Good morning.

Monday brings snow showers to Whitewater, with a high of thirty-five. Sunrise is 7:16 AM and sunset 4:20 PM, for 9h 04m 44s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 36.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred ninety-seventh day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Updated: The Whitewater Unified School Board is scheduled to meet at 6 P.M. Whitewater’s Planning Commission is scheduled to meet today at 6:30 P.M.

On this day in 1946, the United Nations establishes UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund. On this day in 1901, the Morris Pratt Institute is incorporated: ” Morris Pratt gained incorporation for his school of spiritualism located in Whitewater, Wisconsin. Many people of this time embraced spiritualism to try to reach friends and family who had died in the Civil War. As a result, Whitewater became known as the “mecca of modern spiritualism.” Pratt built his institute in 1888, which was initially used as a meeting place for public seances. Pratt decided to turn his institution into an educational school for spiritualists, focusing on science, literature, morality, and communication, as well as spiritualistic instruction. The institute was closed for a few years during the Depression, and then in 1977 relocated to Waukesha…”

Recommended for reading in full —

Andrew Kaczynski reports on statements from Roy Moore in 2011: Getting rid of amendments after 10th would ‘eliminate many problems’:

Alabama Republican Senate nominee Roy Moore appeared on a conspiracy-driven radio show twice in 2011, where he told the hosts in an interview that getting rid of constitutional amendments after the Tenth Amendment would ‘eliminate many problems’ in the way the US government is structured….

In Moore’s June appearance, one of the hosts says he would like to see an amendment that would void all the amendments after the Tenth.

“That would eliminate many problems,” Moore replied. “You know people don’t understand how some of these amendments have completely tried to wreck the form of government that our forefathers intended.”

Moore cited the 17th Amendment, which calls for the direct election of senators by voters rather than state legislatures, as one he particularly found troublesome.

The host agreed with Moore, before turning his attention to the 14th Amendment, which was passed during the Reconstruction period following the Civil War and guaranteed citizenship and equal rights and protection to former slaves and has been used in landmark Supreme Court cases such as Brown v. Board of Education and Obergefell v. Hodges.

“People also don’t understand, and being from the South I bet you get it, the 14th Amendment was only approved at the point of the gun,” the host said.

“Yeah, it had very serious problems with its approval by the states,” Moore replied. “The danger in the 14th Amendment, which was to restrict, it has been a restriction on the states using the first Ten Amendments by and through the 14th Amendment. To restrict the states from doing something that the federal government was restricted from doing and allowing the federal government to do something which the first Ten Amendments prevented them from doing. If you understand the incorporation doctrine used by the courts and what it meant. You’d understand what I’m talking about.”

…Besides the 14th and 17th Amendments, amendments adopted after the Bill of Rights include the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, the 15th Amendment which prohibited the federal and state governments from denying citizens the right to vote based on that person’s “race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” and the 19th Amendment, which extended the right to vote to women….

Bella DePaulo writes I study liars. I’ve never seen one like President Trump:

I spent the first two decades of my career as a social scientist studying liars and their lies. I thought I had developed a sense of what to expect from them. Then along came President Trump. His lies are both more frequent and more malicious than ordinary people’s.

In research beginning in the mid-1990s, when I was a professor at the University of Virginia, my colleagues and I asked 77 college students and 70 people from the nearby community to keep diaries of all the lies they told every day for a week. They handed them in to us with no names attached. We calculated participants’ rates of lying and categorized each lie as either self-serving (told to advantage the liar or protect the liar from embarrassment, blame or other undesired outcomes) or kind (told to advantage, flatter or protect someone else)….

The sheer frequency of Trump’s lies appears to be having an effect, and it may not be the one he is going for. A Politico/Morning Consult poll from late October showed that only 35 percent of voters believed that Trump was honest, while 51 percent said he was not honest. (The others said they didn’t know or had no opinion.) Results of a Quinnipiac University poll from November were similar: Thirty-seven percent of voters thought Trump was honest, compared with 58 percent who thought he was not.

For fewer than 40 percent of American voters to see the president as honest is truly remarkable. Most humans, most of the time, believe other people. That’s our default setting. Usually, we need a reason to disbelieve….

Rebecca Ruiz explains Why Russia Tried to Cheat Its Way to Glory:

Russia’s two subversions, of global sports and American democracy, have more in common than you may think. Both involve intelligence agents, Russia’s will to win and the same cyberespionage team. Both have prompted millions of dollars of investigations and challenged public confidence — in the purity of sport and in the strength of democracy.

The two breaches are at the heart of how President Vladimir Putin has suggested he wants to reclaim Russia’s past: by weakening Western democracy and dominating world sports….

(See also Report Shows Vast Reach of Russian Doping: 1,000 Athletes, 30 Sports.)

Matthew DeFour reports Foxconn won $3 billion tax credit battle, but the public relations campaign continues:

….Foxconn’s public relations effort is being overseen by Platform Communications, a company owned by Walker campaign political adviser Keith Gilkes. A Platform spokeswoman declined to discuss the group’s communications strategy.

Foxconn provided a statement saying over the coming weeks and months, it will continue to engage with business leaders and the public as the company builds its campus in Racine County and grows an “extensive Wisconsin-based supply chain that will support this facility.”

Polls from Marquette Law School and Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling suggested the deal isn’t wildly popular. The Marquette Poll was limited to southeastern Wisconsin but found 38 percent saying it was worth the $3 billion state investment and 48 percent saying it wasn’t. The PPP poll found statewide 41 percent opposed the Foxconn deal, 34 percent supported it and 26 percent weren’t sure….

These Robots Could Be Coming To An Airport Near You:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of thirty-four. Sunrise is 7:15 AM and sunset 4:20 PM, for 9h 05m 27s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 47% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred ninety-sixth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1864, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. accepts the Nobel Peace Prize is Oslo, Norway.  On this day in 1864, the 3rd Wisconsin Infantry reaches Savannah, Georgia: “The Wisconsin 3rd Infantry arrived at the front lines for the Battle of Savannah, Georgia. After marching from Atlanta under General William T. Sherman, Wisconsin troops assembled outside the coastal city of Savannah and laid siege to it.”

Recommended for reading in full — 

Conservative Christian Peter Wehner writes Why I Can No Longer Call Myself an Evangelical Republican:

Just the other day I received a note from a friend of mine, a pastor, who told me he no longer uses the label “evangelical” to describe himself, even though he meets every element of its historical definition, “because the term is now so stained as to ruin my ability to be what evangelicalism was supposed to be.”

Another pastor who is a lifelong friend told me, “Evangelical is no longer a word we can use.” The reason, he explained, is that it’s become not a religious identification so much as a political one. A third person, who heads a Christian organization, told me the term evangelical “is now a tribal rather than a creedal description.” In October, the Princeton Evangelical Fellowship, a campus ministry for more than 80 years, changed its name to the Princeton Christian Fellowship. “We’re interested in being people who are defined by our faith and by our faith commitments and not by any sort of political agenda,” according to Bill Boyce, who has led the campus group for decades.

There are of course a great many honorable individuals in the Republican Party and the evangelical movement. Those who hold different views than I do lead exemplary lives. Yet I cannot help believing that the events of the past few years — and the past few weeks — have shown us that the Republican Party and the evangelical movement (or large parts of them, at least), have become what I once would have thought of as liberal caricatures….

In the latest example of this, a rising number of Republicans are attempting to delegitimize the special counsel’s investigation into whether there were links between Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign and Mr. Putin’s Russia because they quake at what he may find. Prominent evangelical leaders, rather than challenging the president to become a man of integrity, have become courtiers. What’s happening with Mr. Moore in Alabama — with the president, the Republican National Committee, the state party and many white evangelicals rallying around him — is a bridge too far for many of us. Where exactly is the bottom? And at what point do you pull back from associating yourself with a political party and a religious term you once took pride in but that are now doing harm to the things you treasure?

Institutional renewal and regeneration are possible, and I’m going to continue to push for them. But for now a solid majority of Republicans and self-described evangelicals are firmly aboard the Trump train, which is doing its utmost to give a seat of privilege to Mr. Moore. So for those of us who still think of ourselves as conservative and Christian, it’s enough already.

(Better for Wehner to preserve his fundamental religious and political principles than debase himself within Trumpism’s autocratic and perverse ideology.)

Rebecca Ruiz writes Report Shows Vast Reach of Russian Doping: 1,000 Athletes, 30 Sports:

LONDON — International sports’ antidoping watchdog on Friday laid out mountainous evidence that for years Russian officials orchestrated a doping program at the Olympics and other competitions that involved or benefited 1,000 athletes in 30 sports. The findings intensified pressure on the International Olympic Committee to reassess Russia’s medals from the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi and penalize the nation ahead of the 2018 Winter Games.

The evidence, published by the World Anti-Doping Agency, was the coda to a set of investigations led by the Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren, who issued a damning report in July that prompted more than 100 Russian athletes to be barred from the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

The follow-up report outlined competitions that had been tainted by years of extraordinary preparations, ensuring Russia’s dominance at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, the 2013 track and field world championships in Moscow and the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi — the “apex” of Russia’s cheating, the report said, because as the host of the event it controlled drug testing.

The subterfuge included using table salt and Nescafé instant–coffee granules to help conceal tainted urine and bypass controls, according to the inquiry. Some samples were clearly fraudulent: Urine provided by two female hockey players at the Sochi Games contained male DNA.

Yet Mr. McLaren suggested that the full extent of the cheating might never be known.

“It is impossible to know just how deep and how far back this conspiracy goes,” he said on Friday, calling the “immutable facts” of his report clear but far from comprehensive. “For years, international sports competitions have unknowingly been hijacked by the Russians”….

(Putin’s Russia, like the former Soviet Union, is a state of lies and corruption.)

Agence France-Press reports on Putin’s cult of personality:

“He is a super president and a super leader” – New “SuperPutin” exhibition opens in Moscow with the Russian leader portrayed in various heroic roles; from riding a bear to firing missiles in the colours of the Russian flag pic.twitter.com/LxQ9WZOxfD

— AFP news agency (@AFP) December 10, 2017

(Even – and especially – in the face of international censure, the Russian state – and these displays would not happen without the approval of the Russian state – bolsters its dictator. To critics of Putin, of course, this will all seem like parody, both inside and outside Russia.)

The New York Times reports from Inside Trump’s Hour-By-Hour Battle for Self-Preservation:

Before taking office, Mr. Trump told top aides to think of each presidential day as an episode in a television show in which he vanquishes rivals. People close to him estimate that Mr. Trump spends at least four hours a day, and sometimes as much as twice that, in front of a television, sometimes with the volume muted, marinating in the no-holds-barred wars of cable news and eager to fire back….

Mr. Kelly is trying, quietly and respectfully, to reduce the amount of free time the president has for fiery tweets by accelerating the start of his workday. Mr. Priebus also tried, with only modest success, to encourage Mr. Trump to arrive by 9 or 9:30 a.m….

(He may be the most powerful – but at least there is the advantage – that Trump is the laziest nativist in all America. Our situation would be far worse if he put in a full day’s work.)

NASA believes that the 2017 Geminids Will Be Dazzling:

Good morning, Whitewater.

Saturday in town will be partly cloudy with a high of thirty-one. Sunrise is 7:14 AM and sunset 4:20 PM, for 9h 06m 13s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 56.9% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred ninety-fifth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1844, Milwaukee’s first daily newspaper, The Daily Sentinel, begins publication. On this day in 1861, Wisconsin’s first heavy artillery troops muster in: “The 1st Wisconsin Heavy Artillery, Battery A mustered in on this day in 1861. It remained Wisconsin’s only heavy artillery battery until 1863. Its entire service was spent in Washington, D.C., defending against Confederate attacks on the capital.”

Recommended for reading in full —

Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo report F.B.I. Warned Hope Hicks About Emails From Russian Operatives:

WASHINGTON — F.B.I. officials warned one of President Trump’s top advisers, Hope Hicks, earlier this year about repeated attempts by Russian operatives to make contact with her during the presidential transition, according to people familiar with the events.

The Russian outreach efforts show that, even after American intelligence agencies publicly accused Moscow of trying to influence the outcome of last year’s presidential election, Russian operatives were undaunted in their efforts to establish contacts with Mr. Trump’s advisers.

There is no evidence that Ms. Hicks did anything improper. According to former officials, American intelligence and law enforcement agencies became alarmed by introductory emails that Ms. Hicks received from Russian government addresses in the weeks after Mr. Trump’s election.

After he took office, senior F.B.I. counterintelligence agents met with Ms. Hicks in the White House Situation Room at least twice, gave her the names of the Russians who had contacted her, and said that they were not who they claimed to be. The F.B.I. was concerned that the emails to Ms. Hicks may have been part of a Russian intelligence operation, and they urged Ms. Hicks to be cautious….

(The news is significant, among other reasons, because the meeting prevents Hicks from responding – truthfully – to Special Counsel Mueller’s team that she was unaware of the extent of Russian outreach efforts.)

Russell Berman has The 2018 Congressional Retirement Tracker:

If you want to see a political wave forming a year before an election, watch the retirements.

They’re often a leading indicator for which direction a party is headed, and so far, 2018 is shaping up ominously for Republicans. In the last few months, two GOP senators, Bob Corker of Tennessee and Jeff Flake of Arizona, and four Republican committee chairmen in the House have announced they won’t seek reelection next year. Several other veterans in competitive districts are also calling it quits, depriving the GOP of the advantage of incumbency in races that could determine control of the House in 2019. And more retirements are probably on the way between now and the end of the year, when lawmakers head home to discuss future plans with their families.

At the same time, a wave of allegations of sexual harassment and other inappropriate behavior has scrambled the retirement picture in both parties in recent weeks, and it’s forced several lawmakers to leave Congress early. Scandals have already taken down Democratic Senator Al Franken and long-serving Representative John Conyers among Democrats, as well as GOP Representatives Trent Franks and Tim Murphy. More could be on the way as new allegations come to light.

As for those getting out in 2018, President Trump’s low approval rating and Congress’s meager legislative output may be contributing to the decisions of some Republicans to retire, including moderate Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, Frank LoBiondo of New Jersey, and Dave Reichert of Washington state. But there are other factors at play. Unlike Democrats, Republicans have rules limiting the terms of their committee chairmen to ensure turnover and give younger members a chance to advance in the House. Congress isn’t as fun with less power, and all four of the retiring GOP committee leaders would be forced out of their roles and to the back bench in 2019….

Ariel Bogle asks Has the Google of South Korea Found a Way to Save Struggling News Outlets?:

Walk into the headquarters of South Korea’s biggest search engine, Naver, and you could be in Silicon Valley. Like Google and Facebook, the company has an affection for bean bags and primary colors. There are oversized toys in the shape of emoji from Naver’s messaging app, Line. A green wall is lined with ferns, and there’s an immaculately designed library.

Also like Google and Facebook, Naver has a tense relationship with journalists. Though the company produces no journalism itself, Naver’s desktop and mobile news portal is South Korea’s most popular news site. (The second is another local portal, Daum.) Naver hosts stories by various outlets, somewhat similar to news-aggregation apps like Apple News. In a country where around 83 percent of the population accesses news online, the company has outsize control over what Koreans read and see….

This hold that internet companies now have over digital advertising has left news outlets around the world in search of a sustainable business model. Some are doubling down on subscriptions; others rely on philanthropy. But Naver has an unusual model for working with Korean news publishers: The company directly pays 124 outlets as “Naver News in-link partners.” The outlets’ stories are published on Naver’s portal, making the site a one-stop source of articles and video and eliminating the need for readers to leave and visit the original news site. All the better for Naver’s own shopping platform and its own ads. (Another 500 or so news outlets are unpaid “search partners.” The site links to the publishers’ articles, much like Google News.) The total payout comes to more than $40 million per year.

For “in-link partners,” Naver’s model offers an alternative to relying on traffic from an aggregator like Google News, or schemes like Facebook’s Instant Articles that aim to share ad revenue. The partners have a negotiable relationship with the company that wants their work—a company that needs new content for readers each time they log on. Whether Naver’s compensation to publishers is sufficient, however, remains controversial. And like some of its fellow technology giants overseas, Naver’s news practices are under increasing scrutiny….

Barbara McQuade contends After Michael Flynn, Robert Mueller’s Next Targets Are in This Document:

The Statement of the Offense makes it clear that when Flynn spoke to Russia, he was not acting on his own as some rogue player. The Statement of Offense sets out a timeline indicating that Flynn’s conversations with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak were being discussed in real time with a “senior member of President-elect Trump’s Transition Team” and a “very senior member of the Presidential Transition Team.” The document notes that the “senior member” was with other transition officials at the Mar-A-Lago resort in Florida, where President-elect Trump was staying at the time. Some reports indicate that the “senior member” is Flynn’s former deputy K.T. McFarland and the “very senior member” is Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Regardless, Flynn knows who they are and is prepared to testify about them, according to the plea agreement. This disclosure sheds new light on the reports that Kushner sought a back channel for communication with Russia during the transition. Flynn likely can confirm or refute this report and explain why any back channel for communicating with Russia might have been sought. (Kushner denied it was a “secret back channel” and said communications were to be about Syria)….

The Statement of Offense is not a document that Mueller is required to file. Why, then, did he file it? In part, no doubt, he wants to lock Flynn into what he will testify to if necessary at any trial. But if locking in Flynn’s statement was Mueller’s goal, he could do that by having Flynn testify under oath and in private before the grand jury. So why make it public? The “senior member” and “very senior member” of the transition team mentioned in the documents know who they are. Including this language in a public document sends a message to them that if they want to cooperate, now is the time, and perhaps, they, too, can get a good deal….

Trey Griffith is Stacking His Way to the Top:

When Trey Griffith found his first set of stacking cups, his life was changed forever. He began training himself to rack and stack cups at lightning speed, competing in tournaments around the globe. Trey’s father eventually took up stacking himself as an opportunity to bond and compete alongside his son. Today, at age 14, Trey is already the fastest stacker in the state of Texas. Now, he’s ready to take on the world.

Good afternoon.

Friday in Whitewater will see a probability of evening snow showers, and an evening low of twenty-two. Sunrise is 7:13 AM and 4:20 PM, for 9h 07m 03s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 65.2% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred ninety-fourth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1941, Congress declares war on Imperial Japan. On this day in 1864, the Wisconsin 2nd Cavalry is assigned to scout Memphis, Tennessee.

Recommended for reading in full — 

The Poynter Institute releases a new study examining trust in the media:

The Poynter Institute released original public opinion research today that indicates overall trust and confidence in the media has increased since President Trump took office to the highest levels observed since the 2001 terrorist attacks, though the president’s war of words on the press appear to have exacerbated partisan divisions in attitudes toward the press.

Based on responses from 2,100 survey participants whose news consumption habits were tracked in November, Republicans have vastly more negative views of the press than do Democrats, and are more likely to support restrictions on press freedom. While Democrats with high political knowledge say they have the most faith in the press, Republicans with high political knowledge are the most distrustful of the media — more so than Republicans with low political knowledge.

Republicans and Trump supporters are also far more likely to endorse extreme claims about media fabrication, to describe journalists as an “enemy of the people,” and to support restrictions on press freedom….

Max Fisher, Eric Schmitt, Audrey Carlsen, and  Malachy Browne ask Did American Missile Defense Fail in Saudi Arabia?:

The official story was clear: Saudi forces shot down a ballistic missile fired by Yemen’s Houthi rebel group last month at Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh. It was a victory for the Saudis and for the United States, which supplied the Patriot missile defense system.

“Our system knocked the missile out of the air,” President Trump said the next day from Air Force One en route to Japan, one of the 14 countries that use the system. “That’s how good we are. Nobody makes what we make, and now we’re selling it all over the world.”

But an analysis of photos and videos of the strike posted to social media suggests that story may be wrong.

Instead, evidence analyzed by a research team of missile experts appears to show the missile’s warhead flew unimpeded over Saudi defenses and nearly hit its target, Riyadh’s airport. The warhead detonated so close to the domestic terminal that customers jumped out of their seats….

Rosalind S. Helderman and Tom Hamburger report Email pointed Trump campaign to WikiLeaks documents that were already public:

A 2016 email sent to candidate Donald Trump and top aides pointed the campaign to hacked documents from the Democratic National Committee that had already been made public by the group WikiLeaks a day earlier.

The email — sent the afternoon of Sept. 14, 2016 — noted that “Wikileaks has uploaded another (huge 678 mb) archive of files from the DNC” and included a link and a “decryption key,” according to a copy obtained by The Washington Post.

The writer, who said his name was Michael J. Erickson and described himself as the president of an aviation management company, sent the message to the then-Republican nominee as well as his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and other top advisers.

The day before, WikiLeaks had tweeted links to what the group said was 678.4 megabytes of DNC documents.

The full email — which was first described to CNN as being sent on Sept. 4, 10 days earlier — indicates that the writer may have simply been flagging information that was already widely available. CNN later corrected its story to note the email had been sent Sept. 14.

The message also noted that information from former secretary of state Colin Powell’s inbox was available “on DCLeaks.com.” That development, too, had been publicly reported earlier that day….

Frances Robles, Kenan Davis, Sheri Fink, and Sarah Almukhtar report Official Toll in Puerto Rico: 62. Actual Deaths May Be 1,052:

A review by The New York Times of daily mortality data from Puerto Rico’s vital statistics bureau indicates a significantly higher death toll after the hurricane than the government there has acknowledged.

The Times’s analysis found that in the 42 days after Hurricane Maria made landfall on Sept. 20 as a Category 4 storm, 1,052 more people than usual died across the island. The analysis compared the number of deaths for each day in 2017 with the average of the number of deaths for the same days in 2015 and 2016.

Officially, just 62 people died as a result of the storm that ravaged the island with nearly 150-mile-an-hour winds, cutting off power to 3.4 million Puerto Ricans. The last four fatalities were added to the death toll on Dec. 2.

“Before the hurricane, I had an average of 82 deaths daily. That changes from Sept. 20 to 30th. Now I have an average of 118 deaths daily,” Wanda Llovet, the director of the Demographic Registry in Puerto Rico, said in a mid-November interview. Since then, she said on Thursday, both figures have increased by one….

Here’s How NASA, SpaceX, and Blue Origin’s Monster Rockets Compare:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be increasingly sunny with a high of twenty-seven. Sunrise is 7:12 AM and sunset 4:20 PM, for 9h 07m 58s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 78.4% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred ninety-third day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Community Development Authority is scheduled to meet at 5:30 PM, and her Landmarks Commission at 6 PM.

Seventy-six years ago, the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service attacks the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor. Wisconsinite Russ Warriner was among the survivors that day:

Russ Warriner, a 25-year-old first class seaman on the USS Arizona, miraculously survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The explosions ripped apart the Arizona and killed nearly all his mates. At the time of the attack, Warriner was on the sky control platform, where his job was to spot enemy ships and planes. The bomb that struck the Arizona sliced through the steel deck and exploded into a fuel tank. Fire flared for seven seconds before it ignited 1.7 million pounds of explosives held in the ship’s magazine. More than 1,000 sailors died instantly, including many on the lookout platform with Warriner. Warriner lost his balance and fell onto the platform. His hands swept through fiery magnesium remaining from incendiary bombs and were nearly burned off. He was knocked off the ship, pulled aboard a small motor boat, and eventually made his way to shore. Warriner was treated at Great Lakes Naval Base in Illinois, where plastic surgeons were able to repair his hands. Warriner settled in Wisconsin, married and raised two children. In the late 90s, Warriner was a retired piano tuner living in Beloit Township.

Recommended for reading in full —

Josh Gerstein reports Russian oligarch Deripaska drops libel suit against Associated Press:

A Russian oligarch whose business dealings have come under scrutiny by investigators probing Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election has dropped a libel suit against The Associated Press.

Lawyers for aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, who worked closely with indicted former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort several years ago, joined with the news service Tuesday in a joint court filing dismissing appeals of a judge’s decision in October tossing out the defamation lawsuit.

Deripaska’s suit, filed in May, alleged that an AP story published two months earlier falsely implied that Deripaska was paying Manafort for work aimed at advancing the goals of the Russian government and Russian president Vladimir Putin….

U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle dismissed the lawsuit, finding that the Russian businessman was “a limited purpose public figure” under U.S. libel law. That determination meant Deripaska needed to plausibly assert that the AP knew its story was false at the time it published it, something the judge found the complaint in the case failed to lay out….

Avi Selk reports Chirps, hums and phantom noises — how bizarre events in Cuba changed embassy workers’ brains:

They would sometimes wake in the night to hear a disembodied chirping somewhere in the room, or a strange, low hum, or the sound of scraping metal.

Sometimes they felt a phantom flutter of air pass by as they listened. Others in the room would often not notice a thing, the Associated Press reported, and the noises would cease if the person moved just a few feet away.

And then, usually within 24 hours of these bizarre events, bad things happened to those who heard the noises.

What exactly two dozen Americans experienced at the U.S. Embassy in Cuba — in incidents last year and then again in August — remains a mystery to science and the FBI. They have alternately been blamed on a high-tech sonic weapon or a mysterious disease, and have caused a diplomatic crisis because U.S. officials blame Cuba for the attacks….

Jennifer Rubin contends The anti-Trump Republicans can cripple the GOP:

So nearly 20 percent have checked out of the Trump GOP and 23 percent are leaning that way, for a total of 41 percent. This, of course, does not account for the loss of many voters who won’t even identify as Republican because of the Trump phenomenon….

Well, we’ve got a long way to go, and the collapse of the Trump presidency, if it comes, might either shatter the party or help unify it around Vice President Pence (although his proximity to Michael Flynn, Jared Kusher and, of course, Trump might be disqualifying for lots of voters). In any case, Trump enablers may dominate the GOP, but the rest of the party may choose to cripple the Trump GOP by leaving for greener pastures. The more the GOP regulars and Trump sycophants rail against the Never Trump contingent, the more likely the latter is to leave. And if Democrats play their cards right, they might even win some of these voters over.

(Even small defections from Trumpism might tip some Congressional contests. Well worth encouraging.)

Maura Judkis writes Behold, the latest wait-in-line, Instagram-your-purchase status food: Cheese tea:

We’ve nearly made it through 2017, a year that gave us the unicorn frappuccino, pea milk, the gummy bear juice cleanse, pumpkin spice deodorant, and its greatest (worst) gift, microwaveable mug cakes for one.

But just when you thought we were out of the woods, along comes 2017’s final salvo: cheese tea.

[Blue wine is a thing because your Instagram doesn’t have taste buds]

You are thinking: Those are two words that do not go together. Cheese! In tea! But we’re not talking Humboldt Fog or Camembert here. The cheese used in cheese tea is usually a cream cheese — sometimes sweet, sometimes salty — combined with condensed milk. It forms a tall, frothy head at the top of the beverage, sort of like whipped cream in a frappuccino. The teas are often matcha, oolong, jasmine and black, and you can customize them with fruits and other flavor infusions. They’re kind of like bubble tea, which has made its way into mall food courts across America.

CHEESE TEA EXISTS. And it’s delicious. Link in biooooo ?? #cheesetea @littlefluffyhead

A post shared by john warder (@biscuitpancakes) on Sep 29, 2017 at 3:36pm PDT

(I’ve not yet tried it, but will search for some.)

Incredible Footage of the Deepstaria Jellyfish:

Good morning.

Midweek in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of thirty-two. Sunrise is 7:11 AM and sunset 4:20 PM, for 9h 08m 57s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 87.2% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred ninety-second day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Public Works Committee is scheduled to meet at 6 PM.

On this day in 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment is ratified by the required number of states. On this day in 1864, the 30th Wisconsin Infantry arrives in Louisville, Kentucky.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Callum Borchers reports Time’s Person of the Year isn’t Trump. It’s basically the opposite of Trump:

President Trump claimed in a tweet last month that Time magazine told him he would likely be named Person of the Year. But the magazine’s selection turned out to be, essentially, the opposite of Trump: The women and men speaking out about sexual misconduct.

Time dubbed these people “silence breakers” on a cover unveiled Wednesday, and some attributed their silence breaking to the president.

“I have real doubts about whether we’d be going through this if Hillary Clinton had won, because I think that President Trump’s election, in many ways, was a setback for women,” said NBC’s Megyn Kelly, the former Fox News host who last year accused former Fox chairman Roger Ailes of sexual harassment in a book. She added that “the overall message” of Trump’s victory “was that we don’t really matter.”

Trump, of course, won the presidency last fall, despite having been accused of groping and kissing women without consent — and bragging about getting away with such behavior on the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape published by The Washington Post….

Megan Twohey, Jodi Kantor, Susan Dominus, Jim Rutenberg, and Steve Eder report on
Weinstein’s Complicity Machine (“The producer Harvey Weinstein relied on powerful relationships across industries to provide him with cover as accusations of sexual misconduct piled up for decades”):

Harvey Weinsten built his complicity machine out of the witting, the unwitting and those in between. He commanded enablers, silencers and spies, warning others who discovered his secrets to say nothing. He courted those who could provide the money or prestige to enhance his reputation as well as his power to intimidate.

In the weeks and months before allegations of his methodical abuse of women were exposed in October, Mr. Weinstein, the Hollywood producer, pulled on all the levers of his carefully constructed apparatus.

He gathered ammunition, sometimes helped by the editor of The National Enquirer, who had dispatched reporters to find information that could undermine accusers. He turned to old allies, asking a partner in Creative Artists Agency, one of Hollywood’s premier talent shops, to broker a meeting with a C.A.A. client, Ronan Farrow, who was reporting on Mr. Weinstein. He tried to dispense favors: While seeking to stop the actress Rose McGowan from writing in a memoir that he had sexually assaulted her, he tried to arrange a $50,000 payment to her former manager and throw new business to a literary agent advising Ms. McGowan. The agent, Lacy Lynch, replied to him in an email: “No one understands smart, intellectual and commercial like HW.”

Mr. Weinstein’s final, failed round of manipulations shows how he operated for more than three decades: by trying to turn others into instruments or shields for his behavior, according to nearly 200 interviews, internal company records and previously undisclosed emails. Some aided his actions without realizing what he was doing. Many knew something or detected hints, though few understood the scale of his sexual misconduct. Almost everyone had incentives to look the other way or reasons to stay silent. Now, even as the tally of Mr. Weinstein’s alleged misdeeds is still emerging, so is a debate about collective failure and the apportioning of blame….

(Note for Whitewater: In institutions, organizations, corporations, and government, misconduct thrives on willing enablers, often men and woman who rationalize their role aiding misconduct in one way or another. Indeed, repeated abuse of individuals – discarding those injured in the name of some supposed, greater good – often requires carefully-placed help.)

Monika Bauerlein reports It’s a Perfect Storm for Destroying Journalism (“Economic threats or political attacks are bad enough by themselves. But together they are incredibly dangerous”):

We’ve known for a while that the news business is in trouble. Long before Google and Facebook started gobbling up advertising revenue, newsroom hiring froze and investigative teams were dissolved as corporate and hedge-fund owners sought ever fatter quarterly returns. Eric Klinenberg laid it all out in MoJo in 2007: As far back as the 1980s, he notes, corporate owners had begun to “buy up local newspapers, crush the competition, jack up ad rates, downsize the editorial staff (and, if required, break the union), then watch earnings soar.”

And we can fast-forward through the history of digital publishing in no time: Blogging (and layoffs), search engine optimization (and “rightsizing”), social-media optimization (and layoffs), pivot to video (did we mention layoffs?), rinse and repeat—and suddenly it’s late 2017, and here’s another round of, you guessed it, layoffs and revenue implosion. And the timing, at a moment when pursuing the truth about those in power feels like a matter of life and death for democracy, could not be worse….

(Note for Whitewater: Bloggers aren’t journalists, nor should they wish to be. The decline of local journalism has come about not merely for economic reasons, but lack of will: weak newspapers have led to even weaker imitations.)

Jonathan Berr writes The Kochs’ Investment In Time Doesn’t Make Much Business Sense:

It’s a good thing that Charles and David Koch don’t have to answer to shareholders because they would be livid over the billionaire brothers’ decision to invest $650 million in Meredith’s $2.8 billion acquisition of magazine publisher Time Inc.

Under the terms of the deal, the Kochs would become passive investors in the new company through preferred equity they will receive. Iowa-based Meredith has taken pains to note that the conservative-leaning Kochs would have no say over any editorial matters. I will believe it when I see it. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch has made similar promises but has repeatedly meddled in the editorial affairs of his various media properties, such as the New York Post.

But even if you accept the Kochs at their word, it’s hard to see the appeal of the Meredith-Time Inc. merger for any investors because Time Inc. has been a financial basket case for years. Before Time Warner spun off the corporate home of People, Sports Illustrated and Time magazines in 2013, revenue at Time Inc. had plunged in 22 out of the past 24 quarters. The company’s fortunes haven’t improved much since then. Total revenue barely budged from 2013 to 2016 and is expected to plunge in 2017 to $2.78 billion. To top it off, Time Inc. is saddled with more than $1.2 billion in debt from the Time Warner spin-off, an amount that Time Inc. itself has warned is “substantial”….

(There’s speculation that they have a political angle, but it may be instead, as Berr notes, that “[w]hether the Koch Brothers will get an expensive education in a sector they know little about remains to be seen.”)

So, Why Can’t You Put Pineapple in Jello?:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of thirty-five. Sunrise is 7:10 AM and sunset is 4:20 PM, for 9h 10m 00s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 94.1% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred ninety-first day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1952, the Great Smog of London overcomes that city:

A period of cold weather, combined with an anticyclone and windless conditions, collected airborne pollutants – mostly arising from the use of coal – to form a thick layer of smog over the city. It lasted from Friday, 5 December to Tuesday, 9 December 1952 and then dispersed quickly when the weather changed.

It caused major disruption by reducing visibility and even penetrating indoor areas, far more severe than previous smog events experienced in the past, called “pea-soupers”. Government medical reports in the following weeks, however, estimated that up until 8 December, 4,000 people had died as a direct result of the smog and 100,000 more were made ill by the smog’s effects on the human respiratory tract. More recent research suggests that the total number of fatalities was considerably greater, about 12,000.

On this day in 1879, the Humane Society of Wisconsin is organized:

On this date the Humane Society of Wisconsin was organized in Milwaukee. Inspired by Henry Bergh, a New York City philanthropist, and his Humane Movement, the state Humane Society was formed to protect both animals and children. However, with the formation of child protection laws in the early 1900s, the Humane Society of Wisconsin began to focus primarily on animal protection.

Recommended for reading in full —

Dan Friedman reports Paul Manafort Just Tried to Secretly Collaborate With a Colleague Linked to Russian Intelligence, Feds Say:

Following his October 30 indictment on federal charges, Paul Manafort worsened his legal woes by secretly drafting an editorial defending his work on behalf of a former Ukrainian president—cowriting the piece with a “long-time Russian colleague” who is “assessed to have ties to a Russian intelligence service”— according to a motion filed Monday by federal prosecutors. The alleged stunning move by Manafort has torpedoed the $11-million bail package that special counsel Robert Mueller’s team tentatively agreed upon with Manafort’s lawyers last week.

Manafort and his longtime colleague Rick Gates face trial on charges including money laundering and tax evasion for over tens of millions of dollars received for political work on behalf of the political party headed by Viktor Yanukovich, a pro-Russian former Ukrainian president ousted in 2014. Manafort also faces charges related to his failure to register as a foreign lobbyist.

Mueller’s team alleges that with Manafort awaiting trial on those charges: “As late as November 30, 2017, Manafort and a colleague were ghostwriting an editorial in English regarding his political work for Ukraine. Manafort worked on the draft with a long-time Russian colleague of Manafort’s, who is currently based in Russia and assessed to have ties to a Russian intelligence service.”

The filing does not contain additional details but says that the US government will file a separate sealed motion including evidence support their claim….

(Leopards, spots…)

Michael S. Schmidt and Sharon LaFraniere report McFarland Contradicted Herself on Russia Contacts, Congressional Testimony Shows:

WASHINGTON — An email sent during the transition by President Trump’s former deputy national security adviser, K.T. McFarland, appears to contradict the testimony she gave to Congress over the summer about contacts between the Russian ambassador and Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn.

Ms. McFarland had told lawmakers that she did not discuss or know anything about interactions between Sergey I. Kislyak, who had been Moscow’s ambassador to the United States, and Mr. Flynn, according to Senate documents.

But emails obtained by The New York Times appear to undermine those statements. In a Dec. 29 message about newly imposed Obama administration sanctions against Russia for its election interference, Ms. McFarland, then serving on Mr. Trump’s transition team, told another transition official that Mr. Flynn would be talking to the Russian ambassador that evening….

(If Russian contacts were truly innocuous, why conceal or lie about them?)

John Schmid reports Wisconsin childhood trauma data explodes myth of ‘not in my small town’:

The drug crisis in Rock County reflects another epidemic, one that preceded it, sometimes by a full generation or more — and statistically was invisible until only recently.

It’s an epidemic of abuse, neglect and maltreatment of children. It can mean an environment in which adults are alcoholic, mentally unwell, incarcerated or violent — or too stressed by lack of time or money to have any emotional capacity left for children.

A new body of data shows that childhood trauma can lead to lifelong afflictions, both physical and behavioral, including post-traumatic stress disorders. Too often, it leads to neurological impairment. It can precede depression, unemployment and even homelessness and suicide. In high-trauma communities, the workforce can become incapacitated.

The same data also shows a crippling ripple effect: trauma and economic decline are interrelated and self-reinforcing, and frequently transfer from generation to generation, and neighborhood to neighborhood. The same downward dynamic can be found in rural areas and smaller towns as well as the nation’s aging urban centers like Milwaukee….

Emily Hanford and Alex Baumhardt write of Rural America’s Neglected Higher-Education Problem (“A podcast explores the parts of the U.S. being ignored as the nation tries to ramp up degree completion”):

Only 59 percent of rural high-school graduates enroll in college the subsequent fall, according to the National Student Clearinghouse. That’s a lower proportion than students from urban and suburban areas.

“It was amazing to me as a journalist—and embarrassing” to realize that college-going is less common among students in rural America, says Jon Marcus, the higher-education editor for The Hechinger Report who wrote an article about the rural higher-education crisis for The Atlantic. “We haven’t covered this.”

He says colleges have failed to pay attention to the needs of rural students, too….

(There’s more than one issue: how many students attend college, and how many students have a strong, well-rounded education even if they don’t attend college.)

The deepest-ever fish has been recovered for the first time:

Scientists finally have an up-close look at the deepest-dwelling fish in the world. Several samples of the fish have been brought to the surface for study. Following is the transcript of the video.

Scientists finally have an up-close look at the deepest-dwelling fish. The fish was found nearly 5 miles underwater. It’s the first time scientists have retrieved one for study. This CT scan shows the fish’s skeleton and its lunch.

Researchers have named the fish the “Mariana Snailfish” AKA “Pseudoliparis swirei.” It was found 26,200 feet below the surface, in the Mariana Trench. The pressure is 1,000X greater than at the surface. Researchers say the pressure there is so intense, it’s “similar to an elephant standing on your thumb.”

In August, Japanese researchers saw the same fish even deeper, at a depth of 26,830 feet. Scientists didn’t know for sure if such life could exist at this depth. It’s thought that after 26,902 feet, cells cease to function normally.

Scientists caught this fish with a camera-enabled trap. They hope the samples will help them understand how something could survive such incredible pressure. One advantage to their depth is a lack of natural predators, except for the occasional scientist with a trap!

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will see scattered thunderstorms with a high of sixty. Sunrise is 7:09 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 11m 06s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 98.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred ninetieth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1842, a Civil War hero from Waukesha is born: “On this date William B. Cushing was born in Delafield. In October, 1864 Cushing led a small group of soldiers in the sinking of the Confederate ironclad ram, the Albermarle. The crew exploded a torpedo beneath the ship and then attempted to escape. The Albermarle imposed a blockade near Plymouth, North Carolina and sunk or removed many Union vessels while on the watch. Cushing’s plan was a success, although his ship sank and most of the crew either surrendered or drowned. Cushing and one other man swam to shore and hid in the swamps to evade Confederate capture. Cushing received a “vote of thanks” from the U.S. Congress and was promoted to Lieutenant Commander. He died in 1874 of ill health and is buried in the Naval Cemetery at Annapolis, Maryland. [Source: Badger Saints and Sinnersby Fred L. Holmes, p.274-285]”

Recommended for reading in full — 

Carol D. Leonnig, John Wagner and Ellen Nakashima report Trump lawyer says president knew Flynn had given FBI the same account he gave to vice president:

….Trump’s Saturday tweets had stoked controversy, as he wrote that “I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI.” Previously, the White House had cited only the false statements to Pence as a rationale for dismissing Flynn.

[Trump lawyer John] Dowd confirmed Sunday that he had drafted the tweet for Trump and acknowledged that it was sloppily worded. He said it was inaccurate to say the president was told that Flynn had lied to the FBI. Dowd said Sunday that Trump knew only what acting attorney general Sally Yates had told the White House counsel: that Flynn’s accounts to the agents interviewing him were the same as those Flynn gave Pence, and “that the [Justice] Department was not accusing him of lying”….

Dowd played down the significance of Trump’s tweet, saying he did not intend to make news and declared, “I’m out of the tweeting business.”

[Graphic: Here’s what we know so far about Team Trump’s ties to Russian interests]

But several legal experts said the tweet, and some of Dowd’s comments about what the president may have known, could increase the president’s legal exposure.

If Trump knew that Flynn might not have been accurate with the FBI, it could provide motivation for any alleged effort to obstruct justice, said Barak Cohen, a former federal prosecutor who does white-collar defense work at Perkins Coie law firm. “It bolsters the intent for committing obstruction,” he said….

(One would have to accept that Dowd – of all people – actually drafted Trump’s tweets, and also contend that in any event that Trump’s publication of those words did not constitute an adoption of them.)

Mike Allen of Axios floats the latest theory from Dowd, that Trump lawyer claims the “President cannot obstruct justice”:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of fifty-five. Sunrise is 7:08 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 12m 16s of daytime. The moon is full today. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred eighty-ninth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1992, British engineer Neil Papworth sends the first SMS text message (“Merry Christmas”) from his work computer in Newbury, Berkshire, to Vodafone executive Richard Jarvis’ mobile phone. On this day in 1947, WTMJ-TV becomes the first television station in Wisconsin.

Recommended for reading in full —

Nicholas Fandos reports Operative Offered Trump Campaign ‘Kremlin Connection’ Using N.R.A. Ties:

WASHINGTON — A conservative operative trumpeting his close ties to the National Rifle Association and Russia told a Trump campaign adviser last year that he could arrange a back-channel meeting between Donald J. Trump and Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president, according to an email sent to the Trump campaign.

A May 2016 email to the campaign adviser, Rick Dearborn, bore the subject line “Kremlin Connection.” In it, the N.R.A. member said he wanted the advice of Mr. Dearborn and Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, then a foreign policy adviser to Mr. Trump and Mr. Dearborn’s longtime boss, about how to proceed in connecting the two leaders.

Russia, he wrote, was “quietly but actively seeking a dialogue with the U.S.” and would attempt to use the N.R.A.’s annual convention in Louisville, Ky., to make “‘first contact.’” The email, which was among a trove of campaign-related documents turned over to investigators on Capitol Hill, was described in detail to The New York Times….

(History will look back on the National Rifle Association both for its support of Trump and Putin, leaving national a dual loyalty.)

Michael S. Schmidt, Sharon LaFraniere, and Scott Shane report Emails Dispute White House Claims That Flynn Acted Independently on Russia:

WASHINGTON — When President Trump fired his national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, in February, White House officials portrayed him as a renegade who had acted independently in his discussions with a Russian official during the presidential transition and then lied to his colleagues about the interactions.

But emails among top transition officials, provided or described to The New York Times, suggest that Mr. Flynn was far from a rogue actor. In fact, the emails, coupled with interviews and court documents filed on Friday, showed that Mr. Flynn was in close touch with other senior members of the Trump transition team both before and after he spoke with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, about American sanctions against Russia.

While Mr. Trump has disparaged as a Democratic “hoax” any claims that he or his aides had unusual interactions with Russian officials, the records suggest that the Trump transition team was intensely focused on improving relations with Moscow and was willing to intervene to pursue that goal despite a request from the Obama administration that it not sow confusion about official American policy before Mr. Trump took office….

Adam Roston and Joel Anderson report He Spent Almost 20 Years Funding The Racist Right. It Finally Paid Off (“William Regnery II, a man who inherited millions but struggled in business, tried for 15 years to ignite a racist political movement — and failed. Then an unforeseen phenomenon named Donald Trump gave legitimacy to what Regnery had seeded long before: the alt-right. Now, the press-shy white separatist breaks his silence”):

How did explicit racism move from a taboo to an open, unabashed force in American politics? A loose but sprawling internet army, often called the alt-right, gave white supremacy a massive megaphone. And with the rise of Donald Trump’s candidacy, it suddenly seemed to be everywhere at once.

In fact, that movement had an infrastructure — organizations, journals, conferences, money — that had been laid down years before. It was in large part funded by one person: a secretive and aging multimillionaire named William H. Regnery II, the most influential racist you’ve never heard of.

Despite inheriting immense wealth, having grown up in a prominent family in the conservative movement, he had managed to chalk up virtually no public success in his first six decades of life. He never graduated from college, and he floundered in his attempt at running the family business.

But starting in 1999 — when he convened a dozen other middle-aged white nationalists at an ornate seaside hotel nicknamed the Pink Palace — he has poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the quest to transform America and create what he calls a white “ethnostate.”

His traceable donations have gone chiefly to two organizations, both of which he established and led as founding president. The first was the secretive Charles Martel Society, named for a leading figure of the European Middle Ages who fought off Muslim invaders. That organization helped create the second: the innocuously named National Policy Institute, which became a nerve center of the alt-right. In 2011, Regnery hired Richard Spencer, the charismatic speaker widely credited with coining that term, to be the NPI’s president and director….

Steve Dorsey reports Uzbekistan incident raises suspicions of Russian involvement in Cuba attacks:

A newly revealed incident reported by a USAID officer who is based at the American embassy in Uzbekistan is raising suspicions Russia may have been involved and could have had a hand in bizarre attacks targeting U.S. diplomats in Cuba, according to American sources.

In September, the officer and his wife reported, according to one source familiar with the incident, what may have been at least one acoustic attack similar to those experienced by the diplomats in Havana.

[Investigation into mysterious Cuba attacks “back to square one”]

The first Cuba attacks began in November 2016, and the last report of an attack was in August 2017. Victims of the attacks in Cuba describe hearing a loud, high-pitched sound often described like a hiss of cicadas or crickets in unusual places—often in their homes.

The State Department declined to describe in detail the incident in Tashkent….

NASA describes A Supermoon Trilogy:

A series of three supermoons will appear on the celestial stage on December 3, 2017, January 1, 2018, and January 31, 2018.