February, 2019

“The Washington Post ignored basic journalistic standards because it wanted to advance its well-known and easily documented biased agenda against President Donald J. Trump.” Covington student suing WAPO. Go get them Nick. Fake News!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 20, 2019

“My dear departed grandmother … as well as my deceased parents, must be turning in their grave right now to see their family’s name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected, in any way, jokingly or not with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker and in the pursuit of identity politics,” he said.

“Speaking for myself and my immediate Jamaican family, we wish to categorically dissociate ourselves from this travesty,”

OUCH!

Here is the Complaint filed today against The Washington Post on behalf of Nick Sandmann. All members of the mainstream & social media mob of bullies who recklessly & viciously attacked Nick would be well-served to read it carefully. https://t.co/P3H4x0srlX

— Lin Wood (@LLinWood) February 19, 2019

In a tweet Saturday, Wood announced via Twitter that he would begin filing defamation lawsuits against several news outlets this week. “Nick Sandmann is 16 years old has 2+ years to identify accusers sue them,” he said. “No member of mainstream social media mob who attacked him should take comfort from not being sued in initial round of lawsuits which will commence next week. Time is Nick’s friend, not his enemy.”

Oil prices were mixed on Tuesday as concerns about global crude oil demand and uncertainty over the latest round of U.S.-China trade talks countered investor optimism around tightening supplies.
[...]
Brent crude slipped 5 cents to settle at $66.45 a barrel, hovering below its 2019 high of $66.83 reached on Monday. U.S. crude was up 50 cents to $56.09 a barrel, its highest since November 2018.

Washington’s sanctions on oil out of Venezuela, a top supplier of sour crude to the United States, has helped support U.S. futures prices, said Phil Flynn, an analyst at Price Futures Group in Chicago.

President Donald Trump plans to nominate Jeffrey Rosen as the next deputy U.S. attorney general, the White House said on Tuesday night, the latest shuffle in the Justice Department at a time when it faces close scrutiny over its Russia investigation.

Rosen, currently deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation, would succeed Rod Rosenstein, who appointed a special counsel to investigate possible ties between Russia and President Donald Trump’s campaign.

Rosenstein is expected to step down by mid-March, a Justice Department official said on Monday.

Democratic Institutions Minister Karina Gould today called on a Commons committee to look at the possibility of the Canadian government imposing new rules on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter in the lead-up to the next federal election.

The actor, who plays gay singer-songwriter Jamal Lyon on the show, was supposed to have nine scenes and a big musical performance in the second-to-last episode of Season 5, production sources told TMZ.

But five scenes and the musical number have been axed.

FBI Special Agent Mara Schneider declined to comment on specifics of the probe, saying only that the FBI and members of the Detroit Area Public Corruption Task Force "executed multiple search warrants at Taylor City Hall and in several other locations around the area. The warrants were conducted as part of an ongoing public corruption investigation. Because this is an open investigation, I will not be discussing any of the details that led to today’s action."

She added: " ... while I recognize the public’s right to know what the FBI is doing on its behalf, we have a responsibility to protect the integrity of our investigation and, as importantly, we have a responsibility to protect the rights of individuals who have not been charged with any crimes."

Pilot program of seven Motiv-powered Ford E-450 vans to deploy in California’s Central Valley, with one of the electric vans already running routes in Fresno.

John Oliver should take himself back to Jolly-old England if he dislikes it here so much here.

A day after the sailor seen kissing a woman in the iconic World War II photo died, a statue commemorating the couple was found vandalized early Tuesday, Florida police said. According to the Sarasota Police Department, the vandal used red spray paint to emblazon the phrase "#MeToo," which refers to the movement against sexual assault and harassment.
[...]
George Mendonsa, the ecstatic sailor shown kissing a woman in Times Square celebrating the end of WWII, died Monday at the age of 95 – two days before his 96th birthday. He was shown kissing Greta Zimmer Friedman, a dental assistant in a nurse's uniform, on Aug. 14, 1945. Known as V-J Day, it was the day Japan surrendered to the United States.

The administration is responding in part to a reported hanging of a young gay man in Iran, Trump’s top geopolitical foe.

U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, the highest-profile openly gay person in the Trump administration, is leading the effort, which kicks off Tuesday evening in Berlin. The U.S. embassy is flying in LGBT activists from across Europe for a strategy dinner to plan to push for decriminalization in places that still outlaw homosexuality — mostly concentrated in the Middle East, Africa and the Caribbean.

Gold jumped out of the gate on Tuesday following a long weekend for North American markets, adding more than $22 an ounce in heavy buying.

Gold for delivery in April, the most active futures contract, reached a high of $1,345 an ounce, the highest in 10 months after more than 32m ounces changed hands in New York.

• The Trump administration wants to sell its nuclear energy technology to cash-rich Saudi Arabia.
• To prevent nuclear arms development, the U.S. wants to place tight controls on how the technology can be used.
• Saudi Arabia has put the U.S. on a shortlist with China, Russia and others to bid for nuclear power projects in the country.

For nearly two decades at the Grand Canyon, tourists, employees, and children on tours passed by three paint buckets stored in the National Park's museum collection building, unaware that they were being exposed to radiation.

Although federal officials learned last year that the 5-gallon containers were brimming with uranium ore, then removed the radioactive specimens, the park's safety director alleges nothing was done to warn park workers or the public that they might have been exposed to unsafe levels of radiation.

The directive would place the Space Force under the control of the Air Force Department in similar fashion to how the Navy Department oversees the Marine Corps, and marks a partial win for senior Air Force officials. They have argued that creating a separate military department - as Trump stated he wants - would create unnecessary Pentagon bureaucracy.

A bizarre story has emerged out of the mass anti-government protests and unrest that have engulfed Haiti for nearly two weeks. Five heavily armed Americans have been arrested and are being detained by the Haitian government, according to Haiti's Foreign Minister Bocchit Edmond.

They were caught in possession of automatic weapons, pistols, satellite phones, and drones according to a CNN after police pulled over their vehicles for not having valid license plates. Among the group were three others, including two other foreign nationals — a Serbian and Russian — and one Haitian. Crucially the names released by local Haitian reports indicate all of the Americans have US military and special forces backgrounds, and appear to be career private security contractors.