It's Live on the HomePage Now: Andy Borowitz | Biden Leading Trump Among Voters Who Favor Being Alive
Manhattan DA Cites Reports of "Protracted Criminal Conduct" at Trump Organization in Bid for Records In the filing with the federal district court in New York City, where the dispute between Mr. Trump and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance was sent following a Supreme Court ruling last month, New York prosecutors suggested the grand jury investigation into Mr. Trump and his business dealings extends beyond hush-money payments made to an adult film actress and model before the 2016 presidential election. The two women claim that they had affairs with Mr. Trump more than a decade ago, which he denies. In rebutting an argument from Mr. Trump that the subpoena to Mazars USA, his longtime accounting firm, is too broad, prosecutors with the district attorney's office said it "rests on the false premise" that the probe is limited to the payments funneled through Michael Cohen, Mr. Trump's former personal attorney, to Stormy Daniels, the actress, and Karen McDougal, the model. Mr. Trump, they wrote, "goes so far as to declare that these payments — and these payments alone — are what the 'grand jury claims to be investigating,' and thus the Mazars subpoena is overbroad because it seeks documents dating back to 2011. But this Court is already aware that this assertion is fatally undermined by undisputed information in the public record." The prosecutors go on to say that public reporting shows the district attorney's office "had a valid basis for requesting each category and timeframe of document listed in the Mazars subpoena." "As this reporting makes clear, at the time the Mazars subpoena was issued, there were public allegations of criminal activity at [Trump's] New York County-based Trump Organization dating back over a decade," the New York prosecutors wrote. In a footnote, Vance's lawyers cited a March 2019 article in the Washington Post that detailed alleged efforts by Mr. Trump to inflate his net worth to financial institutions, as well as a February 2019 report in the Wall Street Journal about the $130,000 payment to Daniels. The filing from New York prosecutors also cited a third article from the Washington Post, published in October 2018, about the president's expansion of his real estate empire. "This possible criminal activity occurred within the applicable statutes of limitations, particularly if the transactions involved a continuing pattern of conduct," the New York prosecutors said, adding that the reports detail "possibly extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization." Vance's attorneys are urging the court to dismiss the president's amended lawsuit challenging the grand jury subpoena for eight years of his accounting and personal records. Mr. Trump's "recycled claims rest on unsupported and speculative assertions — not the sort of factual allegations that can overcome the legal presumptions of regularity," the prosecutors wrote. The Supreme Court sent the dispute between Mr. Trump and Vance back to the lower court last month in a ruling that rejected the president's claim of "absolute immunity" from state criminal subpoenas. In its amended lawsuit, the president's lawyers again claim that the subpoena to Mazars was issued in bad faith and is overbroad.
Worries About 2020 Census' Accuracy Grow With Cut Schedule
'I Was Asked if I Stole My Car': Black Diplomats Describe Harassment at US Borders
The US Navy Is Investigating a Video Showing Military Dogs Attacking a Man in a Colin Kaepernick Jersey During a Demonstration
Videos of the event were posted by an Instagram user in January 2019, but they received widespread attention on social media after filmmaker Billy Corben shared them on his Twitter account on Sunday. The videos appeared to show several military dogs attacking a "target" wearing a Kaepernick jersey during the demonstration at the museum in Fort Pierce. In a statement on Twitter, the US Naval Special Warfare Command said the agency first became aware on Sunday of the video showing a "military working dog demonstration" held at the National Navy SEAL Museum last year. In the demonstration, the "target" is wearing Kaepernick's jersey, the agency confirmed. The US Navy SEALs said there were "no active duty Navy personnel or equipment" involved with "this independent organization's event." "The inherent message of this video is completely inconsistent with the values and ethos of Naval Special Warfare and the US Navy," the statement said. "We are investigating the matter fully." The National Navy SEAL Museum did not respond to a request for comment. Kaepernick, who is currently a free agent, played six seasons for the San Francisco 49ers before he began taking a knee during the national anthem to protest systemic police brutality and racial inequality in the US. His protest has encouraged many athletes in the US and across the world to do the same and has also prompted backlash from NFL owners, sports fans, and President Donald Trump. Terry Merlo, who originally posted the videos on his Instagram account on Jan. 27, 2019, wrote in the caption: "Colin Kaepernick stand in attacked by 5 Navy SEAL attack dogs at fundraiser for the Navy SEAL Museum in Ft Pierce. Awesome! Stand for the National Anthem!" Merlo did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In the video, a man yells out to the crowd, "You guys want to see Josh get bit again?" Several dogs are then released one by one to "target" the man identified as Josh, who is wearing Kaepernick's jersey. Another video posted by Merlo and reposted by Corben on Twitter shows the target on the ground as a crowd of onlookers cheer. |
The Bicentenario-Los Pilares dam across the Mayo River in Sonora, Mexico, in a photograph from the local council. (photo: San Bernardo Álamos council)
Mexican Dam Poised to Displace Living and Flood Ancestors' Graves
Analy Nuno, Guardian UK
Nuno writes: "High in the Sierra de Alamos of Mexico's northern Sonora state, towering pillars of rock loom above thermal springs where for thousands of years, the indigenous Guarijío people would gather to commune with their ancestors."
Experts say indigenous group has been pressured and cheated into surrendering its land
Now the springs – and the land around them – have been submerged beneath rising waters trapped behind an enormous dam across the Mayo River. The 25-storey Bicentenario-Los Pilares barrier threatens to displace the living, and leave the graves of their forefathers deep under water.
“The government are leaving us with nothing,” said Wilfrido, a member of the Guarijío community in the village of Macarahui, and the leader of one of 53 families who are resisting the dam. “They’re not taking us into account. They say that negotiations should be government-to-government – but they’re not talking to our traditional leader.”
The Sonora state government first presented the plan in 2011: an ambitious project that would involve building a 78-meter-high barrier and would flood nine villages.
Local residents say that the government and other supporters of the project pressured them to hand over their lands, creating fierce divisions among the 3,000-strong Guarijío community. Some have supported the dam, but the group’s traditional leaders remain opposed to the project.
Despite the opposition, work began at the site in 2013, with an initial investment of some US$67m. The Guarijíos launched a legal attempt to block the project, arguing that their collective rights had been violated and that the dam threatened the group’s survival, but construction continued.
Opponents of the dam had hoped that the election of a leftwing president could change things: when Andrés Manuel López Obrador took power in December 2018, 68 indigenous groups awarded him a ceremonial staff, in an unprecedented vote of confidence in the leader.
But the president, popularly known as Amlo, has thrown his support behind a string of controversial megaprojects on or near indigenous land, including highways, reservoirs, mining projects, oil refineries, housing projects and a 1,460km “Mayan Train” railway which critics say threatens unique jungle ecosystems in southern Mexico.
After a six-year legal fight, opponents of the dam won a court ruling in their favour in February 2019, but three months later, Amlo declared that federal funding would be released in order to finish the dam “as soon as possible”.
In October, Amlo announced a consultation process with the Guajiríos – but also released 600m pesos of funding for the project and said the government would approve the necessary licenses to complete it.
Speaking at an event titled Dialogues with the Indigenous Peoples, Amlo said: “This will all depend on you, the Guarijíos, because nothing will be imposed,” before quoting Mexico’s only indigenous president, Benito Juárez: “Nothing by force, all by reason and law.”
But the only Guajiríos invited to the event were those who already supported the project; opponents of the project were left protesting outside.
“The whole process has been riddled with irregularities,” said the anthropologist Armando Haro, an advisor to the Guarijíos since 2011. “The Guarijíos have been pressured and cheated into surrendering their land rights and signing sales contracts through promises which have not been kept.”
Speaking by telephone from the village of Macarahui, Wilfrido, 49, a farmer with four children, said local residents were under pressure not to speak out against the project. “We’ve had threats; they say they’re going to run us out of here. People are scared to stay here.”
Some 3,000 Guarajíos live in a handful of remote villages scattered across the Sierra Madre Occidental. They have survived conquest, drought, hunger, government neglect and incursions by drug traffickers who cultivate marijuana in the deep valleys of the mountain range.
But the dam is perhaps the greatest challenge they have faced so far.
“We want the president to listen to our traditional governors – to hear what state this megaproject will leave us in,” said Wilfrido. “If they set out to destroy us, they’re already succeeding. They’re destroying our land, our culture, our people.”
As the tribe waited for a response from the government, work on the dam continued, and the floodgates on the dam were closed in early July. On Thursday, Amlo will head to Sonora, where first he will officially apologize to the indigenous Yaqui people who were subjected to a genocide in the 19th century – and then to officially inaugurate the Bicentenario-Los Pilares dam.
The rising water has already cut off the Guajiríos’ route to their herds of cattle and nearby roads.
But alongside farmland and homes, the Guarijíos history and heritage also faces obliteration: pre-Columbian petroglyphs, ceremonial sites and a swathe of riverside territory rich in medicinal plants will all be lost beneath the rising waters.
“Our holy places have already been flooded,” said Wilfrido. “Our village is dying, our culture is dying – and our hope is dying.”
A whale shark swims in the Egyptian Red Sea. (photo: Derek Keats/Wikimedia Commons)
Sharks Are Widely Misunderstood
Gavin Naylor, The Conversation
Excerpt: "Sharks elicit outsized fear, even though the risk of a shark bite is infinitesimally small. As a marine biologist and director of the Florida Program for Shark Research, I oversee the International Shark Attack File - a global record of reported shark bites that has been maintained continuously since 1958."
We are careful to emphasize how rare shark bites are: You are 30 times more likely to be struck by lightning than be bitten by a shark. You are more likely to die while taking a selfie, or be bitten by a New Yorker. In anticipation of the anxiety that's typically generated by the Discovery Channel's Shark Week programming, here are a few things about sharks that are often overlooked.
A Big, Diverse Family
Not all sharks are the same. Only a dozen or so of the roughly 520 shark species pose any risk to people. Even the three species that account for almost all shark bite fatalities – the white shark (Carcharodon carcharias), tiger shark (Galeocerdo cuvier) and bull shark (Carcharhinus leucas) – are behaviorally and evolutionarily very different from one another.
The tiger shark and bull shark are genetically as different from each other as a dog is from a rabbit. And both of these species are about as different from a white shark as a dog is from a kangaroo. The evolutionary lineages leading to the two groups split 170 million years ago, during the age of dinosaurs and before the origin of birds, and 110 million years before the origin of primates.
Yet many people assume all sharks are alike and equally likely to bite humans. Consider the term "shark attack," which is scientifically equivalent to "mammal attack." Nobody would equate dog bites with hamster bites, but this is exactly what we do when it comes to sharks.
So, when a reporter calls me about a fatality caused by a white shark off Cape Cod and asks my advice for beachgoers in North Carolina, it's essentially like asking, "A man was killed by a dog on Cape Cod. What precautions should people take when dealing with kangaroos in North Carolina?"
Know Your Species
Understanding local species' behavior and life habits is one of the best ways to stay safe. For example, almost all shark bites that occur off Cape Cod are by white sharks, which are a large, primarily cold-water species that spend most of their time in isolation feeding on fishes. But they also aggregate near seal colonies that provide a reliable food source at certain times of the year.
Shark bites in the Carolinas are by warm-water species like bull sharks, tiger sharks and blacktips (Carcharhinus limbatus). Each species is associated with particular habitats and dietary preferences.
Blacktips, which we suspect are responsible for most relatively minor bites on humans in the southeastern United States, feed on schooling bait fishes like menhaden. In contrast, bull sharks are equally at home in fresh water and salt water, and are often found near estuaries. Their bites are more severe than those of blacktips, as they are larger, more powerful, bolder and more tenacious. Several fatalities have been ascribed to bull sharks.
Tiger sharks are also large, and are responsible for a significant fraction of fatalities, particularly off the coast of volcanic islands like Hawaii and Reunion. They are tropical animals that often venture into shallow water frequented by swimmers and surfers.
Humans Are Not Targets
Sharks do not "hunt" humans. Data from the International Shark Attack File compiled over the past 60 years show a tight association between shark bites and the number of people in the water. In other words, shark bites are a simple function of the probability of encountering a shark.
This underscores the fact that shark bites are almost always cases of mistaken identity. If sharks actively hunted people, there would be many more bites, since humans make very easy targets when they swim in sharks' natural habitats.
Local conditions can also affect the risk of an attack. Encounters are more likely when sharks venture closer to shore, into areas where people are swimming. They may do this because they are following bait fishes or seals upon which they prey.
This means we can use environmental variables such as temperature, tide or weather conditions to better predict movement of bait fish toward the shoreline, which in turn will predict the presence of sharks. Over the next few years, the Florida Program for Shark Research will work with colleagues at other universities to monitor onshore and offshore movements of tagged sharks and their association with environmental variables so that we can improve our understanding of what conditions bring sharks close to shore.
More to Know
There still is much to learn about sharks, especially the 500 or so species that have never been implicated in a bite on humans. One example is the tiny deep sea pocket shark, which has a strange pouch behind its pectoral fins.
Only two specimens of this type of shark have ever been caught – one off the coast of Chile 30 years ago, and another more recently in the Gulf of Mexico. We're not sure about the function of the pouch, but suspect it stores luminous fluid that is released to distract would-be predators – much as its close relative, the tail light shark, releases luminous fluid from a gland on its underside near its vent.
Sharks range in form from the bizarre goblin shark (Mitsukurina owstoni), most commonly encountered in Japan, to the gentle filter-feeding whale shark (Rhincodon typus). Although whale sharks are the largest fishes in the world, we have yet to locate their nursery grounds, which are likely teeming with thousands of foot-long pups. Some deepwater sharks are primarily known from submersibles, such as the giant sixgill shark, which feeds mainly on carrion but probably also preys on other animals in the deep sea.
Sharks seem familiar to almost all of us, but we know precious little about them. Our current understanding of their biology barely scratches the surface. The little we do know suggests they are profoundly different from other vertebrate animals. They've had 400 million years of independent evolution to adapt to their environments, and it's reasonable to expect they may be hiding more than a few tricks up their gills.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.