5: HERE’S THE PROBLEM WITH THE STORY CONNECTING RUSSIA TO DONALD TRUMP’S EMAIL SERVER
ON MONDAY NIGHT, Slate’s Franklin Foer published a story that’s been circulating through the dark web and various newsrooms since summertime, an enormous, eyebrow-raising claim that Donald Trump uses a secret server to communicate with Russia. That claim resulted in an explosive night of Twitter confusion and misinformation.
The gist of the Slate article is dramatic — incredible, even: Cybersecurity researchers found that the Trump Organization used a secret box configured to communicate exclusively with Alfa Bank, Russia’s largest privately-held commercial bank. This is a story that any reporter in our election cycle would drool over, and drool Foer did:
The researchers quickly dismissed their initial fear that the logs represented a malware attack. The communication wasn’t the work of bots. The irregular pattern of server look-ups actually resembled the pattern of human conversation — conversations that began during office hours in New York and continued during office hours in Moscow. It dawned on the researchers that this wasn’t an attack, but a sustained relationship between a server registered to the Trump Organization and two servers registered to an entity called Alfa Bank.
The Intercept
A Standing Rock protester was formally charged Monday with attempted murder of an officer after she allegedly fired three shots when officers tried to forcibly remove her and other protesters near the Dakota Access Pipeline easement in Morton County, North Dakota, last week.
The attempted murder charge is the latest in an escalating series of recent clashes between law enforcement and protesters demonstrating against the proposed Dakota Access Pipeline over the past 11 weeks. The United Nations and Amnesty International said on Friday they were sending observers to North Dakota based on allegations of human rights abuses following last week’s clashes; Amnesty International sent a letter to the Morton County Sheriff’s Office last week urging police “to ensure that the treatment of demonstrators is in accordance with international human rights standards and the U.S. constitution.”
Vice News
3: Iraq-Turkey tension rises amid battle for Mosul
Iraq’s prime minister has warned Turkey against provoking a confrontation while saying he does not want war.
Haider al-Abadi made the comments after Turkey deployed tanks and artillery near the Iraqi border and insisted that any Turkish involvement would be a violation of national sovereignty.
Turkey wants a a role in the battle to retake Mosul from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, by virtue of being a member of the anti-ISIL coalition.
Aljazeera
2:Irish PM warns Brexit talks between UK and EU could turn vicious
Ireland’s prime minister has warned that Brexit negotiations between Britain and the rest of the European Union could turn vicious.
Enda Kenny also predicted that Theresa May might respond to pressure from within the Tory party and trigger article 50 to eject the UK from the EU before next spring.
Kenny told an audience of politicians, business leaders, trade unionists and community organisations in Dublin on Wednesday that May has agreed with him that there would be “no return to the borders of the past” after Brexit.
The Guardian
On November 8, 35 states and the District of Columbia will confront 156 ballot initiatives on issues ranging from universal healthcare to gun sale restrictions and death penalty reforms. One of the most contentious ballot initiatives concerns marijuana legalization. After next week’s election, marijuana could be legal for medical or recreational use in 29 states. Currently about 5 percent of Americans live in states where they can legally smoke cannabis, but after November that figure could rise to 25 percent. California is the biggest of the nine states casting a ballot on the measure. While other states are voting on medicinal use, Arizona, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada are with California in voting on legalizing the recreational use of marijuana. The “yes” vote is currently leading in all five states and is widely supported by young voters from both major parties. California legalized the medical use of marijuana 20 years ago. Polls in California show strong support for Proposition 64, the Adult Use of Marijuana Act. We speak with Deborah Small, founder of Break the Chains: Communities of Color and the War on Drugs. Her recent piece for The Root is headlined “How We Can Reap Reparations from Marijuana Reform.” She’s a longtime advocate for drug decriminalization.
Democracy Now
