https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/05/15/wsj-doj-state-attorneys-general-likely-to-hit-google-with-antitrust-lawsuits/

According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, officials at the Justice Department and a group of state attorneys general are focused on Google’s ad business and how it has used its search monopoly. According to the WSJ, the DOJ is planning to bring a case as early as this summer, while state AGs are likely to file a case in the fall.

The Wall Street Journal reports that both the Justice Department and a group of state attorneys general are likely to file an antitrust lawsuits against Google and have already begun to plan litigation according to sources with knowledge of the matter.

The Justice Department is reportedly planning to bring a case as early as this summer. A large group of state attorneys general, led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republicans, will also reportedly file a case in the fall.

The WSJ writes:

Much of the states’ investigation has focused on Google’s online advertising business. The company owns the dominant tool at every link in the complex chain between online publishers and advertisers. The Justice Department likewise is making Google’s ad technology one of its points of emphasis. But it is also focusing more broadly on concerns that Google uses its dominant search business to stifle competition, people familiar with the matter said.

Details about the Justice Department’s legal theories for a case against Google couldn’t be learned.

Though the coronavirus pandemic has complicated work for the Justice Department, Attorney General William Barrhas devoted considerable resources to the Google probe and continues to treat it as a top priority. Mr. Barr told The Wall Street Journal in March that he wanted the Justice Department to make a final call this summer. “I’m hoping that we bring it to fruition early summer,” Mr. Barr said at the time. “And by fruition I mean, decision time.”

Paxton stated that the pandemic was not slowing the states’ efforts, saying in a statement: “We’ve issued [civil subpoenas] to Google and impacted third parties. We hope to have the investigation wrapped up by fall. If we determine that filing is merited we will go to court soon after that.”

A Google spokesperson said in a statement: “We continue to engage with the ongoing investigations led by the Department of Justice and Attorney General Paxton, and we don’t have any updates or comments on speculation. Our focus is firmly on providing services that help consumers, support thousands of businesses and enable increased choice and competition.”

The department is reportedly gathering further information in its probe and will likely be bringing a case but both the federal and state investigations are ongoing and no final decisions have been made.

Google was fined $1.7 billion for antitrust violations by European Union officials in 2019. The firm was also fined a record $5 billion in 2018 over the dominance of its Android mobile operating system, and in 2017 Google was fined $2.7 billion for practices relating to its shopping service.

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/05/15/wsj-doj-state-attorneys-general-likely-to-hit-google-with-antitrust-lawsuits/

Acting DNI Ric Grenell Announces the FBI Will No Longer be Giving Intelligence-Based Threat Briefings to Candidates

Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell on Friday announced major changes to election security briefings.

Grenell announced the US Intel Community (IC) will lead all intelligence-based threat briefings to candidates, campaigns, and political organizations.

The FBI was frozen out.

This is huge.

The FBI cannot be trusted after what they did to President Trump during the 2016 election and beyond.

Director Christopher Wray has done nothing to cut the cancer out and rebuild the public’s trust in the FBI.

Via ODNI news release:

Today, the ODNI announced that the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) will lead all intelligence-based threat briefings to candidates, campaigns, and political organizations under the U.S. Government’s notification framework. Bill Evanina, the Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, will serve as the IC’s leader to this critical effort.

“US elections are the foundation of our nation’s democracy. We are committed to supporting this Administration’s whole-of-government effort to secure the 2020 election,” said Evanina.

This change represents an important improvement and simplification to the threat notification process. The IC will continue to work in partnership with FBI and DHS to identify and integrate threat information, and Evanina and the elections team will act swiftly to deliver the timely and thorough assessments to those affected by potential malicious influence.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/05/acting-dni-ric-grenell-announces-fbi-will-no-longer-giving-intelligence-based-threat-briefings-candidates/

New York Admits Knowingly Undercounting Nursing Home Deaths After Quietly Changing Reporting Rules

The New York State Department of Health acknowledged that its recent reporting does not fully reflect the known carnage coronavirus has caused among nursing home and adult care residents.

The revelation comes as New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is under fire for his policies regarding nursing homes amid the coronavirus pandemic.

New York is the only state with large coronavirus outbreaks among its long-term care facilities that doesn’t count residents who died at a hospital.

New York quietly changed the way it reports long-term care fatalities around April 28.

New York has omitted an unknown number of coronavirus deaths in recent reports regarding residents of nursing home and adult care facilities, the New York State Department of Health acknowledged in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

In early May, those reports quietly began omitting long-term care residents who died of coronavirus in hospitals. Even so, New York still leads the nation with 5,433 reported deaths at nursing homes and adult care facilities as of Wednesday.

The revelation comes as New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo faces criticism for ordering nursing homes and other long-term care facilities to accept patients from hospitals who had tested positive for coronavirus. Cuomo rescinded the March 25 order, which experts say led to higher levels of death among nursing home residents, on May 11 to allow such facilities to wait until a coronavirus patient tests negative before readmitting them.

The NYSDOH confirmed to the DCNF that until around April 28, it was disclosing coronavirus deaths for all nursing home and adult care facility residents, regardless of whether the patient died at their long-term care facility or at a hospital.

But the department made a subtle change to its disclosures beginning around May 3, according to web archives. The NYSDOH told the DCNF its disclosure now only reports coronavirus deaths for long-term care patients that died while physically present at their facility.

New York’s coronavirus tracker “currently does not include out of facility deaths,” NYSDOH spokeswoman Jill Montag told the DCNF. “Deaths of nursing home and adult care facility residents that occurred at hospitals is accounted for in the overall fatality data on our COVID-19 tracker.”

In other words, New York’s nursing home and adult care facility coronavirus deaths tracker omits any individuals who contracted coronavirus while living at a long-term care facility but died in a hospital.

Montag told the DCNF that the state is opting to not disclose out of facility deaths “in order to maintain consistency and reliability in the data as presented, and to avoid any potential for double-counting.”

But the reporting change has, in fact, resulted in inconsistencies in New York’s disclosure of long-term care coronavirus fatalities, particularly regarding deaths of residents of adult care facilities, which don’t typically don’t have the medical capacity of nursing homes or hospitals.

New York reported on April 28 that there had been 644 deaths from residents of adult care facility residents who died at either the facility or at a hospital. Montag confirmed that the table “contained lab-confirmed and, in some cases, presumed COVID-19 deaths.”

https://dailycaller.com/2020/05/15/new-york-coronavirus-reporting-nursing-home-deaths-undercounting/

Federal Grand Jury Returns Indictment Charging Pakistani Doctor with Attempting to Provide Material Support to ISIS

Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers and U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota Erica H. MacDonald today announced that a federal grand jury sitting in Minneapolis, Minnesota, returned a single-count indictment against Muhammad Masood, 28, charging him with attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization. Masood, who was initially charged in a criminal complaint on March 19, 2020, is currently in custody pending further court proceedings.

According to the indictment and documents filed in court, Masood, a licensed medical doctor in Pakistan, was formerly employed as a Research Coordinator at a medical clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, under an H-1B Visa. Between January 2020 and March 2020, Masood made several statements to others, including pledging his allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS) and its leader, and expressing his desire to travel to Syria to fight for ISIS. Masood also expressed his desire to conduct “lone wolf” terrorist attacks in the United States. On Feb. 21, 2020, Masood purchased a plane ticket from Chicago, Illinois to Amman, Jordan, and from there planned to travel to Syria. On March 16, 2020, Masood’s travel plans changed because Jordan closed its borders to incoming travel due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Masood made a new plan to fly from Minneapolis to Los Angeles to meet up with an individual who he believed would assist him with travel via cargo ship to deliver him to ISIS territory.

On March 19, 2020, Masood traveled from Rochester to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP) to board a flight bound for Los Angeles, California. Upon arrival at MSP, Masood checked in for his flight and was subsequently arrested by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force.

This case is the result of an investigation conducted by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force.

This case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Andrew R. Winter and Timothy C. Rank, with assistance from Trial Attorney Katie Sweeten of the National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section.

The charges contained in the complaint are merely accusations, and the defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/federal-grand-jury-returns-indictment-charging-pakistani-doctor-attempting-provide-material

Beijing Hands Scientists Top Award for Nuclear Missile It’s Never Admitted to Building

The engineers behind a new generation of submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) will receive China’s top science prize. However, the Ministry of National Defense has never directly admitted that the missile in question, the JL-3, even exists.

The JL-3, or “Big Wave,” is believed to have been designed for the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s new Type 096 nuclear submarine and first tested in 2018. The missile has a purported range of 7,450 miles, enabling it to hit the United States if fired from the Chinese coast - much further away than the missile’s predecessor, the JL-2, which had a still-impressive 5,000-mile range.

Now, the missile’s designers have been tapped for the National Award for Excellence in Innovation, given to China’s greatest scientific achievers, even though the missile’s development is so shrouded in secrecy that Beijing has never actually said it exists, the South China Morning Post reported.

However, as the Global Times noted, Beijing has never said the JL-3 doesn’t exist, either, which observers have taken as implicit proof that it does. After all, what else could the series of tests observed and reported on, even by the ministry itself, involve?

China’s National Award for Excellence in Innovation was started up in 2017 and offered to the country’s top scientists every three years. In all, some 300 other scientists and teams will receive the prize, including medical experts and scientists who led China’s COVID-19 response effort, designers of a new type of space dock and the scientists behind the country’s first hypersonic weapon. Nominations are evaluated by industry peers in the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) non-governmental organization, which announced the recipients on Monday.

https://sputniknews.com/asia/202005151079319537-beijing-hands-scientists-top-award-for-nuclear-missile-its-never-admitted-to-building/

Beijing Hands Scientists Top Award for Nuclear Missile It’s Never Admitted to Building

The engineers behind a new generation of submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) will receive China’s top science prize. However, the Ministry of National Defense has never directly admitted that the missile in question, the JL-3, even exists.

The JL-3, or “Big Wave,” is believed to have been designed for the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s new Type 096 nuclear submarine and first tested in 2018. The missile has a purported range of 7,450 miles, enabling it to hit the United States if fired from the Chinese coast - much further away than the missile’s predecessor, the JL-2, which had a still-impressive 5,000-mile range.

Now, the missile’s designers have been tapped for the National Award for Excellence in Innovation, given to China’s greatest scientific achievers, even though the missile’s development is so shrouded in secrecy that Beijing has never actually said it exists, the South China Morning Post reported.

However, as the Global Times noted, Beijing has never said the JL-3 doesn’t exist, either, which observers have taken as implicit proof that it does. After all, what else could the series of tests observed and reported on, even by the ministry itself, involve?

China’s National Award for Excellence in Innovation was started up in 2017 and offered to the country’s top scientists every three years. In all, some 300 other scientists and teams will receive the prize, including medical experts and scientists who led China’s COVID-19 response effort, designers of a new type of space dock and the scientists behind the country’s first hypersonic weapon. Nominations are evaluated by industry peers in the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) non-governmental organization, which announced the recipients on Monday.

https://sputniknews.com/asia/202005151079319537-beijing-hands-scientists-top-award-for-nuclear-missile-its-never-admitted-to-building/

Beijing Hands Scientists Top Award for Nuclear Missile It’s Never Admitted to Building

The engineers behind a new generation of submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) will receive China’s top science prize. However, the Ministry of National Defense has never directly admitted that the missile in question, the JL-3, even exists.

The JL-3, or “Big Wave,” is believed to have been designed for the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s new Type 096 nuclear submarine and first tested in 2018. The missile has a purported range of 7,450 miles, enabling it to hit the United States if fired from the Chinese coast - much further away than the missile’s predecessor, the JL-2, which had a still-impressive 5,000-mile range.

Now, the missile’s designers have been tapped for the National Award for Excellence in Innovation, given to China’s greatest scientific achievers, even though the missile’s development is so shrouded in secrecy that Beijing has never actually said it exists, the South China Morning Post reported.

However, as the Global Times noted, Beijing has never said the JL-3 doesn’t exist, either, which observers have taken as implicit proof that it does. After all, what else could the series of tests observed and reported on, even by the ministry itself, involve?

China’s National Award for Excellence in Innovation was started up in 2017 and offered to the country’s top scientists every three years. In all, some 300 other scientists and teams will receive the prize, including medical experts and scientists who led China’s COVID-19 response effort, designers of a new type of space dock and the scientists behind the country’s first hypersonic weapon. Nominations are evaluated by industry peers in the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) non-governmental organization, which announced the recipients on Monday.

https://sputniknews.com/asia/202005151079319537-beijing-hands-scientists-top-award-for-nuclear-missile-its-never-admitted-to-building/

Beijing Hands Scientists Top Award for Nuclear Missile It’s Never Admitted to Building

The engineers behind a new generation of submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) will receive China’s top science prize. However, the Ministry of National Defense has never directly admitted that the missile in question, the JL-3, even exists.

The JL-3, or “Big Wave,” is believed to have been designed for the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s new Type 096 nuclear submarine and first tested in 2018. The missile has a purported range of 7,450 miles, enabling it to hit the United States if fired from the Chinese coast - much further away than the missile’s predecessor, the JL-2, which had a still-impressive 5,000-mile range.

Now, the missile’s designers have been tapped for the National Award for Excellence in Innovation, given to China’s greatest scientific achievers, even though the missile’s development is so shrouded in secrecy that Beijing has never actually said it exists, the South China Morning Post reported.

However, as the Global Times noted, Beijing has never said the JL-3 doesn’t exist, either, which observers have taken as implicit proof that it does. After all, what else could the series of tests observed and reported on, even by the ministry itself, involve?

China’s National Award for Excellence in Innovation was started up in 2017 and offered to the country’s top scientists every three years. In all, some 300 other scientists and teams will receive the prize, including medical experts and scientists who led China’s COVID-19 response effort, designers of a new type of space dock and the scientists behind the country’s first hypersonic weapon. Nominations are evaluated by industry peers in the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) non-governmental organization, which announced the recipients on Monday.

https://sputniknews.com/asia/202005151079319537-beijing-hands-scientists-top-award-for-nuclear-missile-its-never-admitted-to-building/

https://twitter.com/evacool_/status/1261440937835679745

https://twitter.com/ahmadalissa/status/1261442667495460864

Explosion Heard in City of Aleppo, Syrian Media Report

According to the media, Israeli helicopters launched several missiles from the territory of the occupied Golan Heights, causing limited damage.

An explosion has been heard in the Syrian city of Aleppo, a SANA news correspondent said on Saturday.

https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/202005151079320957-explosion-heard-in-city-of-aleppo-syrian-media-report/

Hillary Clinton says armed Michigan protests are 'domestic terrorism' that 'cannot be tolerated'

Several demonstrations have been held in protest of the state's ongoing coronavirus lockdown

Hillary Clinton has lashed out at the armed demonstrators who have protested at the Michigan state capitol building against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's (D) ongoing coronavirus lockdown, calling such protests "domestic terrorism" and signaling that they must be stopped.

What are the details?

On Friday, Clinton tweeted, "Armed men storming a legislature to disrupt its democratic proceedings is domestic terrorism. It cannot be tolerated."

The former Democratic presidential nominee's message included a link to a Newsweek story with the headline: "Michigan closes down capitol in face of death threats from armed protestors against Gov. Whitmer."

Several protests have been held at the state's capitol building since Gov. Whitmer imposed one of the most strict stay-at-home orders in the nation. Late last month, protestors—some of whom were armed—poured inside the building itself, demanding to enter the chambers of the House of Representatives as members considered whether or not to extend the lockdown at Whitmer's request.

The protestors were blocked from entering the House chambers by State Police troopers and House sergeants-at-arms, but the protest remained peaceful. Lawmakers allowed the shutdown order expire, but Whitmer extended it unilaterally, further angering those opposed to the economic shutdown imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Hill reported that "one man is reportedly facing charges over death threats to Whitmer, and Newsweek reports there have been posts online calling to lynch her as well as suggestions to crowdfund for a hitman."

According to the Newsweek article shared by Clinton, "Whitmer and Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) have considered banning firearms from the Capitol building but are awaiting the six-member Michigan State Capitol Commission to figure out if they have the legal authority to do so.

https://www.theblaze.com/news/hillary-clinton-says-armed-michigan-protests-are-domestic-terrorism-that-cannot-be-tolerated

NATO chief says the alliance backs jihadi-supported government in Libya (VIDEO)

Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), indicated that the alliance will back the Government of National Accord (GNA) in Libya. The GNA is currently at war with the Libyan National Army (LNA). It is also backed by Libya’s branch of the international Muslim Brotherhood Islamist organization, among others.

Stoltenberg made the remarks in an interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica that was published yesterday, according to a report by Greek City Times.

Stoltenberg said that while there is currently an international arms embargo in place for Libya that must be respected by all sides that this doesn’t mean that the two warring factions should be treated equally. “For this reason, NATO is ready to give its support to the [GNA] government of Tripoli,” he said.

Libya has been in chaos since Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s Jamahiriya government, which had ruled the country for more than 40 years, was toppled by NATO-backed forces in 2011. The GNA, under the leadership of Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj, was formed in 2015 and given a mandate to rule the country by the United Nations. That mandate expired in 2017, and yet the UN still considers it to be Libya’s legitimate government.

Since last year the GNA has been under attack by the Libyan National Army, a portion of the country’s armed forces that rejects al-Sarraj’s government and is led by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar. The LNA says that it opposes the GNA because the latter is backed by foreign interests and Islamist terrorists.

The GNA is backed by Italy and Turkey, and also receives support from numerous Islamist organisations, including the Muslim Brotherhood. The GNA has also been accused of using former ISIS fighters, among others, in its army. The LNA, on the other hand, is supported by Egypt, France, Greece, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

A new video is now circulating that was created by Lindsey Snell, an American journalist who was kidnapped by Al-Nusra terrorists in Syria before managing to escape to Turkey, and was then imprisoned by Turkey for two months on allegations that she was a CIA agent. The video consists of interviews with Syrian jihadis who have been fighting on behalf of the GNA.

In the video, the fighters say that they are fighting for the GNA on Turkey’s orders because they are on Turkey’s payroll. One of them even says that, since the jihadis are backed by Turkey, which is a NATO member state, that they also have the rest of NATO, including the United States, supporting them.

https://voiceofeurope.com/2020/05/nato-chief-says-the-alliance-backs-jihadi-supported-government-in-libya-video/