Новости за 19.03.2018

President Trump pushed his proposed border wall as a method to combat the national opioid crisis in a speech in New Hampshire on Monday.

Senior executives at Cambridge Analytica and its parent company, Strategic Communications Laboratories, were apparently secretly filmed by Britain's Channel 4 News suggesting they have used bribes and other shady techniques to influence more than 200 elections across the globe. Cambridge Analytica was a Trump campaign contractor in 2016, and it was reported this weekend that the company harvested 50 million American Facebook profiles for electioneering, a major data breach.

Sex and the City star Cynthia Nixon announced Monday that she is running against New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the state's Democratic primary. Cuomo — who is the son of former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo — was previously unchallenged in the race, and he has appeared rattled by Nixon's moves to take his seat, mocking her run as being "just about name recognition."

White evangelicals have held steadfast in their support for President Trump, recent Pew Research Center data showed, despite allegations that the president once engaged in an extramarital affair with an adult film star. Not only that, but their approval of his performance has only increased in recent months, Pew found.

A woman in Tempe, Arizona, has died after being struck by an Uber car that was operating in "autonomous mode," potentially making her the first pedestrian to be killed by an unmanned vehicle, The New York Times' Daisuke Wakabayashi reports. A human driver was in the car when the collision occurred Sunday night around 10 p.m. MT. The woman was apparently outside of the crosswalk when she was hit by the car, Arizona's ABC 15 reports.

If you're reading this from Mississippi, please put your phone down and look at the road! A massive new study of 2.3 million drivers by Zendrive found that not even the threat of going to jail seems to be able to stop people from using their phones while behind the wheel, and Mississippians are the worst abusers of the bunch, Bloomberg reports. Almost 18 percent of drivers in the Magnolia State are considered "phone addicts," meaning they call, text, or fiddle with apps at a rate that is more than three times that of the average driver ... Читать дальше...

Snowy weather in the nation's capital has inspired some unconventional meteorology.

Following weekend revelations that Facebook was exploited by data firm Cambridge Analytica in order to harvest 50 million Americans' profiles, founder Mark Zuckerberg saw his fortune drop by $3.8 billion Monday morning, Bloomberg Technology reports.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) is surprised by how many Republicans have been willing to "carry water" for President Trump, he told Politico, as his presidency careens through Washington. Particularly in the face of the ongoing probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, Schiff criticized Republicans for failing to speak out against the president:

After 423 days in office, President Trump has gotten rid of more Cabinet officials (three, in Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson) than most presidents lose in their first two years on the job. In fact, NPR reports, no other "elected first-term president in the past 100 years has had this much Cabinet turnover this early in his presidency."

It is getting easier to evade tax payments, FiveThirtyEight reports, and though anti-tax fervor is usually found among the GOP, for this shift Americans can thank Republicans and Democrats alike.

A majority of Americans believe the U.S. government is engaged in mass surveillance of the general public and is influenced by the "deep state," a "group of unelected government and military officials who secretly manipulate or direct national policy," a new Monmouth University poll published Monday reports.

Conservative commentator Erick Erickson alleged in a blog post Monday that Fox News removed him from air in 2014 at the request of Elaine Chao, who didn't like Erickson's criticisms of her husband, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

President Trump is expected to unveil his plan to fight the opioid epidemic on Monday, Politico reports. An early version of the plan would have called for the death penalty against some drug dealers, but the final version is expected to be scaled back, with a call for capital punishment against drug traffickers only "when appropriate under current law," said Andrew Bremberg, the White House's director of the Domestic Policy Council.

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AT&T Inc. heads into court on Monday in a fight with the Justice Department over the company's proposed $85 billion takeover of Time Warner. Time Warner is the home of DC Comics heroes Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman, as well as HBO and CNN. Phone giant AT&T says it needs Time Warner's media power to compete in a changing media landscape increasingly dominated by Netflix and Amazon. The Justice Department says the deal would hurt consumers by giving AT&T power over both content and distribution... Читать дальше...

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Lawmakers from both parties rallied behind Special Counsel Robert Mueller on Sunday, after one of President Trump's lawyers said Mueller's inquiry into Russian election meddling should end soon. Trump fueled concerns with an angry weekend tweetstorm attacking Mueller, former FBI Director James Comey, and FBI No. 2 official Andrew McCabe, who was fired late Friday by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Democrats called for Congress to take steps to protect Mueller. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)... Читать дальше...

President Trump attacked Special Counsel Robert Mueller by name on Twitter over the weekend, veering from the White House legal strategy of cooperating with Mueller's investigation, but Trump's legal team is still trying to work out how Mueller can interview Trump, Axios reports. And Mueller, in his conversations with Trump's lawyers, is focused on "events since the election," Axios' Mike Allen says, specifically "the firings of FBI Director James Comey and National Security Adviser Michael Flynn."

Over the past week, President Trump has fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, openly advocated the death penalty for drug dealers, bragged about lying to Canada's prime minister, apparently forced the firing of a retiring deputy FBI director, and, most recently, hinted on Twitter that he might try to oust Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating him. Trump is "newly emboldened to say what he really feels and to ignore the cautions of those around him" because he "now believes he... Читать дальше...

I have two sons, ages 6 and 8. When I ask them what they want to be when they grow up, they say farmer, builder, artist, video game designer, YouTuber, store owner. The games they play, like Minecraft and Roblox, inspire some of their career goals, while the YouTube videos they watch (often in languages they don't speak), inform others. Every few weeks, they want to start a business — selling lemonade or their artwork, doing chores for the neighbors, their teachers, or me. I ask them why they... Читать дальше...

Every year, the non-partisan, D.C.-based organization Freedom House issues a report scoring every country in the world along two dimensions of human liberty. Its scorching 2018 report, called "Democracy in Crisis," singles out America for "an accelerating decline in American political rights and civil liberties." The United States no longer features the freest combined score of 1 on the group's benchmark political and civil rights index. While the U.S. is not yet anywhere close to what I like... Читать дальше...

Thrashing guitar riffs, throbbing bass licks, and banging drum cymbals resound as the lead singer howls into the mic. The crowd forms a mosh pit, screaming fans go wild, and the band members, visibly energized, smile and bang their heads as they tear through another performance.

The Golden State Killer could be the most horrifying of America's serial killers.

Russia's Central Election Commission said Monday that Russian President Vladimir Putin won re-election with 76.67 percent of the vote in a field of eight candidates. That was a record-high number for Putin, who won his third term in 2012 with 63.3 percent. In second place was communist Pavel Grudinin, with 11.78 percent, followed by Vladimir Zhirinovsky (5.66 percent) and TV personality Ksenia Sobchak (1.68 percent), the only of the candidates to openly criticize Putin.

Are there any living Americans who don't care very much about President Trump? Maybe there is a retired prospector living without cable television or internet in a small Alaskan town who has only heard of this faraway necktie magnate via a yellowing newspaper. What a sane and prudent, though unfortunately not real, man he would be.

Conservatism doesn't exactly have a great reputation these days. That's a problem for conservative (and even conservative-ish) public figures and intellectuals. After all, President Trump is not exactly a good #brand for people wanting to distinguish themselves as deep thinkers.