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How Putin’s agents are infiltrating Germany

How Putin’s agents are infiltrating Germany

Der Spiegel reports: Five months after her sudden disappearance, Maria Adela K. provided a sign of life. She had been trying to hide from herself, she wrote to her friends in an emotional post on Facebook. But now she had to “reveal the truth.” She had cancer, she wrote. Thirty-two of her Facebook friends promptly responded. They showed concern, said they were happy to hear from her and also offered words of encouragement. But shortly after that, K. disappeared again,…

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Gorbachev died shocked and bewildered by Ukraine conflict, says interpreter

Gorbachev died shocked and bewildered by Ukraine conflict, says interpreter

Reuters reports: Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, was shocked and bewildered by the Ukraine conflict in the months before he died and psychologically crushed in recent years by Moscow’s worsening ties with Kyiv, his interpreter said on Thursday. Pavel Palazhchenko, who worked with the late Soviet president for 37 years and was at his side at numerous U.S.-Soviet summits, spoke to Gorbachev a few weeks ago by phone and said he and others had been struck by how traumatised…

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Republicans worry as Miriam Adelson’s big donations dwindle

Republicans worry as Miriam Adelson’s big donations dwindle

Bloomberg reports: Republicans aren’t seeing as many big checks from one of their most generous benefactors, creating a financial hole for the GOP just as Democrats get a fundraising windfall tied to abortion. Miriam Adelson along with her late husband Sheldon Adelson were the party’s biggest donors over the past decade. But her only major contribution in the current election cycle is the $5 million she donated in July to the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC that backs House…

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Ginni Thomas worked harder to overturn the election than was previously known

Ginni Thomas worked harder to overturn the election than was previously known

The Associated Press reports: The wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas contacted at least two Wisconsin state lawmakers, including the chair of the Senate elections committee, urging them to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 election win in the tightly contested state, emails obtained Thursday by The Associated Press show. Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, a conservative activist, also had sent messages to more than two dozen lawmakers in Arizona. In her communications with lawmakers in both states, Thomas urged Republicans…

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What is Fog Data Science? Why is this surveillance company so dangerous?

What is Fog Data Science? Why is this surveillance company so dangerous?

Electronic Frontier Foundation reports: An EFF investigation of public records acquired from dozens of state and local law enforcement agencies has uncovered a widely-used mass surveillance technology. Americans are accustomed to hearing about how the National Security Agency (NSA), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and even the domestically-focused Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have illegally swept up massive amounts of data on people living in the United States—but what about the state and local police? Fog Data Science LLC, a…

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The pandemic erased two decades of progress in math and reading

The pandemic erased two decades of progress in math and reading

The New York Times reports: National test results released on Thursday showed in stark terms the pandemic’s devastating effects on American schoolchildren, with the performance of 9-year-olds in math and reading dropping to the levels from two decades ago. This year, for the first time since the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests began tracking student achievement in the 1970s, 9-year-olds lost ground in math, and scores in reading fell by the largest margin in more than 30 years. The…

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Ravil Maganov is the eighth Russian oil executive to die under mysterious circumstances since war began

Ravil Maganov is the eighth Russian oil executive to die under mysterious circumstances since war began

Forbes reports: Ravil Maganov, the chairman of Russia’s biggest private oil company, Lukoil, died after falling through the window of a hospital in Moscow, Russian media reported on Thursday, a death which comes under mysterious circumstances just months after his company emerged as a rare high profile voice of dissent against the invasion of Ukraine. According to the Russian news agency Interfax, Maganov died from his injuries after falling out of the window of the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow….

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Insiders reveal how Erdogan controls Turkey’s newsrooms

Insiders reveal how Erdogan controls Turkey’s newsrooms

Reuters reports: When President Tayyip Erdogan’s son-in-law suddenly quit as finance minister in late 2020, four staff in Turkey’s leading newsrooms said they received a clear direction from their managers: don’t report this until the government says so. The resignation of Berat Albayrak, which he announced in a Sunday evening Instagram post, was reported by international and independent Turkish news outlets. The lira soared on hopes of a new direction for the beleaguered economy. But for more than 24 hours,…

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An anthropologist schooled in spiritual healing offers wisdom for troubled times

An anthropologist schooled in spiritual healing offers wisdom for troubled times

Anna Badkhen writes: Once upon a time, in a thatched spirit hut in the Nigerien village of Tillaberi, the Songhay master sorcerer Adamu Jenitongo told the American anthropologist Paul Stoller that the bush was angry. “People who speak with two mouths and feel with two hearts anger the spirits of the bush,” Adamu Jenitongo said. “When the bush is angry there is not enough rain. When the bush is angry there is too much rain. When the bush is angry…

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Are Trump’s passports the FBI’s smoking gun?

Are Trump’s passports the FBI’s smoking gun?

Barbara McQuade writes: When the FBI searched former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence earlier this month, they didn’t find a smoking gun, but they did find some smoldering passports. On August 8, agents removed from Trump’s home 33 boxes of sensitive government documents, including more than 100 records classified at the highest levels. In a 36-page brief responding to Trump’s motion to appoint a special master to review the material seized by the FBI, the Justice Department explained that three…

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Trump’s lawyers may become witnesses or targets in documents investigation

Trump’s lawyers may become witnesses or targets in documents investigation

The New York Times reports: Two lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump are likely to become witnesses or targets in the investigation into how he hoarded documents marked as classified at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate — and secretly held onto some even after the lawyers claimed all sensitive materials had been returned, legal specialists said. The lawyers, M. Evan Corcoran and Christina Bobb, handled Mr. Trump’s interactions with the government over a subpoena in May seeking additional material marked…

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DOJ likely to wait past midterms to reveal any charges against Trump as advisers urge him to delay 2024 decision

DOJ likely to wait past midterms to reveal any charges against Trump as advisers urge him to delay 2024 decision

Bloomberg reports: Federal prosecutors are likely to wait until after the November election to announce any charges against Donald Trump, if they determine he broke laws, according to people familiar. The unprecedented prospect of bringing charges against a former US president is creating intense scrutiny of the Justice Department in the aftermath of its search of his home at Mar-a-Lago. A separate DOJ probe is focused on his effort to overturn the 2020 election, which he lost to President Joe…

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Gorbachev never realized what he set in motion

Gorbachev never realized what he set in motion

Anne Applebaum writes: The one time I saw Mikhail Gorbachev in public was on November 9, 2014. I can pin the day down because it was the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. We were in a very large, very crowded Berlin reception room, and he was sitting at a cocktail table, looking rather lost. Gorbachev had been invited to this event as a trophy, a living, breathing souvenir of the 1980s. He was not expected to…

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U.S. war-gamed with Ukraine ahead of counteroffensive and encouraged more limited mission

U.S. war-gamed with Ukraine ahead of counteroffensive and encouraged more limited mission

CNN reports: In the buildup to the current Ukrainian counteroffensive, the US urged Kyiv to keep the operation limited in both its objectives and its geography to avoid getting overextended and bogged down on multiple fronts, multiple US and western officials and Ukrainian sources tell CNN. Those discussions involved engaging in “war-gaming” with Kyiv, the sources said — analytical exercises that were intended to help the Ukrainian forces understand what force levels they would need to muster to be successful…

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