Month: August 2022

Categories
US

DeSantis suspends Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren

DeSantis suspends Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren

TALLAHASSEE—Gov. Ron DeSantis said Thursday suspended Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren for not prosecuting certain crimes.

At a news conference flanked by police from around Tampa Bay, DeSantis said Warren has “put himself publicly above the law” by signing letters saying he would not enforce laws prohibiting gender-affirming care for minors or laws limiting abortion.

“Our government is a government of laws, not a government of men,” DeSantis said.

READ THE GOVERNOR’S ORDER HERE

Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister said police have had long-running frustrations with Warren for not prosecuting particular cases.

“I continue to work with my law enforcement counterparts who are privately frustrated with the state attorney, who seems intently focused on empathy for criminals and less interested in pursuing justice for crime victims,” Chronister said Thursday.

Thursday’s press conference included neighboring other police chiefs, including Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco and Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, and Attorney General Ashley Moody.

“Andrew Warren is a fraud,” former Tampa police Chief Brian Dugan said. “This is a terrible day, that the governor had to come and clean up our mess.”

Warren, a Democrat, has been a frequent critic of DeSantis, including calling the governor’s 2021 “anti-riot” legislation a misguided “solution in search of a problem.”

On Thursday morning, Warren was escorted out of his office. He was set to host a news conference about a “major development” related to the case of Robert DuBoise, who was exonerated in 2020 after serving 37 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. After DeSantis’ suspension, Warren’s office canceled the event.

Warren can appeal DeSantis’ decision.

Under the state constitution, a governor can suspend state officials for misfeasance, malfeasance, neglect of duty, drunkenness, incompetence, permanent inability to perform official duties or commission of a felony.

DeSantis’ order cites neglect of duty and incompetence as the reason for Warren’s suspension, citing, in part, 1937 case law in which a Tampa prosecutor was accused of not charging people for gambling offenses.

Warren, the order states, “demonstrated his incompetence and willful defiance of his duties,” citing:

  • Warren signing on to a June 2021 “joint statement” with prosecutors around the country “to use our discretion and not promote the criminalization of gender-affirming healthcare or transgender people.” Although the state has not enacted such criminal laws, “these statements prove that Warren thinks he has authority to defy the Florida Legislature,” DeSantis wrote.
  • Warren enacting a policy not to prosecute “certain criminal violations, including trespassing at a business location, disorderly conduct, disorderly intoxication, and prostitution.”
  • Warren enacting a policy “against prosecuting crimes where the initial encounter between law enforcement and the defendant results from a non-criminal violation in connection with riding a bicycle or a pedestrian violation.”

“Warren has effectively nullified these Florida criminal laws in the 13th Judicial Circuit, thereby eroding the rule of law, encouraging lawlessness, and usurping the exclusive role of the Florida Legislature to define criminal conduct,” the order states.

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As Warren’s replacement, DeSantis appointed Hillsborough County Judge Susan Lopez, a former county prosecutor whom DeSantis named to the bench last year.

DeSantis said he did not speak with Warren about his concerns before suspending him.

The governor’s decision was a stunning override of the the 369,129 Hillsborough County voters who cast their ballot for Warren in 2020, which made up 53.4 percent of turnout.

It also had echoes of a 2016 clash between former Gov. Rick Scott and Aramis Ayala, the state’s first Black state attorney, representing Orange and Osceola counties.

Ayala stunned many supporters and made national news when, just two months into office, she announced she would not be seeking the death penalty in any cases, including in the case of Markeith Loyd, who was charged with killing police Lt. Debra Clayton and Loyd’s pregnant ex-girlfriend.

Scott reassigned that case and 28 others to a neighboring state attorney’s office, but did not suspend her. Ayala is now running for attorney general.

Before Thursday’s bombshell, DeSantis’ most high-profile suspension of an elected official was Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel, after his department’s failures during the Parkland mass shooting.

After problems in Broward and Palm Beach during the 2018 elections such as failure to meet ballot counting deadlines, DeSantis also suspended Palm Beach Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher. Technically, it was Gov. Rick Scott who suspended Broward County Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes, though DeSantis only rescinded that she so he could accept her letter of resignation from her.

In 2019, DeSantis also suspended the Superintendent of Okaloosa County Schools, citing grand jury reports that teachers were abusing special needs children at two schools in her district, and has suspended other local officials, including Port Richey Mayor Dale Massad, after they were charged with crimes.

Thursday’s news conference brought a jovial crowd, who laughed at Judd’s comments and stood to applaud DeSantis when he announced Warren’s suspension.

On Wednesday, DeSantis’ spokesperson, Christina Pushaw, warned on Twitter that there would be a “MAJOR announcement” by the governor Thursday morning.

“Prepare for the liberal media meltdown of the year,” she wrote.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

Times/Herald staff writer Romy Ellenbogen contributed to this report.

Categories
Business

The big question for investors amid Taiwan tensions relates to inflation

The big question for investors amid Taiwan tensions relates to inflation

The immediate tensions in Taiwan following Pelosi’s visit will probably calm down in the coming days. But the whole episode – from the US administration’s provocative visit to China’s furious reaction – underscores the deep divide between these powerful nations. Throw in the war in Ukraine that will probably leave Russia in the diplomatic deep freeze for decades, and you have a strong reminder that geopolitical tensions will most likely only worsen.

Again, investors sitting in Australia are within their rights to ask: how much does this stuff really matter?

High inflation really matters

The answer may come from Credit Suisse strategist Zoltan Pozsar, who challenges investors to think of geopolitical tensions between the US (and the West more broadly) and China and Russia as part of an economic war destabilizing the low-inflation world we’ve enjoyed for decades.

And higher-for-longer inflation really matters for investors.

Pozsar’s view is that low inflation has simplistically been built on three things: immigration keeping wages low in the US (and arguably other Western countries); cheap goods from China helping to raise living standards despite stagnant wages; and cheap Russian gas powering Europe generally, and Germany specifically.

But the past few years have changed these settings.

Donald Trump’s anti-immigration policies reduced the US labor supply, and wage growth was accelerated by COVID-19-related border closures that further reduced immigration and led many workers to take early retirement.

Amid growing tensions between China and the US, China’s COVID-zero policy has choked the supply of cheap goods to the world.

And Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted the US to weaponize the US dollar to smash Russia’s economy, with Russia weaponizing energy in response.

economic war

It’s widely accepted that this current bout of inflation is supply-driven, caused by the Ukraine war, COVID-19 issues and supply chain disruptions. But it’s also widely accepted that inflation will fade relatively quickly.

Pozsar sees these supply problems as the result of an economic war between increasingly autocratic leaders, particularly in Russia and China.

“Think of the economic war as a fight between the consumer-driven West, where the level of demand has been maximized, and the production-driven East, where the level of supply has been maximized to serve the needs of the West – until East -West relations sourced, and supply snapped back.”

Viewed through this prism, Pozsar says central banks have an extremely difficult task. Rather than trying to get inflation up in a world where globalization was pushing down the cost of labour, commodities and goods, they now have the task of “cleaning up the inflationary impulses coming from a complex economic war”.

He argues political leaders may become more important than central bankers for markets; unpredictable political decisions that affect supply will matter more than monetary policy.

Pozsar emphasizes this is a thought-provoking scenario rather than a forecast, and there are important counterpoints to consider.

For example, China will find it hard to step up any economic war on the US and the West without damaging its own economy. Indeed, the relatively mild sanctions it has announced against Taiwan demonstrate this.

The US can ill afford an economic war, while Russia is already paying the economic price for an actual conflict.

But for investors, Pozsar’s argument is worth chewing on. It’s easy to see inflation coming down sharply in the next 12 months, as markets are clearly doing right now. But as this column has argued before, it’s hard to see inflationary impulses – rising commodity prices amid an energy transition, tighter labor markets as the global population ages, less globalized supply chains in a world of geopolitical tensions – going away.

Or as Pozsar puts it: “Do you see inflation as cyclical (a messy reopening exacerbated by excessive stimulus) or structural (a messy transition to a multipolar world, where two great powers are challenging the hegemony of the US)?

“If it’s the former, inflation has peaked. If it’s the latter, inflation has barely started and could actually be understood as an outright instrument of war.”

Categories
Technology

Valve launches the Steam Deck in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong

Valve launches the Steam Deck in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong

A few days ago Valve announced that it has cleared up a major hurdle in the production of Steam Decks and that it will be able to fulfill demand faster than expected. Today the company announced that it is launching its handheld console in new regions.

Soon fans in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong will be able to pick up a Steam Deck. This launch is in partnership with Komodo, Valve’s authorized reseller for those regions.

The site for Japan is already up – you can check it out here. The base 64GB eMMC model starts at JPY 59,800, the 256GB NVMe SSD model is JPY 79,800 and the top 512GB model is JPY 99,800. Here are the starting prices for the other regions: KRW 589,000 for South Korea, NT$ 13,380 for Taiwan and HK$ 3,288 for Hong Kong.

Valve launches the Steam Deck in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong

Valve notes that the reservation queues in the new regions are separate from those from the current regions, so this launch does not mean the delivery of your Steam Deck will be delayed.

Valve is pretty bold to try to push into Japan, home of Nintendo and Sony, two big names in handheld consoles. Well, mostly Nintendo these days. Still, home console gaming is much more popular in the country than PC gaming, which is what the Steam Deck offers.

That is why the company will set up a large booth at the Tokyo Game Show to introduce the Steam Deck to the attending gamers.

Source | Via

Categories
Entertainment

Alan Cumming: ‘You’d be shocked by the messages Miriam Margolyes and I leave each other!’ | edinburgh festival 2022

There can’t be many people having more fun in their jobs than Alan Cumming. Whether it’s giggling his way around Scotland in a camper van with an outrageously rude Miriam Margolyes for Channel 4, sending up musicals in the gleeful song’n’dance parody Schmigadoon! or doing cabaret at his own bar Club Cumming in Manhattan, the phrase he repeats most often when talking about his various projects is: “It was a hoot!”

His latest memoir, Baggage, recounts hedonism aplenty, unexpectedly becoming the toast of New York as the emcee in the musical Cabaret on Broadway in the 90s. But that book came after a much more sober and surprising 2014 memoir, Not My Father’s Son, recounting the abusive behavior of his father during his childhood in Angus, Scotland. The disconnect between a person’s public persona and the fuller story of their life is one that fascinates Cumming and it’s the trigger for his latest one-man show, Burn, based on the life of poet Robert Burns, premiering at the Edinburgh international festival.

'I was initially drawn to Burns when thinking about desire' … Alan Cumming.
‘I think he was quite a tortured soul’ … Alan Cumming. Photograph: Edinburgh International Festival/PA

In popular imagination we think of Burns as “romping in the hay and ploughing, and ‘Oh, here’s a poem!’” says Cumming. But the actor had “inklings” there was more to Burns than that. “And actually I think he was quite a tortured soul.” In writing his own autobiographies, Cumming thinks he’s changed his particular narrative – he is not only the boyish pansexual performer in circular specs with a mischievous grin that glints at me over Zoom, but also a man with a complicated past and a commitment to emotional frankness . He wanted to do some of the same for Burns, to undermine the sentimentality, the inclination “to biscuit-tin” him, as Cumming puts it. “To make someone into this figure that does n’t reveal their wholeness of him and hides any chance of finding out the real person.”

A lover of drink and women, Burns had numerous affairs and illegitimate children while married to Jean Armour. “I was initially drawn to him when thinking about desire,” says Cumming. “How we have to constantly battle with having the life that we want and controlling our desires. I thought it was interesting the way he lived his life: his sexuality and promiscuity and the mess he made.

“He was a rock star,” Cumming adds, “but a rock star who had a huge hit – his first book of poems was massive – and then the difficult second album.” After success in his 20s, Burns dedicated himself to collecting and arranging folk songs and burned through his earnings, taking up a job as an excise officer to make a living, then dying in poor health at the age of 37.

It was a tumultuous life, and delving into it brought plenty of surprises for Cumming. Discovering, for example, that his letters from him were n’t written in Scots like his poems from him. “Writing in Scots was a choice for him, like the Proclaimers coming along and singing in Scottish accents, it’s radical and amazing.” And finding out that it’s generally agreed Burns was bipolar. “It’s not a controversial thing any more in academic circles to say that,” says Cumming. “There are surveys where you can see the manic phases in both his output from him and his libido from him, and records of doctors’ visits and depressive times. He has this energy schism going on in his life from him.” Burns’s spirit may now preside over merry celebrations of haggis and Hogmanay, but having pored over his letters from him Cumming could n’t help but ask: was he happy? “He never seems joyous,” says Cumming. “I don’t think he was as happy as we’d all like him to be, and that was a shock.”

Alan Cummings as Dionysus in The Bacchae at the Edinburgh international festival in 2007.
Alan Cummings as Dionysus in The Bacchae at the Edinburgh international festival in 2007. Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian

All these themes and more will weave their way into Burn, and just as the research offered up the unexpected for Cumming, the show itself comes in a surprising form, as a dance theater piece. There’s some film, some text, but it’s mostly movement. “I’m 57, it’s not the time to be doing your first solo dance piece!” he chuckles at himself. But this is Cumming getting in touch with his true self from him. “I’ve always slightly regretted that I’m not a dancer,” he says.

Cumming has danced on stage before, of course, and the roots of Burn go right back to Cabaret, when he reprized his award-winning role in 2014. “I was 50 and I remember thinking: I’m never going to be this fit again, dancer-fit. I felt sad that something I’d really enjoyed was over. And then I thought, maybe I’ve got one more thing in me, and I put that out into the universe, thinking it might be another musical, or I might dance a bit in a play. I didn’t expect this.”

Alan Cumming with Jane Horrocks in Cabaret at the Donmar Warehouse, London, in 1993.
Alan Cumming with Jane Horrocks in Cabaret at the Donmar Warehouse, London, in 1993. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

The universe answered him – or rather Cumming’s network of friends, producers, choreographers, directors and festivals nudged the idea along, including movement director Steven Hoggett, with whom he’d worked on The Bacchae for National Theater of Scotland. At some point the dance idea collided with his “inklings” about Burns and the two combined to become Burn, Hoggett co-creating with another choreographer, Vicki Manderson, and featuring music by Anna Meredith.

Making the show is definitely pushing cumming physically. “The last workshop, I was exhausted,” he says. “I had to go home and lie in baths of various salts.” He had to switch his digs because one place he was staying had no bath for his aching body of him. (He lives ordinarily in New York, with illustrator husband Grant Shaffer, although you get the sense there’s not much “ordinary” in his hectic schedule.) But he’s delighted to be dancing. “I tell stories with writing, I use my face in my acting, but to tell it completely with your body is a great thing,” he says. “And I don’t think it necessarily ends when your body isn’t capable of doing everything it could do.”

By which he means, bodies beyond their 20s and 30s have something to offer too. “I love seeing older people dance and move.” Cumming also loves how dance can make you loosen your grip on linear storytelling. “You’re forced into letting things go, the normal way you interpret narrative.”

Alan Cumming Sings Sappy Songs at the Edinburgh international festival in 2016.
Alan Cumming Sings Sappy Songs at the Edinburgh international festival in 2016. Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian

Here’s a fact: Cumming actually made his dance debut in Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake – the famous gender-switched version where all the swans were danced by men – playing one of the autograph hunters. He shared a flat with Bourne and hung out with the dancers. “I knew a few swans intimately,” he says with a little dreamy smile. “That was magical.”

He has a few dance people in his circle, including Mikhail Baryshnikov (whom Cumming says is “hilarious”, telling a tale about surprising the ballet legend in a dressing room wearing some indecently tight shorts that “needed to be pixelated”). A protege of Baryshnikov’s, Aszure Barton, choreographed Cumming in The Threepenny Opera. “She said, ‘Oh, I want to choreograph something for you and Misha’ but I was too shy.” He felt he was n’t enough of a dancer, but now he thinks the strict expectation that a dancer is someone with a particular technique and physique only stymies the art form. “In other art forms you are allowed to be raw and real and to tell your own story and I think dance has been remiss in that and basically says: these are the confines, you have to be able to do these things, otherwise your story’s not valid here.”

Cumming laughs in the face of boundaries generally, as he continues his omnivorous career. There’s a role in the new Marlowe film starring Liam Neeson as the private detective; there’s a second series of Schmigadoon! that he’s filming in Vancouver when we speak, spoofing the musicals of the 60s and 70s; and there’s another jaunt with Margolyes, extending the tour from Scotland to California. Having known each other a little, the idea to pair up came after being on the Graham Norton show together and they’ve since become close chums.

“We leave little WhatsApps for each other all the time, you’d be shocked by some of them,” he laughs. “There’s zero filter. She’ll say, ‘Darling, now I’m sitting on the loo so if there’s strange noises you’ll know what it is.’” Filming with Margolyes is like a Carry On movie, he says. “She always manages to top me in the naughtiness.” It’s a motley mix of projects that keeps him happy, and feeds all the aspects of a multifaceted performer. “I want to do good work, I want to do interesting things that challenge me,” he says. “But I do want to have fun.”

Categories
Technology

Random: Rejoice! Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’s ​​Coconut Mall Has Been ‘Fixed’

Random: Rejoice! Mario Kart 8 Deluxe's ​​Coconut Mall Has Been 'Fixed'

Coconut Mall Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
Image: Nintendo

Wave 2 of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’s ​​Booster Course Pass might have just dropped. But wait, stop your engines. Why not go and check out Coconut Mall before diving into the new courses?

Why would you want to do that, you ask? Well, Nintendo might have brought in Wave 2 today, but it’s also confirmed that it’s updated one of the courses that came in Wave 1.

In both the Wii version and the Mario Kart Tour version of this fan-favorite track, there are cars towards the end of the course that can drive into your character and knock you out. A bit unsporting, but it became pretty iconic. You could shove opponents into them, and it made for a little twisty, turny driving towards the end of a lap. This wasn’t present when Coconut Mall debuted in Deluxe in March, and lots of fans weren’t happy about it:

But Nintendo has taken note, and alongside these new courses, the Big N has gone back and updated the course to make those Shy Guys drive those cars! You go, Shy Guys. We believe you can hit all of our foes.

They don’t move in exactly the same pattern that they have done in previous versions, but we’re pleased that Nintendo has gone back and updated this track with this much-requested feature.

We’ll add that one back into the rotation then!

How do you feel about this fix? Are you happy that the cars in Coconut Mall move again? Let us know!

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Categories
US

MyPillow chief spends tens of millions in fresh crusade to push Trump’s big lie | usnews

MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell, a fervent Donald Trump ally, says he has poured $35-40m into a wide crusade – a wave of lawsuits to get rid of voting machines that he faults for Trump’s defeat, a new movie about voting fraud, and a hefty legal stable – to promote charges that the 2020 election was riddled with fraud, despite a flood of contrary evidence.

In his frenetic quest to dispense with electronic voting equipment that he has often charged are defective, Lindell is hosting a two-day “Moment of Truth” summit on 20 and 21 August in Missouri, that he expects will draw 200 federal and state officials and staff, as well as hundreds of representatives from groups nationwide who have investigated election fraud this year and in 2020.

On a related front to boost his cause, a small segment of the summit will feature 10 conservative sheriffs who have become increasingly active in fighting purported election fraud, who Lindell told the Guardian he invited so they would have “a platform to get their voices heard.” ”.

One leading voice is slated to be former Arizona sheriff Richard Mack, who runs the rightwing Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA). The organization hosted a July meeting in Las Vegas that Lindell attended and publicized via a TV operation he owns, and has taken the unorthodox step of making election fraud monitoring its top priority, which Mack has dubbed a “holy cause.”

The upcoming Lindell summit underscores the growing roles of him and his allies in a sprawling network waging a multi-front war to push Trump’s “big lie” about the 2020 elections, and mobilize activists to ramp up their scrutiny of the fall elections as poll workers and poll watchers. These moves could curb voting rights and intimidate voters, say election watchdogs.

The “big lie” network has been bolstered by other multimillionaires including Patrick Byrne, the former chief executive of Overstock, and at least $1m from a Donald Trump political action committee.

Byrne co-founded the America Project with retired army Lt Gen Michael Flynn just a few months after they attended a meeting with Trump in December 2020, where wild schemes to overturn Joe Biden’s win were discussed. He has boasted of pouring $3m into a self-styled “election integrity” drive to hunt for potential fraud by training activists in poll watching and canvassing.

Non-partisan election spending analysts warn of threats to democracy in the new voting blitzes that mega-donors who promote Trump’s “big lie” are underwriting.

“Mega-donor spending, long associated with Super Pacs and non-profits, is now also aimed at shaping even how our elections are administered,” said Sheila Krumholz, who leads OpenSecrets, which tracks campaign money. “Election administration is critical infrastructure in a democracy and should not be determined by partisan power-brokers.”

However, the burgeoning “big lie” ecosystem seems to have other priorities: it includes nonprofits such as the Texas-based True the Vote, which co-sponsored the CSPOA Las Vegas summit in July, and has teamed up with another sheriffs’ group, Protect America Now, run by Arizona Sheriff Mark Lamb, to form an alliance to police this year’s voting for fraud.

Another influential activist with strong fundraising ties on the right is Cleta Mitchell, a former Trump campaign lawyer who has spearheaded numerous “election integrity” summits in key swing states and is a leading figure at the Conservative Partnership Institute, to which Trump’s leadership Pac last year gave $1m.

Mitchell participated in Trump’s infamous call on 2 January 2021 with the Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, where Trump urged him to “find” 11,870 votes to block Biden’s win there. Mitchell was subpoenaed last month by a special grand jury in Georgia investigating whether Trump’s call and other related efforts broke state laws.

The “big lie” advocates have spent tens of millions of dollars pushing baseless claims of widespread election fraud in 2020 as they have built an infrastructure of loyalists in swing states to be poll watchers and poll workers, and helped enact new laws in 18 states since 2021 that include new limits on absentee voting and other measures to make voting more difficult.

Despite powerful evidence presented to the House panel investigating the January 6 Capitol attack, including former attorney general Bill Barr’s comments that he told Trump there was no evidence of significant fraud in 2020, and numerous studies showing that voting fraud is historically small, the pro- Trump network seems to be growing.

“It is troubling to see conspiracy theorists investing money in a network designed to spread their lies about the 2020 election,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, the acting director of the voting rights and elections program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “They are using those conspiracies in an attempt to cause real harm to voters, and to our democracy. In the search for non-existent fraud, they are turning American citizens against their neighbors, who seek only to exercise their fundamental right to vote.”

Morales-Doyle added: “Now, it seems that election deniers have begun recruiting law enforcement to their cause. At a time when both voters and election workers have cause to fear intimidation and harassment, it is shameful that law enforcement officers would compound that fear rather than offering them protection.”

Some sheriffs too are very troubled by law enforcement officials getting involved in elections.

“There’s no place for politics in policing,” Paul Penzone, the current sheriff of Arizona’s Maricopa county, told the Guardian. “We are seeing a radical movement, including some local law enforcement, of people who are committed to destroying trust in our system for their own selfish gain.

“We must fight against it, or our nation will no longer be the democratic standard.”

Critics notwithstanding, “big lie” advocacy looks to be broadening.

For instance, Lindell’s efforts to wage war on alleged voting fraud have expanded in recent months as he has financed lawsuits to ditch voting machines in numerous states including Arizona, which Biden won. He also plowed about $1m into a new film on voting fraud by former Fox News reporter Lara Logan, which is slated to debut at his summit.

Lindell predicts the film will have a “huge” impact. Logan, who was ousted from Fox after making an incendiary comparison between Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to the president, and the infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, told Lindell she could “[not] find any place where there wasn’t fraud.”

The summit, which will be broadcast on Lindell TV and streamed on Lindell’s FrankSpeech.com, is also scheduled to include several of the lawyers Lindell has tapped for his litigation, plus a team of cyber specialists who have done research on election fraud, Lindell said .

The upcoming summit seems to underscore other ties that Lindell has been forging with Mack, the former sheriff, and his association. Mack’s Las Vegas meeting was live-streamed on Lindell’s eponymous Lindell TV, and Lindell interviewed Mack, a former board member of the far-right Oath Keepers, on his own show, The Lindell Report, on 13 July. Lindell and Mack also held a joint press event in Las Vegas where they discussed how sheriffs could play key roles in alleged fighting voting fraud.

Richard Mack, the founder of CSPOA, at the Las Vegas summit.
Richard Mack, the founder of CSPOA, at the Las Vegas summit. Photograph: Bridget Bennett/Reuters

Mack’s Las Vegas event also garnered more exposure due to True the Vote’s co-sponsoring, a move that reflects the Texas group’s aggressive drive to mobilize sheriffs to monitor elections.

True the Vote’s recent launch of ProtectAmerica.Vote, in tandem with Arizona sheriff Mark Lamb, highlights a burgeoning alliance between the group and some sheriffs.

The website for ProtectAmerica.Vote offers a sweeping mission statement that includes efforts to “empower sheriffs” and “connect citizens and sheriffs” as part of a wide-ranging drive to ferret out potential voting fraud.

Other drives to promote Trump’s big lie have witnessed more fundraising and alliances to help beef up voting scrutiny for the fall elections.

Mitchell’s summits, for instance, have benefited from strong links to well-heeled conservative groups who have been co-sponsors, including Tea Party Patriots Action and FreedomWorks. As senior legal fellow at CPI, Mitchell has led the summits in swing states such as Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, and boasted of creating a “movement” to fight alleged voting fraud by recruiting poll watchers and poll workers.

To that end, Mitchell and CPI have helped set up local and state taskforces, and supplied a 19-page “Citizens’ Guide to Building an Election Integrity Infrastructure”. The CPI manual suggests traditional poll monitoring methods, plus, ominously, urging its activists to be “ever-present” inside election offices and to follow “every step” of vote-by-mail operations.

Further, CPI has witnessed a big jump in its overall revenues, which benefit a variety of the group’s conservative programs, including its election integrity initiative, since last year, when it recruited Mitchell and Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows as senior partner. Founded by former South Carolina senator Jim DeMint in 2017, CPI raked in $19.7m in 2021, up from $7.3m in 2020, according to its latest annual report.

Besides hauling in $1m from Trump’s leadership Pac, the group seems to have gotten a boost from a letter Trump wrote, praising its role “helping to build out the vital infrastructure we need to lead the America First movement to new heights”.

Meanwhile, when Byrne unveiled the America Project’s “election integrity” drive, dubbed Operation Eagles Wings, that he put up $3m to launch this year, he named Flynn and longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone as special advisers. The move set off alarm bells with voting watchdogs such as Morales-Doyle, who deemed it a “sham”, in part because of the duo’s ties to several Oath Keepers and Proud Boys charged in the Capitol attack.

Byrne, like Stone and Flynn, is known for conspiratorial and debunked efforts to prove the 2020 election was rigged. With Operation Eagles Wings he has boasted of plans to educate “election reform activists” to handle election canvassing, grassroots work and fundraising “to expose shenanigans at the ballot box.”

Byrne has described the operation’s mission as ensuring “there are no repeats of the errors that happened in the 2020 election”, and stressed the “need to protect the voting process from election meddlers who care only about serving crooked special-interest groups that neither respect nor value the rule of law”.

Looking ahead, Morales-Doyle stressed that the Trump-allied election denialist movement poses multiple threats to democracy.

“The ramifications of the lie that the 2020 election was rigged reach far beyond the events of January 6. This lie has fueled a variety of new threats to our democracy, including changes to state law, harassment of election workers, and the recruitment of poll watchers, poll workers, and vigilante canvassers.”

Still, he added: “We must keep in mind that our democracy is resilient, and that there are federal and state laws in place to protect voters and others from those that seek to undermine it.”

Categories
Technology

Valve expands Steam Deck reservations to four new countries

GDC Logo

Valve has announced that it’s opening up Steam Deck reservations for customers in Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

The Seattle, WA-based company is partnering with Komodo to sell and distribute its portable Steam consoles in these areas. In a statement to Game Developer, Valve said that this new expansion is possible thanks to its recent efforts to increase Steam Deck production.

It also noted that the reservation queue for the new regions “will not impact delivery estimates” for the current reservation process in North America, Europe, and the UK

New destinations for the Steam Deck

Valve’s journey from game developer to digital platform owner to console manufacturer is taking it to new destinations. It’s also showing that the company is successfully navigating the manufacturing process with greater deftness than with its previous hardware efforts.

Earlier in the decade, Valve tried its hand at Steam-based consoles with Steam Machines, and tried to reinvent the gamepad with the Steam Controller. The former product never took off, and the latter slammed headlong into a lawsuit filed by Ironburg Inventions. It would later lose that case.

Part of the promise of the Steam Machine concept was that other manufacturers would be able to make their own devices that would run Valve’s Linux-based Steam operating system. That concept seems to be back on the table, as Valve’s Steam Deck team has said it would welcome participation from other manufacturers.

That prospect might become more appealing as the Steam Deck rolls out to new countries across the world. Different countries have different habits when it comes to video game console purchases, and Valve’s thinking may be that the Steam Deck platform could be modified to meet different customer needs.

Valve’s success at ramping up Steam Deck production and entering new territories comes in the wake of a global supply chain crisis that’s already impacted its business plans for the Steam Deck. The company had to delay plans for a TV-ready charging dock that would be similar to the Nintendo Switch’s docking station.

Categories
Technology

A New Nintendo Switch Model Isn’t Releasing Before March 2023

Splatoon 3 OLED Switch

It’s been seemingly confirmed that the successor Nintendo Switch will not release before March 2023.

This come from Nikkei, who said that there would be no new hardware released before March 2023, although it’s unclear if this came directly from the Nintendo President in which Nikkei were interviewing or just a determination that the outlet had made based on the interview.

It had been previously thought that the next Nintendo Switch would release in 1H 2023, due to the fact that Nintendo had ordered the parts some time ago and 4K dev kits had been with developers for well over a year now.

Obviously, we don’t know when Breath of the Wild 2 is releasing, and it had been long thought that that would be the perfect time for Nintendo to drop an improved Nintendo Switch utilizing a new NVIIDA chip that would likely make 4K visuals available through the use of DLSS technology.

Earlier this week, Nintendo announced that the Nintendo Switch had sold 111 million units and close to a billion units in software sales, which is absolutely huge, and no doubt Nintendo will be looking to continue that momentum with a successor at some point.

Categories
Sports

Man U coach Erik ten Hag savages ‘unacceptable’ Cristiano Ronaldo early exit from pre-season match, trade rumors

Man U coach Erik ten Hag savages 'unacceptable' Cristiano Ronaldo early exit from pre-season match, trade rumors

Erik ten Hag said it was “unacceptable” for Cristiano Ronaldo and other Manchester United players to leave Old Trafford before the end of Sunday’s friendly against Rayo Vallecano.

After taking a strong team to Oslo to face Atletico Madrid on Saturday, United wrapped up their pre-season preparations against another Spanish side the following day.

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United drew 1-1 with Rayo at Old Trafford as star man Ronaldo made his first appearance of pre-season, playing the first 45 minutes.

The 37-year-old missed the pre-season tour of Thailand and Australia due to a family issue, and the wantaway forward was pictured with Diogo Dalot leaving Sunday’s game before full-time.

Ten Hag did not speak to the media after the match but has now expressed his annoyance to broadcaster Viaplay.

“There were many more (as well as Ronaldo) who went home,” the United boss said. “This is unacceptable for everyone,” he said. “I tell them that it’s unacceptable, that we are a team, a squad and that you should stay until the end.”

Ten Hag will take charge of his first competitive match as United manager on Sunday, when they face Brighton at home in the Premier League.

It comes a week after Ronaldo returned to training for talks with the coach about his future at Old Trafford.

Ronaldo, who missed the club’s pre-season tour to Thailand and Australia for personal reasons, wants to leave the club he rejoined last year.

I have arrived at United’s Carrington training base with his agent Jorge Mendes. Former United manager Alex Ferguson was also seen arriving.

New United manager Ten Hag said earlier this month that Ronaldo was “not for sale”.

“We are planning for Cristiano Ronaldo for the season and that’s it and I’m looking forward to working with him,” he said.

“I have read it, but what I say is Cristiano is not for sale, he is in our plans and we want success together.” The former Real Madrid and Juventus player finished as United’s topscorer last season with 24 goals.

But the campaign was a huge disappointment for the club, who finished sixth in the Premier League, missing out on Champions League qualification.

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Categories
US

US says Russia aims to manufacture evidence in prison deaths

US says Russia aims to manufacture evidence in prison deaths

WASHINGTON (AP) — US officials believe Russia is working to fabricate evidence concerning last week’s deadly strike on a prison housing prisoners of war in a separatist region of eastern Ukraine.

US intelligence officials have determined that Russia is looking to plant false evidence to make it appear that Ukrainian forces were responsible for the July 29 attack on Olenivka Prison that left 53 dead and wounded dozens more, a US official familiar with the intelligence finding told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Separately, a Western government official, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity, said explosive experts who have reviewed photos of the prison released by the Russians following the incident have determined that the destruction wasn’t likely caused by “a high-explosive strike from the outside” and that it was “much more likely to be incendiary and from inside the location.”

Russia has claimed that Ukraine’s military used US-supplied rocket launchers to strike the prison in Olenivka, a settlement controlled by the Moscow-backed Donetsk People’s Republic.

The Ukrainian military denied making any rocket or artillery strikes in Olenivka. The intelligence arm of the Ukrainian defense ministry claimed in a statement Wednesday to have evidence that local Kremlin-backed separatists colluded with the Russian FSB, the KGB’s main successor agency, and mercenary group Wagner to mine the barrack before “using a flammable substance, which led to the rapid spread of fire in the room.”

The US official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the classified intelligence — which was recently downgraded — shows that Russian officials might even plant ammunition from medium-ranged High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, as evidence that the systems provided by the US to Ukraine were used in the attack.

Russia is expected to take the action as it anticipates independent investigators and journalists eventually getting access to Olenivka, the official added.

Ukraine has effectively used HIMARS launchers, which fire medium-range rockets and can be quickly moved before Russia can target them with return fire, and have been seeking more launchers from the United States.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Thursday angrily dismissed the US officials’ claims about Russia fabricating the evidence.

“It has been absolutely proven and it’s absolutely obvious what happened in Olenivka,” Peskov said Thursday in a conference call with reporters. “Ukrainian prisoners of war were killed by the Ukrainian military. Ukraine killed its soldiers who were in captivity, and many others were wounded. There is an evidence and there is nothing to hide.”

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he is appointing a fact-finding mission in response to requests from Russia and Ukraine to investigate the killings at the prison.

Guterres told reporters he doesn’t have authority to conduct criminal investigations but does have authority to conduct fact-finding missions. I have added that the terms of reference for a mission to Ukraine are currently being prepared and will be sent to the governments of Ukraine and Russia for approval. Peskov said that Russia has invited the UN and the Red Cross to visit the site and conduct a probe.

The Ukrainian POWs at the Donetsk prison included troops captured during the fall of Mariupol. They spent months holed up with civilians at the giant Azovstal steel mill in the southern port city. Their resistance during a relentless Russian bombardment became a symbol of Ukrainian defiance against Russia’s aggression.

More than 2,400 soldiers from the Azov Regiment of the Ukrainian national guard and other military units gave up their fight and surrendered under orders from Ukraine’s military in May.

Scores of Ukrainian soldiers have been taken to prisons in Russian-controlled areas. Some have returned to Ukraine as part of prisoner exchanges with Russia, but other families have no idea whether their loved ones are still alive, or if they will ever come home.

US and UK officials, before the war and in its early stages, repeatedly went public with what they said were Russian plans to stage fake videos and events that the Kremlin would blame on Ukraine but in fact were perpetrated by Russia.

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Lederer reported from the United Nations. Associated Press writers Jill Lawless in London and Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to this report.

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