USPS Review Finds Decrease In On-Time Election Mail Delivery Since 2018

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - AUGUST 29: People stand near a USPS mail box as the city continues Phase 4 of re-opening following restrictions imposed to slow the spread of coronavirus on August 29, 2020 in New York City. 

By Matt Shuham
|
September 1, 2020 6:15 p.m.

The Postal Service’s internal watchdog found an decrease in on-time delivery of election and political mail in a review earlier this year, the results of which were published Tuesday, underlining fears that a sharp uptick in mail-in voting may end up disenfranchising some voters this November.

The review from the USPS inspector general took place in May and June this year. Importantly, that was before the new postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, instituted a series of changes that resulted in mail slowdowns across the country. And many of the inspector general’s findings don’t concern Postal Service employees themselves, but rather their counterparts in state and local government.

Still, with a record number of Americans expected to use the mail to vote this year, the report identified key weaknesses that could impact the vote tally.

“Since our prior audits, the Postal Service has improved internal communication between headquarters and mail processing facilities, and developed online Election and Political Mail training,” the report found. “However, the amount of identifiable Election and Political Mail delivered on-time nationwide was 94.5 percent from April 2020 through June 2020, a decrease of 1.7 percentage points compared to the same time period in 2018.”

The inspector general also highlighted a point that the USPS general counsel flagged to 46 states and the District of Columbia earlier this summer: Local deadlines for requesting and casting ballots are often set close to Election Day, meaning that some voters who request or submit ballots at the “last minute” may actually be out of luck.

The inspector general’s report, citing numbers from USPS management, highlighted a few significant shortcomings from state election officials: In 11 states, for example, over 44,000 ballots were sent from election boards to voters “the day of or day before the state’s primary election.” In Pennsylvania, 500 ballots were sent to voters the day after the election.

The state-by-state patchwork of election laws, especially concerning something like postmarking requirements, makes national election mail policy a difficult balance:



New York voters realized this might be a problem in primary season, when postmarking errors imperiled thousands of ballots.

“Without a postmark on return ballots mailed by voters, a ballot could be rejected and a vote not counted,” the report read.

In recent congressional testimony, DeJoy was short on details about a plan to ensure the prompt delivery of election mail, but he did reiterate to lawmakers that it was USPS policy to postmark all ballots, and that the USPS would seek to expedite all election mail, not just first-class mail.

But, frustrated with DeJoy’s refusal to hand over certain documents related to changes in the USPS policy toward late mail delivery trips, decommissioned sorting machines and other issues, the House Oversight Committee on Monday announced its intent to subpoena him.

The IG report also identified several pitfalls that, experts have told TPM, could especially impact states where postal and election workers have less experience with high vote-by-mail volumes, such as instances of election and political mail getting left behind at USPS facilities.

Over the two-month review of processing and distribution centers (P&DC) in seven cities, the report found, “we identified approximately 200 ballots at the Oklahoma City P&DC and 68,000 Political Mail mailpieces at the Baltimore P&DC that had not been processed.” (The ballots in Oklahoma were successfully delivered after investigators noticed them, the report assured readers.)



And none of the seven facilities used the Postal Service’s “Operational Clean Sweep Search Checklist,” the review found, referring to the list of specific facility areas to check to ensure that election and political mail isn’t lost in the system.

In large part, USPS management acknowledged the shortcomings identified in the report. But it disagreed with the inspector general’s recommendation “to work toward creating a separate, simplified mail product exclusively for Election Mail that would support uniform mail processing, including mandatory mailpiece tracking and proper mailpiece design.” There simply is not enough time to do so before the 2020 elections, USPS management said in an included response to the report.

However, the agency’s management responded, the Postal Service will undertake “herculean efforts” to ensure that ballots meet state deadlines.

With Itchy Trigger Fingers, Some Right Wingers Predict The Next Civil War Has Finally Arrived

PORTLAND, OR - AUGUST 22: Right wing groups, left, and anti-police protesters face off in front of the Multnomah County Justice Center on August 22, 2020 in Portland, Oregon. For the second Saturday in a row

By Matt Shuham
September 1, 2020

The first shots in the second American civil war have been fired — at least, according to some right-wing groups that have sought to use recent shooting deaths during protests across the country as a call to arms.

After three people were killed during protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin and Portland, Oregon in recent days, right-wing groups that have made a habit of showing up armed to protest are forecasting a larger, more violent struggle. Experts told TPM that was purposeful.

“The first shot has been fired brother,” said Stewart Rhodes, founder of the armed anti-government group Oath Keepers, in a tweet Sunday. “Civil war is here, right now. We’ll give Trump one last chance to declare this a Marxist insurrection & suppress it as his duty demands. If he fails to do HIS duty, we will do OURS.”

Rhodes was referring to the killing of Aaron Danielson in Portland on Saturday. Danielson was affiliated with a right-wing group known for street brawling, Patriot Prayer, whose members had joined a caravan of trucks that made a route through Portland earlier in the day, many armed with pepper spray and paintball guns.

Just a few days earlier, two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin — Anthony Huber and Joseph Rosenbaum — were allegedly killed by the 17-year-old Trump supporter Kyle Rittenhouse. Rittenhouse has been charged with homicide. No one has been charged in the Portland killing yet, but The Oregonian reported that a self-identified anti-fascist protester was under investigation.

The Oath Keepers’ tweets went beyond their normal schtick, said Sam Jackson, an assistant professor at the University of Albany and author of a new book about the group.

For years, Oath Keepers leadership has speculated about potential armed conflict: In 2015, for example, members of the group claimed that the “Jade Helm” military training exercise was a front for martial law. And last year, Rhodes said Democrats’ impeachment investigation of President Donald Trump marked “the verge of a HOT civil war.” But these conflicts, of course, never materialized.

“They’ve identified the start of a civil war over and over again,” Jackson said. “The identification or anticipation of a civil war is consistent.”

“What’s different now is they’re pointing to a particular act of violence from the people that they’ve identified as the other side — the enemy combatants in the civil war,” he added. “What’s different now is they’re not just anticipating that it’s going to happen soon — they’re rhetorically positioning that it has begun.”

The Oath Keepers message was part of a wave of ominous forecasts from right-wing vigilantes in recent days.

“This is the inflection point. This is where the pendulum swings back in the other direction,” Chris Hill, leader of the armed group called Georgia Security Force III%, said in a video last week, referring to the Kenosha shooting. He added, “There’s going to be an escalation in this conflict that we have — that is now, it is here, it is spreading, it is going to get crazy. It’s already crazy, but now there’s a body count.”

Hill saved his pitch for the end. If viewers didn’t join a militia soon, he said, “your country is going to be shattered glass and fucking rubble… But if you are interested, hit me up!”

Georgia Security Force III% and others recently faced off against some anti-Confederate monument activists at Stone Mountain in Georgia. Fights broke out at the scene and, at one point, both sides had hands on their firearms, feet away from each other.

Hill’s attempt to recruit off of the unrest is a natural part of leading an armed vigilante group. Jackson recalled that in 2015, after a gunman killed five servicemembers in attacks at a recruiting center and a Naval Reserve center in Chattanooga, Oath Keepers launched an effort that the group called “Operation Protect the Protectors.” It was a form of networking: Armed citizens, some of whom hadn’t before been affiliated with the Oath Keepers, stood outside of recruiting centers in a show of force.

Nowadays, the right-wing presence at uprisings across the country serves to “radicalize” potential extremists, said Daryl Johnson, a former domestic terrorism analyst at the Department of Homeland Security

“Now, with the boogaloo movement and with these militias going into these [instances of] civil unrest, it kind of reinforces to them this notion that society is on the brink of a civil war,” he said. “And it serves as a radicalization facilitator, much like a foreign fighter going over to a conflict zone reinforcing their version of the world.”

The armed groups aren’t acting alone. Mainstream conservative media and political figures have created a bogeyman out of antifa and Black Lives Matter — convenient domestic “others” that serve as scapegoats. The President himself on Monday referred to people “on the streets” and “in the dark shadows” that were controlling Joe Biden. Separately, he said vaguely that the departments of Justice and Homeland Security would be “announcing a joint operation center to investigate the violent, left-wing civil unrest.”

Once upon a time, when Barack Obama was president, the Oath Keepers might’ve been up in arms about that sort of assertion of executive power. But things have changed. Stewart Rhodes, asked Monday what he thought Trump should do about America’s supposed new civil war, told the journalist Casey Michel, “he should declare a nationwide insurrection to be in effect and call all of the National Guard units into federal service, under his command, and use them to suppress the insurrection in the streets.”

A member of Patriot Prayer who claimed to have been with Danielson when he was killed — and whose story Oath Keepers retweeted — was asked a similar question this weekend: What should Trump do?

“Send troops,” the man said. “Send troops.”

Much of the amped up rhetoric about cresting violence is just projection: The right blames the left for violence to justify its own.

In recent years, according to a recent report on tactics of the racist “alt-right” published by the Southern Poverty Law Center, “Some members of the radical right realized that, even while claiming to be victims of liberal overreach, they could capitalize on their own violent acts. Video of a dramatic punch could go viral, making heroes out of the movement’s street warriors and recruiting people to the cause.”

One of the report’s authors, Howard Graves, told TPM that “the far-right has demonstrated that it is willing and able to escalate at a quicker rate, and that’s really where we see the biggest potential for violence.”

“Their animus for going out into the streets is to directly and physically oppose antifa,” Graves added. “And they see opposing antifa as largely instigating these conflicts.”


Matt Shuham (@mattshuham) is a reporter in TPM’s New York office covering corruption, extremism and other beats. Prior to joining TPM, he was associate editor of The National Memo and an editorial intern at Rolling Stone.

New Engineering Report Claims Bannon’s Privately Built Border Wall Will Fail

The report, set to be filed in federal court this week, confirms reporting from ProPublica and The Texas Tribune that found portions of the wall were in danger of overturning if not fixed due to extensive erosion just months after it was built.

MISSION, TEXAS - DECEMBER 11: A loader grades land near a section of privately-built border wall under construction on December 11, 2019 near Mission, Texas. The hardline immigration group We Build The Wall is const... MORE
By Jeremy Schwartz and Perla Trevizo
|
September 2, 2020 9:17 a.m.

This story first appeared at ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

It’s not a matter of if a privately built border fence along the shores of the Rio Grande will fail, it’s a matter of when, according to a new engineering report on the troubled project.

The report is one of two new studies set to be filed in federal court this week that found numerous deficiencies in the 3-mile border fence, built this year by North Dakota-based Fisher Sand and Gravel. The reports confirm earlier reporting from ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, which found that segments of the structure were in danger of overturning due to extensive erosion if not fixed and properly maintained. Fisher dismissed the concerns as normal post-construction issues.

Donations that paid for part of the border fence are at the heart of an indictment against members of the We Build the Wall nonprofit, which raised more than $25 million to help President Donald Trump build a border wall.

Former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon, We Build the Wall founder Brian Kolfage and two others connected to the organization are accused of siphoning donor money to pay off personal debt and fund lavish lifestyles. All four, who face up to 20 years in prison on each of the two counts they face, have pleaded not guilty, and Bannon has called the charges a plot to stop border wall construction.

We Build the Wall, whose executive board is made up of influential immigration hard-liners like Bannon, Kris Kobach and Tom Tancredo, contributed $1.5 million of the cost of the $42 million private border fence project south of Mission, Texas.

Last year, the nonprofit also hired Fisher to build a half-mile fence segment in Sunland Park, New Mexico, outside El Paso.

Company president Tommy Fisher, a frequent guest on Fox News, had called the Rio Grande fence the “Lamborghini” of border walls and bragged that his company’s methods could help Trump reach his Election Day goal of about 500 new miles of barriers along the southern border.

Instead, one engineer who reviewed the two reports on behalf of ProPublica and The Texas Tribune likened Fisher’s fence to a used Toyota Yaris.

“It seems like they are cutting corners everywhere,” said Alex Mayer, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Texas at El Paso. “It’s not a Lamborghini, it’s a $500 used car.”

Since Fisher’s companies embarked on construction of the Rio Grande fence, the Trump administration has awarded about $2 billion in federal contracts to the firms to build segments of the border wall in other locations.

Fisher agreed to the inspection as part of ongoing lawsuits against Fisher Sand and Gravel filed last year by the National Butterfly Center and the International Boundary and Water Commission. They unsuccessfully sought to convince a federal judge to stop the construction of the project until the potential impacts of the wall on the Rio Grande could be determined.

Mark Tompkins, an environmental engineer hired by the wildlife refuge, noted in his report that widespread erosion and scouring occurred after heavy rain events such as Hurricane Hanna in July, but that the fence has yet to experience a flood of the Rio Grande.

“Fisher Industries’ private bollard fence will fail during extreme high flow events,” concluded Tompkins, who specializes in river management.

“When extreme flow events, laden with sediment and debris, completely undermine the foundation of the fence and create a flow path under the fence or cause a segment of the fence to topple into the river, unpredictable and damaging hydraulics will occur,” he added in an affidavit to be filed in court.

Experts have said the fence will face a never-ending battle with erosion given its proximity to the water and the sandy, silty material of the banks. In the Rio Grande Valley, the federal government usually builds sections of the wall miles inland on top of existing levees, partly due to erosion concerns.

A second report, based on a geotechnical and structural inspection by the Millennium Engineers Group of Pharr, Texas, also hired by the National Butterfly Center, found that the fence was stable for now, but that it faces a host of issues. They include soil erosion on the river side — in some areas gaps up to three feet wide and waist deep, concrete cracking, construction flaws and what the firm concluded was likely substandard construction material below the fence’s foundation.

The Millennium engineers called for a clay covering to protect the embankment from erosion, as well as closely monitoring the project.

Its conclusion: “The geography at the wall’s construction location in comparison to the river bend is not at a favorable location for long-term performance.”

According to a copy of an operation and maintenance plan, Fisher Sand and Gravel plans quarterly inspections of the fence as well as extra checkups after large storms. The company had also said it would plant grasses that better hold in place the sandy riverbank and add a layer of rocks to lessen erosion. New soil will also be “treated and seeded” to help fill ground cover.

Tompkins called the maintenance plan “completely inadequate” and a “haphazard and unprofessional approach to long-term maintenance.”

Tommy Fisher said Tuesday that he couldn’t comment on the reports because he hadn’t reviewed them. But he added that his company has fixed all of the erosion, in part by adding a 10-foot-wide road made out of rocks for the Border Patrol to drive over that his crew considered big enough so it wouldn’t be as easily displaced. He estimates it will cost up to $150,000.

“Bottom line, if you want border security on the border you have to think outside the box,” he said. “I feel very comfortable with what we’ve done.”

In July, Fisher appeared on a podcast hosted by Bannon, who called Fisher “kind of a mentor” who “taught me really about how you actually have to build a wall.”

Asked about the engineering concerns, which Bannon said were part of a “hit piece,” Fisher called them “absolutely nonsense.”

“I would invite any of these engineers that so-called said this was gonna fall over, I’ll meet ‘em there next week. … If you don’t know what you’re talking about, you probably shouldn’t start talking,” he said. “It’s working unbelievably well. There’s a little erosion maintenance we have to maintain.”

But to experts, Fisher’s planned fixes are inadequate.

“To me, it’s almost like putting a Band-Aid on a gaping wound,” said Adriana E. Martinez, a Southern Illinois University Edwardsville professor and geomorphologist who reviewed the reports on behalf of ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.

Officials with the International Boundary Commission have said that they too have found “significant erosion,” but spokeswoman Sally Spener said she couldn’t elaborate on that or on mitigation plans due to pending litigation. The binational body regulates building in the floodplain between the U.S. and Mexico because structures can worsen flooding and alter the course of the river, potentially violating international water treaties.

The Mexican section of the commission has said it worries the wall could obstruct the river’s flow or be knocked down by the force of the water, according to Spener.

Trump tried to distance himself from the private fence after the ProPublica/Tribune stories, saying that he had never agreed with it and that it had been done to make him look bad. He again distanced himself from the project and We Build the Wall after the charges against Bannon and the others.

“When I read about it, I didn’t like it,” he said. “It was showboating and maybe looking for funds. But you’ll have to see what happens.”

Last November, We Build the Wall representatives met with Customs and Border Protection officials about donating the group’s first border wall project — a half-mile fence in Sunland Park, New Mexico, just outside El Paso. According to a memo obtained by The Nation, CBP called it an “overall positive meet and greet.”

But the federal agency identified several areas of concern with the Sunland Park project, including the possibility that it would require an environmental assessment, but also the fact that Fisher Industries had inflated the speed with which it could complete the project.

“Their performance on this small project shows that some claims may have been inflated due to lack of experience with this type of work,” the memo states.

Fisher has said he wants to donate the Rio Grande fence to the federal government as well, although it’s unclear whether the government will take it. The fence likely will come with a hefty tax bill if not donated, after Hidalgo County recently appraised the land’s value at more than $20 million, which Fisher said his company will fight.

The next court hearing regarding the pending federal lawsuits is scheduled for Sept. 10.

Biden campaign wants pro-Trump ad on FRACKING removed in battleground PA, telling TV stations it "makes up a policy, ascribes it to Vice President Biden, and then says the nonexistent policy will result in job losses of 30 times more people than actually work in the industry.”

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Kenosha Shop Owner Was Replaced In Trump’s Damage Tour After Declining To Be Featured

THE TRUMP SCHOOL OF FALSIFICATION

KENOSHA, WISCONSIN - SEPTEMBER 01: Police prepare for President Donald Trump's visit on September 1, 2020 in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Kenosha is recovering from several days of unrest and demonstrations following the shoo... MORE

By Zoë Richards  TPM
September 2, 2020 8:21 a.m.

A Kenosha business owner rebuked President Donald Trump for appearing to use his leveled shop for political gain after he refused to participate in the President’s tour of the city’s damage and was later replaced by a man who was misrepresented as the shop’s current owner.

Tom Gram who owns an old camera shop that was leveled in fires last Monday after protests broke out in the Wisconsin city told an NBC-affiliate in Milwaukee that he immediately refused when the White House called on Monday, asking if he would accompany the President on a tour that would showcase his leveled business.

“I think everything he does turns into a circus and I just didn’t want to be involved in it,” Gram told WTMJ-TV.

The White House had called with a request from President Trump for Gram to be featured in a presidential tour of damage following demonstrations that turned destructive in the aftermath of the shooting of Jacob Blake after Trump arrived in Kenosha on Tuesday. When Gram said no, it appears that a former owner of the shop who lavishly praised the president’s efforts was featured instead.

Gram told WTMJ-TV that he has been the shop owner of the century-old Rode’s Camera Shop for the past eight years after he purchased the shop from the Rode family. A website for the business confirms that when the business reached its 100-year milestone in 2011, in preparation to retire then-owner John Rode III sold the business to his employees. Before purchasing the shop, Gram said he worked at the store for more than four decades. Co-owner Paul Willette joined the business in 2001.

To Gram’s surprise, he discovered while watching television that President Trump had replaced him. Trump is featured in the video alongside the camera shop’s former owner in a doctored scene that makes it look like the business still belongs to him even though he sold it to Gram several years ago.

Gram’s story is not the first case of President Trump bending facts to suit his political campaign objectives. He featured several public housing tenants in a self-aggrandizing video that aired without their knowledge at the Republican National Convention last week.

While WTMJ-TV found that Rode is still the property owner at 2204 Roosevelt Road in Kenosha, where Gram ran the camera business which is now in ruins, Rode is not the rightful owner of the shop that he sold to his employee.

“I just appreciate President Trump coming today; everybody here does,” Rode — Gram’s false stand-in– said in the clip. “We’re so thankful that we got the federal troops in to help because once they got here, things did calm down quite a bit.”

President Trump also introduced Rode as the “owner of Rode’s Camera Shop,” during a round table conversation on Tuesday.

“I think he needs to bring this country together rather than divide it,” Gram said of Trump, telling WTMJ-TV that he did not believe it was correct to solely focus on law enforcement when “there’s a lot of good people in this community.”

Zoë Richards is a TPM newswriter based in New York. Previously, she reported on local politics in Kampala, Uganda, wrote about sustainability from a think-tank in Paris, France, and has pursued documentary and broadcast news projects closer to home. She holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.

Thought to be extinct for 50 years, New Guinea singing dog was thriving all along

Scientists found the wild dogs from which the captive New Guinea singing dog population was derived. Photo by New Guinea Highland Wild Dog Foundation

Sept. 1 (UPI) -- The New Guinea singing dog was thought to have disappeared from the wild some 50 years ago, but new research suggests the unusual species has been thriving all along in the New Guinea Highlands.

Genomic analysis, detailed this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, confirmed a group of wild dogs discovered in the New Guinea Highlands as the population from which New Guinea singing dogs were derived.

New Guinea singing dogs are noted for their distinct, melodious howls.

"Canids make all kinds of sounds, but the sound that New Guinea singing dogs make is different, it's unlike any dog sound you've heard," Elaine Ostrander told UPI on Tuesday.

RELATED New study details the genetic evolution of domesticated animals

"It has a harmonic, tonal quality that goes up and goes down in pitch," said Ostrander, lead investigator at the National Human Genome Research Institute of the National Institutes of Health.

Knowledge of the New Guinea singing dog can be traced back in the scientific literature to the 19th century, but by the 1970s, scientists reported the dog missing from the wild.

In an effort to conserve the species, a handful of dogs were brought from conservation centers in New Guinea to the United States. On the surface, the effort was a success, breeders turned eight or nine dogs into a population of nearly 300.

RELATED Increase in promiscuity likely encouraged animal domestication

"The problem is that when you start with just eight or nine dogs and you breed them and breed them, you lose genetic diversity very quickly," Ostrander said.

In the mid-2000s, word spread of a group of dogs in the mountains of Indonesia that resembled New Guinea singing dogs. James McIntyre, president of the New Guinea Highland Wild Dog Foundation, led a pair of expeditions to find and document the wild dogs. On the second expedition, in 2018, McIntyre was able to obtain blood samples.

Back in the lab, scientists were able to isolate the nuclear genomes of three individual dogs from DNA in the blood samples.

RELATED Study finds wolves understand cause and effect better than dogs

"When we looked at the highland dogs' genome and compared it to all known dog breeds from everywhere in the world, as well as to dingoes and village dogs from New Guinea, it was clear that they were most closely related to New Guinea singing dogs," Ostrander said.

The findings also allowed researchers to measure the loss of genetic diversity the New Guinea singing dog experienced while in captivity, data that could help conservation biologists improve future captive breeding programs and protect species vulnerable to genetic bottlenecking.

Often, captive breeding programs start with only a small sample of a popualion's genetic diversity.

RELATED Dogs and wolves have an innate sense of inequity

"Those eight or nine dogs were all taken from around the same area, so chances are that they were probably fairly closely related," Ostrander said. "By the time a species is a candidate for a captive breeding program, they are undergoing duress and have already lost some genetic diversity."

Researchers hope the wild dogs of the New Guinea Highlands can help conservationists restore the genetic diversity of the New Guinea singing dog.

Ostrander said he hopes a more complete picture of the New Guinea singing dog's genome could help her and her colleagues locate the genes responsible for the dog's unique singing ability.

"That's something I'm personally very interested in finding out," she said. "Then I'd like to know what these same genes are doing in humans. Nature is very clever about redundancy, it will often use the same genes for slightly different things."

The new findings could also have implications for the complex and still poorly understood story of dog domestication.

"When we build a tree of all the canids, we find that New Guinea Highland wild dogs, New Guinea singing dogs and dingoes all tie closely together on a branch, and that branch came off pretty early on, well before the emergence of all the other kinds of dog breeds we know today," Ostrander said. "But where [the New Guinea singing dog] falls into the story of domestication is something we can't say for certain. We need to do more research in order to better understand it."

upi.com/7034958

Full 'Corn Moon' rises in September for 1st time in 3 years

A full moon rises behind the Statue of Liberty in New York City on May 7. September was graced by the Corn Moon, summer's last full moon, on Tuesday and Wednesday. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

Sept. 1 (UPI) -- September's lone full moon rose so early this year that it shined as the Corn Moon on Tuesday night and promised that October skies will be graced by a Blue Moon on Halloween.

For the first time in three years, the Corn Moon -- the final full moon of the summer -- rose in September and peaked about 1:22 a.m. EDT Wednesday on the opposite side of the sun, according to NASA.

Usually, September's full moon rises closer to the Autumn Equinox, which ushers in the fall season on Sept. 22, and is named the Harvest Moon in relation to when Native Americans traditionally harvested their crops, according to the Farmers' Almanac.

However, the nearest moon to the equinox is to rise on Oct. 1 this year, meaning September's full moon is the Corn Moon as it appears around the traditional corn harvest, the annual calendar publication said.

"Corn requires up to 100 frost-free days to reach harvest depending upon variety and the amount of heat during the growing season," the almanac said. "That would take us to around the end of August to early September. Hence, for a full moon in early September, it seems appropriate to brand it as a Corn Moon."

This means that the celestial body will appear full twice in October's skies with the Blue Moon, the latter of the two full moons, to fall on Oct. 31 -- Halloween.

Corn Moons occur in September about once every three years.

CAMPBELL'S CREAM OF ANARCHIST SOUP
Trump ridiculed after bizarre rant about 'anarchists throwing soup' resurfaces

Posted 4 hours ago by Greg Evans 

2020 has been a rough year for Donald Trump and the United States.

Not only has he done a terrible job of handling the coronavirus pandemic but he has also faced months and months' worth of Black Lives Matter protests following the death of unarmed Black people in the US at the hands of police.

Rather than offer words of support or a solution to the decades-long problem, Trump has criticised the protesters and even suggested that Black Lives Matter is 'discriminatory' and 'bad for Black people.'

Just a few weeks ago, on July 31, the president went on a bizarre rant about protesters and soup, which he claimed was being thrown at police. Yes, you read that correctly – soup.

Speaking during a meeting with the National Association of Police Organizations Leadership, the president said:

In cities across the nation, we’ve also seen police officers assaulted with bricks, rocks, bats, Molotov cocktails, frozen bottles of water.

Somebody said last night, one of the protesters — I saw it — he said, 'It’s only water. How can water hurt you?' Yeah, they don’t say it’s frozen, in a bottle the size of a football. And they throw it at the police. It’s unbelievable. 'It’s water.'

And then they have cans of soup. Soup. And they throw the cans of soup. That’s better than a brick because you can’t throw a brick; it’s too heavy. But a can of soup, you can really put some power into that, right? 

And then, when they get caught, they say, 'No, this is soup for my family.' They’re so innocent. 'This is soup for my family.' It’s incredible.

And you have people coming over with bags of soup — big bags of soup. And they lay it on the ground, and the anarchists take it and they start throwing it at our cops, at our police.

And if it hits you, that’s worse than a brick because that’s got force. It’s the perfect size. It’s, like, made perfect

And when they get caught, they say, 'No, this is just soup for my family.' And then the media says, 'This is just soup. These people are very, very innocent. They’re innocent people. These are just protesters. Isn’t it wonderful to allow protesting?'

It's hard to know exactly what Trump has a grievance with here. Is it the protesters or the soup? Regardless, the bonkers rant has been widely ridiculed on social media.

There was the inevitable comparison to the famous 'Soup Nazi' episode from Seinfeld.

It's amazing that this took so long to come to light but we can at least be thankful that it is in the world now. We can't wait to see what Joe Biden will make of this

Pakistan bans dating apps Tinder, Grindr over 'immoral' content

Pakistan has blocked access to multiple dating apps, including Tinder and Grindr, in a bid to restrict "immoral" and "indecent" content.

    

Pakistan has blocked several dating apps, including Tinder and Grindr, in a bid to restrict "immoral" and "indecent" content, authorities said on Monday.

The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) said it issued notices to the management of Tinder, Grindr, Tagged, Skout and SayHi, seeking the removal of dating services on those platforms.

Read more: Pakistani women break dating taboos on Tinder

The notices were sent "keeping in view the negative effects of immoral/indecent content streaming," according to the PTA, but the companies did not respond within the time outlined by local laws.

Pakistan is the second-largest Muslim-majority state in the world. Extra-marital relationships and homosexuality are against the laws of the country.

Last week, the regulatory body asked YouTube to block all videos that were considered "objectionable" in the country. In the past, video app TikTok and live-streaming app Bigo Live were also reprimanded over explicit content.

However, with greater regulations imposed on digital platforms, rights groups are worried that the government is attempting to push censorship and gain control of free media.

"If adults choose to be on an app, it is not for the state to dictate whether they should use it or not," said Shahzad Ahmad, director of Bytes For All, a Pakistani digital rights group. Calling the ban "completely ridiculous," he said it was an attempt at  "moral policing."

Data shows that within the past 12 months, Tinder was downloaded 440,000 times, Grindr, Tagged and SayHi about 300,000 times each, and Skout 100,000 times in Pakistan.

see/aw (Reuters, AFP)

Elon Musk to meet with German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier

The billionaire is visiting Germany to explore a potential coronavirus vaccine made by CureVac. The biotechnology firm, which Germany has a direct stake in, is in the advanced stages of developing a vaccine candidate.

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk is visiting Germany to scope out the development of a coronavirus vaccine candidate and meet with the economy minister.

Musk is scheduled to meet with Economy Minister Peter Altmaier on Wednesday, according to government sources.

Read more: EU joins WHO's coronavirus vaccine alliance, offers €400 million investment

On Tuesday, the Tesla CEO visited biotechnology company CureVac in the southwestern town of Tübingen. The firm is in the advanced stages of developing a potential vaccine for the virus.

On Sunday, Musk announced that he would head to Germany to discuss cooperation with CureVac and the construction of a Tesla factory in Grünheide, on the outskirts of Berlin.

Read more: Global race to buy coronavirus vaccine: What you need to know

"Tesla, as a side project, is building RNA microfactories for CureVac and possibly others," he tweeted in July.

The car manufacturer has not yet released details on the project.

Starting in mid-2021, Tesla plans to produce around 500,000 electric vehicles annually at the Grünheide "Gigafactory," creating around 12,000 jobs. The plan does not yet have full environmental approval.

The European Commission said in August that it was in advanced talks with CureVac, which is partly owned by the German government, regarding the purchase of 225 million doses of its vaccine. In June, Germany paid €300 million ($356 million) for a 23% stake in the company.

Until then, billionaire German entrepreneur Dietmar Hopp, co-founder of German software company SAP, had been the biotech firm's biggest investor.

Germany also signed an agreement with France, Italy and the Netherlands to procure 300 million doses of a potential coronavirus vaccine from the British-Swedish pharmaceutical group AstraZeneca. Under the deal, all EU member states must receive supplies of the vaccine as soon as it is discovered.

Read more: Coronavirus: German vaccine study draws thousands of volunteers

Date 02.09.2020
Related Subjects Coronavirus
Keywords Elon Musk, Altmaier, vaccine, coronavirus, COVID-19

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