Links

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-administration-to-circumvent-court-limits-on-detention-of-child-migrants/2018/09/06/181d376c-b1bd-11e8-a810-4d6b627c3d5d_story.html?utm_term=.d37a66491c34https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-administration-to-circumvent-court-limits-on-detention-of-child-migrants/2018/09/06/181d376c-b1bd-11e8-a810-4d6b627c3d5d_story.html?utm_term=.d37a66491c34
Sept. 6, 2017
The Trump administration took the first official step Thursday toward withdrawing from a court agreement limiting the government’s ability to hold minors in immigration jails, a move that could lead to the rapid expansion of detention facilities and more time in custody for children.
The changes proposed by the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services would attempt to terminate the Flores Settlement Agreement, the federal consent decree that has shaped detention standards for underage migrants since 1997.


https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-09-04/secrets-of-las-vegas-s-exclusive-high-roller-cosmopolitan-sweet
Sept. 4, 2018
Secrets of Las Vegas high rollers


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/09/07/she-made-the-discovery-but-a-man-got-the-nobel-a-half-century-later-shes-won-a-3-million-prize/
Sept. 7, 2018
In 1967, Bell Burnell discovered the first pulsars — a groundbreaking revelation that on Thursday earned her the $3 million Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, which was previously awarded to Stephen Hawking, among others.
It’s a recognition that many feel is long overdue. Bell Burnell’s male PhD supervisor won a Nobel Prize for the same discovery — in 1974.
Like the stars of “Hidden Figures” and DNA researcher Rosalind Franklin, Bell Burnell’s personal story embodies the challenges faced by women in scientific fields. Born in Northern Ireland in 1943, she had to fight to take science classes after the age of 12. “The assumption was that the boys would do science and the girls would do cookery and needlework,” she told The Washington Post. “It was such a firm assumption that it wasn’t even discussed, so there was no choice in the matter.”
“Wading through miles of chart, I discovered two more of the mysterious signals,” she told the Guardian. “I had, it transpired, discovered the first four examples of an unimagined kind of star — bizarre astral bodies that transmitted radio beams as they spun, which swept through space like the ray of a lighthouse. We called them pulsars.”
As for the $3 million, Bell Burnell, whose Quaker faith preaches living simply, doesn’t plan on keeping any of it.
“I don’t need a Porsche or Ferrari,” she told The Washington Post. “I don’t have an affluent lifestyle.”
Instead, the money will go to creating scholarships for people from underrepresented backgrounds who want to study physics. The funds will be administered by the U.K.’s Institute of Physics, and Bell Burnell is hopeful that having a more diverse array of people entering the field will lead to even more new discoveries.


https://www.marketwatch.com/story/prominent-health-care-investor-phillip-frost-charged-by-sec-with-pump-and-dump-schemes-2018-09-07
https://www .marketwatch. com/story/prominent-health-care-investor-phillip-frost-charged-by-sec-with-pump-and-dump-schemes-2018-09-07
Billionaire and notable health-care investor Phillip Frost was one of 10 individuals and 10 associated firms charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday with participating in extremely profitable, yearslong pump-and-dump schemes.
Frost, Opko and others were accused of making more than $27 million in stock sales proceeds between 2013 and 2018 by organizing large stock buys and promoting the stock — including through misleading articles and manipulative trading — while failing to properly disclose their stakes.
The scheme left public investors “holding virtually worthless stock,” according to the SEC complaint.


https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/03/amid-drug-price-increases-pfizer-ceo-gets-61-pay-raise-to-27-9-million/
Mar. 16, 2018
Pfizer CEO gets 61% pay raise—to $27.9 million—as drug prices continue to climb


https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/i-knew-brett-kavanaugh-during-his-years-republican-operative-don-ncna907391
Sept. 7, 2018
David Brock: I knew Brett Kavanaugh during his years as a Republican operative. Don't let him sit on the Supreme Court.
We were part of a close circle of cynical hard-right operatives being groomed for much bigger things.
A detailed analysis of Kavanaugh's own notes from the Starr Investigation reveals he was cherry-picking random bits of information from the Starr investigation — as well as the multiple previous investigations — attempting vainly to legitimize wild right-wing conspiracies.
Kavanaugh was not a dispassionate finder of fact but rather an engineer of a political smear campaign. And after decades of that, he expects people to believe he's changed his stripes.
But I can promise you that any pretense of simply being a fair arbiter of the constitutionality of any policy regardless of politics is simply a pretense. He made up his mind nearly a generation ago — and, if he's confirmed, he'll have nearly two generations to impose it upon the rest of us.


https://www.newsweek.com/russia-will-interfere-us-midterm-elections-and-sweden-can-show-us-how-respond-1111902
Sept. 7, 2018
Russia Will Interfere in U.S. Midterm Elections and Sweden Can Show Us How to Respond, Experts Say
With the U.S. midterm elections rapidly approaching, some U.S. policymakers are thinking about new ways to combat Russian interference in the elections. Meanwhile, Sweden, which will hold elections this Sunday, is touting itself as an example of how to counter Russian influence in the lead-up to election day.
Officials in Sweden spent years in the run-up to their election looking at ways to address Russian disinformation and election interference. Journalists have been trained to spot fake news and work to counter disinformation actively. Politicians have been trained to spot phishing attacks and other attempts to infiltrate their computer systems. And local officials have been trained to protect voting booths.
However, preparedness has not stopped the barrage of fake news from arriving in the country. On Thursday, Oxford University released a report demonstrating that as many as one in three news stories shared on Twitter about Swedish politics between August 8 and August 17 were fake news stories, many of them aimed at stoking fear of Muslims and immigrants. The report noted that Swedish officials believed Russia was one of the main actors attempting to influence Swedish politics.
“At the People and Defence conference 2018, the Swedish Prime Minister claimed that Russia were responsible for several influence operations. In a larger political context, Russia has a history of being one of the biggest intelligence threats towards Sweden,” the report read.
“Furthermore, the Totalförsvarets Forskningsinstitut [the Swedish Defence Research Agency] recently released a report on interference campaigns which found that automated bots share URLs of known junk news sites like Samhällsnytt and Fria Tider more frequently than regular accounts; and that the majority of automated accounts that have either been suspended or removed by Twitter expresses traditional authoritarian and nationalistic views,” it continued.