• Manafort’s Reward: Sen. Ron Johnson and the Ukraine Conspiracy Investigation: Part II

    After three years of insisting that unvetted information should never form the basis for an investigation into an active presidential candidate (did someone say “Steel Dossier”?), Republican members of the Senate would never attempt to do such a thing themselves, right? “Wrong,” Asha Rangappa and Ryan Goodman write in Just Security, adding that this is exactly what Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) is attempting to do in the home stretch of the 2020 election: “An attempt to accomplish through a congressional hearing what President Donald Trump was unable to achieve through his quid pro quo to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, namely, to put Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, under a cloud of suspicion before the country votes this November.” But Johnson’s investigation as a second purpose, too: “The goal isn’t just to smear Biden, but also to shift blame for 2016 election interference to Ukraine.”

  • German Docs Identify Poison Used in Attempt on Russian Opposition Leader

    Initial findings by physicians and scientists at the Berlin Charité hospital, where Russia’s opposition leader Alexey Nvalny was transferred late Sunday, indicate that he was poisoned. The hospital spokesperson told reporters on Monday (24 August) that the first clinical investigations indicated that the substance Russian agents used in their attempt to kill Navalny belong to a group of active substances called cholinesterase inhibitors. In minute quantities, cholinesterase inhibitors, also known as anti-cholinesterase, are used as drugs for Alzheimer’s and myasthenia gravis, but can be lethal in larger quantities and can be sued as insecticides and chemical weapons.

  • Alexey Navalny is but the Latest in a Long Line of Putin’s Victims

    Not everyone who has a quarrel with Russian President Vladimir Putin dies in violent or suspicious circumstances, but enough of them do. Moreover, enough of them die in practically identical manner, which may indicate that the agents who killed them all had similar training and experience. Opposition leader Alexey Navalny joins a long list of Putin’s critics who experience the violence of Putin’s agents.

  • Handgun Purchaser Licensing Laws Associated with Lower Firearm Homicides, Suicides

    State handgun purchaser licensing laws—which go beyond federal background checks by requiring a prospective buyer to apply for a license or permit from state or local law enforcement—appear to be highly effective at reducing firearm homicide and suicide rates, according to a new analysis of gun laws.

  • Kremlin Refuses to Have Navalny Flown to Germany for Treatment, or have German Doctors Examine Him in Russia

    The Kremlin says it will not allow opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, who is in a coma in a Siberian hospital with suspected poisoning, to be flown to Germany for treatment because of “medical reasons.” The attending physician at the Omsk hospital’s ICU said Navalny suffers from “metabolic disorder,” and that there was no need for foreign specialists to examine him. Navalny’s wife was not allowed to see him. Navalny’s personal physician said that “they are waiting three days so that there are no traces of poison left in the body, and in Europe it will no longer be possible to identify this toxic substance.” Other medical experts agree with her, and also support her assertion that “metabolic disorder” is not a diagnosis but a condition which, among other things, can be caused by poisoning.

  • Police solve just 2% of all major crimes

    As Americans across the nation protest police violence, people have begun to call for cuts or changes in public spending on police. But neither these nor other proposed reforms address a key problem with solving crimes. My recent review of fifty years of national crime data confirms that, as police report, they don’t solve most serious crimes in America. In reality, about 11 percent of all serious crimes result in an arrest, and about 2 percent end in a conviction. Therefore, the number of people police hold accountable for crimes – what I call the “criminal accountability” rate – is very low.

  • Sea-Level Rise Linked to Higher Water Tables Along California Coast

    In the first comprehensive study of the link between rising sea levels and inland water tables along the California coast, researchers found an increased threat to populated areas already at risk from rising water tables, and the possibility of flooding in unexpected inland areas.

  • Russian Opposition Leader in Coma after Being Poisoned

    Outspoken Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny is in a coma in a hospital intensive-care unit in Siberia after falling ill in a manner similar to that of many of the critics of Vladimir Putin who were poisoned by agents of the FSB, the domestic intelligence service and heir to the KGB. This is he Kremlin’s third attempt to silence one of Putin’s more persistent critics. In 2017, Navalny suffered serious damage to one of his eyes after he was attacked with antiseptic dye. In July 2019, while in prison for 30 days for participating in a demonstration against the regime, he was poisoned with TCDD dioxin, the same poison Russian FSB agents used, in September 2004, against Viktor Yushchenko, then the leader of the Ukrainian opposition. Yushchenko survived, but his face was permanently disfigured by the poison. The quantity of prison used against Navalny in July 2019 was too small to kill him or leave permanent marks, but he had to be treated in a hospital for more than a week for a swollen face and a severe rash all over his body.

  • Brother of Manchester Bomber Given 55-years Jail Sentence

    A court in Britain on Thursday sentenced Hashem Abedi, the younger brother of the suicide bomber who set off an explosion on 22 May 2017 at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, to a minimum of 55 years in jail. Among the 22 killed were seven children, the youngest aged eight. The blast injured 237 people while hundreds more were reported to have suffered from psychological trauma.

  • Steve Bannon Charged with Defrauding Donors to “We Build the Wall” Campaign

    Steve Bannon, President Donald Trump’s former top political adviser, was charged today (Thursday) in New York with defrauding donors in a scheme related to an initiative called “We Build the Wall,” an online crowdfunding effort which collected more than $25 million from citizens who wished to help Trump’s border wall project for the U.S.-Mexico border. “As alleged, the defendants defrauded hundreds of thousands of donors, capitalizing on their interest in funding a border wall to raise millions of dollars, under the false pretense that all of that money would be spent on construction,” Audrey Strauss, the acting United States attorney in Manhattan, said in statement Thursday.

  • COVID-19 Outcomes in Female-Led Countries “Systematically and Significantly Better”

    Female national leaders locked down earlier and suffered half as many COVID deaths on average as male leaders, according to analysis across 194 countries. The researchers say that the analysis holds even if outliers – the effective responses by Angela Merkel-led Germany and Jacinda Arden-led New Zealand, and the botched, inompetent response by the Trump administration – are removed from the statistics. The researchers note that “While this [early lockdown] may have longer-term economic implications, it has certainly helped these countries to save lives, as evidenced by the significantly lower number of deaths in these countries.”

  • Better Control of What Mobile Apps Do with Your Data

    Every year, mobile app developers make billions of dollars selling data they collect from the mobile apps on your cell phone, and they aren’t making it easy for you to prevent that. While both Apple iOS and Android have introduced a growing collection of privacy permission settings that, in theory, give you more control over your data, studies have shown that users are still overwhelmed and are unable to take advantage of them. In particular, the privacy controls fail to distinguish between different purposes for which data is collected.

  • Demographics Data Helps Predict N.Y. Flood Insurance Claims

    In flood-prone areas of the Hudson River valley in New York state, census areas with more white and affluent home owners tend to file a higher percentage of flood insurance claims than lower-income, minority residents, raising the issue of developing more nuanced, need-based federal flood insurance subsidies in these floodplains, according to a new study.

  • “We Must Do Better in 2020”: Bipartisan Senate Panel Releases Final Report on Russian 2016 Election Interference

    “The Russian government engaged in an aggressive, multi-faceted effort to influence” the “outcome of the 2016 presidential election.” This is the key, bipartisan finding of the fifth and final report of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The committee’s investigation into the massive intervention campaign waged by Russian government agencies and operatives on behalf of then-candidate Donald Trump was thorough, totaling more than three years of investigative activity, more than 200 witness interviews, and more than a million pages of reviewed documents. All five volumes total more than 1300 pages. “We must do better in 2020,” said Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida) the committee’s chairman. “This cannot happen again,” said Senator Marc Warner (D-Virginia), the committee’s ranking member.

  • In COVID’s Shadow, Global Terrorism Goes Quiet. But We Have Seen This Before, and Should Be Wary

    Have we flattened the curve of global terrorism? In our COVID-19-obsessed news cycle, stories about terrorism and terrorist attacks have largely disappeared. But as is the case with epidemics, terrorism works as a phenomenon that depends on social contact and exchange, and expands rapidly in an opportunistic fashion when defenses are lowered. In fact, we have contributed, through military campaigns, to weakening the body politic of host countries in which groups like al-Qaeda, IS and other violent extremist groups have a parasitic presence. We now need to face the inconvenient truth that toxic identity politics and the tribal dynamics of hate have infected Western democracies. Limiting the scope for terrorist attacks is difficult. Eliminating the viral spread of hateful extremism is much harder, but ultimately even more important.