Southeast Texas man sentenced to more than 12 years in prison for distributing, possessing child pornography

HOUSTON – A 30-year-old Southeast Texas man who posted hundreds of images depicting child pornography on two separate public blogs in 2017 and 2018 was sentenced Tuesday to more than 12 years in federal prison.

This investigation was conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in Houston, Texas, in cooperation with the Houston Metro Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.

Marcus Ryan Howell, a resident of Lake Jackson, Texas, was sentenced Oct. 13 in the Southern District of Texas to 151 months in federal prison for two counts of distribution of child pornography and one count of possession of child pornography. Howell pleaded guilty to the charges on March 12.

Following his prison term, Howell will be required to serve 10 years on supervised release, during which time he will have to comply with numerous conditions that restrict his access to children and the internet. Howell will also be required to register as a sex offender.

In December 2017, authorities received information that a social media user was posting child exploitation material on a public blog. They later learned of a second blog with a different username which also contained child pornography. Law enforcement traced both blogs to an IP address registered to Howell’s Lake Jackson address.

They executed a search warrant and seized an HP desktop computer belonging to Howell, which was found to contain multiple images and videos of child pornography. Approximately 20 of the videos were longer than five minutes in length, the longest of which lasted nearly 11 minutes.

Howell was ultimately held responsible for a total of 34 GIFs, 354 videos and 1,503 photos depicting child pornography.

Howell will remain in custody pending transfer to a U.S. Bureau of Prisons facility to be determined in the near future.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Sherri Zack and Stephanie Bauman prosecuted the case.

https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/southeast-texas-man-sentenced-more-12-years-prison-distributing-possessing-child

Facebook Reduces Reach of Hunter Biden Report Before Fact-Checking It

A Facebook communications director said Wednesday that the platform will be limiting the distribution of a New York Post report on Hunter Biden before it is fact checked.

"While I will intentionally not link to the New York Post, I want be clear [sic] that this story is eligible to be fact checked by Facebook's third-party fact checking partners," Andy Stone tweeted. "In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform."

Stone defended Facebook reducing the article's reach by saying it is part of the company's standard operating procedure. Facebook policy states that "if we have signals that a piece of content is false, we temporarily reduce its distribution pending review by a third-party fact-checker."

Facebook did not specify what its "signals" are in this case, but many liberal Twitter users have cast doubt on the article's veracity.

Stone is a former Democratic operative who worked for a major Democratic Super PAC, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Rep. Jerry McNerney (D., Calif.), and former Democratic senator Barbara Boxer.

The Post story detailed how Hunter Biden introduced his father Joe Biden, then the vice president, to an executive from a Ukrainian energy firm. The story contradicts the Democratic presidential nominee's longstanding claim that he never discussed his son's business in Ukraine with him.

A Senate committee told the Post that it is investigating the documents and hard drive cited in the article.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) also penned a letter to Facebook asking for more information about how the company came to this conclusion, and he posted the letter on Twitter Wednesday afternoon.

https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/facebook-reduces-reach-of-hunter-biden-report-before-fact-checking-it/

S.C. Democrat Who Railed Against Lobbying Lobbied for Posh Florida Yacht Club

Joe Cunningham now says lobbyists have had a 'stranglehold over American politics'

Democratic congressman Joe Cunningham (S.C.), who has railed against lobbyists for placing a "stranglehold over American politics," lobbied on behalf of a posh Florida yacht club to thwart local environmentalists.

Cunningham joined Florida-based engineering consulting firm Turrell, Hall & Associates in May 2005, according to his LinkedIn profile. The Democrat quickly registered as a lobbyist in Collier County on May 26, 2005, documents reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon show. Roughly two years later, Cunningham appeared before the Marco Island City Council to represent Marco Island Yacht Club, which planned to construct two large boat docks in the Marco River.

The project was opposed by then-city planner Bryan Milk, who argued that the docks could "put too much strain on the area's manatee population" and would create "too imposing a presence on both the Marco River and the Chestnut Waterway," according to the Naples Daily News. Cunningham pushed back, arguing that the docks "would not be too cumbersome."

City councilmembers eventually approved the proposal in March 2008, with the Daily News calling the decision "controversial." The Marco Island City Clerk's Office told the Free Beacon that it does not require lobbyists to register with the city, meaning Cunningham did not officially disclose his council lobbying activities on behalf of the yacht club. He did, however, register as a lobbyist for the yacht club with Collier County in September 2008 as he worked to move the project forward at the county level, local filings and internal emails obtained by the Free Beacon show.

Cunningham did not respond to a request for comment. Cunningham, who is considered one of the more vulnerable House Democrats in the country, routinely attacked lobbyists during his 2018 congressional campaign against Republican Katie Arrington. The Democrat pledged to be "accountable to you and you alone" in an October 2018 Facebook post, saying that "lobbyists and corporations have had a stranglehold over American politics for far too long."

Cunningham has also opposed similar projects for environmental reasons as a federal lawmaker. When a county in his district rejected a plan to build a resort on Bay Point Island, citing a "sensitive barrier island environment," the South Carolina Democrat celebrated the decision and promised to "continue to fight to preserve this beautiful and sacred plot of land."

Cunningham was removed from Turrell, Hall & Associates's lobbyist list in April 2010, three months after his LinkedIn profile says he left the consulting firm.

https://freebeacon.com/2020-election/s-c-democrat-who-railed-against-lobbying-lobbied-for-posh-florida-yacht-club/

73. ROGER STONE, SEXUAL COMPROMISE, DRUG TRAFFICKING, GAY FOR PAY - SHADOW GATE PART 1 OF 4

THESE PEOPLE ARE SICK

It's Begun: Media Start Predicting a Biden 'Landslide' – Just Like Four Years Ago

Want to have some fun? Go to news aggregator Memeorandum.com and get into the Wayback Machine for this date in 2016. Strangely, many of the headlines look exactly like headlines from today.

Inside Donald Trump’s Total Meltdown

Ryan sounds alarm on Trump

Michelle Obama calls on women to rise up against Trump

Donald Trump’s Attacks on the Rights of Minority Voters

CPJ chairman says Trump is threat to press freedom

Poll: Clinton Ahead in North Carolina; Virtual Tie in Ohio

It’s amazing. And the media are oblivious to the fact that they are repeating history, almost word for word.

That’s not to say the election won’t have a different outcome. We’re a different nation than we were four years ago. “Time brings all things to pass,” Aeschylus said, and the past four years have put America through the wringer. We’ve seen so much, been outraged so often by the actions of the radical left that there are few surprises anymore. We’ve developed a bad case of “outrage fatigue” and no matter who wins the presidency, the only certainty is continued upheaval.

That said, the left and media are, if nothing else, predictable. It was about this time four years ago when the first suggestions of a Hillary Clinton “landslide” crept into the national conversation on the election. So it’s not surprising that history should repeat itself.

“Biden Landslide Creeps Into View” is the headline du jour in The Hill and despite the usual caveats, it’s started the media drumbeat for Trump’s doom.

No challenger to an incumbent president since Bill Clinton almost 30 years ago has been in such a strong position as Biden with such a short period of time until Election Day.

Still, even Democrats are reluctant to talk out loud about a Biden landslide for fear of jinxing a monumental election or encouraging complacency. Many pundits are also hedging their bets, mindful of the 2016 experience.

It’s not hard to “encourage complacency” when people are more enthusiastic about what they had for breakfast than they are about seeing Joe Biden as president.

But the Trump team members are laughing behind their hands. They’ve seen it all before.

Trump aide Corey Lewandowski — the president’s first campaign manager in the 2016 cycle, now back on board for the 2020 effort — contended that the polls that year and the media’s coverage of them had amounted to “enormous misinformation.”

In a conference call with reporters Monday morning, Lewandowski said, “Our internal numbers — and we are very confident of where our numbers are — continue to show a very different story” from the public polls.

In response, the media try to hedge and predict a Biden landslide while acknowledging their 2016 fiasco.

“Neither of the outcomes that looks a bit of a reach right now is out of the question,” said Steve Kornacki, national political correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC. “We are always fighting the last war where everybody remembers the surprise of 2016. But if you apply that and think — as I think we should — that Trump could win this thing, you have to entertain the other possibility: that Joe Biden could win an emphatic victory.”

This election will not be decided on the night of November 3. It’s going to be very close in key battleground states where Trump eked out razor-thin victories, and the laborious chore of counting millions of absentee ballots by hand guarantees it will be many days after the election before we can start fighting over who “really” won.

Despite the avalanche of hatred, hysteria, and vitriol directed at Donald Trump, his family, his friends, and probably his dog, many voters have been unmoved by the assault on him by the left-wing media. It says something remarkable about the media’s lack of credibility.

Maybe the fact that they haven’t gotten the word that this is 2020, and not 2016, has something to do with that.

https://pjmedia.com/uncategorized/rick-moran/2020/10/13/its-begun-media-begin-predicting-a-biden-landslide-just-like-four-years-ago-n1045519

Netanyahu won’t reveal secret parts of UAE deal in Knesset until after MKs vote

Moshe Ya’alon accused Netanyahu of deliberately hiding portions of the agreement from the Knesset.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has bowed to requests to appear before the Knesset to explain classified portions of the normalization agreement with the United Arab Emirates – but not before Thursday, when the Knesset plenum votes to approve it.

But Netanyahu will present whatever secret parts there may be in the deal only next week to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee’s subcommittee on intelligence and secret services, committee sources said, confirming a report by KAN Radio.

Since before the deal was signed in Washington, committee chairman Zvi Hauser (Derech Eretz) has called on Netanyahu and Knesset Speaker Yariv Levin to present the agreement in full to his panel. After Levin wrote to Hauser last week and turned down the request, Hauser asked that Netanyahu at least discuss the deal with the committee members.

The subcommittee comprises five members: Hauser, former defense minister Moshe Ya’alon (Yesh Atid-Telem), Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beytenu) and Likud MKs Gideon Sa’ar and Avi Dichter.

When Netanyahu went to Washington last month to sign the deal, Ya’alon posted a video on social media in which he said Netanyahu’s refusal to present the deal to the security cabinet or the Knesset was the way leaders behave in a dictatorship, not a democracy.

“Immediately upon the official announcement of a peace agreement with the UAE and reports that the deal had a secret appendix about advanced weaponry that could have a critical impact on Israel’s strategic military advantage in the region, I demanded that it be brought for approval by the legislative branch,” Ya’alon told The Jerusalem Post. “My request was denied, time has passed and the deal was signed.”

Ya’alon accused Netanyahu of deliberately hiding portions of the agreement from the Knesset and the security cabinet and making a mockery of parliament.

“How can you bring to a vote in the Knesset plenum a peace agreement, without enabling the members of Knesset to know its contents?” Ya’alon said. “The Knesset is not a rubber stamp. The security of Israel is not Netanyahu’s private business.”

Liberman added that Netanyahu was “taking an improper step that cancels the role of the Knesset as the body that oversees the work of the government.”

The Likud’s representatives on the subcommittee declined to comment.

https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/netanyahu-wont-reveal-secret-parts-of-uae-deal-in-knesset-until-after-mks-vote-645672

$10.6 Billion Hedge Fund Closing After Massive "Value" Losses

After keeping up neck and neck with "growth" for much of the first half of the past decade, the past five years have been nothing short of a living hell for value investors, underperforming the recent and still ongoing surge in "growth" by more than 50%.

And nowhere has the pain been more acute than for pureplay quant funds who had the misfortune of overallocating to the value factor, which however as shown above, has generated virtually any alpha for the past four years. In retrospect, it is surprising that more funds didn't shutter amid an exodus of disgusted investors who failed to grasp that in a centrally-planned world, value strategies - which rely on properly functioning markets and arbitrage neither of which exists in manipulated, planned markets - no longer work.

As such it is certainly not surprising that one prominent quant fund, the $10.6 billion Philadelphia-based AJO Partners (which bizarrely even names all of its 51 clients), will shutter after suffering "steep losses from its value strategy" according to Bloomberg. In a letter from founder Ted Aronson, the firm announced it would stop trading on Nov 30, putting the 36-year-old firm out to pasture.

"We still believe there is a future for value investing; sadly, the future is unlikely to arrive fast enough — for us," wrote Aronson who plans to retire.

"The better part of valor is to return the assets and call it a day," Aronson added, "Our clients are exclusively large sophisticated institutional clients, so they have superior alternatives. C’est la vie."

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/106-billion-hedge-fund-closing-after-massive-value-losses

Coronavirus Deception: Defying Logic

Logic 101:

The transitive property of equality in mathematics tells us that if a=b, b=c, then it follows that a=c.

The transitive property of human nature tells us that while mathematics does not lie, mathematicians do.

Moral of the story? Prove your foundations FIRST and FOREMOST before engaging the conclusion.

Do not agree to “A = C” when B does not equal C.

Become a Natural Blaze Patron and Support Health Freedom HERE.

In law, this is referred to as “fruit of the poisonous tree,” or illegally obtained evidence.

In politics, it is referred to as the Hegelian Dialectic: Problem, Reaction. Solution.

In justice, it is referred to as fraud.

Illegal Evidence Built Foundation For COVID

Let’s apply this principle to COVID/Coronavirus:

Where A = COVID comes from Coronavirus.

And B = Coronavirus is contagious and deadly.

And C = If COVID is deadly, then government must implement mask and vaccine mandates, enforce social distancing, take away the freedom to assemble, abolish parental rights, lockdown cities and countries, deploy military in the streets, limit customers to restaurants and other small businesses?

However, what if B cannot be proven because the virus named SARS-CoV-2 has not been isolated? Where is the foundation for deliberate world changes?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says the virus is not available. The July 13, 2020 CDC document titled, “CDC 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel” [For Emergency Use Only] section titled, “Performance Characteristics,” p. 39 reads:

Since no quantified virus isolates of the 2019-nCoV are currently available, assays [diagnostic tests] designed for detection of the 2019-nCoV RNA were tested with characterized stocks of in vitro transcribed full length RNA.

The CDC has no measurable amount of the virus, because Coronavirus is “unavailable.” The virus is not found.

Virus Never Isolated

If the CDC cannot produce a virus because it cannot isolate a virus, then it follows that the virus does not exist. If the virus does not exist, it cannot be tested. If there is no virus, and no valid test, then there is no reason for mandates and restrictions that remain illegal under the law.

A virus no-show.

The same logic holds true for HIV and Measles viruses.

https://www.naturalblaze.com/2020/10/coronavirus-deception-defying-logic.html

Another COVID vaccine using aborted baby cell line pauses trials after participant’s ‘unexplained illness’

This is the second time that trials for a coronavirus vaccine using a cell line developed from tissue from an aborted baby have been halted due to a serious medical concern.

NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ, October 14, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — Clinical trials for one of the leading potential coronavirus vaccines, which uses cell lines from an aborted baby, have been temporarily paused due to a serious medical complication in one of its participants.

Johnson & Johnson (J&J) released a statement on behalf of their pharmaceutical division Janssen Monday announcing they “have temporarily paused further dosing in all our COVID-19 vaccine candidate clinical trials” due to the development of an “unexplained illness” in one individual.

This pause effects all trials of the J&J vaccine including Janssen's large-scale Phase 3 clinical trial which began on September 22 and anticipates the enrollment of 60,000 volunteers and 215 research sites.

Though the specific participant’s illness has not been released, it is being evaluated by an “independent Data Safety Monitoring Board” as well as the corporation’s “internal clinical and safety physicians.”

The J&J statement insists that such adverse events “are an expected part of any clinical study, especially large studies” and they have “prespecified guidelines” which provide protocols for pausing such trials when they face a “serious adverse event.”

However, the halting of these clinical trials occurs with a background of concerns raised among experts regarding the potential risks of rushing coronavirus vaccines to the end user in a matter of months, a process which would normally require years to achieve.

Due to the tight timelines required by the Trump Administration’s Operation Warp Speed, the Food and Drug Administration has permitted these potential vaccines to be directly tested on humans without first completing the necessary animal testing to ensure safety and efficacy.

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/another-covid-vaccine-using-aborted-baby-cell-line-pauses-trials-after-participants-unexplained-illness?utm_source=featured&utm_campaign=standard

Turkey Deployed Large Armored Force In Syria’s Greater Idlib

On October 14, the Turkish Armed Forces deployed a large armored unit in the northwestern Syrian region of Greater Idlib.

The unit, that consists from dozens of M60 Sabra MK II battle tanks and T-155 Fırtına howitzers, took position near the town of Maratah in the southwestern countryside of Idlib, where Turkish forces maintain several positions.

A commander in the Syrian National Army told Jesr Press that the deployment of Turkish reinforcement is a protective measure.

“The Russians usually initiate military operations in the winter. As a matter of being prepared for any eventuality, we, with our Turkish allies, are taking all kinds of preventive measures,” the commander, whose name was not mentioned, said.

Greater Idlib appears to be heading to a new escalation. Earlier today, a series of Russian airstrikes wiped out several training camps and headquarters of al-Qaeda-affiliated Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, which control the region.

The Turkish military has a large, heavily-armed force deployed in more than 60 fortified posts throughout Greater Idlib. Air-defense systems were also installed there.

Any new ground operation by the Syrian Arab Army and its allies in Greater Idlib will likely lead to a large confrontation with Turkey, which is yet to implement the March 5 agreement.

https://southfront.org/turkey-deployed-large-armored-force-in-syrias-greater-idlib-video/

Taliban Attack Leaves At Least 16 Dead Afghan Security Forces In Baghlan Province

On October 14th, clashes between Taliban and Afghan security forces left at least 16 dead and dozens wounded on the side of the Afghan government.

This was the result of a Taliban attack in the Baghlan province, the clashes were still reportedly on-going as of midday in the Gozargah-e-Noor district in the province.

The clashes took place near the police headquarters.

Elsewhere, in in western Herat and eastern Laghman provinces, at least five civilians were killed and 17 others including a policeman were wounded in separate blasts.

Three civilians were killed and seven others including a policeman were wounded in a blast targeting a police vehicle in Mehtarlam city.

Two civilians were killed and ten others were wounded after a civilian vehicle struck a roadside mine in Kesh-e-Kohna district of the province, said Jailani Farhad, a spokesman for provincial governor.

“The civilians were on the way to a wedding party when the incident happened,” said Farhad, adding: “The mine was placed by the Taliban.”

The Taliban have not claimed responsibility for the blasts that killed civilians.

On October 14th, Tariq Arian, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry said that the Taliban initiated “575 attacks, including 92 mine blasts and suicide attacks,” against “civilians and security forces” in the past two weeks and “251 civilians were killed and wounded.”

Baghlan province is an area where clashes frequently take place. Back in July, at least 15 Taliban members were reportedly killed in clashes, as a result of an air and ground operation by Afghan security forces.

“A combination of army, National Directorate of Security (NDS), police and police special forces have launched an operation in the highway in which 15 insurgents–including their group leaders–were killed,” Ahmad Jawid Basharat, a spokesman for Baghlan’s police chief said.

Back in January 2020, in another attack at least 9 police officers were killed in clashes with the Taliban.

The Taliban attacked a police base in Khawja Alwan in Pul-e-Khumri, the center of Baghlan, according to the source.

Reports later on increased the number of casualties to 16 policemen who were reportedly killed in the attack, including commanders.

https://southfront.org/taliban-attack-leaves-at-least-16-dead-afghan-security-forces-in-baghlan-province/

Election Interference? Facebook and Twitter Suppressing New York Post Bombshell Story Of Damaging Hunter Biden Emails

Facebook has reduced the distribution of a New York Post story containing bombshell information indicating that – contrary to his previous denials — Joe Biden allegedly did meet with an adviser to the board of Burisma while he was Vice President, arranged by his son Hunter, who was then working as a lobbyist for the company. Twitter followed suit soon after, labeling links to the story “unsafe.”

The story made the front page of the Post, which also reveals that the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is investigating emails provided to it by a whistleblower, allegedly between Hunter Biden and executives at Burisma.

His father has previously said, “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.”

But according to emails obtained by the Post, Hunter introduced his father to a Burisma executive less than a year before the then-VP pressured the Ukrainian government into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company.

Facebook spokesman and former Democrat staffer Andy Stone announced the decision on Twitter, and also practically invited Facebook’s supposedly neutral fact-checkers to challenge the story.

Significantly, the social network took the rare step of acting in advance of a decision by its “third-party fact-checkers,” on which it usually relies on to defer responsibility for censoring news publishers.

That move is practically unprecedented, arguably protecting the former Vice President from a major political scandal at a critical time in the 2020 Election.

“While I will intentionally not link to the New York Post, I want be clear that this story is eligible to be fact checked by Facebook’s third-party fact checking partners,” said Stone. “In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform.”

While I will intentionally not link to the New York Post, I want be clear that this story is eligible to be fact checked by Facebook's third-party fact checking partners. In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform.

— Andy Stone (@andymstone) October 14, 2020

Twitter followed Facebook’s lead, censoring existing links to the New York Post article as “unsafe,” and preventing people – including the newspaper’s own employees – from posting new ones.

“This is a Big Tech information coup,” said the New York Post’s op-eds editor, Sohrab Ahmari. “This is digital civil war.”

“I, an editor at the New York Post, one of the nation’s largest papers by circulation, can’t post one of our own stories that details corruption by a major-party presidential candidate, Joe Biden.”

This is a Big Tech information coup. This is digital civil war.

I, an editor at The New York Post, one of the nation’s largest papers by circulation, can’t post one of our own stories that details corruption by a major-party presidential candidate, Biden. pic.twitter.com/BKNQmAG19H

— Sohrab Ahmari (@SohrabAhmari) October 14, 2020

A Twitter spokesman said the link was being banned across the platform “in line with our Hacked Materials Policy as well as our approach to blocking URLs.”

Twitter also claimed the article lacked “authoritative information,” but did not explain this position further.

The censorship drew instant condemnation from Republicans. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said, “So Facebook is going to actively censor a [New York Post] investigative story on the Democrat candidate for president. But rest assured, Facebook is a neutral platform with no political viewpoints!”

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/10/14/election-interference-facebook-suppressing-new-york-post-bombshell-story-of-damaging-hunter-biden-emails/

I knew Assange was autistic - it explains why people read him unfairly

Autistic people are the garlic in life’s salad, and therefore not to everyone’s taste. But how dull life would be without them – a case of the bland leading the bland. With diagnostic hindsight, we now know that Mozart, Einstein, Orwell, Van Gogh, Steve Jobs and many other scientists, mathematicians, artists, musicians and computer masterminds such as Alan Turing were on the autistic spectrum. Joining their quirky ranks is Julian Assange.

As revealed in court, Assange has recently received an official diagnosis of autism. It wasn’t news to me. I’ve been convinced Julian’s on the spectrum from the moment we first met when he moved into our spare room in 2010 seeking legal advice from my then husband, Geoffrey Robertson.

Our 29-year-old son Julius is autistic. Like all parents living with the condition, I’ve developed an astute radar for the symptoms.

Now, a label is nothing more than something on the side of a jam jar, but it does provide a psychological shorthand to help explain quirky, erratic or idiosyncratic behaviour. Autism is a lifelong neurological condition whose chief characteristics are poor communication and socialising skills, often chronic obsessive-compulsive disorder and anxiety, but also, often, a very high IQ.

Assange is basically Wikipedia with a pulse – like many computer geniuses.

Passionate and philosophical, Julian proved a diverting dinner guest. His unusual upbringing, moving from town to town with his mother and brother, lent him the larrikin aura of protagonist in a Peter Carey novel. I actually got to know Julian so well that when The Simpsons planned to feature Assange in its 500th episode, he asked me to write his dialogue.

For any writer, a credit on The Simpsons is the ultimate accolade, so I accepted with alacrity. The resulting episode is pithy, witty and topical, although the producers cut my favourite line which involved Marg Simpson asking Julian for the recipe for his barbecue marinade, to which he head-shakingly replies: “I’m sorry. But I never reveal my sauces.”

But this court case is no laughing matter. Assange is accused of receiving and publishing government documents (170 years' potential prison sentence) and of allegedly assisting US soldier Chelsea Manning to crack an encrypted password to hide her identity as the source of the leak (five years). The hundreds of thousands of downloaded classified documents revealed much of the heinous barbarity of the post-September 11, US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the further barbarity of Guantanamo Bay.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/i-knew-assange-was-autistic-it-explains-why-people-read-him-unfairly-20201013-p564tp.html

Northern Ireland will introduce a four-week circuit-breaker lockdown from FRIDAY with pubs and restaurants closed while schools will shut for two weeks from MONDAY

Pubs and restaurants will close their doors for 4 weeks, except for takeaways

Schools will close for two, one of which will cover the half-term Halloween break

Shops, churches and gyms for individual training will stay open

863 cases reported in Northern Ireland yesterday - bringing the total to 21,898

Northern Ireland will close its pubs for a month from Friday and shut schools for a fortnight from next week under a circuit-breaker lockdown, First Minister Arlene Foster announced today.

The province will ramp up its coronavirus measures after it suffered a sharp up-spike in cases. They were announced as Northern Ireland recorded 1,217 new cases of Covid-19 in 24 hours, a new daily record for the region.

There were four further coronavirus linked deaths announced on Wednesday, taking the toll recorded by Stormont Department of Health past 600 to 602.

Ms Foster told the Stormont Assembly this morning the rising figures were of 'grave concern'.

'We fully appreciate that this will be difficult and worrying news for a lot of people,' she told MLAs.

'The Executive has taken this decision because it is necessary, and we discussed the impacts in great detail. We do not take this step lightly.'

She pledged to look at business support 'as a priority' .

The measures will see pubs and restaurants shut ahead of this weekend, with the exception of takeaways and deliveries. Off-licences will have to close at 8pm, with the same cut off for supermarkets to sell alcohol.

Shops will remain open, as will gyms for individual training. Churches will also stay open, but with a 25-person guest limit on funerals and weddings. Receptions are banned.

The fortnight school closure includes a week of half-term holiday, so children would only miss a single week of lessons.

While the moves do not amount to a full scale lockdown similar to that imposed during the first wave of the virus, they mark a significant ramping up in Northern Ireland's response to spiraling infection rates. It came as Ireland this morning suggested that it will consider altering its own coronavirus measures in the counties that border Ulster.

Ms Foster said she hoped further support measures for those affected by the latest restrictions would be signed off by another meeting of ministers on Thursday.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8836467/Northern-Ireland-faces-month-long-circuit-breaker-lockdown.html