Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of seventy-one. Sunrise is 6:44 AM and sunset 6:49 PM, for 12h 05m 16s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 97.4% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the six hundred eighty-fourth day.
The sixth-annual Discover Whitewater Series, a local half marathon, 5K, and kids’ run, takes place today.
On this day in 1779, Captain John Paul Jones is victorious over the British:
Shortly after 7 p.m. the Battle of Flamborough Head began. Serapis engaged Bonhomme Richard, and soon afterwards, Alliance fired, from a considerable distance, at Countess. Quickly recognizing that he could not win a battle of big guns, and with the wind dying, Jones made every effort to lock Richard and Serapis together (his famous, albeit possibly apocryphal, quotation “I have not yet begun to fight!” was uttered in reply to a demand to surrender in this phase of the battle), finally succeeding after about an hour, following which his deck guns and his Marine marksmen in the rigging began clearing the British decks.
….
[British] Captain Pearson of Serapis accepted that prolonging the battle could achieve nothing, so he surrendered. Most of Bonhomme Richard‘s crew immediately transferred to other vessels, and after a day and a half of frantic repair efforts, it was decided that the ship could not be saved, so it was allowed to sink, and Jones took command of Serapis for the trip to neutral (but American-sympathizing) Holland.
Recommended for reading in full —
Rick Barrett reports New tariffs threaten Wisconsin’s Trek Bicycle, soybean farmers as trade war with China heats up.
From bicycles to beans, Wisconsin and much of the nation are caught in the crossfires of President Donald Trump’s trade war.
Starting Monday, the Trump administration will begin taxing $200 billion more in Chinese goods. The tariffs will start at 10 percent and rise to 25 percent in 2019.
The product list is huge, and it includes goods from some of Wisconsin’s most well-known companies, such as Waterloo-based Trek Bicycle Corp.
If Trump delivers on the 25 percent tariff, Trek says it would pay an additional $30 million in tariffs each year on bikes imported from China.
(If Trek pays, then consumers will almost surely pay in higher costs.)
Anthony Cormier and Jason Leopold report The Planners Of The Trump Tower Meeting Moved Millions, And Mueller Is Now Investigating:
On June 3, 2016, Donald Trump Jr. received one of the most striking emails of the presidential campaign, offering dirt on Hillary Clinton as part of the Russian government’s “support for Mr. Trump.”
Trump Jr. responded 17 minutes later: “if it’s what you say I love it.”
That email led to a meeting at Trump Tower that has become a central focus of the investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.
But the very day that email was sent, another exchange was taking place behind the scenes.
Documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News show that $3.3 million began moving on June 3 between two of the men who orchestrated the meeting: Aras Agalarov, a billionaire real estate developer close to both Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump, and Irakly “Ike” Kaveladze, a longtime Agalarov employee once investigated for money laundering.
That money is on top of the more than $20 million that was flagged as suspicious, BuzzFeed News revealed earlier this month, after the money ricocheted among the planners and participants of the Trump Tower meeting. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, which has been investigating whether any individuals colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election, is examining the suspicious transactions, four federal law enforcement officials said. A spokesperson for Mueller’s office declined to comment.
Although the documents do not directly link the $3.3 million to the meeting, they show that officials at three separate banks raised red flags about the funds. Many of the transfers seemed to have no legitimate purpose, bankers noted. Kaveladze quickly moved money to other accounts he controlled, and appeared to use some of it to make payments on Agalarov’s behalf — including more than $700,000 to pay off American Express charges.
Joshua Brustein and Nate Lanxon report How Electric Scooters Are Reshaping Cities:
One of the biggest stories in technology this year is the exploding popularity of Bird, Lime, Skip, Spin and Scoot. They’re all electric scooter-rental services, and their vehicles are suddenly buzzing along city streets and sidewalks around the world. These startups allow riders to locate and unlock scooters with an app. When they reach their destination, they just walk away. Some drivers and pedestrians see the scooters as dangerous contrivances that must be stopped, while some urban planners consider them, along with bikes, the future of city transport.
1. What accounts for the rise of scooters?
Cars often aren’t the quickest way to travel in dense, urban areas. Many cities looked to bicycle-sharing services and bike lanes as a better option for shorter trips and as a way to reduce carbon emissions. Electric scooters, which can cost less than $2 per ride, are an offshoot of that. Investors looking for the next Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc., the app-based car-hailing services, are adding to scooter-mania by pouring money into companies like Bird and Lime, touching off a city-by-city race to become the premier scooter brand. Not to be left behind, even Uber and Lyft are launching competing scooter businesses.
2. How prevalent are scooters?
Bird, started by a former executive of Lyft and Uber, operates scooter services in about 40 U.S. cities, while Lime is in 23. Bird kicked off the trend in late 2017 with its launch in Santa Monica, California, and suddenly it seemed scooters were everywhere. Scores of unattended vehicles on city sidewalks have resulted in pushback from people complaining of urban chaos, and some cities have started to cap the number of scooters they’ll allow. But in most U.S. cities with sharing services, the number of scooters barely exceeds 1,000. By comparison, 45,000 Uber and Lyft drivers worked in San Francisco in 2017, according to the city’s attorney.
(It’s more accurate to say scooters could reshape cities than to say they are doing so, but there’s a definite potential to them.)
Alex Finley, John Sipher, and Asha Rangappa write Putin Had a Win-Win Strategy for Life Post-2016; Trump, Not So Much:
Given Putin’s overall objective of sowing discord in the U.S. by driving an even deeper wedge in our already existent social and cultural divisions, the outcome of the election would have mattered little to him. A Clinton presidency could have still provided an environment that was ripe for exploitation. In fact, it might have been even easier to exploit, and Trump would have been a perfect post-election tool. Putin never wanted to use Trump because he respects or loves the man. Putin wanted to use Trump because Trump causes chaos.
It wouldn’t have taken a lot of foresight to have noticed a few years ago that Trump would make a great disruptor. While Trump has always been an outspoken provocateur, his potential for disruption became abundantly clear during the Obama administration. Even before Trump traveled to Russia to put on the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, he began questioning the legitimacy of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate. It’s worth noting that Trump’s “birther” conspiracy echoed the Russian playbook in other elections – for example, the fake social media conspiracies that questioned the “authenticity” of Ukrainian presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko (who happens to be the longtime political rival of Paul Manafort’s previous top Ukrainian client: Victor Yanukovych) in 2014. The similarity in tactics might be coincidence, but Trump’s embrace of “birtherism” – and the traction it gained in mainstream American politics – demonstrated to Putin that Trump was willing to promote fringe conspiracies and polarize political discussion.
For Russia’s part, having Trump as a “useful idiot on the sidelines” might have been a better role for them in many ways than his actually being president. No one would have questioned his repeating Russian propaganda word for word – while it might have been provocative, he would have had no oath or public trust he was expected to uphold. Russia also wouldn’t need to worry that the foreign policy establishment might get to him or even change his mind on questions of U.S. policy toward Russia. And there would be no Mueller investigation (although presumably the FBI would still be investigating), which is as much a thorn in Putin’s side as it is in Trump’s, since it has galvanized Congress to pass more sanctions against his oligarch friends.
Meet The Last of the Stilt Fishers in Sri Lanka:
Anura Wijewikrama fishes two hours each morning and two hours each evening. And like his grandfather and father before him, he does so on handmade stilts driven into the sand. He is one of the few still carrying on the practice, which is exclusively found in the stunning waters off Sri Lanka. What started started as a World War II-era reaction to food and boat shortages is now done to keep tradition alive, with stilt fishermen like Anura taking on other jobs to make ends meet.