Anonymous ## Mod
Welcome to /news/ 11/27/15(Fri)10:38:22 No.6

Welcome to /news/ Anonymous ## Mod 11/27/15(Fri)10:38:22 No.6   [Reply]

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Months after President Trump took office, Russia’s disinformation teams trained their sights on a new target: special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Having worked to help get Trump into the White House, they now worked to neutralize the biggest threat to his staying there.

The Russian operatives unloaded on Mueller through fake accounts on Facebook, Twitter and beyond, falsely claiming that the former FBI director was corrupt and that the allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election were crackpot conspiracies. One post on Instagram — which emerged as an especially potent weapon in the Russian social media arsenal — claimed that Mueller had worked in the past with “radical Islamic groups.”

Such tactics exemplified how Russian teams ranged nimbly across social media platforms in a shrewd online influence operation aimed squarely at American voters. The effort started earlier than commonly understood and lasted longer while relying on the strengths of different sites to manipulate distinct slices of the electorate, according to a pair of comprehensive new reports prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee and released Monday.

One of the reports, written by Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Project and network analysis firm Graphika, became public when The Washington Post obtained it and published its highlights Sunday. The other report was by social media research firm New Knowledge, Columbia University and Canfield Research.

Together the reports describe the Russian campaign with sweep and detail not before available.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/russian-disinformation-teams-targeted-robert-s-mueller-iii-says-report-prepared-for-senate/2018/12/17/0e0047f6-0230-11e9-8186-4ec26a485713_story.html

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https://www.marketwatch.com/story/roger-stone-admits-to-spreading-lies-on-infowars-agrees-to-apologize-publicly-2018-12-17

As questions swirl about his credibility, former Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone settled a defamation suit seeking $100 million in damages on Monday for publishing false and misleading statements on InfoWars, a far-right website known for promoting conspiracy theories.

The agreement requires Stone to run ads in national newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, apologizing for making defamatory statements about a Chinese businessman who is a vocal critic of Beijing. It also requires Stone to publish a retraction of the false statements on social media. Doing so exempts him from paying any of the damages.

In a text message, Stone described his conduct as “irresponsible” and added that “I am solely responsible for fulfilling the terms of the settlement.”

The settlement is the latest indication that Stone’s use of various media platforms to spread unfounded claims isn’t without consequences. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s office is investigating Stone’s role in orchestrating stories about key events being examined in the Russia probe, the Journal has reported.

An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/roger-stone-admits-spreading-lies-on-infowars-11545093097?mod=mktw

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https://www.theage.com.au/world/north-america/new-report-shows-russia-used-every-major-social-media-tool-to-help-trump-20181217-p50mn8.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/12/16/new-report-russian-disinformation-prepared-senate-shows-operations-scale-sweep/

This article is really long, just read it instead of making me waste five minutes pasting it, Ivan.

This so-called "witch hunt" sure keeps finding a lot of witches.

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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/12/16/boys-can-have-periods-schoolchildren-taught-latest-victory-transgender/

School children will be taught that "all genders" can have periods in new sex education lessons, in a victory for transgender rights campaigners.

The advice to teachers was approved by Brighton & Hove City Council as they try to tackle stigma around menstruation.

The new advice follows a council report which said: "Trans boys and men and non-binary people may have periods", adding that "menstruation must be inclusive of all genders".

Bins used for menstruation products will be provided in all toilets for children, according to the report.

It also calls for transgender students and pupils to be provided with additional support from a school nurse if needed.

The report recommends that "language and learning about periods is inclusive of all genders, cultures, faiths and sexual orientations. For example; ‘girls and women and others who have periods'".

Brighton & Hove City Council said in a statement: "By encouraging effective education on menstruation and puberty, we hope to reduce stigma and ensure no child or young person feels shame in asking for period products inside or outside of school if they need them.

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Congress has demanded to see his tax returns . Is he scared?

http://fortune.com/2018/12/17/trump-subpoena-taxes-lawsuit-emoluments-corruption

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>Two new reports released by the Senate Intelligence Committee underscore how much the Internet Research Agency targeted African Americans—echoing efforts by the campaign.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/12/shared-russia-trump-focus-depressing-black-votes/578302/

Perhaps the most striking takeaway from a pair of new reports released by the Senate Intelligence Committee is the consistency and persistence with which Russian trolls sought to depress the black vote in the 2016 election.

That workers for the Internet Research Agency—a “troll farm” with close ties to the Kremlin—targeted African Americans has been clear for more than a year, emerging in a series of reports in fall 2017, and then receiving new attention in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s February 2018 indictment of the IRA and several associated individuals.

But the two reports, commissioned from Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Project and New Knowledge, provide an overwhelming amount of detail and information. There’s a remarkable amount of crossover between the Russians’ tactics and what the Donald Trump campaign said it was doing late in the 2016 race.

[Read: Trump’s ‘voter suppression operation’ targets black voters]
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/trumps-black-voter-dilemma/505586/

According to the Oxford team, African Americans were the single group targeted most heavily by the IRA—and it wasn’t even a close margin.


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The mother of a 9-year-old girl who took her own life says her daughter had been bullied by a group of classmates because she rode to school with a white family.

McKenzie Adams, 9, was a fourth grade African-American student at U.S. Jones Elementary School in Demopolis, Alabama. Her grandmother found her Monday night at their home in Linden after she had hung herself.

Adams’ mother, Jasmine Adams, said race played a factor in the alleged bullying.

“Part of it could have been because she rode to school with a white family,” Adams told CBS affiliate WIAT. “And a lot of it was race, some of the student bullies would say to her why you riding with white people — you’re black, you’re ugly. You should just die.”

The girl’s aunt, Edwina Harris, told WYFF that Adams’ friendship with the boy she rode to school was behind much of the ridicule the family says she faced. “She was being bullied the entire school year, with words such as ‘kill yourself,’ ‘you think you’re white because you ride with that white boy,’” said Harris.

Jasmine Adams said she told her daughter’s teachers and her assistant principal she was being bullied a number of times.

The Demopolis City School System offered its condolences to the family, but says its own internal investigation concluded “there have been no findings of any reports of bullying either the student or family.”

Jasmine Adams feels the school system let her daughter and her family down.

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America’s cheese hoard continues to balloon to unprecedented levels, as producers fear the mountain could grow further and put even more dairy farmers out of business.

About 1.4 billion pounds of American, cheddar and other kinds of cheese is socked away at cold-storage warehouses across the country, the biggest stockpile since federal record-keeping began a century ago.

Driving the glut are cheese makers who ramped up production before trade tensions abroad tamped down demand for many of their products. Shifting tastes at home have further changed the outlook for traditional cheese makers. Many are paying to store their excess cheese in hopes demand and prices will improve.

“There’s a whole ton of aged product laying around,” said Nate Donnay, director of Dairy Market Insight at INTL FCStone Financial.

Cheese, which has a limited shelf-life, is less valuable once it spends weeks in cold-storage, and producers are concerned that the glut and price drop that has come with it could eat into profits. Spot market prices for 40-pound blocks of cheddar fell around 25% this year from 2014 prices, while 500-pound barrels typically used for processed cheese declined 28%.

Cheese exports have suffered since Mexico and China, major dairy buyers, instituted retaliatory tariffs on U.S. cheese and whey. Cheese shipments to Mexico in September were down more than 10% annually, according to the U.S. Dairy Export Council trade group, and shipments to China were down 63% annually.

That leaves U.S. dairy producers relying more on a domestic market where tastes are changing.

Americans ate a record 37 pounds of natural cheese per capita last year. But they are ditching processed, American and plain cheddar cheese for foreign varieties. Per capita consumption of mozzarella has topped cheddar since 2010. Consumption of processed cheese spreads per capita is about half what it was in 2006.

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https://theweek.com/speedreads/813154/tennessee-sen-lamar-alexander-wont-run-reelection-2020

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) is about to start his last two years in the Senate.

The 78-year-old senator announced Monday he would not run for re-election in 2020, seemingly hinting at his retirement. A longtime politician, Alexander served as Tennessee's governor from 1979 to 1987 and as the Secretary of Education before heading to the Senate in 2003.

Alexander thanked "the people of Tennessee" for "electing me to serve more combined years as governor and senator than anyone else from our state," he said in his Monday statement. "But now it is time for someone else to have that privilege," Alexander continued.

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/16/macrons-ratings-fall-further-after-month-of-gilets-jaunes-protests

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Mexico refused to pay for President Donald Trump’s wall, and now it appears American taxpayers may never have to either.

A spending bill to keep the federal government running past Sept. 30 will not contain money for Trump’s biggest presidential campaign promise. Republican congressional leaders are instead postponing the fight over a wall along the southwestern border until after the November midterm elections — when Democrats will have more influence and be weeks away from taking control of the House.

“This is the GOP Congress giving the president a big middle finger,” said Stan Collender, a budget expert who spent years working for House and Senate committees. “It’s the Republican Congress saying, ‘We’re going to make it more difficult for you to shut down the government because it’s not good for us, even if it’s good for you.’”

While most Americans are not particularly interested in a border wall, Trump’s base is, and will likely see his readiness to sign yet another spending bill that lacks wall money as a broken promise.

“There is a strong segment of Trump voters that’s demoralized,” said William Gheen, the head of the hard-line group Americans for Legal Immigration. “Because there’s no wall, illegal crossings are at a new peak, possibly higher than Obama levels, and the Republican House spent its time on an amnesty compromise bill rather than enforcement like we were promised by Trump.”

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-no-border-wall_us_5b9c1ee4e4b013b0977abbdd?utm_source=reddit.com

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https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Texas-speech-pathologist-fired-by-school-district-13472052.php
Julian Gill, Houston Chronicle
Monday, December 17, 2018

Texas speech pathologist fired by school district for refusing to sign pro-Israel agreement

A Texas speech pathologist has been barred from working for an Austin-area school district because she refused to sign pro-Israel agreements in her new contract.

A Texas school district recently cut ties with a child language specialist because she refused to sign an oath in her contract barring her from boycotting anything "intended to inflict economic harm" to Israel, according to a report from The Intercept.

Bahia Amawi, who is a U.S. citizen with a master's degree in speech pathology, had contracted with Austin-area Pflugerville Independent School District since 2009, working with children in the area's growing Arabic-speaking population, the Intercept reported.

The new clause in her contract comes after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed the "Anti-BDS" bill into state law in May 2017. It prohibits all state agencies "from contracting with, and certain public funds from investing in, companies that boycott Israel."

claims that the law violates her freedom of speech, and the lead attorney said it could set a dangerous precedent if left unchallenged.

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A 1974 New York state ban on nunchucks that was put into place over fears that youth inspired by martial arts movies would create widespread mayhem is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment, a federal court has ruled.

Judge Pamela Chen issued her ruling Friday in a Brooklyn federal court on the martial arts weapon made famous by Bruce Lee.

The plaintiff, James Maloney, started his legal quest after being charged with possession of nunchucks in his home in 2000. He initially filed a complaint in 2003, and appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court when the case went against him. The Supreme Court in 2010 remanded the case back down to be reconsidered in light of a Second Amendment decision it had made in another case, and Maloney filed an amended complaint later that year.

Maloney had been focused on getting the part of the law overturned that banned nunchucks, two rigid rods connected at one end by a chain or rope, even in private homes.

In her ruling, Chen said the court couldn’t simply take that part out, and ruled that the state’s law as it pertained to possessing nunchuks as well as to manufacturing, transporting or disposing of them was in violation of the Second Amendment.

The ruling went over the history of the ban, and said it “arose out of a concern that, as a result of the rising popularity ‘of ‘Kung Fu’ movies and shows, ‘various circles of the state’s youth’ — including ‘muggers and street gangs’ — were ‘widely’ using nunchaku to cause ‘many serious injuries.’”

In an email to The Associated Press, Maloney said “perhaps the most amazing thing” was getting more relief than he had asked for.

https://apnews.com/f6fc6ffac3ca4eaa9dd4ff07be0c7c48

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Robert Mueller’s investigation has cost just over $25 million in the first 16 months of its investigation, according to CNBC.

The Special Counsel’s Office released new an expenditure report Friday which revealed that the six months between the beginning of April through September cost about $4.5 million. More than half of the total cost is attributed to personnel compensation and benefits.

Since beginning the probe in May 2017, investigating whether Russia was linked to the Trump presidential campaign, Mueller has filed more than 100 criminal charges.

Though the investigation comes with a hefty price tag, it has actually paid for its own investigation, with its probe leading to monetary estimated gains of up to $48 million for the government through the tax evasion the investigation has revealed.

Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, was sentenced for conspiracy and obstruction of justice in September. As part of his plea deal, Manafort agreed to forfeit assets that amount to between $42 million and $46 million, including about $22 million in property, CNBC reports. The case revealed how Manafort avoided paying more than $15 million in taxes by laundering $60 million from pro-Russian Ukrainians, CNN reports.

Manafort reportedly violated the conditions of his plea deal, and last month prosecutors said that he could face more charges.

Earlier this week, Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to financial crimes including paying hush money to a porn star and Playboy model. As part of his deal, Cohen agreed to pay $1.4 million in unpaid taxes and hand over $500,000 in assets as well as pay $100,000 in fines.

http://fortune.com/2018/12/14/mueller-investigation-cost-tax-cheats/