The FBI tried to get the CEO of encrypted phone company Phantom Secure, Vincent Ramos, to install a backdoor in his service so that the agency could spy on Sinaloa Cartel members, Motherboard reported on Wednesday. The FBI, along with Canadian and Australian police, busted Phantom Secure last year, with prosecutors indicting Ramos in the Southern District of California on charges including racketeering conspiracy to conduct enterprise affairs, conspiracy to distribute narcotics, and aiding and abetting. Notably, authorities accused Ramos of deliberately selling secure mobile devices"which had cameras, microphones and most connectivity functions nuked and a version of Pretty Good Privacy installed to route messages overseas, as well as a GPS tracker for cartel bosses to monitor their underlings"to members of the Sinaloa syndicate, making him an associate of their sprawling drug business.
For years, wind and solar power were derided as boondoggles. They were too expensive, the argument went, to build without government handouts.
Today, renewable energy is so cheap that the handouts they once needed are disappearing.
On sun-drenched fields across Spain and Italy, developers are building solar farms without subsidies or tax-breaks, betting they can profit without them. In China, the government plans to stop financially supporting new wind farms. And in the U.S., developers are signing shorter sales contracts, opting to depend on competitive markets for revenue once the agreements expire.
U.S. Steel Corp. shares plunged the most in more than a year after the company said it expects to report a wider loss than analysts were expecting, the third American steelmaker in three days to warn on their outlook.
The Pittsburgh-based company cited weakening markets for flat-rolled steel and tubular products for the energy industry.
It expects an adjusted loss of 35 cents a share this quarter, according to a statement Wednesday, compared with the average analyst estimate for a 6-cent loss.
The outlook comes after Nucor Corp., the largest U.S. producer of the metal, and Steel Dynamics Inc. this week gave guidance short of estimates. Steelmakers raised some prices earlier this quarter, but buyers have been slow to accept the increases, underscoring fading optimism more than a year after the introduction of U.S. tariffs meant to bolster the industry.
British-Pakistani author Kamila Shamsie has been stripped off of her German Literary award due to her support for Palestine. Shamsie was announced as this year's winner of the Nelly Sachs Prize (named after a Jewish poet and Nobel Laureate) in September but her support for the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has made the organisers rethink their decision of awarding the author. Read more
conic conservative blogger Matt Drudge on Wednesday announced who he thought was going to be the Democratic nominee in 2020. Drudge, founder of the news aggregation site The Drudge Report, took to Twitter and shared an image from Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren's rally she held in New York City this week, which reportedly had 20,000 attendees. "It's Elizabeth Warren's nomination to lose..." Drudge tweeted. Last year, Drudge correctly predicted that Democrats would win back the House of Representatives, but overestimated by claiming they would pick up 60 seats instead of the roughly 40 they flipped from Republicans. However, in February 2016, Drudge predicted early on that Donald Trump would become the GOP nominee. Warren has picked up momentum in most polls in recent months, but in the latest Fox News poll, she placed third with 16 percent, following former Vice President Joe Biden's 29 percent and her progressive colleague Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders' 18 percent.
In the 1970s, '80s and '90s, as Stoller explains, Democrats altered their economic vision. They abandoned New Deal and Great Society liberalism in favor of a new dogma that came to be known as neoliberalism " a view of society in which markets and financial instruments, rather than government policy and direct intervention, are seen as the best way to achieve social ends. Obama's biggest ideas were neoliberal: The Affordable Care Act, his greatest domestic policy achievement, improved access to health care by altering private health-insurance markets. Obama aimed to address the climate crisis by setting up a market for carbon, and his plan for improving education focused on technocratic, standards-based reform. Over the course of his presidency, inequality grew, and Obama did little to stop it. While much of the rest of the country struggled to get by, the wealthy got wealthier and multimillionaires and billionaires achieved greater political and cultural power.
Tehran, Iran (CNN)Iran's foreign minister has raised the specter of "all-out war" in the event of US or Saudi military strikes and that Saudi Arabia would have to fight "to the last American soldier." Javad Zarif told CNN that Iran hoped to avoid conflict, adding that the country was willing to talk to its regional rivals Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. But the possibility of a return to negotiations with the US, however, would not happen unless Washington provided full sanctions relief as promised under the 2015 nuclear deal, Tehran's top diplomat said. He again denied Tehran's involvement in weekend attacks on Saudi Arabia's oil facilities, which dramatically ratcheted up tensions in the region this week. Zarif said Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, who claimed responsibility for the attack, have stepped up their military capabilities and are capable of conducting a sophisticated operation such as the one that knocked out half of the kingdom's energy production.
Justin Trudeau, Canada's prime minister, wore brownface makeup to a party at the private school where he was teaching in the spring of 2001. TIME has obtained a photograph of the incident.
The Jimmy Dore Show | Published on Sep 18, 2019 Read more
Elon Musk's legal team in the defamation suit filed against him by a British man whom Musk called "pedo guy" in a tweet said he didn't mean to accuse him of being a pedophile as he had a different understanding of the term. Read more
Justin Trudeau, Canada's prime minister, wore brownface makeup to a party at the private school where he was teaching in the spring of 2001. TIME has obtained a photograph of the incident. The photograph has not been previously reported. The picture was taken at an "Arabian Nights"-themed gala. It shows Trudeau, then the 29-year-old son of the late former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, wearing a turban and robes with his face, neck and hands completely darkened. The photograph appears in the 2000-2001 yearbook of West Point Grey Academy, a private day school where Trudeau was a teacher. Read more
More than half a million people are homeless each night in the United States, a new White House report has found. All told, 47% of all unsheltered homeless people nationwide " meaning those who sleep in areas not meant for habitation, such as sidewalks, parks, cars and abandoned buildings, rather than in shelters " live in the Golden State, according to a new report on homelessness from the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Unsheltered homeless people represent just over a third (35%) of the overall homeless population nationwide. .
NBC News is asking Americans to confess their climate change sins, though at least some people have taken the opportunity to troll the news company.
On Wednesday, President Trump used his Twitter feed to share a video that falsely depicted Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) partying on the anniversary of 9/11. Yes, the president of the United States cheerfully trafficked in disinformation. Which raises a question: Are Democrats prepared for the tsunami of shamelessly propagandistic media manipulation and rank disinformation tactics that Trump and his network will unleash during the coming election? Read more
Bugatti didn't just bring the 12 million La Voiture Noire to this year's Geneva motor show. It also showed off a 3D-printed model of a rear-wheel-drive EV costing from as little as 30,000 (27,000), of which it would make 500 examples ... Read more
"You get a tax break for a racehorse, why in God's name couldn't we provide an $8,000 tax credit for everybody who has childcare costs? It would put 720 million women back in the workforce. It would increase the GDP, to sound like a wonk here, by about eight-tenths of one percent. It would grow the economy." Doubling the number of people in the US would definitely stimulate the economy. Read more
