W.H. looks to scrub clearance list

11/21/2013 08:48 AM EST

The Obama administration has ordered a government-wide reassessment of how almost 5 million Americans have been granted classified information security clearances and whether each person currently approved to see sensitive national security secrets truly has a need for such access.

https://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/government-security-clearance-list-100195

Trump does the same thing and he's accused of being a banana republic dictator.

In Papers Saying Papadopoulos Lied, FBI Reveals It’s Also Lying Or Incompetent

To say that George Papadopoulos’ lies (or inaccurate memory of the events, as his wife puts it) prevented the FBI from questioning, detaining, or arresting Joseph Mifsud is unbelievable.

https://thefederalist.com/2018/08/20/papers-saying-papadopoulos-lied-fbi-fbi-shows-either-also-lying-incompetent/

Escort says oligarch now has tapes on Russia interference

A model and escort from Belarus who caused a sensation by claiming to have information linking Russian interference to the election of President Donald Trump said Monday that she no longer has the evidence and will not talk about it.

Vashukevich told The Associated Press that she had turned over audio recordings to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, whose conversations about election interference she claimed to have taped.

She has said she provided “escort” services to Deripaska, who is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and who has links to Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager now being tried in the United States on money laundering and other charges.

https://apnews.com/78eef0ecec49412b816ac5169d63279a

Amazon Isn’t Paying Its Electric Bills. You Might Be

For a little while earlier this year, it seemed as though 87-year-old Rosie Thomas and her neighbors in the small town of Gainesville, Va., had beaten Amazon. Virginia’s largest utility, Dominion Energy Inc., had planned to run an aboveground power line straight through a Civil War battlefield—and Thomas’s property—to reach a nearby data center run by an Amazon.com Inc. subsidiary. After three years of petitions and protests in front of the gated data center, skirmishes punctuated by barking dogs and shooing police, Dominion agreed to bury that part of the line along a nearby highway, at an estimated cost of $172 million.

Within a month, however, the utility and state legislators had passed on the cost to Thomas and her fellow Virginians. The state’s House of Delegates approved Dominion’s proposal to raise the money needed for the Amazon line with an as-yet-unannounced monthly fee.

https://www.bloombergquint.com/businessweek/2018/08/20/amazon-isn-t-paying-its-electric-bills-you-might-be

South Africa begins seizing white-owned farms

targeted the first two farms for unilateral seizure after the owners refused an offer of one-tenth of the land’s value.

Local newspaper City Press reports two game farms in the northern province of Limpopo are the first to be targeted for unilateral seizure after negotiations with the owners to purchase the properties stalled.

While the government says it intends to pay, owners Akkerland Boerdery wanted 200 million rand ($18.7 million) for the land — they’re being offered just 20 million rand ($1.87 million).

https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/world-economy/south-africa-begins-seizing-whiteowned-farms/news-story/8937f899bd3f131bfc4ffb648ea5c53b