news

Emphasis mine.

An appeals court in Georgia has agreed to take up former President Donald Trump's appeal of the Fani Willis disqualification ruling that ultimately allowed her to remain on the Georgia election interference case -- a move that could significantly delay the case against the former president.

A Bluesky post

Reuters has really done an amazing job detailing, piece by piece, how Tesla is basically a giant pile of fraud built on the back of poorly built tech and the empty promises of an opportunistic bullshitter.

It's a Cnbc link but it's the Reuter's article.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/08/in-tesla-autopilot-probe-us-prosecutors-focus-on-securities-wire-fraud-.html

https://amimagazine.org/2021/08/18/reuven-kahane/ archive

my plan had always been to make aliyah and go into business and politics in Israel. ..

I knew from my years of learning in Israel (and from my summer interning in the Knesset for Likud)...

. I realized that I needed to find the food that does not exist in Israel but that everyone in Israel wants. After thinking about hot dogs, burritos and doughnuts, I made my choice and Bonkers Bagels was born.....somehow, we were able to convince the landlord to give the lease to a couple of immigrants ....

We were the only American bagel shop in the Middle East.

“The business was wildly successful the first four years. At its peak, it had a revenue of around six million dollars. But we grew too quickly. The factory cost millions to build and you need a lot more than your own stores to support a factory.

The Intifada and other factors affected the business, too. Eventually, like so many other retail chains, Bonkers Bagels closed. “The business closing coincided with my father passing away,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Defense_League

Jewish Defense League (JDL) is a far-right religious and political organization in the United States and Canada. Its stated goal is to "protect Jews from antisemitism by whatever means necessary"; it has been classified as "right-wing terrorist group" by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) since 2001, and is also designated as hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. According to the FBI, the JDL has been involved in plotting and executing acts of terrorism within the United States.

https://jalopnik.com/real-estate-developer-allegedly-drives-car-into-crowd-o-1851462303

Once Columbia University’s administrators called the cops in on students protesting Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and the Fox News crowd started foaming at the mouth for teens to be beaten or killed, you knew it was only a matter of time before someone ended up in the hospital. Sadly, it appears that is now the case, as someone reportedly drove their car into a crowd of protesters. The person the driver hit later went to the hospital in an ambulance.

Per reports from Talia Jane, who is Jewish, during a protest outside the house of a Columbia trustee, Reuven Kahane, a local real estate developer, initially drove up to a group of protesters and asked for a flyer. When someone offered one to him, he instead grabbed their arm and drove off. Next Kahane drove his Volvo around the block, sometimes swerving toward the sidewalk, and then directed his car at the protesters themselves.

A de-escalator at the back of the march attempted to get Kahane to wait, but he hit her with his car anyway. A second de-escalator then sat in front of his car to prevent him from driving into the crowd, but was later arrested. The first de-escalator called an ambulance for an injury to her leg. Kahane was also arrested, and the injured de-escalator was detained at the hospital.

Independent journalist Marisa Kabas has since confirmed that Reuven Kahane was arrested by the NYPD. He is currently charged with second-degree assault, a felony. Kabas also confirmed the de-escalator he hit was a 55-year-old woman who is currently charged with criminal mischief and unlawful assembly, while the de-escalator who sat in front of Kahane’s car has been charged with criminal mischief. The safety/de-escalation team was reportedly made up entirely of non-student volunteers.

Jane also claims to have seen video of the commanding officer calling the student protesters “fucking morons” and saying, “there’s consequences as an adult,” as if it’s somehow their fault that someone tried to drive a car into their march. For the record: If you use your car to intentionally hurt people, you are a bad person. No amount of annoyance or personal inconvenience justifies using a deadly weapon to attack a group of protesters, cyclists or anyone else you don’t like.

Police and military forces were still trying to find 24 others who were swept up in a wave of kidnappings.

The State Department has been expected to issue a report Wednesday with a determination on whether Israel has violated international humanitarian law since the war in Gaza began. If so, the U.S. would be expected to stop sending Israel military assistance.

But the report won’t be finished by Wednesday, said the aides, granted anonymity to discuss internal communications. In an email, the Biden administration notified the Hill that it will miss the date — without providing a clear reason why.

Maybe the aides should write another strong worder letter, how they are very upset

Police in Slovakia are trying to find out who sent more than 1,000 bomb threats to schools and other institutions on Tuesday.

Emails from an anonymous sender reportedly began arriving at 05:00, alleging that explosives were stored in hundreds of schools spanning the country's eight regions.

Classes were suspended as specialist teams investigated the alerts. The vast majority were sent to schools, but Slovakia's national police announced on social media that at least 110 banks and 40 electrical stores also received the bomb threats.

It comes after similar emails were reportedly sent to more than 120 schools in the Bratislava region last week, according to police.

In April, Slovakia's newly elected populist-nationalist leader, Robert Fico, pledged not to send "one more round of ammunition" to Ukraine.

… Mr Fico has refused to join about 20 countries that have signed up to a Czech-led operation to procure large quantities of artillery ammunition on the global arms market.

NASA astronauts will have to wait until another day to launch to orbit in the Boeing Starliner spacecraft. The planned launch was called off Monday night because of a problem in the Atlas V rocket that was to send them to space.

Engineers will work through the night to assess whether the two astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, can get back on the launchpad on Tuesday, or if repairs will be needed that could delay the flight by at least several days.

Is this how ceasefires work?

Time to collect the cum Oh, wait wrong country

Image is of Stepanakert, essentially the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh. It is now a ghost city, and Azerbaijan has recently torn down the parliament building and various other important places. Sourced from this article.

Despite the predictions and assertions of various NATO-aligned commentators that Russia's influence is waning, the opposite generally appears to be occurring. ASEAN has become more strongly aligned with Russia despite claims to the contrary. In Central Asia, there has been a propaganda push to declare that countries there are "emerging from Russia's shadow", while in reality, as Bhadrakumar analyzes, Russia's significant economic growth and ongoing march towards victory in Ukraine is creating opportunities for further integration, not separation, and there are no major political shifts there in terms of Russian ties. And in Niger, Russian soldiers have now entered an airbase which once hosted American soldiers, now kicked out, and generally Russia's diplomacy and economic deals (nuclear power plant construction, military equipment, grain shipments, etc) have accelerated in Africa.

Where Russia's influence has actually seemed to decrease (outside of the West, of course) is in Armenia. Nagorno-Karabakh's remarkably rapid collapse in late 2023 demonstrated that Russia was not willing to escalate things in defense of Armenia to fend off Azerbaijan. One hundred thousand Armenians - most but not all of them in the region - fled in advance to avoid mass persecution, which received remarkably little attention by a West which calls itself overwhelmingly concerned with borders changing due to military action as in Ukraine. Since then, Armenia seems to be on some kind of self-annihilating bender, allured by the potential of Western military and economic deals. Armenia froze its membership in the CSTO due to its failure to protect them, and the head of NATO, Stoltenberg, visited the region in March. The West has offered up hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance to Armenia and is helping them "modernize their military"; given the poor track record of Western military equipment in Ukraine, one wonders why they're even bothering. RAND has advocated for a balancing act; America should, in their eyes, realize that they can't entirely remove Russia's influence but nonetheless should make inroads to protect Armenia from Azerbaijan (which is an interesting position given that Israel provided arms to Azerbaijan to help them take Nagorno-Karabakh).

A quick look at Armenia's geographical position reveals the folly of trying to create some kind of Western outpost. With a hostile Azerbaijan to their east, a very unfriendly (albeit NATO member) Turkiye to their west, an ascendant Iran to their south, and Russia not far from the action, there is little hope of doing much more than causing a little chaos in the hopes it'll momentarily distract Russia while it makes inroads most everywhere else on the planet. The political situation appears miserable for Pashinyan, but there isn't really a popular alternative to take the reins. A truly cursed situation.

The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.

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Before a door-size panel blew out of a Boeing 737 Max, leaving a gaping hole in the side of an Alaska Airlines aircraft shortly after takeoff; before whistleblowers came forward to say they were threatened for bringing up safety issues at the company; and before the Justice Department opened a criminal investigation into the blowout incident, Boeing was struggling with another set of issues, on another high-profile vehicle.

Its Starliner spacecraft, designed to fly astronauts to orbit under a $4.2 billion contract from NASA, had suffered a series of problems that put its launch with astronauts years behind schedule. Its onboard computer had failed during its first test flight. A second test flight was scrubbed after valves in the vehicle’s service module stuck and wouldn’t operate. Then, after the craft finally flew a test mission successfully without anyone on board, Boeing discovered that tape used as insulation on wiring inside the capsule was flammable and would need to be removed. The parachute system also had problems, which forced the company to redesign and strengthen a link between the parachutes and the spacecraft.

Now, a decade after NASA awarded Boeing a contract to fly astronauts to the International Space Station, Boeing will finally attempt to fly its Starliner spacecraft with people onboard. If all goes to plan, at 10:34 p.m. on Monday, the company is set to fly a pair of veteran astronauts, Sunita Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore, on a mission that will be one of the most significant tests for Boeing’s space division — and for NASA — in years.

I hate the privatization of space flight soooo much.