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This is the kind of bullshit that needs to be called out.

You know what uranium is, right? It’s this thing called nuclear weapons. And other things. Like lots of things are done with uranium. Including some bad things.

Inside the White House, they are dismissed by their rivals as “the Democrats.”

Outspoken, worldly and polished, this coterie of ascendant Manhattan business figures-turned-presidential advisers is scrambling the still-evolving power centers swirling around President Trump.

Led by Gary Cohn and Dina Powell — two former Goldman Sachs executives often aligned with Trump’s eldest daughter and his son-in-law — the group and its broad network of allies are the targets of suspicion, loathing and jealousy from their more ideological West Wing colleagues.

On the other side are the Republican populists driving much of Trump’s nationalist agenda and confrontations, led by chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who has grown closer to Chief of Staff Reince Priebus in part to counter the New Yorkers.

As Trump’s administration enters its third month, the constant jockeying and backbiting among senior staff is further inflaming tensions at a time when the White House is struggling on numerous fronts — from the endangered health-care bill to the controversial budget to the hundreds of top jobs still vacant throughout the government.

A man accused of sending a flashing image to a writer in order to trigger an epileptic seizure has been arrested, the US justice department says.

John Rayne Rivello, 29, of Maryland, sent Kurt Eichenwald an animated image with a flashing light on Twitter in December, causing the seizure.

He has been charged with criminal cyber stalking and could face a 10-year sentence, the New York Times reports.

"You deserve a seizure for your post," he is alleged to have written.

Mr Eichenwald is known to have epilepsy. He is a senior writer at Newsweek magazine, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and a best-selling author of books including The Informant.




'Let's see if he dies'

Investigators found that Mr Rivello had sent messages to other Twitter users about Mr Eichenwald and a plan to attack him virtually, including one that read: "I hope this sends him into a seizure".

Tweet 'caused' epileptic seizure

"Spammed this at [victim] let's see if he dies," another message read, according to the justice department.

Investigators found a screenshot on his iCloud account of an altered Wikipedia page for Mr Eichenwald, falsely listing his date of death as 16 December, a day after the image was sent.

He had also researched epilepsy seizure triggers on the epilepsy.com website.

The Twitter message was no different from "a bomb sent in the mail or anthrax sent in an envelope," Steven Lieberman, a lawyer for Mr Eichenwald, told the New York Times. "It triggers a physical effect."
Mr Rivello will have his case heard in Texas, where his alleged victim is based.

The justice department did not say what motivated the attack, though reports have speculated that it may have been related to Mr Eichenwald's frequent criticism of US President Donald Trump on Twitter.

Mr Eichenwald is reported to have suffered the effects of the seizure for several weeks. He tweeted on Friday that more than 40 people had sent him "strobes" after learning about the case.

After the attack was reported in December, Stefano Seri, a professor of neurophysiology at Aston University in the UK, said the material in the tweet must have been carefully constructed.

"Abrupt changes in light intensity, or luminance, can trigger seizures. The most sensitive range is about 15-25 flashes per second," he said.

"The picture would need to occupy most of the visual field. It would take some very sick people to do this, but technically, it is possible.

"Modern LED screens are not as provocative as older ones. It takes a very carefully designed stimulus to induce a seizure," Prof Seri added.

Everyone is hearing a lot more from Minnesota’s junior senator these days.

At the dawn of a presidency that stretches the limits of late-night parody, and at a moment when an out-of-power Democratic Party is trying to find its voice, the former comedian and satirist may be having a breakout moment as a political star.

He is also finding it safe to be funny again.

Franken, now 65, barely made it to the Senate, taking his oath in July 2009 after a ballot recount that took eight months to resolve. So he spent his first term trying to prove he was not a joke — buttoning up his wit, buckling down on esoteric issues and sidestepping all but his home-state media.

“I won by 312 votes, right?” he said in an interview. “I had to show people that I was taking the job seriously, and I had come here for serious purposes, and I am still here for serious purposes. So I think I just felt like I was on probation.”

A US Secret Service laptop with Trump Tower floor plans and other sensitive material has been stolen from an agent's vehicle in New York.

The laptop was protected by encryption and carried no classified information, the Secret Service said.

But the computer does have details on a criminal inquiry into former Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server, ABC News said.

Police are looking at surveillance footage to identify a suspect.

The Secret Service released a statement saying "an employee was the victim of a criminal act in which our Agency issued laptop was stolen".

The agency added that its computers "contain multiple layers of security including full disk encryption and are not permitted to contain classified information".
ABC said the female agent's vehicle was targeted in the Bath Beach area of Brooklyn on Thursday.

CBS News said the computer also carried important files on Pope Francis.

A police source told the New York Daily News: "There's data on there that's highly sensitive. They're scrambling like mad."

Secret Service "lapel assignment pins" for President Donald Trump, the Clinton campaign and the United Nations General Assembly were also taken with the laptop, according to US media.

The items were reportedly stolen from a bag inside a car in the agent's driveway. The bag has since been recovered but the laptop has not, US media reported.

And they're all sauntering around the Palace of Versailles in powdered wigs.

When WikiLeaks released more than 8,000 files about the CIA’s global hacking programs this month, it dropped a tantalizing clue: The leak came from private contractors. Federal investigators quickly confirmed this, calling contractors the likeliest sources. As a result of the breach, WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange said, the CIA had “lost control of its entire cyberweapons arsenal.”

Intelligence insiders were dismayed. Agencies “take a chance with contractors” because “they may not have the same loyalty” as officers employed by the government, former CIA director Leon Panetta lamented to NBC.

But this is a liability built into our system that intelligence officials have long known about and done nothing to correct. As I first reported in 2007, some 70 cents of every intelligence dollar is allocated to the private sector. And the relentless pace of mergers and acquisitions in the spies-for-hire business has left five corporations in control of about 80 percent of the 45,000 contractors employed in U.S. intelligence. The threat from unreliable employees in this multibillion-dollar industry is only getting worse.

‘People will simply starve to death’: Why Trump’s plan to slash U.N. funding could lead to global calamity
The world is facing its “largest humanitarian crisis” since 1945, according to the United Nations.

President Donald Trump said in an interview aired Sunday that President Barack Obama, who he previously called a "bad (or sick) guy," has "been very nice" to him.

"He’s been very nice to me personally, but his people haven’t been nice," Trump told Fox News' Jesse Watters. "While he's nice personally, there doesn't seem to be a lot of nice things happening behind the scenes, and that's unfortunate."

Earlier in March, when Trump accused Obama of "wire tapping" his phones at Trump Tower before the 2016 election, he called his predecessor a "bad (or sick) guy."

A coal lobbyist may become Scott Pruitt’s right-hand man at the EPA.Andrew Wheeler, an energy attorney and a registered lobbyist for Murray Energy, is “expected” to be offered the deputy administrator position at the Environmental Protection Agency, sources told Politico on Friday. The article cautioned that the White House’s decision “has not yet been finalized.” Indeed, in an email to me, Wheeler said, “I have not been offered any position.” He did not respond to a follow-up asking if he’s actually interested in the job, or if he’s been in contact with the administration.

If Wheeler is given the gig, it appears he would be yet another powerful bureaucrat who falsely denies the science of climate change. In 2006, when he served as a Republican staffer for the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, Wheeler said he believed the planet could actually be moving through a cooling cycle (it wasn’t, and isn’t):