Forbes estimates China paid Trump at least $5.4 million while in office, via mysterious Trump Tower lease

Forbes estimates China paid Trump at least $5.4 million while in office, via mysterious Trump Tower lease

Forbes reports: President Donald Trump, who declared “I don’t make money from China” in Thursday night’s presidential debate, has in fact collected millions of dollars from government-owned entities in China since he took office. Forbes estimates that at least $5.4 million has flowed into the president’s business from a lease agreement involving a state-owned bank in Trump Tower. The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China signed a lease for space in 2008, years before the president took office, paying about…

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The Epoch Times’ anti-China, pro-Trump media empire

The Epoch Times’ anti-China, pro-Trump media empire

Kevin Roose reports: For years, The Epoch Times was a small, low-budget newspaper with an anti-China slant that was handed out free on New York street corners. But in 2016 and 2017, the paper made two changes that transformed it into one of the country’s most powerful digital publishers. The changes also paved the way for the publication, which is affiliated with the secretive and relatively obscure Chinese spiritual movement Falun Gong, to become a leading purveyor of right-wing misinformation….

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Inside a refugee camp on America’s doorstep

Inside a refugee camp on America’s doorstep

The New York Times reports: A butter yellow sun rose over the crowded tent camp across the river from Texas and a thick heat baked the rotten debris below, a mixture of broken toys, human waste and uneaten food swarming with flies. Clothing and sheets hung from trees and dried stiff after being drenched and muddied in a hurricane the week before. As residents emerged from the zipper-holes of their canvas homes that morning in August, some trudged with buckets…

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The U.S. is poised to enter into its worst stretch yet of the coronavirus pandemic

The U.S. is poised to enter into its worst stretch yet of the coronavirus pandemic

The Washington Post reports: America is poised to enter the worst stretch ever of the coronavirus pandemic, with cases spiking and the country on the precipice of shattering its daily record for infections in the next few days. The current surge is already considerably more widespread than the waves from last summer and spring. On Thursday, the number of cases topped 70,000 for the first time since July. The unprecedented geographic spread of the current surge makes it especially dangerous,…

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Election experts game out the chaos that could unfold after the last ballot is cast

Election experts game out the chaos that could unfold after the last ballot is cast

Garrett M. Graff writes: North Carolina and Florida, two key bellwethers, both will likely report results relatively quickly on election night itself; early victories for Biden in either or both states will hint that Biden might be the clear winner within a day or so. And while a Trump win in either or both states wouldn’t necessarily foreclose an eventual Biden victory, it would likely mean that the nation would be in for a long period of uncertainty. And the…

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The Trump administration shut down an office dedicated to studying the long-term safety of vaccines

The Trump administration shut down an office dedicated to studying the long-term safety of vaccines

Carl Zimmer reports: As the first coronavirus vaccines arrive in the coming year, government researchers will face a monumental challenge: monitoring the health of hundreds of millions of Americans to ensure the vaccines don’t cause harm. Purely by chance, thousands of vaccinated people will have heart attacks, strokes and other illnesses shortly after the injections. Sorting out whether the vaccines had anything to do with their ailments will be a thorny problem, requiring a vast, coordinated effort by state and…

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You’re not supposed to be able to make sense of the rumors about Biden

You’re not supposed to be able to make sense of the rumors about Biden

Anne Applebaum writes: On Tuesday, Fox News’ Laura Ingraham broke some news: An “investigative journalist” named Matthew Tyrmand had uncovered a cache of 26,000 emails belonging to Hunter Biden’s disgraced business partner Bevan Cooney, who is now in jail. Tyrmand claimed that he had gotten hold of the emails via a person in the same facility as Cooney (a “federal work camp for white-collar infractions,” is how Tyrmand put it). Tyrmand explained that Cooney felt stiffed by Biden, the son…

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Trump campaign spokesperson claims parents of separated children don’t want them back

Trump campaign spokesperson claims parents of separated children don’t want them back

Politico reports: The Trump campaign’s communications director asserted on Friday that the reason some migrant families separated by the administration at the U.S. border have not been reunited is because the parents do not want their children back. Multiple media outlets reported this week that the federal government remains unable to reach the parents of more than 500 children who were separated from their families after crossing the U.S. border, according to recent court filings. Speaking on CNN’s “New Day,”…

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Russia’s clandestine chemical weapons program and the GRU’s Unit 29155

Russia’s clandestine chemical weapons program and the GRU’s Unit 29155

Bellingcat Investigation Team reports: On October 15, 2020, the European Union imposed sanctions on six senior Russian officials and a leading Russian research institute over the alleged use of a nerve agent from the Novichok family in the poisoning of opposition leader Alexey Navalny. Russia dismissed as baseless the EU’s allegations that it had not complied with its obligations, under the convention it ratified in 1997, to discontinue its chemical weapons program. Russian officials said the country had nothing to…

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Homo erectus, not humans, may have invented bone tools at least 800,000 years ago

Homo erectus, not humans, may have invented bone tools at least 800,000 years ago

Science News reports: A type of bone tool generally thought to have been invented by Stone Age humans got its start among hominids that lived hundreds of thousands of years before Homo sapiens evolved, a new study concludes. A set of 52 previously excavated but little-studied animal bones from East Africa’s Olduvai Gorge includes the world’s oldest known barbed bone point, an implement probably crafted by now-extinct Homo erectus at least 800,000 years ago, researchers say. Made from a piece…

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In the calm before the possible storm, it doesn’t look like courts will decide the election

In the calm before the possible storm, it doesn’t look like courts will decide the election

CNN reports: The doomsday scenario of lawyers and judges setting surprise terms for voting or even deciding the election this year has loomed large. Yet that likelihood is diminishing by the day, several elections law experts say, with the terms for voting already essentially set in many states and a calm coming over the courts in pre-Election Day litigation. The focus on courts has been extreme at times this year, especially with President Donald Trump pushing for the confirmation of…

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North Carolina is the center of the political universe as the state’s demographics shift dramatically

North Carolina is the center of the political universe as the state’s demographics shift dramatically

CNN reports: Donald Trump has a math problem in North Carolina. The state the President won by more than 3 percentage points four years ago has continued its gradual political transformation, moving away from the red states to its south and toward its bluer neighbors to the north. The transformation has been propelled by a mix of factors: The state is growing more diverse with Hispanic and Asian immigrants, its cities and suburbs are booming with unbridled growth from northern…

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Five states where the threat of militia activity around the elections is the highest

Five states where the threat of militia activity around the elections is the highest

NPR reports: Five states — Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Oregon — have the highest risk of seeing increased militia activity around the elections: everything from demonstrations to violence. That’s the conclusion of a new report by ACLED, a crisis-mapping project, and the research group MilitiaWatch. They worked together to map out potential hot spots for militia-style activities around the elections. Their report looks at states where militias have had recruitment drives and training, where they have cultivated relationships with…

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Most people arrested in protests aren’t leftist radicals

Most people arrested in protests aren’t leftist radicals

The Associated Press reports: President Donald Trump portrays the hundreds of people arrested nationwide in protests against racial injustice as violent urban left-wing radicals. But an Associated Press review of thousands of pages of court documents tells a different story. Very few of those charged appear to be affiliated with highly organized extremist groups, and many are young suburban adults from the very neighborhoods Trump vows to protect from the violence in his reelection push to win support from the…

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