Rohingya refugees sue Facebook for $150 billion over Myanmar genocide

The class-action suit alleges Facebook turned a blind eye to hate speech.

J. Fingas
@jonfingas
December 7th, 2021

REUTERS/Beawiharta


Facebook has been repeatedly accused of enabling Myanmar's genocide against the country's Rohingya minority, and now it will deal with those accusations in court. A Rohingya woman has filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of refugees against Facebook parent company Meta, alleging the company both amplified anti-Rohingya hate speech through its algorithms and failed to remove content fostering violence. The refugees ask for over $150 billion in damages.

The plaintiffs argued that Facebook only took meaningful action against pro-genocide factions after it was pushed. The Myanmar military launched its purge of Rohingya in 2017, with officials and nationalist monks spreading slurs and misinformation on Facebook to either justify or cover up atrocities. Facebook only started cracking down in August 2018 following a UN report linking unchecked behavior on the social network to real-world violence. The company requested an independent audit at the same time that reached a similar conclusion. This was too little too late, according to the refugees — the company admitted it "should and could have done more" only after mass displacements and deaths.

Meta has already declined to comment on the lawsuit. A similar complaint is expected in the UK in 2022.

The firm was quick to clamp down on the Myanmar military following its February 2021 coup, and went so far as to pull the military's main page. However, that swifter response won't help much with a lawsuit over past actions. While it's too soon to say whether or not the lawsuit will succeed, let alone obtain the hoped-for damages, the company may have a difficult time defending itself.

Amazon Web Services outage disrupts dozens of sites



AWS outage Amazon Web Services logo displayed on a phone screen and a laptop keyboard are seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on Dec. 1, 2021. A major AWS outage disrupted access to numerous popular sites for several hours on Tuesday, Dec. 7, 2021, including Prime, Disney+, Netflix and Ring, among others. 

(Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)December 07, 2021 at 5:15 pm PSTBy Kelli Dugan, Cox Media Group National Content Desk

A major Amazon Web Services outage disrupted access to numerous popular sites for several hours on Tuesday, including Prime, Disney+, Netflix and Ring, among others.

Some services began coming back online sporadically just before 5 p.m. EST, following the more than six-hour outage.

Update 8:15 p.m. EST Dec. 7: Amazon Web Services issued a notice just before 8 p.m. Tuesday indicating that its “network device issues have been resolved” and that the company is working to recover “any impaired services.”

Update 6:47 p.m. EST Dec. 7: In a statement provided to CNBC, Amazon spokesperson Richard Rocha confirmed that the outage impacted the company’s warehouse and delivery operations,” noting that officials are “working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.”

The company did not immediately specify how many warehouses and delivery stations were affected by the outage.

According to CNBC, a notice sent to delivery drivers via Amazon Chime, an internal chat app, stated that the company was “currently monitoring a network-wide technical outage” impacting delivery operations.

“Should drivers be unable to continue delivering due to the outage, go to a nearby safe location and stand by,” the message continued.

Meanwhile, Samuel Caceres, an Amazon driver in Washington state, told the network that his delivery facility has been “at a standstill” since 8 a.m. PST and that drivers and warehouse workers had been on standby since then.

Update 6:35 p.m. EST Dec. 7: Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Kentik Inc, a network intelligence firm, confirmed to The Associated Press that the issue arose midmorning on the U.S. East Coast at AWS’ largest data center.

Both Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines and Houson-based Southwest Airlines reported AWS-related interruptions, with the latter switching to West Coast servers as a workaround and avoiding major disruptions to flights.

According to the AP, airlines American, United, Alaska and JetBlue were unaffected by the outage, but DownDetector indicated services such as Instacart, Venmo, Kindle and Roku, as well as the McDonald’s app were not as fortunate.

“More and more these outages end up being the product of automation and centralization of administration,” Madory told the AP, adding, “This ends up leading to outages that are hard to completely avoid due to operational complexity but are very impactful when they happen.”

Meanwhile, Kentick experienced a 26% drop in traffic to Netflix, among other major web-based services affected by the outage, he said.

In an emailed response to questions from the AP, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency stated that it was working with Amazon “to understand any potential impacts this outage may have for federal agencies or other partners.”

Update 6:09 p.m. EST Dec. 7: By 6 p.m. the company reported “significant recovery” from the outage but continued to “closely monitor the health” of the affected network devices. Amazon did not disclose any additional details about the cause and did not provided a timeline for full recovery of services.

AWS provides cloud computing services to myriad governments, universities and private companies.

The news came too late, however, for many travelers temporarily stranded by the major outage.

Original report: A notice on Amazon Web Services’ status page identified the suspected root of the issue as a problem with its application programming interface, or API, as well as with the AWS Management Console, CNBC reported.

The issues impacted AWS’ main US-East-1 region hosted in Northern Virginia, meaning not all users experienced interruptions, the company confirmed.

The company later stated that an increase in traffic between specific internal services is causing network congestion between those devices, and that it is working to resolve the bottleneck.

According to Reuters, outage tracker Downdetector showed more than 24,000 incidents of people reporting issues with Amazon.

Other affected sites included, but were not limited to, Prime Video, messaging service Slack, mobile banking app Chime, robot vacuum cleaner maker iRobot, stock trading app Robinhood and Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the U.S., as well as numerous in-house Amazon Warehouse tools, such as the Flex and AtoZ app, CNBC reported.

According to the network, the warehouse tool outage made it impossible to scan packages or access delivery routes.

In July, Amazon experienced a disruption in its online stores’ service that affected more than 38,000 users in only about two hours. Meanwhile, users have endured 27 Amazon-related outages during the past 12 months, Reuters reported, citing web tool reviewing website ToolTester.

-- The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Furious customers blast Amazon as an outage knocks Ring doorbells, baby monitors, and Alexa products offline

Allana Akhtar

A Ring doorbell in 2019. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images


Amazon Ring users on social media are furious they cannot access home monitoring services.
Amazon's AWS cloud servers were down for most of the day Tuesday as the company investigated an outage.
"How the hell are we supposed to disarm our alarms. Or monitor anything at all," one user tweeted.

Amazon Ring users online are fuming as they lost access to home monitoring services during the company's major outage.

Amazon's web-hosting subsidiary, Amazon Web Services, suffered a major outage on Tuesday, impacting a number of services that rely on the company's servers.

The outage extended to popular Amazon services, like the Ring smart home system and Alexa speakers.

"Can't listen to Amazon Music. My Ring Doorbell doesn't work. Can't control my lights with Alexa," one user tweeted.

Ring users said issues with the home monitoring service has resulted in the inability to disable alarms, monitor children, and watch out for intruders.

"I'm unable to access any of my cameras, is there a nationwide outage? I'm literally relying on my cameras to keep me safe because I'm on bed rest," one user said in a tweet.

"How the hell are we supposed to disarm our alarms. Or monitor anything at all," another tweeted.

The outage began around 11:30 a.m. ET. As of about 2 p.m. ET, Amazon said its technical teams identified the root cause of the outage and are working on a solution, according to its website. Amazon added some services have began experiencing partial recovery.

"Most pathetic service," one Twitter user said. "How can a doorbell or a security camera be down for several hours, and still no signs of resumption!"

"Eek, just in time for my newly-in-beds triplet toddlers' nap," another user said. "Now I have no idea what they're doing up there."

Many Ring doorbell users said they were concerned their packages would get stolen during the systems outage.

"What's going on ring? App down, can't login, can't see what's going on outside my door," a user tweeted. "I got packages coming and I'm not about to get caught lacking."

"Great the one day we had a package taken from our porch...seriously," tweeted another Ring customer. "Hopefully the camera caught it."

"Do we have an update? [My Ring] has been down for a few hours now and I'm expecting packages. Some of which need to be signed for today," another Twitter user said.

"We are aware of a service interruption impacting Ring," the company said in a statement. "We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience and understanding."

Amazon was not immediately available for additional comment

Problems With AWS Network Devices Caused Widespread Cloud Outage

BY RICH MILLER - DECEMBER 7, 2021 


Amazon Web Services data centers in Loudoun County, Virginia. (Photo: Rich Miller)

Problems with several network devices in Northern Virginia caused a major outage at Amazon Web Services, with the ripples spreading across the Internet to interrupt service for many popular web services that run their infrastructure on the AWS cloud.

The lengthy outage highlighted the essential role played by cloud platforms like AWS, which support the web operations of at least 1 million enterprise customers. The problems at AWS were blamed for performance issues at Netflix, Disney+, Ring, Ticketmaster, Venmo, Roku. Fidelity Investments, Hootsuite, and many others. The outage interrupted online finals for students using the Canvas Learning Management platform, and even deliveries at Amazon warehouses, as the outage impacted apps required to scan packages and plan delivery routes.

The AWS outage was focused on US-East-1, a service region based in Northern Virginia which houses the largest concentration of Amazon data center infrastructure. The problems began at around 12:30 p.m. Eastern, when users began to experience problems accessing AWS services. Approximately 5 hours later, at 5:47 p.m., AWS reported that it had “mitigated the underlying issue” and services were beginning to be restored.

“The root cause of this issue is an impairment of several network devices in the US-EAST-1 Region,” AWS said on its status page. As of 7:30 pm Eastern, AWS said the network devices issues had been resolved, and it was “now working towards recovery of any impaired services.”

Large-scale IT service outages can be expensive. A 2021 survey from The Uptime Institute found that data center outages cost companies an average of $100,000 per incident, with about a third of respondents citing costs of $1 million or more.

The stakes could be even higher for Amazon Web Services, which is the largest cloud computing platform. AWS had revenue of $16.4 billion in the third quarter of 2021, which works out to about $7.4 million per hour. Although cloud workloads running outside the US-East-1 region apparently were unaffected, an outage lasting more than six hours in the largest cloud region would add up quickly – although such “losses” at service providers are often accounted for through customer credits.

Why Networks Are So Important

The rise of cloud computing underscores the importance of networks and how they are configured. Networking and software issues are surpassing power outages as the most common causes of data center downtime, according to 2021 outage data from Uptime Institute. This trend reflects the growing role of cloud computing and SaaS (software as a service) applications, which often use architectures that can route around physical failures of electrical components like UPS systems, transfer switches and generators.

When Amazon Web Services experiences reliability problems, they often involve US -East-1, which is not surprising because it is the largest AWS region and also the oldest, as Amazon has had data centers in Virginia since 2004. AWS has spent $35 billion on its cloud computing infrastructure in Northern Virginia over the past 10 years, and operates about 50 data centers in the region. It’s the largest single concentration of corporate data centers on earth, positioned near a strategic Internet intersection in Ashburn, which serves as a global crossroads for data traffic.

Network problems are complicated by the highly-automated nature of cloud platforms. These data traffic flows are designed to be large and fast and work without human intervention – which makes them hard to tame when humans intervene. Some of the largest outages impacting cloud platforms and social networks have been tied to network problems. 

Some examples:
On October 5, a configuration error broke Facebook’s connection to a key network backbone, disconnecting all of its data centers from the Internet and leaving its DNS servers unreachable, the company said.

A lengthy 2019 Google outage was caused by unusual network congestion in its operations in the Eastern U.S. In an incident report, Google said that YouTube measured a 10 percent drop in global views during the incident, while Google Cloud Storage measured a 30 percent reduction in traffic.
Resiliency is Still A Challenge

At DCF we have often noted how cloud computing is bringing change to how companies approach uptime, introducing architectures that create resiliency using software and network connectivity (See “Rethinking Redundancy”). This strategy, pioneered by cloud providers, is creating new ways of designing applications. Data center uptime has historically been achieved through layers of redundant electrical infrastructure, including uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems and emergency backup generators.

Cloud providers like Google have been leaders in creating failover scenarios that shift workloads across data centers, spreading applications and backup systems across multiple data centers, and using sophisticated software to detect outages and redirect data traffic to route around hardware failures and utility power outages.

Amazon Web Services has been a pioneer in this effort by popularizing the use of availability zones (AZs), clusters of data centers within a region that allow customers to run instances of an application in several isolated locations to avoid a single point of failure. These architectures enable sophisticated approaches to failover and backup of applications. But even a distributed uptime plan can break down if the network fails, breaking the flow of data across cloud infrastructure.

Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto Is Craig Wright Alone, According to Kleiman V Wright Jury

by Makkie Maclang
December 6, 2021 




It took the jury in the Kleiman v Wright trial almost two weeks of deliberation to reach a unanimous decision. The good news is that the verdict is finally out, and the jury has sided with the defense on all counts except conversion, awarding $100 million to W&K Info Defense Research, LLC. No punitive damages have been given to the plaintiff, the Dave Kleiman estate.

This is a loss to the plaintiff, but it is only fitting as no direct evidence to their claims have been presented during the trial. Now, there is no more question that Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, is 100% Craig Wright and no one else.

The Kleiman v Wright trial has concluded its closing arguments before Thanksgiving, and the jury has deliberated since then, excluding the holidays. Considering that the plaintiff has revised its demands and is requesting at least $126 billion, which is half of the $252 billion intellectual property of nChain Chief Scientist Craig S. Wright, plus punitive damages of about $34 billion, it would truly be difficult for any jury to reach a verdict in this unprecedented Bitcoin trial.

Facts of the Case

The plaintiff is composed of the David Kleiman estate and W&K Info Defense Research, LLC, and is represented by Ira Kleiman, David Kleiman’s estranged brother and his only living immediate family member. Ira Kleiman claimed through this lawsuit that Wright cheated David Kleiman out of the credit of being a partner in writing the Bitcoin white paper under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.

The plaintiff also alleged David Kleiman was a business partner in W&K Info Defense Research, LLC, through which the early mining of 1.1 million Bitcoin, now priced at about $64 billion, was purportedly done.

Thus, the plaintiff originally claimed that David Kleiman’s estate is entitled to half of the Satoshi coins, which was later on changed to half of the value of Wright’s intellectual property as Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto.

Throughout the three-week trial, it was clear that the plaintiff only had circumstantial and anecdotal evidence as to the alleged partnership between David Kleiman and Wright as Satoshi Nakamoto and business partnership between the two in mining the 1.1 million Satoshi coins.

It was a fact proven in court that there was no evidence of a written agreement between David Kleiman and Wright in being partners as it relates to co-authoring the Bitcoin white paper and mining the said coins.

And because Ira Kleiman had previously deleted and overwritten all of David Kleiman’s hard drives, given away his brother’s cellphone and reformatted David Kleiman’s laptop so Ira Kleiman’s wife could use it, no evidence from David Kleiman could be presented in court, aside from emails that were alleged to be forged by the plaintiff.

It was also a fact that almost all evidence presented by the plaintiff came from Wright himself after he contacted Ira Kleiman, the brother of someone Wright considers to be his best friend. In these email exchanges and even in a BBC interview outtake that has been documented, Wright called David Kleiman his partner and as essential to the creation of Bitcoin.

In his testimony, Wright told the court he exaggerated David Kleiman’s role in Bitcoin because he wanted his best friend to be remembered. In fact, according to Wright, David Kleiman only edited the Bitcoin white paper and his crucial role was in providing the encouragement and moral support that Wright needed in order to push through with creating Bitcoin.

There was no evidence presented in court to substantiate Wright’s claim of exaggeration; however, it’s a fact that David Kleiman died in 2013 without making a single attempt to get credit for being a part of the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto and without laying claim to the 1.1 million Satoshi coins that Ira claimed his brother David Kleiman mined with Wright.

Questions Left Unanswered

David Kleiman was a computer forensics expert, a former police officer, and was an awarded U.S. army veteran. It has also been established during the trial that David Kleiman knew how to create a signed operating agreement, which he had done with his business partners who were also his best friends.

Why did David Kleiman not have Wright sign an operating agreement while they were allegedly creating and mining Bitcoin? Why did he not file a civil or criminal complaint if Wright fraudulently took hold of assets that were rightfully his? Why did David Kleiman remain on good terms until he died with Wright—someone who allegedly cheated him of a fortune?

David Kleiman died due to complications from several illnesses, but largely in part due to a MRSA infection for which he was hospitalized for the last two years and five months of his life. He was a paraplegic who was also destitute as evidenced by his financial status dissected in court—David Kleiman was in a mountain of debt and could not even afford to pay for his cell phone bill at the time of his death.

Why did David Kleiman not sell off his alleged Bitcoin holdings to alleviate his financial situation or even improve his quality of life by being able to afford better medical care? Even if David Kleiman and Wright were operating in secrecy, as alleged by the plaintiff, why did David Kleiman not even try to lay claim to the Satoshi coins and ask Wright for help considering the dire situation he was in where his life was literally on the line?

David Kleiman knew that he was dying. Less than a month before his death, the value of 1.1 million Bitcoin was already almost $300 million. Many were also already trading Bitcoin at this time. Still, David Kleiman did not do anything nor tell anybody about this alleged partnership in creating and mining Bitcoin. Why?

The plaintiff continued to allege that David Kleiman and Wright were operating in secrecy and that it was the main reason why there were no written agreements or why David Kleiman never mentioned Bitcoin to any of his friends. However, Wright had told his family and friends, and even advised them to buy or mine Bitcoin, as what he also told David Kleiman. Why did David Kleiman not do the same to his family and friends?

David Kleiman’s inaction while he was still alive has left many questions unanswered, or it could also have spoken volumes about the truth, which was what probably resonated more with the jury.

As established in court, David Kleiman was a good guy who many considered as their best friend. It is now obvious that David Kleiman remained a good guy until the end—not laying claim to something that was not rightfully his. Sadly, the same could not be said of Ira Kleiman.

The Verdict

Although it took some time, the jury answered “no” in favor of the defense in 24 of the 25 questions in the verdict form. The only answer in favor of the plaintiff was, “Do you find that Craig Wright is liable to the Estate of David Kleiman and/or W&K Info Defense Research, LLC for conversion?” And the jury answered “yes” only to W&K Info Defense Research, LLC and awarded it $100 million—chump change compared to the $160 billion the plaintiff asked for.

In general, the jury finds Wright not guilty against allegations of breach of partnership, civil theft, fraud, constructive fraud, breach of fiduciary duty and unjust enrichment. The verdict marks a big win for Wright and a clear validation that he alone was behind the pseudonymous Bitcoin white paper author Satoshi Nakamoto.

The jury has spoken very clearly: David Kleiman was not a partner of Wright in writing the Bitcoin white paper as Satoshi Nakamoto and his estate is not entitled to half of the 1.1 million Satoshi coins; Wright did not steal anything from David Kleiman; and Wright did not commit any fraudulent act as it relates to David Kleiman’s estate.

“The decision reached by the jury today reinforces what we already knew to be the truth: Dr. Craig Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto, the sole creator of Bitcoin on blockchain technology. And Craig Wright did not form a partnership with David Kleiman to mine Bitcoin. Thankfully, the jury recognized the overwhelming evidence that Dr. Wright holds 3,208 patents related to Bitcoin and blockchain technology, he has written extensively about Bitcoin and its underlying code, and has restored the original Bitcoin protocol in Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV),” Andres Rivero, lead counsel for the defense, said in a statement.

Although it is a clear win for Wright and the defense, the plaintiff can still appeal the case or reach a settlement behind closed doors.

What now?

It must be noted that although W&K Info Defense Research, LLC has been awarded $100 million by the jury, that there is still a probate case in Palm Beach County court that will decide whether or not Ira Kleiman gets a piece of the $100 million.

This is because Lynn Wright, Craig Wright’s ex-wife and the fiduciary controller of W&K Info Defense Research, LLC, has filed a lawsuit against Ira Kleiman claiming that he does not have the authority to represent and act on behalf of W&K Info Defense Research, LLC to sue Craig Wright.

Holding undeniable proof of her shares in W&K Info Defense Research, LLC, Lynn Wright’s lawyers argue that based on the Chapter 605 of the Florida Statutes. According to the section on limited liability companies, a transfer of shares to a non-member does not mean the non-member would also have management rights to the company.

In the case of W&K Info Defense Research, LLC, even if David Kleiman’s shares were transferred to Ira Kleiman after the former’s death, it does not give Ira Kleiman the right to manage or participate in the company’s affairs—or even represent the company in a lawsuit.

While the future is dim for Ira Kleiman and his team of litigators, this is clearly a momentous occasion for Wright and BSV. On top of Wright’s claims of being Satoshi Nakamoto being proven as true, interest in BSV is expected to grow rapidly, with it being validated as the original Bitcoin with Wright at the helm. This is evidenced by the fact that the price of BSV jumped from $118 to $136 in a matter of minutes.

“Now that this case confirmed the origins of Bitcoin’s creation, Dr. Wright plans to make good on his promise to empower marginalized groups through the greatest financial equalizer of the modern era. Bitcoin Satoshi Vision will allow people to steadily become part of the global capitalist world, start selling, trading, building themselves—not because they have to take handouts from the government but because they can work with dignity for themselves. Dr. Wright plans to make Bitcoin Satoshi Vision something that is sustaining and sustainable that lasts,” Rivero stated.

Wright has been largely criticized for his claim of being Satoshi Nakamoto by the BTC camp—even having a popular moniker as “Faketoshi.” The big question now is what will happen to BTC now that it has been proven through the verdict that Wright is indeed Satoshi Nakamoto?

At the time of writing this article, the price of BTC has dipped to $49,206.40. And this is low, especially compared to its all-time high of $68,521 on November 5 at the start of the Kleiman v Wright trial. Will the downward spiral continue? Only time will tell.

NASA has 10 new astronauts, and they could not have joined at a better time

"We're always looking for smart, dedicated people in their current fields."

ERIC BERGER - 12/7/2021, 12:19 PM

Enlarge / Meet the new astronaut-candidates: US Air Force Maj. Nichole Ayers, Christopher Williams, US Marine Corps Maj. (retired) Luke Delaney, US Navy Lt. Cmdr. Jessica Wittner, US Air Force Lt. Col. Anil Menon, US Air Force Maj. Marcos Berríos, US Navy Cmdr. Jack Hathaway, Christina Birch, US Navy Lt. Deniz Burnham, and Andre Douglas.
NASA

This week, NASA announced its first class of new astronauts since 2017, hiring 10 candidates to train at Johnson Space Center in Houston for the next two years.

There is no guarantee that each of these six men and four women, ages 32 to 45 and all with extremely impressive resumes, will complete the training and become full-fledged astronauts. But one thing is clear: They're arriving at NASA at an auspicious time.

"This is the golden age of human spaceflight," said Reid Wiseman on Monday during a ceremony at an airfield near Johnson Space Center welcoming the new astronaut candidates.

Wiseman would know. Now chief of the astronaut office, Wiseman was selected in August 2009. At that time, the space shuttle was due to retire. Neither he nor any of his classmates would fly on the US vehicle. The majority of them would make their first spaceflight on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. And at the time there was no coherent deep-space exploration plan—nominally NASA was on a "journey to Mars," which was mocked as a "journey to nowhere." The classes of 2013 and 2017 also faced similar uncertainty.

FURTHER READING NASA has selected its deep space hardware—now comes the fun part

But now NASA has SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft to fly four people at a time into low Earth orbit. And within the next two years, Boeing's Starliner spacecraft should come online. By the mid-2020s, NASA's Orion spacecraft will also enter service, and SpaceX is also developing its large Starship vehicle for Moon landings and more. Never before in its history will NASA have so many human spaceflight vehicles available.

And while NASA has vibrant research ongoing at the International Space Station, it also has a pretty solid plan for lunar exploration with the Artemis program. Many of the 10 people who walked onto the stage inside a T-38 maintenance hangar Monday will probably walk on the Moon within the next 10 or 15 years.

Wiseman, who led the selection process, said the agency sought people with a wide range of skill sets, who can do everything from grow protein crystals on the space station to drill for water on the surface of the Moon.

"We're always looking for smart, dedicated people in their current fields," Wiseman said in an interview after the ceremony. "We want team players, people that we know we can send up to the space station, or to the surface of the Moon, and get along with the team. And we want to know when we're picking you, that you have the kind of the motivation and the prowess to get the job done. These people are all complex problem solvers, and they are all team players."

The new astronaut candidates, accordingly, came from a variety of backgrounds to NASA, from the traditional test pilots to oil drilling to national championship track cycling.

"You might think that my path as a bioengineer and a cyclist is a little bit out there, but it was really all of those skills that I gained from those experiences that helped me get here,” said Christina Birch, 35, who has a doctoral degree in biological engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and won the US individual cycling pursuit title in 2016 and 2017.

NASA also sought to select a diverse group of people who were representative of the whole country. The new astronauts came from across the United States, from Puerto Rico to Alaska, from a variety of ethnic backgrounds.

"We really want every little kid growing up in America to look at the NASA Astronaut Office and see themselves projected into the future," Wiseman said. "That's very important to us. We were extremely lucky this time that we had a fantastic, diverse group of candidates that came out and just crushed it."

NASA selected the latest class from more than 12,000 applicants. Wiseman said out of those there were 500 people he could easily have selected to become astronauts. NASA gave the authority to select up to a dozen people, but these 10 stood head and shoulders above the rest. The agency will probably select another class in 2025, when the Artemis program begins to ramp up.

Mark Meadows embarrassing story of Trump hiding in a bunker made him look weak

Sarah K. Burris

RAW STORY
December 07, 2021

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), House Freedom Caucus Chairman, speaks

 to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., May 23, 2017

 REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

Mark Meadows's new book walks through the fury that he and others in the White House faced after it was leaked to the press that then-President Donald Trump was rushed to the bunker when a protester jumped over the temporary fencing around the White House complex.

If there's one thing consistent with Trump, it's that he can never be seen to show weakness. His niece, Dr. Mary Trump, a psychologist, has walked through many of the reasons for this that go back to his father Fred Trump Sr.

Elsewhere in the book, Meadows talks about Trump's fear of showing weakness around his COVID-19 illness and his colonoscopy. When getting the common procedure, Trump refused to sign over power, instead opting to undergo the colonoscopy without any anesthesia.

"President Trump would not willingly admit weakness, especially with the whole world watching. He knew better than anyone that giving up control of the White House during this difficult time would be the ultimate sign of weakness," Meadows also wrote.

READ MORE: Mark Meadows rages at Kellyanne Conway in new book for seeming to believe Trump lost the election

The confirmation of JusticeBrett Kavanaugh made the judge appear so weak that Trump almost replaced him. Kavanaugh burst into tears over being forced to face sexual assault allegations.

Former White House communications director, press secretary and first lady chief of staff Stephanie Grisham noted Trump's obsession with looking weak in her book as well.

"As I’ve stated many times, there is nothing worse than being made to look 'weak,' and he denied that he had gone there for his safety, saying that he had gone for an 'inspection,' which was just not true," she wrote in I'll Take Your Questions Now.

"If there is one thing for which President Trump has absolutely no tolerance or patience, it’s weakness," wrote Meadows.

So, when it was revealed that Trump was rushed to the bunker and that he was "rattled," it made him look like he was scared facing off against his foes or weak in the face of Black Lives Matter protests. New York Times headlines characterized it as Trump shrinking. The Guardian said that he fled to the bunker. The Los Angeles Times described Trump as being rushed underground. Forbes painted a picture of Trump in hiding.

The former president was so furious that the story was leaked he demanded the person be prosecuted. Michael Bender's book, Frankly, We Did Win, quotes Trump screaming, "Whoever did that, they should be charged with treason! They should be executed!"

“To this day, everyone has a theory about where the leak came from," said Meadows. "If I had to bet, I would say that it was probably Stephanie Grisham, Emma Doyle, or someone from the VP’s team.”

Grisham has published a tell-all book that revealed a lot of the ugly pieces of the Trump White House and those she worked with. She and Meadows clashed from the moment he arrived.

"It looked to me that Mark Meadows was milking" Trump's delusion and conspiracy "for all it was worth. Why? Probably because that was how he stayed in power," Grisham wrote in I'll Take Your Questions Now.

"I had been in Kansas for a couple of weeks when I first heard that Mark Meadows was accusing me of leaking 'the bunker story' to the news media," Grisham wrote. "I was not in town that weekend, but, as was standard protocol, Tony Ornato, the deputy chief of staff for operations, called me after the first family had been moved to let me know that Mrs. Trump and Barron were safe. He said it was just a precaution and that they would all be leaving to go back to the residence soon. The next day, I started getting calls and texts from reporters asking me if it was true that the family had gone to the bunker."

She said that she did text the folks at the White House that the news had gotten out, and that she couldn't respond to press questions due to the cell service.

"When it came to matters such as national security and the first family’s safety, there was never a chance in hell that I would give the press the slightest bit of information," Grisham said.

Emma Doyle was a hold-over from Mick Mulvaney's days as Trump's chief of staff.

Meadows's book is on sale now.

A writer who predicted Trump's first coup attempt warns of an obscure legal doctrine he may exploit next time

Alex Henderson, AlterNet
December 07, 2021

Trump speaks at the "Stop the Steal" rally on Jan. 6. (Screenshot via YouTube.com)


During the 2020 presidential election, The Atlantic’s Barton Gellman was among the journalists who predicted that then-President Donald Trump would not admit defeat if he lost. Gellman’s prediction was spot on: Trump, refusing to acknowledge that now-President Joe Biden won the election, did everything he could to overturn the election results. And in an article published by The Atlantic this week, Gellman predicts that Trump’s next coup attempt will be in a much better position to succeed.

On November 2, 2020, The Atlantic published an article by Gellman headlined, “How Trump Could Attempt a Coup.” Gellman reported that “behind the scenes,” Biden’s team was “preparing for the worst.” At the time, “Real Time” host Bill Maher was making the same troubling prediction — that Trump would not accept the election results if he lost. Republicans accused both Gellman and Maher of suffering from “Trump derangement syndrome,” but just as Gellman and Maher predicted, Trump and his attorneys refused to accept the election results.

During a November 4, 2020 interview with National Public Radio’s Terry Gross, Gellman warned, “What Trump can do if he's sufficiently ruthless — and I think he's proving that he is — is he can do his best to keep changing forums whenever he gets an answer he doesn't like to simply reject it. And we have seen this administration prepared just to flatly reject the requirements of law. Trump can also try to maneuver in the Electoral College to persuade Republican legislatures in states that are still in contention to bypass the popular vote and simply appoint electors for Trump.”

As troubling as Gellman’s November 2020 warnings were, he is even more worried about the 2024 presidential election and explains why in his Atlantic article published this week.

READ: The nasty legacy of Bob Dole

“Technically, the next attempt to overthrow a national election may not qualify as a coup,” Gellman warns. “It will rely on subversion more than violence, although each will have its place. If the plot succeeds, the ballots cast by American voters will not decide the presidency in 2024. Thousands of votes will be thrown away, or millions, to produce the required effect. The winner will be declared the loser. The loser will be certified president-elect.”

Gellman continues, “The prospect of this democratic collapse is not remote. People with the motive to make it happen are manufacturing the means. Given the opportunity, they will act. They are acting already.”

According to Gellman, “They are driving out or stripping power from election officials who refused to go along with the plot last November, aiming to replace them with exponents of the Big Lie. They are fine-tuning a legal argument that purports to allow state legislators to override the choice of the voters.”


That legal argument rests on an obscure doctrine of constitutional interpretation that Republicans seem to think they can leverage to their advantage, as he explained:
Republicans are promoting an “independent state legislature” doctrine, which holds that statehouses have “plenary,” or exclusive, control of the rules for choosing presidential electors. Taken to its logical conclusion, it could provide a legal basis for any state legislature to throw out an election result it dislikes and appoint its preferred electors instead.

...

The question could arise, and Barrett’s vote could become decisive, if Trump again asks a Republican-controlled legislature to set aside a Democratic victory at the polls. Any such legislature would be able to point to multiple actions during the election that it had not specifically authorized. To repeat, that is the norm for how elections are carried out today. Discretionary procedures are baked into the cake. A Supreme Court friendly to the doctrine of independent state legislatures would have a range of remedies available to it; the justices might, for instance, simply disqualify the portion of the votes that were cast through “unauthorized” procedures. But one of those remedies would be the nuclear option: throwing out the vote altogether and allowing the state legislature to appoint electors of its choosing.

Gellman believes that MAGA Republicans will be much better positioned to steal a presidential election in 2024 than they were in 2020.

“In nearly every battle space of the war to control the count of the next election — statehouses, state election authorities, courthouses, Congress, and the Republican Party apparatus — Trump’s position has improved since a year ago,” Gellman observes. “To understand the threat today, you have to see with clear eyes what happened, what is still happening, after the 2020 election. The charlatans and cranks who filed lawsuits and led public spectacles on Trump’s behalf were sideshows. They distracted from the main event: a systematic effort to nullify the election results and then reverse them.”


Gellman continues, “As milestones passed — individual certification by states, the meeting of the Electoral College on December 14 — Trump’s hand grew weaker. But he played it strategically throughout. The more we learn about January 6, the clearer the conclusion becomes that it was the last gambit in a soundly conceived campaign — one that provides a blueprint for 2024.”

Trumpworld oligarch busted in the biggest sanctions-evasion scheme in US history is still living a ‘playboy lifestyle’ in Miami

Bob Brigham
December 07, 2021

Reza Zarrab (Youtube)

A bombshell new investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, Law&Crime and the Miami Herald revealed how a notorious figure is living a life of luxury in Florida while under protection of U.S. authorities.

"Facing 130 years in prison, infamous Turkish-Iranian money launderer Reza Zarrab took a plea deal in 2017 agreeing to testify in U.S. courts. Federal officials have since kept him out of the spotlight, while allowing him to lead a government-sanctioned life of luxury under a false identity in Miami," the Herald reported.

The investigation "found that Zarrab remains connected to his former criminal network and has received multiple unusual wire transfers from Turkey. Using fake identities, he’s invested in thoroughbred horses and a palatial equestrian facility, entering an industry rife with fraud and money laundering. U.S. officials declined to comment when asked if they have concerns about his activities or if he’s surrendered a dime of his fortune."

Zarrab has links to both Rudy Giuliani and Mike Flynn.

"Dubbed the 'The Turkish Gatsby' by media there for his playboy lifestyle, Zarrab ran a vast money-laundering operation that channeled funds to Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions against the Persian Gulf country. U.S. prosecutors offered a conservative estimate that his network moved at least $20 billion from 2010 to 2015 alone. Zarrab pleaded guilty to various charges related to fraud and money laundering," the newspaper reported.

"Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-OR) was troubled by the report.

“I’ve long been concerned with how the Justice Department handled this case, and the appearance of political interference on behalf of Turkey influencing the department’s decision-making,’’ Wyden said. “This was the largest sanctions-evasion scheme in U.S. history, and the possibility that the U.S. financial system is being used to facilitate improper transactions for Reza Zarrab and other co-conspirators implicated in the scheme deserves the immediate attention of U.S. officials.”

Read the full report.

Russia reveals what Putin asked of Biden

RT 7 Dec, 2021 

Russian President Vladimir Putin holds talks with U.S. President Joe Biden via a video link in Sochi, Russia

 December 7, 2021. © Sputnik / Mikhail Metzel / Pool via REUTERS

In a “frank and businesslike” conversation Russian President Vladimir Putin asked his US counterpart Joe Biden for guarantees that NATO won’t expand further east or deploy offensive weapons to countries like Ukraine.

Moscow is “seriously interested” in obtaining “reliable and firm legal guarantees” excluding NATO’s further expansion eastward and deployment of “offensive strike weapons systems in countries adjacent to Russia,” the Kremlin said in a readout of Tuesday’s call between the two leaders. 

READ MORE

Anti-Russian measures stripped from Pentagon bill

Putin’s proposal came in response to Biden’s “concerns” about Russian troops allegedly threatening Ukraine and threats of US and allied sanctions against Russia, a subject that arose during the two-hour call. The Russian leader responded that it was NATO “making dangerous attempts to conquer Ukrainian territory” and “building up its military potential at our borders.”

When asked about this, Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US has made “no such commitments or concessions.”

Putin used specific examples to illustrate the “destructive” policy of Kiev, which he said was aimed at completely dismantling the Minsk agreements and the ‘Normandy format’ talks. He also expressed Moscow’s serious concerns about “provocative actions” by the government in Kiev against the residents of Donetsk and Lugansk, two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine.

Last week, before the date of the meeting was announced, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said that the situation in Europe would be at the top of the agenda for the two leaders to discuss. The diplomat stressed that “contact is badly needed; we have multiplying problems. There is no progression on bilateral affairs, which are more and more spiraling into a phase of acute crisis.”

The talks come amid heightened tensions between Washington and Moscow over the situation on the Russian-Ukrainian border, which the White House has signaled as a key area on which bilateral negotiations are needed.

READ MORE

Putin and Biden wrap up video meeting after 2 hours of talks

American and Ukrainian officials have repeatedly accused Russia of plotting to invade its neighbor in recent weeks. Earlier this month, US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken implored Moscow to de-escalate its purported aggressions against Kiev, or face “severe consequences.”

Russia has repeatedly denied allegations put forward by Western officials and outlets that it will launch an offensive against Ukraine. Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov has blasted the accusations as groundless, dubbing them as “hysteria” whipped up in the Anglophone and Ukrainian media.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s hopes to be admitted to NATO and the potential eastwards expansion of the US-led military bloc have been a point of contention for Moscow. Ahead of the video conference, the Russian president announced that he will request discussions with NATO to ensure the US-led military bloc does not edge closer to his country’s frontiers. Speaking last week, Putin said that he will “insist on guarantees being set out to exclude the possibility of NATO moving any further to the east, and deploying threatening weapons close to Russian territory.”

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov noted the day before that “significant units and armaments from NATO countries, including American and British, are being moved closer to our borders.”

The pair last met in the Swiss city of Geneva in June. The meeting was hailed as productive by the two heads of state, covering topics such as nuclear proliferation and managing the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the Kremlin said that it will take a long time for constructive engagement to return and the two sides have recently accused each other of escalating military tensions in Eastern Europe.

Readout of President Biden’s Video Call with

President Vladimir Putin of Russia

THE WHITE HOUSE

The White House

DECEMBER 07, 2021

STATEMENTS AND RELEASES

President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. held a secure video call today with President Vladimir Putin of Russia to discuss a range of issues on the U.S.-Russia agenda. President Biden voiced the deep concerns of the United States and our European Allies about Russia’s escalation of forces surrounding Ukraine and made clear that the U.S. and our Allies would respond with strong economic and other measures in the event of military escalation. President Biden reiterated his support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and called for de-escalation and a return to diplomacy. The two presidents tasked their teams to follow up, and the U.S. will do so in close coordination with allies and partners. The presidents also discussed the U.S.-Russia dialogue on Strategic Stability, a separate dialogue on ransomware, as well as joint work on regional issues such as Iran.

Archaeologist accused of bullying is reinstated at Max Planck institute

German court grants injunction allowing Nicole Boivin to run premier archaeology institute while she challenges her demotion

BY ANDREW CURRY
6 DEC 2021

Archaeologist Nicole Boivin has been reinstated as a director at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

SVEN DÖRING/LAIF/REDUX

A Berlin court today reinstated embattled archaeologist Nicole Boivin as a director of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (MPI-SHH), a world-leading institute in the study of prehistory.

Boivin was removed from her directorship in October after an internal investigation by the Max Planck Society (MPG) reportedly found she bullied junior staffers and took credit for other researchers’ work, among other charges.

Boivin initially accepted an offer to remain at MPI-SHH in a diminished role as a researcher. Then, in November, she filed for an injunction with the High Civil Court (Landgericht) in Berlin, seeking to block her demotion while she challenges it. Judges granted the temporary injunction today, effectively reinstating Boivin as MPI-SHH’s director, with supervisory responsibilities over institute staff and a multimillion-euro budget.

In an email to staffers at MPI-SHH sent Monday afternoon, Boivin celebrated the decision. “I am very happy to be back in place,” she wrote. She called her removal “a massive miscarriage of justice I am confident will be rectified in the courts.”

MPG has pledged to continue to press for her dismissal. “This is disappointing insofar as this ruling does not take into account the welfare of the employees at the Institute,” MPG Secretary General Rüdiger Willems said in a statement on Monday. “[MPG] will appeal the ruling.”

Today’s decision turned on MPG’s decision to remove Boivin without the approval of MPG’s Senate, which her lawyer argued violated the society’s bylaws. MPG spokesperson Christina Beck notes German law gives an employer just 2 weeks to act once it becomes aware of grounds to immediately terminate an employee’s contract. That was too little time to convene and get the approval of MPG’s Senate, which includes politicians and representatives from outside the scientific community as well as prominent scientists and other institute directors. According to Beck, Willems decided to act within the 2-week window required by law, rather than wait for a meeting scheduled for mid-November.

But Sascha Herms, a labor lawyer who represented Boivin in court, argued that according to MPG’s bylaws, the 2-week clock wouldn’t start ticking until the Senate—which has the power to fire directors—was informed. The Berlin court agreed.

The court also considered whether Boivin or MPG would be more damaged if she was removed from her position while she fights the demotion. “They weren’t able to prove they have interests that outweigh the interests of Prof. Boivin,” Herms says.

Some current and former staffers expressed concern about Boivin’s return. “I worry that this temporary decision exposes junior scholars—particularly those who spoke about their experiences to the commission or to the press—to further abuse or retaliation,” says William Taylor, an archaeozoologist now at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who worked under Boivin as a postdoc.

But several staffers at MPI-SHH say it’s Boivin who has been treated unfairly. They argue that the years long investigation that led to her demotion was opaque and secretive. In an email obtained by Science, Beate Kerpen, MPI-SHH’s scientific staff representative, told staff at the institute that in her view the investigation “lack[ed] transparency and communicatio​n” and failed “to follow very basic legal principles ensuring fairness to all sides.”

The case has put MPG, one of the largest and best-funded basic science research institutions in the world, under an uncomfortable spotlight: Of the society’s 304 directors, only 54 are women. And in the past few years, several women have been removed from their director positions whereas only one man has been publicly demoted.

In a letter to MPG’s senate in November, more than 145 female scientists pointed out that recent demotions at MPG have disproportionately impacted women; the letter noted Boivin’s case but did not address its merits.

In November, Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, a Nobel laureate and a director at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, argued in a separate letter to her fellow members of MPG’s Senate that there are “deep-seated, unacknowledged prejudices against women in leadership positions” at MPG, according to press accounts.

The letters frustrated some with inside knowledge of the situation. “It is hard enough to come forward in situations like these,” a doctoral student affiliated with MPI-SHH who asked to remain anonymous to avoid retaliation told Science. “It is extremely discouraging to early female scientists to know that if they speak up against an established female scientist who is abusing their power, they will not only have to contend with an academic system that does not value or support them, but also a wall of established female scientists who do not care about their experiences.”

Some staffers hope Boivin's reinstatement will stabilize the situation. “The decision to remove her without any warning and without a concrete solution in place had caused a lot of stress and uncertainty for us,” one doctoral researcher at MPI-SHH told Science. “This is better than the uncertainty of the last few weeks.”

Willems said in his statement that MPG plans to meet within days to decide how to “adequately protect the employees,” and to respond to the situation at MPI-SHH, where one of its vice presidents has been serving as interim director since late October.

Correction, 7 December, 2:40 p.m.: This story has been corrected to reflect Beate Kerpen’s title at MPI-SHH, which is scientific staff representative rather than scientific director.

doi: 10.1126/science.acx9778

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrew Curry is a journalist in Berlin.