Deported to the wrong country; pressing the nuclear button; Border Patrol & vigilantes, and more

But he did use the opportunity to do one thing more: bring the facts. Lots of them. In his report, Mueller describes the Russian attack on the 2016 election, the campaign’s and the candidate’s responses, and the president’s efforts to obstruct the inquiry in what Susan Hennessey and Quinta Jurecic call “excruciating detail.” The text goes well beyond the bare minimum that the governing statute required of Mueller, “explaining the prosecution or declination decisions,” but it does so without venturing into opinion.
Mueller knew he did not have the authority to hold the president to account for his behavior while the president is still in office. And he did not seek it. As he wrote in the report’s Volume 2, any next steps during this presidency must come from Capitol Hill: “The conclusion that Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the President’s corrupt exercise of the powers of office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law.”
Thus, the special counsel found a way to appropriately get hundreds of pages of information to the institution that—unlike him—is charged with considering any political act to come: the House of Representatives, the constitutional body able to initiate presidential impeachment. That seems a better use of his report than searching for the right words to characterize the president’s actions.

Authorities keep distance, yet work with armed border group (VOA)
Authorities on the U.S.-Mexico border have distanced themselves from an armed civilian group that detains asylum-seeking families, but the United Constitutional Patriots have never been shy about saying they work with Border Patrol agents.

U.S. measles cases hit a record high since the disease was eliminated in 2000 (Aimee Cunningham, Science News)
About 169 million kids worldwide didn’t get a measles shot in 2010–2017, easing disease spread

Radicalization among Sri Lanka’s Muslims was slow and steady (Aya Batrawy, AP)
A spate of attacks against mosques, shrines and followers of Sufi sheikhs in Sri Lanka more than a decade ago point to early warning signs of fundamentalism taking root among a sliver of the country’s Muslims.
The Easter attacks in Sri Lanka that killed more than 350 people in churches and hotels showed how the warnings went largely unheeded. It also exposed how a legacy of civil war, marginalization, political disarray and security lapses cultivated fertile ground for the militants to carry out their attacks.

Sri Lanka and the venomous spread of terror (The Editorial Board, New York Times)
Modern social media added fuel to the sectarian fires still smoldering after the country’s civil strife.

The attacks in Sri Lanka and the threat of foreign fighters (Daniel Byman, Lawfare)
The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the horrific terrorist attacks on Easter Sunday on churches in Sri Lanka, which killed over 300 people. It appears that the group may have worked with a local radical Islamist group, National Thowheeth Jama’ath, mixing the resources and capabilities of both. Initial reporting—still to be verified—indicates that many of those arrested in the follow-up sweep had fought in Syria. Early reports are often wrong or exaggerated, but if Sri Lankan foreign fighters played a significant role in the terrorist attacks, this would be the largest killing by foreign fighters linked to the Islamic State ever, and the largest foreign fighter-linked attack since 9/11. The attacks suggest both the danger posed by foreign fighters and the importance of government efforts in stopping them.

Russians will soon lose uncensored access to the internet (Patrick Tucker, Defense One)
A new law allows the Kremlin to spy on, filter, and control the country’s online activity, alarming human-rights watchdogs.

Top cyber diplomat: U.S. needs allies’ help to punish cyberattacks (Jack Corrigan, Defense One)
Creating a unified international response around online attacks will help “establish the legitimacy” of norms for cyberspace.

Shoalwater Bay Indian tribe plans tsunami evacuation tower (Dan Hammock, The Daily World)
FEMA money, plus another $1 million from the Washington state tribe, will cover the tower’s construction. When complete, it will be one of two tsunami evacuation structures in the U.S., the other about 10 miles north.

Pressing the button: How nuclear-armed countries plan to launch Armageddon (and what to do about the U.S.) (Jeffrey Lewis and Bruno Tertrais, War on the Rocks)

Deported to the wrong country—for a crime he may not have committed (Scott Bixby, Daily Beast)
‘The only similarity is the name,’ Ilir Hope’s attorney said, ‘and it’s the most common name in Albania.’