Good morning. 
Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 86. Sunrise is 5:30 AM and sunset 8:31 PM, for 15h 01m 21s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 19.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1960, Jane Goodall arrives at the Gombe Stream Reserve in present-day Tanzania to begin her study of chimpanzees in the wild.
Recommended for reading in full —
Katelyn Ferral reports After years of failure, Defense Department moves to address sex assault in National Guard:
For years, the Defense Department has failed to hold the National Guard accountable for its longstanding sexual assault problem.
But now, the agency is considering adopting broad reforms in how the Guard handles such cases.
Routine audits, prevention policies and more data are among the changes the agency is considering and that were outlined in a Defense Department task force report in June.
The task force’s report reflects the findings of a Journal Sentinel/Cap Times investigation earlier this year that found Guard units have buried sexual assault allegations and do not have basic data on such claims. The investigation also showed how the Guard’s bureaucracy and complex state-federal structure is so impenetrable that it is difficult for victims to navigate and easy for commanders to weaponize.
The task force largely agreed, calling for distinct reforms for the Guard, which is different than full-time, active duty forces and the U.S. Reserves because the Guard is made up of militias in 54 U.S. states and territories and answers to the governor of each state rather than the federal government.
“Recent independent investigations of sexual harassment and sexual assault in the Guard and Reserve have surfaced troubling findings,” the task force report said. “These components face special jurisdictional challenges by their very nature that simply do not resonate with the Active Duty component.”
Ed Pilkington reports Ken Starr helped Jeffrey Epstein with ‘scorched-earth’ campaign, book claims:
In Perversion of Justice, the Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown writes about Starr’s role in securing the secret 2008 sweetheart deal that granted Epstein effective immunity from federal prosecution. The author, who is credited with blowing open the cover-up, calls Starr a “fixer” who “used his political connections in the White House to get the Justice Department to review Epstein’s case”.
The book says that emails and letters sent by Starr and Epstein’s then criminal defense lawyer Jay Lefkowitz show that the duo were “campaigning to pressure the Justice Department to drop the case”. Starr had been brought into “center stage” of Epstein’s legal team because of his connections in Washington to the Bush administration.
Perversion of Justice will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.
Rachel Pannett reports Iranian intelligence agents plotted brazen abduction of Brooklyn dissident journalist, U.S. prosecutors say:
Iranian intelligence agents plotted to abduct an Iranian American journalist living in Brooklyn and spirit her away to the Middle Eastern country, possibly via a daring maritime evacuation, the Justice Department alleged in an indictment unsealed Tuesday.
Four Iranians were charged in federal court in Manhattan with conspiring to kidnap the exiled journalist and women’s rights activist, Masih Alinejad, who has long been critical of the regime in Tehran. Alinejad was not identified by prosecutors, but she confirmed on Twitter that she was the intended target.
“I am grateful to FBI for foiling the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Intelligence Ministry’s plot to kidnap me. This plot was orchestrated under Rouhani,” she wrote on Tuesday, referring to outgoing Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.