Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be increasingly cloudy, with a couple of showers and a thunderstorm this afternoon, and a high of seventy-eight. Sunrise is 5:34 AM and sunset 8:28 PM, for 14h 53m 43s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 47.3% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Community Involvement and Cable Television Commission meets today at 5 PM.
On this day in 1799, the French rediscover the Rosetta Stone:
The Rosetta Stone is a granodiorite stele, found in 1799, inscribed with three versions of a decree issued at Memphis, Egypt in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty on behalf of King Ptolemy V. The top and middle texts are in Ancient Egyptian using hieroglyphic script and Demotic script, respectively, while the bottom is in Ancient Greek. As the decree has only minor differences between the three versions, the Rosetta Stone proved to be the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Napoleon’s 1798 campaign in Egypt came at (and helped cause) the beginning of a burst of Egyptomania in Europe, and especially France. A corps of 167 technical experts (savants), known as the Commission des Sciences et des Arts, accompanied the French expeditionary army to Egypt. On July 15, 1799, French soldiers under the command of Colonel d’Hautpoul were strengthening the defences of Fort Julien, a couple of miles north-east of the Egyptian port city of Rosetta (modern-day Rashid). Lieutenant Pierre-François Bouchard spotted a slab with inscriptions on one side that the soldiers had uncovered.[36] He and d’Hautpoul saw at once that it might be important and informed General Jacques-François Menou, who happened to be at Rosetta.[A] The find was announced to Napoleon’s newly founded scientific association in Cairo, the Institut d’Égypte, in a report by Commission member Michel Ange Lancret noting that it contained three inscriptions, the first in hieroglyphs and the third in Greek, and rightly suggesting that the three inscriptions were versions of the same text. Lancret’s report, dated July 19, 1799, was read to a meeting of the Institute soon after July 25. Bouchard, meanwhile, transported the stone to Cairo for examination by scholars. Napoleon himself inspected what had already begun to be called la Pierre de Rosette, the Rosetta Stone, shortly before his return to France in August 1799.[9]
Recommended for reading in full —
Tom Jackman and Rosalind S. Helderman report Alleged Russian agent Maria Butina ordered to remain in custody after prosecutors argue she has ties to Russian intelligence:
The Russian woman arrested this week on charges of being a foreign agent has ties to Russian intelligence operatives and was in contact with them while in the United States, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
Maria Butina, 29, also cultivated a “personal relationship” with an American Republican consultant as part of her cover and offered sex to at least one other person “in exchange for a position within a special interest organization,” according to a court filing.
After a hearing on Wednesday afternoon, U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson denied Butina’s request to be released on bail, finding that no combination of conditions would ensure her return to court.
Sharon LaFraniere and Adam Goldman report Maria Butina, Suspected Secret Agent, Used Sex in Covert Plan, Prosecutors Say:
WASHINGTON — For four years, a Russian accused of being a covert agent pursued a brazen effort to infiltrate conservative circles and influence powerful Republicans while she secretly was in contact with Russian intelligence operatives, a senior Russian official and a billionaire oligarch close to the Kremlin whom she called her “funder,” federal prosecutors said on Wednesday.
The woman, Maria Butina, carried out her campaign through a series of deceptions that began in 2014, if not earlier, prosecutors said. She lied to obtain a student visa to pursue graduate work at American University in 2016. Apparently hoping for a work visa that would grant her a longer stay, she offered one American sex in exchange for a job. She moved in with a Republican political operative nearly twice her age, describing him as her boyfriend. But she privately expressed “disdain” for him and had him do her homework, prosecutors said.
In a dramatic two-hour hearing in Federal District Court here, prosecutors said that Ms. Butina, who is charged with conspiracy and illegally acting as an agent of the Russian government, was the point person in a calculated, long-term campaign intended to steer high-level politicians toward Moscow’s objectives. Though prosecutors did not name any party or politician, Ms. Butina’s efforts were clearly aimed at Republican leaders, especially those with White House aspirations in 2016, including Donald J. Trump.
(Emphasis added.)
Patrick Marley and Trent Tetzlaff report Scott Walker says his talk with accused Russian spy Maria Butina was brief:
Walker posed for a photo with her at a National Rifle Association meeting in Tennessee in 2015. In the photo, Walker stood between Butina and Alexander Torshin, who is not named in court filings but is the “Russian official” who gave Butina orders as part of the conspiracy, according to the New York Times.
At the time of the photo at the NRA event, Walker was preparing to launch his presidential bid. Soon afterward, Butina attended Walker’s event announcing his campaign launch.
Walker said he has not been contacted by authorities and knows of no one from his campaign who has been.
RELATED: Scott Walker met with woman now charged in Russian plot during his presidential bid
Butina said in online posts in 2015 that Walker said “hello” and “thank you” to her in Russian and that she did not detect any hostility toward Russia from him.
Walker said he did not recall whether he spoke Russian to her but did take one semester of the language in college.
Asked if he remembered talking to her, Walker said, “Well, I do now because it’s all over the media. But to me, it’s just another person we met.”
In a court filing Wednesday, prosecutors alleged Butina was in touch with Russian intelligence operatives and once offered sex to someone in exchange for a position with an unnamed special interest group
(Walker remembered his college Russian, these years later? Perhaps, but his brief use of that language was surely meant to catch her notice, to impress. It was, in any event, a shallow effort: unless one is prepared for a full conversation, one does better to speak naturally in one’s own language.)
Shawn Johnson reports Walker Had 2015 Encounter With Woman Charged In Russia Probe:
Walker’s encounter with Butina had been reported previously by news organizations including Mother Jones and Rolling Stone, thanks to pictures posted by Butina on her social media pages.
In a blog post attributed to Butina from April 2015, she posted a picture of herself with Walker, writing that she “did not hear any aggression towards our country, the president or my compatriots.” She also posted a picture from July 2015 taken from the crowd at Walker’s official presidential campaign kickoff July 13, 2015.
….
Butina’s connections to another Wisconsin politician were far more pronounced.
In late 2015, a group she ran helped pay for a delegation from the National Rifle Association to visit Russia. That delegation included former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke.
(I’ve never been a member of the National Rifle Association, but as others have remarked, after numerous reports of ties to Russian operatives, one has reason to wonder what nation the word ‘national’ truly describes.)
Never, ever ignore warnings for bridges, railroads, etc., as a cyclist in Menasha, Wisconsin recklessly did:
After a short time bystanders got out of their cars and rushed to help the woman out of the opening.
The bridge operator was made aware of the incident and did not move the bridge span until everyone was off of the bridge, the Menasha Police Department said.
The woman was taken to a local hospital and treated primarily for facial injuries, police said.