Our picksCalif.’s earthquake refugees; stopping weaponized consumer drones; how a nuclear war would kill you, and more

Trump, at rally, hints at conspiracy theories for migrant caravan (Christopher Cadelago, Brent D. Griffiths, Politico)
President Donald Trump on Thursday amped up his focus on immigration ahead of the midterm elections by claiming, without evidence, that Democrats were behind a group of Central American migrants trying to reach the U.S.
Returning to the first issue that helped him vanquish more than a dozen Republican rivals in the 2016 campaign, the president emphasized the need to build a border wall, lest his supporters forget about reports of another caravan of 4,000 Central American migrants traveling from Honduras with hopes of entering the U.S. Trump, flirting with conspiracy theories about the possibility that the migrants are being paid off, said money was being “passed through” those very people.
“Now we’re starting to find out — and I won’t say it 100 percent, I’ll put it a little tiny question mark on the end, but we’re not going to get it, but we have the fake news back there, fake news — a lot of money has been passing through people to try to get to the border by Election Day, because they think that is a negative for us,” the president told the crowd. “Number one, they are being stopped and number two, regardless, that’s our issue.”

How to stop weaponized consumer drones (Ben Watson, Defense One)
Have a drone you want removed from the sky? Grab your wallet, some patience, and probably a lawyer — because so far, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution.
Returning to the first issue that helped him vanquish more than a dozen Republican rivals in the 2016 campaign, the president emphasized the need to build a border wall, lest his supporters forget about reports of another caravan of 4,000 Central American migrants traveling from Honduras with hopes of entering the U.S. Trump, flirting with conspiracy theories about the possibility that the migrants are being paid off, said money was being “passed through” those very people.
“Now we’re starting to find out — and I won’t say it 100 percent, I’ll put it a little tiny question mark on the end, but we’re not going to get it, but we have the fake news back there, fake news — a lot of money has been passing through people to try to get to the border by Election Day, because they think that is a negative for us,” the president told the crowd. “Number one, they are being stopped and number two, regardless, that’s our issue.”

The torture of forcibly separating children from their parents (Beth Van Schaack, Just Security)
As discussed in my prior post, President Donald Trump’s family separation policy has come under legal assault from a number of civil society organizations, 17 U.S. states, and the District of Columbia. Some of these lawsuits challenging family separations date back to earlier administrations, (e.g., Flores, see our backgrounder), but new lawsuits have proliferated since Trump’s promulgation of the “zero tolerance” policy, which intends to ramp up criminal prosecution of those crossing the border without prior authorization. At the same time, the Trump administration is considering a return to the practice of separating children from their parents, but this time under the guise of giving parents an excruciating Sophie’s choice: Keep your children in detention with you for months, or even years, or hand them over to U.S. authorities.

Japanese firm falsified data on earthquake protection equipment (Justin McCurry, Guardian)
Tokyo-based KYB admits doctoring data for equipment in almost 1,000 structures across Japan

Khashoggi’s death is highlighting the Ottoman-Saudi Islamic rift (Mustafa Akyol, Foreign Policy)
The journalist’s suspected murder, and its aftermath, was the latest battle of a 300-year war over Sunni Islam.

Fighting cybercrime requires a new kind of leadership (MIT)
A new MIT Sloan Executive Education program presents a holistic approach to cybersecurity.

Catastrophic earthquakes could leave 250,000-400,000 refugees in California (Rong-Gong Lin II and Sarah Parvini, Los Angeles Times)
Officials are trying to determine where all those refugees would go.

This is exactly how a nuclear war would kill you (Alex Ward, Vox)
This is how the world ends — not with a bang, but with a lot of really big bombs.