U.S. officials say Huawei Technologies Co. can covertly access mobile-phone networks around the world through “back doors” designed for use by law enforcement, as Washington tries to persuade allies to exclude the Chinese company from their networks.

Intelligence shows Huawei has had this secret capability for more than a decade, U.S. officials said. Huawei rejected the allegations.

The U.S. kept the intelligence highly classified until late last year, when American officials provided details to allies including the U.K. and Germany, according to officials from the three countries. That was a tactical turnabout by the U.S., which in the past had argued that it didn’t need to produce hard evidence of the threat it says Huawei poses to nations’ security.

...

U.S. officials say Huawei has built equipment that secretly preserves the manufacturer’s ability to access networks through these interfaces without the carriers’ knowledge. The officials didn’t provide details of where they believe Huawei is able access networks. Other manufacturers don’t have the same ability, they said.

For nearly two years, about one in five veteran military sexual trauma claims were wrongfully denied or improperly handled by the Department of Veterans Affairs, officials told Congress Wednesday.

In September 2019, VBA completed a review of about 9,700 previously-denied MST claims from Oct. 1, 2016 through June 30, 2018. Of the 9,700 the agency reviewed, about 1,900 "required additional development" so they were initially wrongly denied or improperly handled, VBA Undersecretary for Field Operations Willie Clark told Congress.

That amounts to about one in every five MST claims during that period being wrongly denied or handled incorrectly.

Since September 2019, of the 1,900 still being worked on, Clark said VA found that about 460 deserved to be approved and have their disability percentage increased. Another 500 are still being worked on, Clark said, and about 900 claims decisions were sustained or remained denied.

There are those in our country today, too, who speak of the "protection" of the country. Of "survival". The answer to that is: *survival as what*? A country isn't a rock. And it isn't an extension of one's self. *It's what it stands for, when standing for something is the most difficult!* Before the people of the world - let it now be noted in our decision here that this is what *we* stand for: *justice, truth... and the value of a single human being!*

The Senate’s acquittal of Donald Trump elicited predictions that the president would now be “unleashed,” freed to do as he pleased. His actions over the past few days offer a first glimpse of what that might look like. With the threat of accountability gone, or at least diminished, Trump is bestowing favor on his loyal defenders, and visiting revenge on those he feels have betrayed him.

Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, who testified in the impeachment hearings, was sacked from his post on the National Security Council, in what presidential aides made very clear was revenge. For good measure, so was his twin brother, a lawyer at the NSC and a fellow Army officer. Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, was asked to resign, and when he refused, he was fired Friday night. Elaine McCusker, who had been tapped to be Pentagon comptroller but clashed with the White House over freezing military aid to Ukraine, will have her nomination withdrawn, according to the New York Post.

And today, a day after prosecutors requested seven to nine years in prison for Roger Stone, the Justice Department suddenly intervened and announced that it would withdraw the recommendation in favor of a lighter sentence, a highly irregular move. Stone was convicted in November on seven counts, including witness tampering and making false statements, in a case that grew out of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into possible collusion with Russia in the 2016 election. Trump also tweeted angrily about the proposed sentence. “This is a horrible and very unfair situation,” he wrote. “The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them. Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!” Later, at the White House, Trump asserted an “absolute right” to intervene.

The intervention led to a mass resignation from the case in protest by prosecutors. First Aaron Zelinsky, a former Mueller aide, resigned from the case. (Zelinsky remains an assistant U.S. attorney, a career position, in Maryland.) Two others, Adam Jed and Mike Marando, also dropped off the case. A fourth, Jonathan Kravis, resigned from DOJ altogether in protest.

Something you need to understand about Roger Stone and Donald Trump. They go waaaay back. Trump was Stone's big client in the 1980s when Stone was a name partner in a heavy-duty Washington political lobbying firm. https://wapo.st/2TT2GRc

Paul Manafort, FUCK YOU!

Roger Stone, FUCK YOU, TOO. SIDEWAYS. WITH A RUSTY SAW

None of them knew it then, but that one conversation, a chat among three ambitious young Reaganites — Stone was just 28 and Black only 33 — would have a transformative effect on the capital, nudging Washington into a generation-long evolution. Their business would morph into a then-unheard-of hybrid, a bipartisan firm that would help elect politicians — sometimes hedging by playing both sides in the same race — then lobby those same politicians. Radical, disruptive and frequently criticized as ethically unsavory at the time, the mix is de rigueur now.

“I don’t think they invented the swamp,” said John Donaldson, a veteran Washington strategist who was an early employee of the firm. “They invented an innovative way to navigate the swamp.”

One of the first clients of the firm they christened Black, Manafort & Stone was a New York developer named Donald J. Trump, brought into their portfolio by Stone, who’d met him through the notorious Gotham lawyer Roy Cohn.

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By the time their business was born, they were already expert navigators of loopholes — Black and Stone, along with GOP operative John T. “Terry” Dolan, had founded the National Conservative Political Action Committee, best known as Nick-Pac, five years earlier. The hyperaggressive group was one of the first to bundle contributions to circumvent limits on individual campaign contributions, and was a precursor to the rise of super PACs, which candidate Trump lambasted four decades later as prime examples of Washington’s swamp problem.

Aaron Rupar
✔
@atrupar
Asked about Roger Stone, Trump says he has an “absolute right” to tell the Justice Department what to do

New @AmyMcGrathKY ad features the jet and her opposition to free college and Medicare for All. #kysen https://twitter.com/MediumBuying/status/1227248030677639169

Over 100 US service members have been diagnosed with mild traumatic brain injuries in the wake of the January 8 Iranian missile attack on the al Asad military base in Iraq, according to a US official with knowledge of the latest information.

That's an increase of at least 36 cases from the end of January when the Pentagon said 64 service members had been diagnosed with injuries.

...

"All of those people were screened and we have got a certain number and the number is growing, in this particular case TBI -- that manifests, it takes some time to manifest itself, it's not an immediate thing necessarily -- some cases it is, some cases it's not. So we continue to screen," Milley said. "Some of them have been evacuated to Europe, some have been evacuated back to the United States so there is a layered approach to this, we'll continue to do that with our medical professionals."

Last month, Trump said he does not consider potential brain injuries to be as serious as physical combat wounds, downplaying the severity of the injuries suffered in Iraq.

SAN FRANCISCO — Amazon is quietly canceling its Nazis.

Over the past 18 months, the retailer has removed two books by David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, as well as several titles by George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi Party. Amazon has also prohibited volumes like “The Ruling Elite: The Zionist Seizure of World Power” and “A History of Central Banking and the Enslavement of Mankind.”

While few may lament the disappearance of these hate-filled books, the increasing number of banished titles has set off concern among some of the third-party booksellers who stock Amazon’s vast virtual shelves. Amazon, they said, seems to operate under vague or nonexistent rules.

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Now Amazon is becoming increasingly proactive in removing Nazi material. It even allowed its own Nazi-themed show, “The Man in the High Castle,” to be cleaned up for a tribute book. The series, which began in 2015 and concluded in November, is set in a parallel United States where the Germans and the Japanese won World War II.