September, 2019

As many as 130 officials have been recently contacted by investigators from the State Department, current and former officials told the Washington Post. According to the outlet, those targeted were contacted by the department about emails they sent years ago that have been retroactively classified and could now count as possible security violations. Investigators began communicating with former officials around 18 months ago, but they appeared to suspend the effort before ramping it back up in August.

Although some who are under scrutiny view the recent activity as the Trump administration's decision to wield power against political adversaries, senior State Department officials said they are simply following standard protocol in an investigation that initially started during the Obama administration.

“This has nothing to do with who is in the White House,” one official said. “This is about the time it took to go through millions of emails, which is about 3 and a half years.”...

SpaceX's Starship and Super Heavy launch vehicle is a fully, rapidly reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars, and anywhere else in the solar system.

UPDATE: We have now raised almost $15 million in small dollar donations (including 50,000 NEW donors) since @SpeakerPelosi started this impeachment charade 72 hrs ago! Unbelievable numbers!! Keep it going — you and the dems are handing @realDonaldTrump the win in 2020! 🤛👍🇺🇸

— Eric Trump (@EricTrump) September 27, 2019

Well, it’s sound weird but in the upcoming future, your toilet will be your mini doctor. A company called Micron is developing a smart artificial intelligence-powered toilet that will reportedly be able to diagnose your state of health and risk of disease by analyzing your bodily waste.

The major goal of this technology is to analyze bowel movements and recognize the signs for health issues or ailments early on. This information will also use to understand early symptoms of certain diseases... The smart toilet is able to perform, fecal analysis and urine analysis. These are two of the most commonly-used conventional tests to determine the well-being of a patient...

Scrutiny of business deals by former Vice President Joseph R. Biden’s son Hunter now includes his joint venture with a Chinese government entity to buy a U.S. automotive technology company with potential military applications. The ease with which the 2015 transaction was approved by the Obama administration alarmed Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, who is looking into whether the Obama-Biden White House intervened in the process.
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The purchase of Henniges by the Chinese needed approval from the Obama administration’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) that included a go-ahead from Mr. Kerry’s State Department.

The company says the new measures “should be temporary” until producing countries correct the application of glyphosate.

The move comes at a time when many countries have either banned or are seeking to prohibit the use of glyphosate, used in the Roundup weedkiller. Bayer AG, which spent $63 billion buying the product’s maker, Monsanto, is now facing billions of dollars worth of lawsuits claiming it causes cancer...

SpaceX has live-streamed all of Musk's prior presentations from the company's YouTube channel, and this one should be no different. Sources suggest his talk should begin around 8 p.m. ET...

It is not known precisely when the August 2019 revision to the whistleblower complaint form was approved, nor is it known which, if any, version of the Disclosure of Urgent Concern form the complainant completed prior to addressing his complaint to Congress.
Reached by phone on Friday afternoon, a Director of National Intelligence official refused to comment on any questions about the secret revision to the whistleblower form, including when it was revised to eliminate the requirement of first-hand knowledge and for what reason...

I talked to a DNI official and asked when these revisions were made and why. The official said the intelligence community would not comment on anything to do with the anti-Trump whistleblower.

I never mentioned or asked about the anti-Trump whistleblower. https://t.co/ZvCpCMBx8h

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) September 27, 2019

Based on bookies' bets and a few recent actions, speculation is once again starting to grow that Hillary Clinton may be about to enter the Democratic Party presidential nominee race... in the interview with CBS Sunday Morning that is airing this weekend, Clinton said: “Look, there were many funny things that happened in my election that will not happen again,” Clinton said. “And I’m hoping that both the public and press understand the way Trump plays the game.”...

The accord, which is set to be signed by next month, will compel social media firms to share information to support investigations into individuals suspected of serious criminal offenses including terrorism and pedophilia, the person said.
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The U.K. and the U.S. have agreed not to investigate each other’s citizens as part of the deal, while the U.S. won’t be able to use information obtained from British firms in any cases carrying the death penalty...

U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson in Washington, D.C., issued a preliminary injunction late Friday following a request from civil rights groups suing over the policy. "Both the public interest and the balance of the harms weigh in favor of the issuance of a preliminary injunction," wrote Jackson, an Obama appointee... The policy seeks to expand on an existing policy that permits low-level officials to fast-track deportation without a hearing within 100 miles of the border and for individuals who have been in the country less than two weeks. The expansion would affect migrants anywhere in the U.S., beyond those who arrive by sea and who haven't been in the country for at least two years.

"I think we now go to a very long and unproductive road," he said during a chat on political civility at Seton Hall Law School with former N.J. Gov Chris Christie, according to The New York Daily News. “Speaker Pelosi was dealing with pressure from her caucus and...there is a heightened leftist component to the Democratic Party that she was feeling pressure for,” Cuomo said. “She is a deliberate, responsible person. She is not a knee-jerk person and I think she even resisted the pressure in her caucus admirably for a long period of time.”...

Psilocybin is now in clinical trials, and medical professionals see promising results for its use in treating addiction, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder in humans.

This child sex trafficking problem within the child welfare system is still not widely known in the U.S., but it is well documented as fact. Now, a new law passed in the State of New York may reveal just how prevalent this problem is within New York state. The Child Victims Act is a new law passed earlier this year that allows survivors of sexual abuse to file civil suits regardless of the statute of limitations. New York attorney Samantha Breakstone says she is representing “thousands” of victims under the new law, and she filed the first one in Westchester County on September 19th...

When a federal judge declared that President Trump, as a politician, couldn’t block his Twitter followers, the ruling applied to other politicians as well. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is being sued by former Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind for blocking him on Twitter. After Cortez tried to get the case dismissed, a judge demanded on September 27 that she appear in court to explain why she blocked Hikind and 19 other individuals...

U.S. District Court Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles said the rules conflict with a 1997 settlement agreement that requires the government to release immigrant children caught on the border as quickly as possible to relatives in the U.S. and says they can only be held in facilities licensed by a state. Gee said the Flores agreement — named for a teenage plaintiff — will remain in place and govern the conditions for all immigrant children in U.S. custody, including those with their parents.

Azarov, who was prime minister from 2010-2014, is himself wanted by Ukrainian authorities for alleged abuse of power. He said he was not aware of any evidence suggesting wrongdoing on Hunter Biden’s part, but said it was in the Ukrainian public interest to ascertain the legality of his activities. In particular, he said it was important to investigate what Biden had done for Burisma to justify his fee.

The chairmen of the House Foreign Affairs, Intelligence and Oversight committees initially requested a laundry list of documents on Sept. 9 and sent a follow-up letter on Monday. "Your failure or refusal to comply with the subpoena shall constitute evidence of obstruction of the House's impeachment inquiry," wrote Intelligence chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif.; Foreign Affairs chairman Eliot Engel, D-N.Y.; and Oversight chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Md. The chairmen asked for State Department correspondence and documents dating from Jan. 20, 2017, to the present. The documents relate to reports that Trump pressed Ukrainian officials to investigate potential 2020 election rival Joe Biden, his son Hunter and the Bidens' business activity in Ukraine.