Newspaper tells staff to use ‘climate emergency' and 'climate denier' in news stories

The Guardian has directed its staff to use “climate emergency” or “climate crisis” instead of “climate change” in news stories. According to an internal email the British newspaper — a proud bastion of liberalism — contends “climate change” sounds “rather passive and gentle when what scientists are talking about is a catastrophe for humanity.” Rather than “climate skeptic," terms like “climate denier" or “climate science denier” should be used. The email said “global heating” should be used instead of “global warming."

The Associated Press Stylebook, which is the industry standard for most media outlets, states: "To describe those who don’t accept climate science or dispute the world is warming from man-made forces, use climate change doubters or those who reject mainstream climate science. Avoid use of skeptics or deniers." While stopping short of an outright ban, Guardian editors told staff to "think twice" before including them in stories. “We want to ensure that we are being scientifically precise in rooted facts, while also communicating clearly with readers on this very important issue,” the email to staff said. Staff were also instructed to avoid using terms like "biodiversity" and "fish stocks." Instead, "wildlife" and "fish populations" should be used, respectively.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/newspaper-tells-staff-to-use-climate-emergency-and-climate-denier-in-news-stories

https://twitter.com/MarkDiStef/status/1129330642720829441

Devin Nunes: Mueller knew there was no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion on day one

Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., went further than Attorney General William Barr to answer the question of when special counsel Robert Mueller knew there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. In an interview that aired Friday on Fox News, Barr said he "couldn't say." Appearing after Barr, Nunes, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, was not so hesitant.

"Bob Mueller knew the day that he walked in the door there was no evidence of the Trump campaign colluding with Russians," Nunes said, referring to the findings of the FBI's counterintelligence that began in the summer of 2016. Mueller was appointed to lead the investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election in May 2017, eight days after President Trump fired former FBI Director James Comey. Although Mueller completed his investigation in March, Nunes said the House Intelligence Committee, which conducted its own Russian interference investigation when he was chairman, determined there was no collusion by early 2018. "I'm able to answer that because we looked at all the work. We looked at all the intelligence. We've known for – our report came out a year ago. There's zero evidence of the Trump campaign colluding with Russians – period," Nunes said.

Despite Nunes' decisiveness, Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee argued the probe was wrapped up prematurely. Since taking back control of the House, they have restarted the Trump-Russia investigation. Fox News anchor Sandra Smith repeatedly challenged Nunes on that point, noting that Barr has not publicly said when the collusion question was solved by Mueller. "That's my point. I just wanted to make sure that I answered it for the American people and that's why the attorney general is doing a good job here is he's not jumping to any conclusions," Nunes said.

The Justice Department released Mueller's 448-page report with redactions last month which noted the term "collusion" has no legal application. Instead, Mueller's team focused on analyzing the prospect of criminal conspiracy. Mueller concluded that Russia used cyberattacks and social media disinformation campaigns to interfere in 2016, but he did not establish any criminal conspiracy between the Russian government and the Trump campaign. Republicans have long alleged that the launching of the investigation into Trump in 2016 was influenced by politics and that the probe itself was rife with misconduct.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/devin-nunes-mueller-knew-there-was-no-evidence-of-trump-russia-collusion-on-day-one

The other Trump Tower meeting: Barr looking into leaks after Comey briefed Trump on dossier

The phrase “the Trump Tower meeting” has become synonymous with the controversial June 9, 2016 meeting between senior members of the Trump campaign and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and others, but Attorney General William Barr says he is looking into another Trump Tower gathering — when then-FBI Director James Comey briefed President-elect Trump on some of the most salacious allegations in the so-called Steele dossier in January 2017 in New York City. In an interview with Fox News that aired Friday, Barr said “one of the things we want to look into” is “the handling of the meeting on January 6, 2017 between the intelligence chiefs and the President and the leaking of information subsequent to that meeting.” The allegation that Russia had possible compromising information on Trump was leaked by unknown persons to the press and led to the dossier being published by BuzzFeed just a few days later. Republicans have been calling for investigations into possible politically motivated criminal leaks of classified information for years now.

The meeting between Trump, Comey, and other top intelligence officials took place on Jan. 6, 2017, and it was quickly leaked to the press. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan, and Comey briefed Trump on the intelligence community's assessment that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election, but Comey stayed behind after the meeting to tell Trump about some of the dossier's claims. Days later, on the afternoon of Jan. 10, 2017, CNN ran a story about the meeting titled “Intel chiefs presented Trump with claims of Russian efforts to compromise him.” Later that evening, BuzzFeed posted Steele’s dossier online with the title “These Reports Allege Trump Has Deep Ties To Russia.” While demurring on what questions he had about the January 2017 meeting, Barr emphasized that “it’s one of the things we need to look at.” “We’re still at the stage of gathering all the information,” Barr added.

Earlier this week, former FBI General Counsel James Baker admitted that the bureau was worried that Comey would appear to be “blackmailing” Trump during the January 2017 briefing at Trump Tower on the allegations in the dossier written by British ex-spy Christopher Steele. The dossier, packed with unverified claims about Trump's ties to Russia, formed a key part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act applications used to justify surveillance warrants against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Steele was working for Fusion GPS which was receiving funding through the Perkins Coie law firm from the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee — facts that were not communicated to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Baker said that prior to Comey’s meeting with Trump, the FBI was “quite worried” that it might seem like J. Edgar Hoover-style “blackmail” if Comey told Trump about the salacious claims in the dossier, which Comey ended up doing. “Jim [Comey] and I had talked many times about the Hoover days, especially the investigation of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., what was done there, the blackmailing of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,” Baker said. “So yeah, we were quite worried about that, quite worried about how that would come off.”

Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani called Comey a “jackass” over his handling of the dossier and also compared Comey to J. Edgar Hoover, the first director of the FBI. Giuliani criticized Comey’s decision to tell Trump about the claims in the dossier — like allegations related to prostitutes in a hotel room in Moscow — during their private discussion in January 2017. “That whole thing with going up to Trump and telling him about the Steele dossier … that wasn’t being a Hoover?” Giuliani asked rhetorically. The FBI’s handling of the Steele dossier has come under increased scrutiny in recent weeks, and there are at least three federal investigations into alleged FISA abuse and other matters related to the way that the FBI and DOJ conducted the Trump-Russia investigation.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/the-other-trump-tower-meeting-barr-looking-into-leaks-after-comey-briefed-trump-on-dossier

>>6521201

Agreed, so in this instance who would be more believable. Nunes had to recuse himself from the investigation for a period of time, while he was chairman..Who made that happen, I wonder. What would Rosenstein stand to gain by his statements? Then there is this Q drop.

Second federal appeals court rules against Trump administration over DACA rollback

A second federal appeals court on Friday ruled against the Trump administration in its attempt to rollback the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and said its decision to do so was unlawful. A divided three-judge panel on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in its ruling that the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to rescind the DACA program violated federal law because “it was not adequately explained and thus was arbitrary and capricious.” The Richmond-based federal appeals court is the second appeals court to rule against President Trump in his attempt to wind down the DACA program, which was implemented by the Obama administration in 2012 and protected immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children from the threat of deportation.

In November, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court order blocking the government from rescinding the DACA program. The San Francisco-based court said then that plaintiffs in that challenge to the administration’s efforts to end DACA were likely to succeed in their claim that the rescission “is arbitrary, capricious, or otherwise not in accordance with law.” The Justice Department has asked the Supreme Court to take up the dispute over its attempted rollback, though the court has not acted on numerous petitions currently before it.

The Trump administration announced in 2017 that it would be ending the DACA program, and the Department of Homeland Security predicated its decision on the grounds DACA was unlawful to begin with. But the president’s move was met with a host of lawsuits filed by immigrant-rights groups and individuals who argued DACA’s wind down violated federal law and the Constitution. Federal district court judges in Washington, D.C., New York, and San Francisco delivered losses to the Trump administration and blocked it from moving forward with DACA’s rollback. But one judge in Greenbelt, Md., sided with the Trump administration and said the president acted within his authority to wind down the Obama-era program. The 4th Circuit, however, reversed the ruling from the federal judge in Maryland that upheld DACA's rescission.

In its ruling against the Trump administration, the 4th Circuit said the Department of Homeland Security failed to account for those affected by the decision. “Hundreds of thousands of people had structured their lives on the availability of deferred action during the over five years between implementation of DACA and the decision to rescind it,” the court said. “Although the government insists that Acting Secretary [Elaine] Duke considered these interests in connection with her decision to rescind DACA, her memo makes no mention of them.” Judge Julius Richardson, a Trump appointee, dissented and said the executive branch's rollback of DACA is judicially unreviewable. "We in the judicial branch have a narrowly circumscribed role. It is not our place to second-guess the wisdom of the discretionary decisions made by the other branches," Richardson wrote. "The rescission of DACA was a controversial and contentious decision, but one that was committed to the executive branch."

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/courts/second-federal-appeals-court-rules-against-trump-administration-over-daca-rollback

>>6521385

Indeed, RR is a serious problem.

Facebook forms Swiss fintech firm with payments focus

ZURICH (Reuters) - Facebook has set up a new financial technology company in Switzerland focusing on blockchain and payments as well as data analytics and investing, Geneva’s commercial register shows. Libra Networks, with Facebook Global Holdings as stakeholder, was registered in Geneva on May 2 to provide financial and technology services and develop related hardware and software, plans submitted on the Swiss register reveal.

Facebook, whose social network has more than 2 billion users, did not immediately comment on Libra Networks, which will focus on “investing, payments, financing, identity management, analytics, big data, blockchain and other technologies.” The owner of WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram, each used by more than 1 billion people, has been at the center of public and regulatory scrutiny over misuse of consumers’ personal data.

The U.S. Senate Banking Committee this month sent an open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg asking how a new cryptocurrency-based payments system related to legal, regulatory, privacy and consumer protection concerns, following a Wall Street Journal report.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-switzerland-payments/facebook-forms-swiss-fintech-firm-with-payments-focus-idUSKCN1SN1ZT?il=0

The U.S. Senate Banking Committee letter

https://www.banking.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/5.9.19%20Facebook%20Letter.pdf

Exclusive: FBI targets Johnson & Johnson, Siemens, GE, Philips in Brazil graft case - sources

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - The U.S. FBI is investigating corporate giants Johnson & Johnson, Siemens AG, General Electric Co and Philips for allegedly paying kickbacks as part of a scheme involving medical equipment sales in Brazil, two Brazilian investigators have told Reuters. Brazilian prosecutors suspect the companies channeled illegal payoffs to government officials to secure contracts with public health programs across the South American country over the past two decades.

Brazilian authorities say more than 20 companies may have been part of a “cartel” that paid bribes and charged the government inflated prices for medical gear such as magnetic resonance imaging machines and prosthetics. The four multinational companies, with a combined market capitalization of nearly $600 billion at Thursday’s market close, are the largest foreign enterprises to be investigated in an unprecedented anti-corruption push in Brazil in recent years. Big U.S. and European companies found to have engaged in wrongdoing in Brazil could also face heavy fines and other punishment under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). Since 1977, that law has made it illegal for American citizens, U.S. companies or foreign companies whose securities are listed in the United States to pay foreign officials to win business. Foreign companies are the latest targets of government corruption probes in Brazil. Over the past five years, prosecutors have uncovered pervasive graft in state institutions and private-sector companies seeking to do business with them. The sprawling investigations by prosecutors and federal police, including the famed “Car Wash” dragnet centered on Brazil’s state-run oil company Petrobras, have toppled business and political leaders across Latin America. '''Authorities say plea-bargain testimonies obtained from suspects alerted them to other possible schemes, including alleged bribes paid by multinationals to obtain public contracts in Brazil.

‘CONSTANTLY SHARING’ Brazilian federal prosecutor Marisa Ferrari confirmed in an interview with Reuters that U.S. authorities from the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission were assisting in the Brazilian medical equipment investigation she helps lead. In 2016, U.S. and Brazilian prosecutors jointly negotiated the world’s largest-ever compliance penalty, a $3.5 billion fine against Brazilian construction conglomerate Odebrecht SA for its part in the Car Wash scandal. “We are constantly sharing information with the FBI on this (medical equipment) case. They ask for documents and we send them, and they are assisting our investigation in return,” Ferrari said. In addition, Ferrari said, “we’ve received a lot of material from the Department of Justice and from the SEC.” She declined to name which companies U.S. law enforcement agencies were investigating.

Two Brazilian investigators with direct knowledge of the matter confirmed to Reuters that Johnson & Johnson, Siemens, GE, and Koninklijke Philips NV were being targeted by the FBI for alleged bribery in Brazil. The people requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the U.S. side of the investigation.

The FBI would not confirm or deny the existence of any investigations. The SEC, which also investigates FCPA allegations, said by email that it declined to comment. Boston-based GE declined to comment on any investigation related to its business in Brazil. It said in an emailed statement that “we are committed to integrity, compliance and the rule of law in Brazil and every other country in which we do business.” Siemens, which is based in Munich, Germany, said in an emailed statement that the firm “is not aware of any FBI investigation of the company related to cartel activity in Brazil.” It said its policy is always to cooperate with law enforcement investigations when they occur. Amsterdam-based Philips confirmed in an email that it is under investigation in Brazil. In its 2018 annual report, Philips acknowledged that it “has also received inquiries from certain US authorities in respect to this matter.” In its emailed response to Reuters, Philips said “it is not uncommon for US authorities to show an interest in these matters and it is too early to draw any conclusions.” New Brunswick, New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson said in an emailed response that the Department of Justice and the SEC “have made preliminary inquiries to the company” in regard to a raid by Brazilian federal police on its Sao Paulo offices last year, and that the firm is cooperating.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-corruption-healthcare-exclusiv/exclusive-fbi-targets-johnson-johnson-siemens-ge-philips-in-brazil-graft-case-sources-idUSKCN1SN0ZZ?il=0