen Moving Toward U.S. Security Deal But Hurdles Remain
TikTok Seen Moving Toward U.S. Security Deal, But Hurdles Remain https://digitalarkansasnews.com/tiktok-seen-moving-toward-u-s-security-deal-but-hurdles-remain/
The Biden administration and TikTok have drafted a preliminary agreement to resolve national security concerns posed by the Chinese-owned video app but face hurdles over the terms, as the platform negotiates to keep operating in the United States without major changes to its ownership structure, four people with knowledge of the discussions said.
The two sides have hammered out the foundations of a deal in which TikTok would make changes to its data security and governance without requiring its owner, the Chinese internet giant ByteDance, to sell it, said three of the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the negotiations are confidential.
The two sides are still wrangling over the potential agreement. The Justice Department is leading the negotiations with TikTok, and its No. 2 official, Lisa Monaco, has concerns that the terms are not tough enough on China, two people with knowledge of the matter said. The Treasury Department, which plays a key role in approving deals involving national security risks, is also skeptical that the potential agreement with TikTok can sufficiently resolve national security issues, two people with knowledge of the matter said. That could force changes to the terms and drag out a final resolution for months.
TikTok, one of the world’s most popular social media apps, has been under a legal cloud in the United States for more than two years because of its Chinese ties. Lawmakers and regulators have repeatedly raised concerns about TikTok’s ability to protect the data of American users from Chinese authorities. President Donald J. Trump tried to force ByteDance to sell TikTok to an American company in 2020 and threatened to block the app.
If completed, an agreement with the Biden administration is likely to be highly scrutinized, as TikTok has become a symbol of the Cold War-like atmosphere in relations between Beijing and Washington. As part of the tit-for-tat, the nations are battling over primacy in technology and digital data. Skepticism toward China is a built-in feature of U.S. politics, and the talks are taking place just weeks before November’s midterm elections.
Completing an agreement may also be difficult at a tricky political moment for the Biden administration, which has stepped up its cadence of criticism and executive actions addressing China. The policy toward Beijing, while expressed in more diplomatic language, is not substantially different from the posture of the Trump White House, reflecting a suspicion of China that now spans the political spectrum. Nevertheless, Republicans have criticized the administration for being too soft on China.
“Anything short of a complete separation” of TikTok from ByteDance “will likely leave significant national security issues regarding operations, data and algorithms unresolved,” Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee, said in a statement.
TikTok has been negotiating with representatives for the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, a group of federal agencies that reviews investments by foreign entities in American companies, to resolve concerns that the app puts national security at risk. The group would need to sign off on an agreement, and potentially President Biden as well.
A spokesman for the Treasury Department, which leads the group, said that as a general matter, the committee “is committed to taking all necessary actions within its authority to safeguard U.S. national security.”
TikTok declined to comment on the talks but said it was “confident” that it was “on a path to fully satisfy all reasonable U.S. national security concerns.”
Image
Vanessa Pappas, TikTok’s chief operating officer, told senators this month that the app would “satisfy all national security concerns.”Credit…Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
At a Senate hearing about social media and national security this month, Vanessa Pappas, TikTok’s chief operating officer, declined to commit to cutting employees in China off from the app’s American data but said any agreement with the government would “satisfy all national security concerns.”
A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment, as did a spokeswoman for the White House. ByteDance did not respond to a request for comment.
What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.
Tensions over TikTok have mounted for years. After Mr. Trump ordered ByteDance to sell the app or risk being blocked from Apple’s and Google’s app stores in 2020, the Chinese company appeared to reach an agreement to sell part of TikTok to Oracle, the American cloud computing company. But the deal never closed, and a federal court ruled against Mr. Trump’s attempt to block the app.
That left TikTok’s fate in the hands of Mr. Biden. Last year, he issued an order rolling back Mr. Trump’s demand that TikTok be blocked. His administration set out to develop a policy toward the app and others owned by foreign entities.
The Biden administration’s plans for TikTok were thrust back into the spotlight in June when BuzzFeed News reported that the company’s employees in China had access to TikTok’s U.S. data as recently as this year.
Negotiations between CFIUS and TikTok have dragged on as officials wrapped their arms around complex technical questions about the app. They edged closer to a detailed agreement in recent months, two people with knowledge of the discussions said.
Under the draft terms, TikTok would make changes to three main areas, the people with knowledge of the discussions said.
First, TikTok would store its American data solely on servers in the United States, probably run by Oracle, instead of on its own servers in Singapore and Virginia, two of the people said. Second, Oracle is expected to monitor TikTok’s powerful algorithms that determine the content that the app recommends, in response to concerns that the Chinese government could use its feed as a way to influence the American public, they said. Lastly, TikTok would create a board of security experts, reporting to the government, to oversee its U.S. operations, three people with knowledge said.
Reuters and BuzzFeed earlier reported TikTok’s plan to store its data with Oracle; Axios earlier reported that Oracle had started monitoring TikTok’s algorithms.
TikTok is represented in the negotiations by the law firms Covington & Burling and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, people familiar with the matter said. Among the government officials negotiating a deal are Adam Hickey, a Justice Department national security lawyer, two people with knowledge of the talks said.
Oracle is not directly involved in the negotiations but has been consulted by the government, another person said. Oracle declined to comment.
Image
Lisa Monaco, the Justice Department official who is reviewing the draft agreement, has a reputation for taking a hard line on China.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times
The terms of the draft deal are being reviewed by Ms. Monaco, among others, four people with knowledge of the matter said. A former Obama White House national security official, Ms. Monaco has a reputation for taking a hard line on Beijing, which has, in part, slowed a resolution, these people said.
Within the Biden administration, officials approach how to handle China differently. Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen is often viewed as more accommodating and has called for scaling back some U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports because of the burden they place on companies and consumers. Others, such as the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, have called for the United States to closely scrutinize commercial ties with China.
“President Biden does not seem to be able to decide which side of his administration he wants to back,” said Derek Scissors, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, citing the administration’s perceived slowness in rolling out executive orders against China.
Mr. Biden told CFIUS in an executive order this month that it should consider whether deals would expose data from the United States to foreign adversaries.
The White House has also been working on two other executive orders to address concerns about China, a person with knowledge of the matter said. One would tackle worries that American investors were putting money into Chinese firms, the person said. U.S. companies have spent roughly $15 billion on deals in China so far this year, compared with $21 billion during the same period last year, according to the data firm Dealogic.
The second executive order could give the government more power to take on apps that — like TikTok — could leak data to a foreign power.
Any resolution on TikTok would also most likely “provide a blueprint” for handling similar cases in the future, said Antonia Tzinova, a partner at the law firm Holland & Knight who specializes in CFIUS and national security. “China is perceived as a threat, and Big Data, or data generally, is of particular concern.”
Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
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Peloton The Troubled Fitness Company Loses Another Top Executive
Peloton, The Troubled Fitness Company, Loses Another Top Executive https://digitalarkansasnews.com/peloton-the-troubled-fitness-company-loses-another-top-executive/
Business|Peloton, the Troubled Fitness Company, Loses Another Top Executive
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/26/business/peloton-executive-departure.html
The company’s chief marketing officer announced her departure on the heels of a management shake-up that included the exit of two of its founders.
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Recent executive departures at Peloton leave in question the future of the brand.Credit…Jeff Chiu/Associated Press
Sept. 26, 2022Updated 4:45 p.m. ET
Dara Treseder, who has been Peloton’s chief marketing officer since 2020, is leaving the ailing exercise equipment maker to run marketing at Autodesk, a move that comes two weeks after Peloton’s co-founder and former chief executive, John Foley, announced his exit amid a broader management shake-up.
A spokesman for the company wished Ms. Treseder luck, adding that she had helped to more than double its membership to more than 6.9 million, the DealBook newsletter reported.
The executive departures leave in question the future of the brand.
Ms. Treseder, who will remain as Peloton’s head of global marketing and communications through Oct. 4, helped oversee the introduction of four new products, including its $3,195 rowing machine. Ms. Treseder, who had previously worked at Apple, Goldman Sachs and General Electric, also set up a content partnership with Beyoncé.
Mr. Foley had been the public face of the brand since its founding in 2012; Ms. Treseder called him “the greatest of all time.” Peloton said earlier this month that Hisao Kushi, another founder and the company’s chief legal officer, will depart on Oct. 3.
Ms. Treseder’s exit comes amid a broader restructuring. The pandemic darling of home workouts has had to pump the brakes on its rapid expansion in the past year as demand fizzled once lockdown measures were eased.
In an effort to revive the business, Peloton hired Barry McCarthy, the former Spotify chief financial officer, as its chief executive in February; he has since focused on trimming costs and revamping the subscription model.
Peloton has laid off workers, announced plans to close stores, outsourced production and sell its bikes on Amazon. It’s been an uphill battle: Peloton reported a $1.2 billion loss in the fourth quarter, its sixth straight quarterly loss, and shares are down 75 percent through the year.
Marketing is key to its turnaround plans. The pandemic made Peloton’s workout bikes a household name, but sales plummeted as gyms reopened and demand for its products waned. And negative depictions of its products on TV series like “And Just Like That,” the “Sex and the City” revival, and “Billions” caused the company’s stock price to drop.
“Covid was the marketing campaign the company could never have afforded,” Mr. McCarthy told DealBook in February. Now, he wants to put Peloton’s fitness-focused app at the center of marketing efforts as the company looks to slash operating costs by $800 million this year.
“We need to lean in and figure out whether or not we can actually increase the unaided brand awareness in a cost-effective way,” he said at an investor conference this month. “That’s the marketing challenge. And so that’s what we’re trying to sell for now.”
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Bills Would Curtail Objections At Future Jan. 6 Vote Counts
Bills Would Curtail Objections At Future Jan. 6 Vote Counts https://digitalarkansasnews.com/bills-would-curtail-objections-at-future-jan-6-vote-counts/
If the bills are consolidated into one measure that becomes law, it will do away with a tradition that has become increasingly popular as Congress has become more polarized.
The certification of Electoral College votes for the state of Arizona is unsealed during a joint session of the House and Senate convened to confirm the electoral votes cast in November’s election, at the Capitol, on Jan 6, 2021. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Members of Congress have officially objected to the results in four of the last six presidential elections, a partisan practice that has been legal for over a century but became much more fraught after a violent mob of then-President Donald Trump’s supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol last year.
In an effort to prevent another Jan. 6, 2021, bills moving through the House and the Senate would make it harder to lodge those objections when Congress counts the electoral votes in a joint session after every presidential election. The move to curtail the objections is part of a larger effort to overhaul the 1800s-era Electoral Count Act and safeguard the integrity of the vote after Trump tried to persuade his Republican allies in Congress to vote against Democrat Joe Biden’s victory and overturn his 2020 defeat.
Under current law, only one member of the House and one member of the Senate has to challenge a state’s results to trigger votes on that state’s electors in each chamber. If a simple majority in each chamber votes to sustain the objection, that state’s votes can be thrown out.
The House and Senate bills would each raise that threshold substantially, with the House bill requiring a third of each chamber to object and the Senate bill requiring a fifth of each chamber to object. The House legislation, passed last week, would also lay out new requirements for the grounds for an objection.
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“It is just too easy to trigger an objection when it only requires one person in each chamber,” says Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican co-sponsor of the Senate version. Eleven GOP senators have signed on to the legislation, which is up for a vote in a Senate committee on Tuesday.
If the bills are consolidated into one measure that becomes law, it will do away with a tradition that has become increasingly popular as Congress has become more polarized.
Democrats have objected the last three times that Republicans were elected — twice against George W. Bush and once against Trump — but in each of those cases the Democratic candidate had already conceded the election.
The stakes were raised considerably in 2021, when Trump and his allies were actively trying to thwart Biden’s win, with a strategy to throw out Biden electors in Congress and the support of a violent mob that broke into the Capitol, interrupted the joint session and threatened the lives of lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence.
House Administration Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren of California, the Democratic sponsor of the House bill with Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, said the bill would protect the voters’ will from “frivolous” objections and more sinister efforts.
“If you want to object to the vote, you better have your colleagues and the Constitution on your side,” Lofgren said just before the bill passed. “Don’t try to overturn our democracy.”
At the 2021 joint session, two GOP senators — Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri — joined a larger group of House Republicans in objecting to Biden’s electoral votes in Arizona and Pennsylvania, two swing states that Trump had won in the 2016 election but lost in 2020. Both the House and the Senate voted to certify Biden’s win in those states in the hours after the rioters had injured police officers, rampaged through the Capitol and sent lawmakers running for their lives. But eight senators and almost 140 members of the House voted to sustain the objections.
Congress had only held such votes twice since the enactment of the Electoral Count Act 135 years ago. In 1969, two Democratic senators joined a member of the House to object to the vote of one elector in North Carolina during the certification of Republican Richard Nixon’s victory. In 2004, Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer of California and Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio, objected to President George W. Bush’s electors in Ohio over what they said were voting irregularities.
In both cases, the House and the Senate rejected the objections.
In several other instances, members of the House have lodged objections without the support of a senator. In 2000, several members of the Congressional Black Caucus objected to Bush’s electors in Florida after the Supreme Court had forced a halt to vote-counting in that state and decided the election. Vice President Al Gore, whom Bush had defeated, gaveled the objections down as he presided over the session.
In 2016, several Democrats stood and objected to Trump’s win over Democrat Hillary Clinton but no senator joined, and Vice President Joe Biden dismissed them. Like Gore, Clinton had already conceded defeat.
Members on both sides of the Capitol have been working on the revisions to the Electoral Count Act since the 2021 insurrection, saying the law’s vague language was not robust enough protection against Trump’s overt attempts to subvert the will of the people. The bills would also clarify that the vice president’s role is solely ceremonial and try to prevent states from creating slates of illegitimate electors, as Trump’s allies tried to do.
The House bill is more expansive than the Senate bill, and the two sides will eventually have to resolve their differences into a single measure. That includes the House language with new grounds for any objection, which would restrict the process even further.
Under the House legislation, no member could make an objection unless it fell under a strict set of parameters that relate to the Constitution — that the state is not validly a state, if the state submits too many electoral votes or if a candidate is not eligible, for example.
House Republicans argued against the legislation by saying it was a political attack on Trump, noting the frequent Democratic objections over the years. It only received nine Republican votes, all from members who are not returning to the House next year.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., responded that if lawmakers believed there had been too many objections in the past, “you should absolutely be supporting this legislation.”
Hawley, who was photographed raising a fist to pro-Trump protesters outside the Capitol ahead of last year’s joint session, said in an interview that he is “skeptical” of the effort to change a law that has been in place for so many years.
“My concern is that it’s going to look like to Republican voters that Democrats can object as much as often as they want,” the Missouri Republican said, noting the objections in 2000, 2004 and 2016.
“As soon as Republicans do, they change the law,” Hawley said. “I can promise you, that will be the perception.”
Still, 11 Republican senators have signed on to the Senate bill, enough to break a filibuster and pass the bill in the 50-50 Senate.
Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, who is retiring, was the latest GOP senator to sign on to the legislation last week.
“The poor drafting of the 1887 Electoral Count Act endangered the transition of power from one Administration to the next,” Toomey said when he announced his support.
“Unfortunately, in the over 100 intervening years, individual Democratic and Republican members of Congress have occasionally attempted to exploit the ambiguities in this law to cast doubt on the validity of our elections, culminating in the debacle of January 6, 2021,” he said. “It is past time Congress act.”
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By MARY CLARE JALONICK Associated Press
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Vos Says The Jan. 6 Committee Wants To Talk To Him About Phone Calls With Trump
Vos Says The Jan. 6 Committee Wants To Talk To Him About Phone Calls With Trump https://digitalarkansasnews.com/vos-says-the-jan-6-committee-wants-to-talk-to-him-about-phone-calls-with-trump/
Vos says the Jan. 6 committee wants to talk to him about phone calls with Trump WMSN Fox 47 Madison
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Debunked Anti-Trump Dossier Sub-Source Who Sought To Traffic Classified Information Remained On FBI Payroll Until Late 2020 | U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley Of Iowa
Debunked Anti-Trump Dossier Sub-Source Who Sought To Traffic Classified Information Remained On FBI Payroll Until Late 2020 | U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley Of Iowa https://digitalarkansasnews.com/debunked-anti-trump-dossier-sub-source-who-sought-to-traffic-classified-information-remained-on-fbi-payroll-until-late-2020-u-s-senator-chuck-grassley-of-iowa/
09.26.2022
Grassley, Johnson demand explanation for the FBI’s continued reliance on sketchy source at taxpayer expense
WASHINGTON – Years before it paid the rumor peddler at the center of the debunked anti-Trump dossier, the FBI considered him a counterintelligence threat. Payments from the FBI to Igor Danchenko, the dossier’s primary sub-source, continued from March 2017 to October 2020 despite his problematic history and ongoing congressional investigations into the FBI’s years-long Russia probe codenamed Crossfire Hurricane.
Since 2016, Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and others have raised a number of concerns about Crossfire Hurricane given its reliance on unverified – and now debunked – allegations from dubious sources who were paid by the Hillary Clinton Campaign and Democratic National Committee. That information was central to securing a federal warrant to eavesdrop on a member of the Trump presidential campaign in 2016 and 2017. At the time the FBI was paying Danchenko, it was aware of his history, including his interactions with Russian intelligence services and his offer to procure and sell U.S. government secrets.
“This extraordinary fact pattern requires additional information from the Justice Department and FBI relating to why Danchenko was placed on the payroll and paid by the taxpayer to assist in the federal government’s flawed investigation into President Trump,” Grassley and Johnson wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Revelations of the FBI’s reliance on Danchenko as a paid human source were made in a recent court filing by Special Counsel John Durham, who continues to investigate the origins of the FBI’s Russia probe. Danchenko is accused of lying to federal authorities in that investigation.
Grassley and Johnson are seeking all FBI and Justice Dept. records related to government payments to Danchenko, the counterintelligence concerns he posed and the FBI’s decision to rely on him.
September 21, 2022
VIA ELECTRONIC TRANSMISSION
The Honorable Merrick Garland
Attorney General
Department of Justice
The Honorable Christopher Wray
Director
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Dear Attorney General Garland and Director Wray:
On September 2, 2022, Special Counsel John Durham filed a motion in limine with respect to the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) case against Igor Danchenko, Christopher Steele’s primary sub-source, for lying to federal investigators.[1] In that motion, Special Counsel Durham noted that, “[i]n March 2017, the [Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)] signed [Danchenko] up as a paid confidential human source of the FBI. The FBI terminated its source relationship with the defendant in October 2020.”[2]
As you are aware, in May 2009, the FBI opened a preliminary investigation into Danchenko based on his reported attempts to facilitate payment for classified information. Specifically, a declassified summary of the investigation noted that Danchenko approached several individuals at a work-related event in 2008 and “indicated that if the two individuals at the table ‘did get a job in the government and had access to classified information’ and ‘wanted to make a little extra money,’” Danchenko knew individuals who they could speak to.[3] The summary further stated that an individual interviewed by the FBI expressed the possibility that Danchenko could be “a Russian spy.”[4]
The preliminary investigation then proceeded to a full investigation because Danchenko was identified as an associate of two FBI counterintelligence subjects.[5] The FBI also determined that Danchenko had contact in 2006 with the Russian Embassy and known Russian intelligence officers.[6] The FBI also learned that during the course of Danchenko’s contacts with Russian intelligence officers, he appeared to be involved in the transmission of Russian documents at the request of a Russian Intelligence Officer.[7]
In December 2016, the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane team identified Danchenko as Steele’s primary sub-source and, according to the FBI, “became familiar with the 2009 investigation.”[8] The FBI, even in light of the extensive derogatory information attached to Danchenko, proceeded to pay him as a confidential human source three months later from March 2017 to October 2020 as part of Crossfire Hurricane. Therefore, while we were investigating the Justice Department’s and FBI’s misconduct with respect to Crossfire Hurricane, you maintained him on the government’s payroll.
This extraordinary fact pattern requires additional information from the Justice Department and FBI relating to why Danchenko was placed on the payroll and paid by the taxpayer to assist in the federal government’s flawed investigation into President Trump.
Accordingly, no later than October 22, 2022, please provide all records relating to government payments made to Danchenko, the counterintelligence investigation into him and his later hiring.[9]
Sincerely,
Charles E. Grassley
Ranking Member
Committee on the Judiciary
Ron Johnson
Ranking Member
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
cc: The Honorable Richard Durbin
Chairman
Committee on the Judiciary
The Honorable Jon Ossoff
Chairman
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
The Honorable Michael Horowitz
Inspector General
Department of Justice
-30-
[1] Gov’t’s Motion In Limine at 3, United States v. Danchenko, No. 21-CR-245 (AJT) (E.D. Va. 2022), https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.vaed.515692/gov.uscourts.vaed.515692.78.0.pdf. Notably, on page 18, the motion confirms Danchenko was Steele’s primary subsource, “Specifically, Steele informed the FBI that his primary subsource for the Steele Reports (the defendant) had met with Sergei Millian on two or three occasions – at least once in New York and once in Charleston, South Carolina.”
[3] FBI, Overview of the Counterintelligence Investigation of Christopher Steele’s Primary Sub-source, Sept. 23, 2020 at 1. [Attached.] The document, on page 1, confirms that the investigation involved “Christopher Steele’s Primary Sub-Source” who Durham identified as Danchenko.
[9] “Records” include any written, recorded, or graphic material of any kind, including letters, memoranda, reports,
notes, electronic data (e-mails, email attachments, and any other electronically-created or stored information),
calendar entries, inter-office communications, meeting minutes, phone/voice mail or recordings/records of verbal
communications, and drafts (whether or not they resulted in final documents). This definition applies to all requests for records in the questions for the record.
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Future Of Sport Lab Startups Including Drive Hockey Analytics Set For Demo Day September 27
Future Of Sport Lab Startups, Including Drive Hockey Analytics, Set For Demo Day September 27 https://digitalarkansasnews.com/future-of-sport-lab-startups-including-drive-hockey-analytics-set-for-demo-day-september-27/
Startups
Future of Sport Lab Startups, Including Drive Hockey Analytics, Set for Demo Day September 27
By Tom Friend September 26, 2022
The Future of Sport Lab’s eight startups—which range from fan engagement to fitness tech to artificial intelligence—will unveil their technology and business plans at Tuesday’s Demo Day in Toronto.
The pitch session is expected to be attended by more than 75 of Canada’s sports tech leaders. All of the eight startups received direction from the Ted Rogers School of Business and entrepreneurial-centric DMZ and were able to trial their products across Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment teams and venues.
The Future of Sport Lab’s Canadian-based startups are as follows:
BookSeats.com—Helps fans streamline trips to world-wide sporting events. Allows users to book custom flight, hotel and ticket packages.
Classlete –Creates virtual or printed sports cards and posters for high school athletes that aggregate their statistics, grade-point-averages and volunteer hours —which can be then simply posted to social media.
DIBZ—Novel technology that improves a fan’s in-venue experience through text messaging.
Drive Hockey Analytics—Providing mainstream hockey players with the same player and puck tracking that pros receive, through AI and wearable sensor technology.
Innerlogic—Intuitive software that ensures that sports organizations can evaluate their working culture and keep it safe, supportive, high-performing and aligned.
TheProgram.ai—creates engaging sports and fitness content for youth athletes to promote a lifelong interest in wellness.
tiptapSPORTS—Improves frictionless payments with a goal of increasing the fundraising potential of sports organization, while enhancing the in-venue fan experience.
Vic Park Analytics—A diverse team of consultants that identify the next generation female consumer in the sports industry.
Operated since 2018 by Toronto Metropolitan University, in conjunction with MLSE, the Future of Sport Lab’s startups have raised more than $30 million in financing and investments. Recognizable companies to have matriculated from the Future of Sport Lab are the injury prediction startup Zone7, audio streaming app ProWire, remote sports announcing platform Spalk and the female-centric sports media startup The GIST.
Extended Reality
Investments & Partnerships
Media & Platforms
LootMogul, Sports Metaverse Secure First Naming Rights Deal for Digital Properties in Its Virtual World
By Joe Lemire September 26, 2022
Sports Metaverse creator LootMogul has reached its first naming rights deal for digital properties in its virtual world.
Hoop Culture, a basketball accessories and lifestyle apparel brand, is the new titular partner of the Metaverse Arena in Orlando. It will also create five retail/experiential stores in five arenas throughout the Sports Metaverse developed by LootMogul.
LootMogul, which bills itself as an athlete-led Web3 platform, recently received a $200 million investment from the Global Emerging Markets Group. Basketball Hall of Famer Lisa Leslie is one of the company’s athlete ambassadors, along with retired NBA players Rick Barry, Carlos Boozer, Mario Chalmers, Michael Cooper and Gheorghe Muresan.
Investments & Partnerships
Sports Betting
Web3 Daily Fantasy and Sports Betting Startup HotStreak Raises $9 Million Series A Led by Polychain Capital
By Andrew Cohen September 26, 2022
Web3 daily fantasy and sports betting startup HotStreak has raised a $9 million Series A round led by Polychain Capital. FanDuel co-founder and former CEO Nigel Eccles has also joined San Francisco-based HotStreak as chairman of its board.
Polychain Capital is a hedge fund focused on cryptocurrency and blockchain technology, with blockchain company Tezos being among its existing investments. HotStreak will use its new funding to launch Sharp Protocol, a blockchain infrastructure for regulated sports betting and fantasy operators to enable users to place wagers with cryptocurrency.
HotStreak is the latest blockchain-based sports gaming investment for Eccles as he’s also funded betting startups Aver and BetDex, which raised $21 million last year. HotStreak’s daily fantasy sports app is currently available on the App Store.
Investments & Partnerships
Media & Platforms
NBC Sports Next Boosts Streaming Efforts by Acquiring Rapid Replay
By David Rumsey September 26, 2022
NBC Sports Next has acquired youth and amateur sports streamer Rapid Replay to continue boosting its SportsEngine HQ service around recreational sports, SportTechie has learned in an exclusive.
Rapid Replay provides video tools for live streaming, post-production, and highlight distribution to high schools, leagues, coaches, parents, athletes, and tournament operators.
Rapid Replay will continue to operate independently with integration efforts planned for 2023. Rapid Replay employees will then fall under the NBC Sports Next banner. The deal marks Comcast NBCUniversal’s first acquisition of a company from its Startup Engagement network.
Analytics
Athletes
Media & Platforms
nVenue to Track Aaron Judge, Albert Pujols Pitch-by-Pitch Home Run Probabilities During AppleTV+ Broadcasts
By Joe Lemire September 23, 2022
As the Yankees’ Aaron Judge and the Cardinals’ Albert Pujols approach historic home run milestones, nVenue will track their pitch-by-pitch home run probabilities throughout their Apple TV+ broadcasts Friday night.
With Judge at 60 home runs—one shy of Roger Maris’ Yankees and American League mark of 61—and Pujols two home runs shy of becoming the fourth player with 700 for his career, both of their games will be included in Apple’s season long Friday night MLB package, which are streamed for free to all users.
The on-screen probabilities computed by nVenue rely on complex models with dozen of inputs related to the batter, pitcher, ballpark and historical data. Prior to the game, nVenue will publish predictions for Judge’s first plate appearance on its Twitter feed, as well as additional predictive content. According to nVenue, Judge begins his first at-bat around the league average probability of hitting a home run (roughly 2.25%). Judge’s chances of a walk are eight times the league average at an 0-0 count, but nVenue notes that Judge’s chances of homering increase as the count progresses, highlighting the 2-1 count in particular.
The Dallas-based startup also plans to reveal for the first time more detailed information on social media about how its probabilities are calculated.
Media & Platforms
Rules & Officiating
Safety & Security
Sports Betting
Amazon-Owned Twitch No Longer Allowing Users to Share Content From Gambling Websites After Sliker Scam
By Andrew Cohen September 23, 2022
Amazon’s gaming-focused streaming platform Twitch will no longer let users share content from websites that offer slots, roulette, or dice games if the site does not hold a license in the U.S. or another jurisdiction that provides “sufficient consumer protection,” Twitch said in a statement. The updated gambling policy comes shortly after a popular streamer known as Sliker confessed to scamming his Twitch viewers out of $200,000 to fuel his own video game gambling addiction.
Silker, whose real name is Abraham Mohammed, routinely asked his Twitch audience to send him money claiming he needed the cash due to issues with his bank account, according to Kotaku. He recently admitted that the real reason was he used the money to buy weapon skins on the items marketplace in the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive video game.
Many Twitch streamers have sponsorships with gambling operators, but Twitch will no longer let users share links or referral codes to gambling sites including Stake.com, Rollbit.com, Duelbits.com and Roobet.com. Stake.com, which brands itself as a crypto casino and sports betting platform, has sponsorships with UFC and Premier League club Everton.
Twitch’s new policy will go into effect on Oct. 18. “We will continue to allow websites that focus on sports betting, fantasy sport, and poker” reads Twitch’s statement.
The NFL and Amazon livestream Thursday Night Football games for free on Twitch. Other leagues to stream games on Twitch include the NWSL and English Premier League, as well as NBC’s Olympic programming. Twitch’s parent company Amazon recently signed a deal with DraftKings to provide gambling odds on a pre-game show for Thursday Night Football on Prime Video.
Athletes
Media & Platforms
VerifiedInk Creates NFTs for Three Top College Basketball Players to Add to Their NIL Portfolios
By Tom Friend September 23, 2022
NFT marketplace VerifiedInk has created NFTs for three top collegiate basketball players as it continues to pursue NIL deals with NCAA and high school student-athletes.
Kansas’s freshman center Ernest Udeh, Creighton’ senior guard Baylor Scheierman and Tennessee’s freshman power forward Julian Phillips each released their respective digital tokens Sept. 20th through Sept. 22nd, with Phillips’ selling out overnight.
VerifiedInk just recently earned $1.2 million in funding in a seed round led by Sixers Innovation Lab. Prior to that, the company made news when, through an NIL deal, it created an NFT for the No. 1 high school basketball recruit from the Class of 2024, Naasir Cunningham. Cunningham also signed in April to play in the Overtime Elite league, who has had players ink brand ambassador deals with the smart basketball SIQ.
VerifiedInk claims to be the first NIL platform to specifically help college and high school athletes design, mint and sell NFTs and uniquely allows its roster of over 500 amateur athletes to drive their own profits. Players who join VerifiedInk are able to design their NFTs at no cost and can keep...
WATCH: Retired Border Patrol Agent Reveals Why She Left Democratic Party
WATCH: Retired Border Patrol Agent Reveals Why She Left Democratic Party https://digitalarkansasnews.com/watch-retired-border-patrol-agent-reveals-why-she-left-democratic-party/
September 26, 2022 03:49 PM
A retired Texas Border Patrol agent told Fox News on Monday that she flipped parties after Democrats ignored the immigration crisis for decades and let it spiral out of control.
Rosa Arellano said a visit to the border by then-President Donald Trump in 2016 opened her eyes and eventually led her to the Republican Party.
“He was the first president in a long time that I recall actually came down to the border,” she told Fox & Friends First.
DESANTIS ADMINISTRATION FACES LAWSUIT FROM FLORIDA LAWMAKERS OVER MIGRANT FLIGHTS
Arellano said when Trump first announced his candidacy, she was apprehensive about his “celebrity” status and knew he was a polarizing figure but that as time went on, she was convinced of his dedication to fixing the border crisis.
She added that his controversial comment referring to those crossing the border illegally as “bad hombres” actually resonated with her.
“I worked as a CBP officer, and I did encounter my fair share of ‘bad hombres,”‘ she said before the Fox host pivoted.
Arellano said the crisis at the border has been “passed on from administration to administration” but added that Trump stood out because “he listened to us letting him know that we needed a multilayer solution to this situation.”
“We mentioned that we needed physical barriers at strategic locations, better infrastructure … needed more boots on the ground, better technology,” she said. “He listened to us and he pointed it out to the country.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Arellano also knocked Democratic mayors who recently criticized Texas for busing immigrants to their cities without notice as “pure hypocrisy” and said border communities were overwhelmed daily.
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Putin Grants Citizenship To Edward Snowden Who Disclosed U.S. Surveillance
Putin Grants Citizenship To Edward Snowden, Who Disclosed U.S. Surveillance https://digitalarkansasnews.com/putin-grants-citizenship-to-edward-snowden-who-disclosed-u-s-surveillance/
Russian President Vladimir Putin granted citizenship on Monday to Edward Snowden, the former security consultant who leaked information about top-secret U.S. surveillance programs and is still wanted by Washington on espionage charges.
Snowden, 39, was one of 72 foreigners granted citizenship in a decree signed by Putin.
Snowden, who considers himself a whistleblower, fled the United States to avoid prosecution and has been living in Russia, which granted him asylum in 2013.
Snowden was granted permanent residency in 2020, and his lawyers said at the time that he was applying to obtain a Russian passport without renouncing his U.S. citizenship.
Snowden’s lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, told the state-run news agency RIA Novosti on Monday that Snowden’s wife, Lindsay Mills, is also now applying for Russian citizenship. Mills joined Snowden in Moscow in 2014. They were married in 2017 and have a son together.
Kucherena also said that Snowden would not be subject to the partial military mobilization that Putin decreed last week to help Russia’s flagging war in Ukraine as Snowden never served in the Russian army. Putin said only those with previous experience would be called up in the partial mobilization though there have been widespread reports of summonses going to others, including men arrested at protests against mobilization.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to comment on Snowden’s new passport, and instead referred questions to the prosecutors seeking his extradition. “So, since I believe there have been criminal charges brought against him, we would point you to the Department of Justice for any specifics on this,” Jean-Pierre said.
Snowden’s revelations, published first in The Washington Post and the Guardian, were arguably the biggest security breach in U.S. history. The information he disclosed revealed top-secret NSA surveillance as part of a program known as PRISM and the extraction of a wide range of digital information.
In 2017, Putin said in a documentary film made by U.S. director Oliver Stone that he did not consider Snowden “a traitor” for leaking government secrets.
“As an ex-KGB agent, you must have hated what Snowden did with every fiber of your being,” Stone says in the clip.
“Snowden is not a traitor,” Putin replied. “He did not betray the interests of his country. Nor did he transfer any information to any other country which would have been pernicious to his own country or to his own people. The only thing Snowden does, he does publicly.”
In 2020, Snowden explained his decision to seek dual citizenship.
“After years of separation from our parents, my wife and I have no desire to be separated from our son. That’s why, in this era of pandemics and closed borders, we’re applying for dual US-Russian citizenship,” Snowden wrote on Twitter at the time.
“Lindsay and I will remain Americans, raising our son with all the values of the America we love — including the freedom to speak his mind. And I look forward to the day I can return to the States, so the whole family can be reunited,” Snowden added.
War in Ukraine: What you need to know
The latest: Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “partial mobilization” of troops in an address to the nation on Sept. 21, framing the move as an attempt to defend Russian sovereignty against a West that seeks to use Ukraine as a tool to “divide and destroy Russia.” Follow our live updates here.
The fight: A successful Ukrainian counteroffensive has forced a major Russian retreat in the northeastern Kharkiv region in recent days, as troops fled cities and villages they had occupied since the early days of the war and abandoned large amounts of military equipment.
Annexation referendums: Staged referendums, which would be illegal under international law, are set to take place from Sept. 23 to 27 in the breakaway Luhansk and Donetsk regions of eastern Ukraine, according to Russian news agencies. Another staged referendum will be held by the Moscow-appointed administration in Kherson starting Friday.
Photos: Washington Post photographers have been on the ground from the beginning of the war — here’s some of their most powerful work.
How you can help: Here are ways those in the U.S. can help support the Ukrainian people as well as what people around the world have been donating.
Read our full coverage of the Russia-Ukraine crisis. Are you on Telegram? Subscribe to our channel for updates and exclusive video.
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Giorgia Meloni And Commonsense https://digitalarkansasnews.com/giorgia-meloni-and-commonsense/
Commentary
Towards the beginning of “Nineteen-Eighty-Four,” George Orwell has his unhappy protagonist Winston Smith jot down what he describes as an “axiom.”
“Freedom,” he writes, “is the freedom to say that two plus two equals four. If that is granted, all else follows.”
That seemingly simple, in reality deep, observation is akin to Bishop Butler’s bijou that “everything is what it is, and not another thing.”
How much mischief could have been avoided if people, especially people in power, were to take such commonsense wisdom to heart?
Italy’s new prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, seems to be a rare member of the genus homo politicus in embracing such commonsensical positions.
In a speech three years ago at the World Congress of Families, she listed Orwellian by quoting not him but G. K. Chesterton.
“Fires will be kindled,” she quoted, “to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer.”
Chesterton’s wise words come from the end of his book “Heretics” (1905).
“The great march of mental destruction will go on,” he writes. “Everything will be denied. Everything will become a creed.”
Meloni, founder and head of Italy’s Brothers of Italy party, is a eurosceptic.
This makes her a heretic.
She objects to the effort of the people in charge of Project Europe to turn her into a “perfect consumer,” a “consumer slave.”
This makes her a pariah.
Meloni refuses to be treated as a cipher, a number.
This makes her a threat.
She proudly defines herself as “Italian, Christian, woman, mother.”
This makes her a fascist.
That, anyway, is what the major news networks want you to believe.
On the eve of her stunning election victory—in 2018, the Brothers of Italy won only 4.5 percent of the vote—CBS indulged in a hysterical (I do not mean “funny”) bit of rhetorical overkill.
“Voters in Italy appear poised to elect a far-right prime minister,” CBS informed viewers.
That’s not all. According to CBS, Meloni “leads a neo-fascist movement, reminiscent of Benito Mussolini’s own political party.”
Mussolini, eh?
Oh yes.
This woman wants to reclaim her own identity as an individual, to champion the two-plus-two-equals-four reality that she is Italian, not a global citizen, a Christian, not a “consumer slave,” a mother, not “parent Number 1,” a woman, not a “gender.”
All this makes her, if CBS is to be believed, the exponent of a political philosophy that has “roots in neo-fascism.”
“Many fear,” intoned a bobblehead called Chris Livesay, that a “particularly ugly” bit of history could soon repeat itself as Meloni is “poised to lead the most hard-right government since World War II.”
“Many?”
It wasn’t only CBS, of course.
CNN was right there, on the case, telling us that Meloni’s victory ushered in “Italy’s most far-right prime minister since Mussolini,” “underscoring Italy’s longstanding rejection of mainstream politics,” i.e., the politics CNN supports.
And then there was the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who just before Meloni’s victory warned that the EU had “tools” it could use to punish Italy should it vote the wrong way.
Such “tools,” she added, were already being deployed against Hungary and Poland.
What we are seeing here is a European version of the tactic deployed by the Biden administration against Donald Trump and his supporters.
At his speech in Philadelphia earlier this month, President Joe Biden insisted that “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic.”
A week earlier, at a speech in Maryland, Biden explained that the problem was “not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the … semi-fascism” of the MAGA agenda.
But what is that “MAGA” (or, even scarier, “ultra-MAGA”) agenda we are supposed to recoil from?
It’s a commonsense agenda that stresses policies that encourage American prosperity, American security, and American freedom.
It’s an agenda that recognizes that borders are borders, that cheap, abundant energy is a prerequisite of economic prosperity, and that the rule of law must be administered impartially if the coercive power of the state is not to descend into tyranny.
It also recognizes that the human race is divided into two sexes, and only two, that race is not determinative of character, and that national sovereignty and private property are necessary to the preservation of individual liberty.
In his great essay “Politics and the English Language,” Orwell noted that the term “fascist” had degenerated into a cognitively empty negative epithet that was little more than a term of abuse.
You don’t like something. Therefore it’s “fascist.”
It’s certainly odd that one has to work overtime to defend Meloni’s assertion of her identity as an Italian, a Christian, a woman, and a mother.
Everything is what it is and not another thing.
But then we really do live in a time when the assertion that two plus two equals four is disparaged as an example of “white supremacy.”
Who knows what tort will be invented to counter the claim that leaves in the summer are green.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
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Roger Kimball is the editor and publisher of The New Criterion and publisher of Encounter Books. His most recent book is “The Critical Temper: Interventions from The New Criterion at 40.”
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What We Know Going Into The Final Jan. 6 Hearing https://digitalarkansasnews.com/what-we-know-going-into-the-final-jan-6-hearing/
The Jan. 6 select committee is convening Wednesday for what is likely its last public hearing before releasing a final report on its findings and recommendations.
Why it matters: This week’s hearing will bookend the investigation into the Capitol riot that has spanned more than a year and has included more than 130,000 documents and testimony from more than 1,000 witnesses.
The big picture: Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif), a Jan. 6 panel member, previewed the final hearing on Sunday, saying: “I can say that, as this may be the last hearing of this nature — that is, one that is focused on sort of the factual record — I think it’ll be potentially more sweeping than some of the other hearings.”
Committee chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) also offered a teaser of the hearing, saying the panel has “substantial footage of what occurred … [and] significant witness testimony that we haven’t used in other hearings.”
Wednesday is set to be the last public hearing for Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the vice chair of the committee, after she lost an August primary for her reelection to a Trump-backed candidate.
Cheney, and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), who is retiring, are the only two House Republicans on the panel.
How we got here
The select committee in its previous hearings has tried to link Trump directly to the violence of Jan. 6 through witness testimonies and video evidence. Here’s some of what we’ve learned so far …
Cassidy Hutchinson, a top aide to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, testified that Trump grew increasingly irate on Jan. 6, reportedly lunging at his former security detail when the Secret Service would not drive him to join protesters at the Capitol.
Hutchinson also testified that Trump knew that some rallygoers on Jan. 6 had weapons, but he requested that the metal detectors to enter the Ellipse be removed anyway.
Mike Pence’s legal aides testified that the former vice president resisted the “pressure campaign” by Trump to reject electoral votes.
Top Trump administration and campaign officials, including former Attorney General Bill Barr, described trying to convince Trump that he lost the election — and the 45th president’s continued commitment to pushing the “Big Lie” anyway.
What to watch
The panel has requested testimony from a number of Trump allies or individuals who may have knowledge of the events on Jan. 6, including …
Conservative activist Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has agreed to sit down for a voluntary interview with the House Jan. 6 select committee, her lawyer confirmed to Axios last week.
Steve Bannon, a former Trump chief strategist, told the committee in July that he was willing to testify, per the New York Times.
The panel is also seeking an interview with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) about his involvement in events leading up to the Capitol riot.
It’s not yet clear whether all of the potential witnesses have agreed to testify — and whether the panel will publicly show details of their interviews.
Both Thompson and Cheney have also said that the committee has received thousands of materials from the Secret Service in response to a July subpoena of the agency.
Cheney, however, said this weekend that communications from around Jan. 6 were largely not recovered.
What’s next
The select committee has said that it plans to release a final report after the midterm election, but plenty of news could be made before then, Axios’ Andrew Solender and Alayna Treene report.
The committee, which has said that the election is not a big factor in planning, also said it plans to release early findings and recommendations before the election.
The bottom line: Finally, one question underpinning the panel’s work is whether the final report should include a criminal referral regarding Trump’s conduct.
Schiff said Sunday that if a referral is made, it should be unanimous among panel members.
“It will be certainly, I think, my recommendation, my feeling that we should make referrals, but we will get to a decision as a committee, and we will all abide by that decision, and I will join our committee members if they feel differently,” he told CNN.
Go deeper… Key takeaways from New York AG’s lawsuit against Trump
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Leading Economies Sliding Into Recession As Ukraine War Cuts Growth OECD Finds
Leading Economies Sliding Into Recession As Ukraine War Cuts Growth, OECD Finds https://digitalarkansasnews.com/leading-economies-sliding-into-recession-as-ukraine-war-cuts-growth-oecd-finds/
The world’s leading economies are sliding into recession as the global energy and inflation crises sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine cut growth by more than previously forecast, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
A dependency on expensive gas for heavy industry and home heating will plunge Germany, Italy and the UK into a long period of recession after global growth was projected by the OECD to slow to 2.2% in 2023 from a forecast in June of 2.8%.
With the global economy needing to grow by about 4% to keep pace with rising populations, the OECD said incomes per head would be lower in many countries.
OECD’s interim chief economist, Álvaro Pereira, said the world was paying a steep price for the Ukraine war and Russia’s decision to restrict access to gas supplies more tightly than was forecast in June.
He said governments would need to encourage households and businesses to reduce their consumption of gas and oil to help weather a difficult winter.
Pereira also supported the determination of central banks to reduce inflation by raising interest rates. “We need to reduce demand, there is no doubt about that. And monetary and fiscal authorities need to work hand in hand to achieve it,” he said.
China’s growth rate is expected to drop this year to 3.2% – its lowest since the 1970s – causing a large decrease in trade with neighbours South Korea, Vietnam and Japan, dragging down their capacity to grow.
A recovery in China next year to 4.7% will be weaker than expected, the OECD said, as Beijing wrestles with a property market and banking sector weighed down by huge debts.
However, the Paris-based policy forum was most alarmed by the outlook across Europe, which is most directly exposed to the fallout from Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The OECD forecast that UK GDP growth would be flat in 2023. However, this projection does not take into account the measures announced in the chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget on Friday.
The OECD forecast a drop in growth in the eurozone from 3.1% this year to only 0.3% in 2023, meaning that many countries in the 19-member currency bloc will spend at least part of the year in recession. A recession is defined as two straight quarters of contraction.
France could escape a recession if it grows by 0.8% next year as predicted by the OECD, but will suffer along with other European countries after the downgrade in GDP growth since June of 1.3 percentage points.
Russia will shrink by at least 5.5% this year and 4.5% in 2023. Berlin’s dependence on Russian gas before the invasion means the German economy will shrink by 0.7% next year, down from a June estimate of 1.7% growth.
The OECD warned that further disruptions to energy supplies would hit growth and boost inflation, especially in Europe, where they could knock activity back another 1.25 percentage points and increase inflation by 1.5 percentage points, pushing many countries into recession for the full year of 2023.
Global output next year is projected to be $2.8tn (£2.6tn) lower than the OECD forecast before Russia attacked Ukraine – a loss of global income equivalent to the UK economy.
“The global economy has lost momentum in the wake of Russia’s unprovoked, unjustifiable and illegal war of aggression against Ukraine. GDP growth has stalled in many economies and economic indicators point to an extended slowdown,” the organisation’s secretary-general, Mathias Cormann, said.
A review of the outlook for the US found that while it is likely to grow slowly this year and be in recession for part of 2023, it was less dependent than other countries on energy from Russia or other sources, allowing for a strong recovery in 2024.
The OECD forecast that the world’s biggest economy would slow from 1.5% growth this year to only 0.5% next year, down from June forecasts for 2.5% in 2022 and 1.2% in 2023.
World Bank officials have called on central banks to refrain from competitive rate hikes that will push the global economy into recession and harm the economies of developing countries the most.
Nevertheless, the OECD said further rate hikes were needed to fight inflation, forecasting that most major central banks’ policy rates would reach at least 4% next year.
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