Reuters
LANSING, Michigan, June 6 (Reuters) - State police in Michigan have obtained warrants to seize voting equipment and election-related records in at least three towns and one county in the past six weeks, police records show, widening the largest known investigation into unauthorized attempts by allies of former President Donald Trump to access voting systems.
The previously unreported records include search warrants and investigators' memos obtained by Reuters through public records requests. The documents reveal a flurry of efforts by state authorities to secure voting machines, poll books, data-storage devices and phone records as evidence in a probe launched in mid-February.
The state’s investigation follows breaches of local election systems in Michigan by Republican officials and pro-Trump activists trying to prove his baseless claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.
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BBC
Elon Musk has threatened to walk away from his $44bn takeover of Twitter, accusing the social media company of "thwarting" his requests to learn more about its user base.
In a letter filed with regulators, Mr Musk said he was entitled to do his own measurement of spam accounts.
The letter formalises a dispute that has simmered for weeks after Mr Musk declared the deal "on hold" pending further information.
Twitter has defended its estimates.
But Mr Musk has said he believes spam and fake accounts represent a far greater share than the less than 5% of daily users that Twitter reports publicly.
BBC
South Africans have condemned Irish airline Ryanair for making them take a test in the Afrikaans language on UK flights, calling it discriminatory.
The country has 11 official languages, and many say they cannot understand Afrikaans - a language which was imposed during white-minority rule.
The quiz contains questions on South African general knowledge.
Ryanair defended the test, saying it weeds out those travelling on fraudulent South African passports.
"Due to the high prevalence of fraudulent South African passports, we require passengers travelling to the UK to fill out a simple questionnaire issued in Afrikaans," it said in a statement.
"If they are unable to complete this questionnaire, they will be refused travel and issued with a full refund," the airline continued.
A South African man who was flying from Lanzarote to London in May said he was "shocked" when Ryanair took away his passport and boarding pass before presenting him with the Afrikaans test.
Deutsche Welle
The murder of rapper-turned-politician Sidhu Moose Wala has drawn global attention to the dark side of the Punjab music industry and the criminal networks operating within India and abroad.
Rapper-turned-politician Shubhdeep Singh Sidhu, popularly known as Sidhu Moose Wala, was shot and killed by unidentified people on May 29 in a crowded marketplace in the Mansa district in Punjab state, a day after his security was downsized by the state government.
The 28-year-old had a massive fan following both in India and abroad, especially in Canada and the UK, which have a sizeable Punjabi diaspora population.
According to Punjab police, Canada-based gangster Goldy Brar, and gang member Lawrence Bishnoi, currently in a Delhi prison, were behind the attack. Initial investigations suggest that Moose Wala's death was the result of an inter-gang dispute.
Deutsche Welle
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party has come under fire for incendiary comments about the Prophet Muhammad. Muslim countries have lodged protests amid calls for a boycott of Indian goods.
A row over remarks by India's ruling party officials grew on Monday as several Muslim-majority countries summoned Indian diplomats.
The comments by the now-suspended members of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) triggered wide criticism from Arab and Muslim-majority countries, which say the comments were offensive and "Islamophobic."
What triggered the row?
Last week, BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma commented on Prophet Muhammad's youngest wife during a televised debate, specifically about how old she was believed to be when they married.
Bangkok Post
WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden on Monday invoked the Defense Production Act to spur US solar panel manufacturing and exempted tariffs on solar panels from four Southeast Asian nations for two years as part of his push for clean energy, the White House said.
The tariff waiver applies to panels from Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia and Vietnam and will serve as a "bridge" while US manufacturing ramps up, it said in a statement, confirming a Reuters report.
Bangkok Post
Cannabis is scheduled to be removed from the Category 5 narcotics list on Thursday, allowing people to grow an unlimited number of plants at home.
The delisting of cannabis as a narcotic does not mean people can use it freely, especially for recreation. Homegrown cannabis is allowed only for health and medical purposes, and people have to register the cultivation first with provincial administrative organisations, or via the mobile application Pluk Kan, developed and operated by the Food and Drug Administration.
The Guardian, US
The founder of the People of Praise, a secretive charismatic Christian group that counts the supreme court justice Amy Coney Barrett as a member, was described in a sworn affidavit filed in the 1990s as exerting almost total control over one of the group’s female members, including making all decisions about her finances and dating relationships.
The court documents also described alleged instances of a sexualized atmosphere in the home of the founder, Kevin Ranaghan, and his wife, Dorothy Ranaghan.
The description of the Ranaghans and accusations involving their intimate behavior were contained in a 1993 proceeding in which a woman, Cynthia Carnick, said that she did not want her five minor children to have visitations with their father, John Roger Carnick, who was then a member of the People of Praise, in the Ranaghan household or in their presence, because she believed it was not in her children’s “best interest”. Cynthia Carnick also described inappropriate incidents involving the couple and the Ranaghan children. The matter was eventually settled between the parties.
The Guardian, US
For Americans who have lost family members to gun violence, the scene outside Robb elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, was all too familiar. The yellow caution tape. The distraught parents shouting at law enforcement officials and begging them for action or answers. And the officers’ response: reports and footage of relatives being restrained and allegations that some parents were even handcuffed or Tasered.
For Trice, the images from Texas brought back painful memories. She recalled getting no answer when she asked police officers at the scene of her son’s murder if they could cover up his body, so her son, Monte Russell, would not be left lying on the street. When her niece fell to the ground, overcome with grief, “they were just standing there looking at her”, Trice said.
The Guardian UK
Fears are growing over the safety of a British journalist and a Brazilian Indigenous expert who have disappeared in one of the remotest corners of the Amazon just days after receiving threats.
Dom Phillips, a longtime contributor to the Guardian in Brazil, was last seen over the weekend in the Javari region of Amazonas state – a vast region of rivers and rainforests near the border with Peru.
The reporter was traveling with Bruno Araújo Pereira, a former government official tasked with protecting Brazil’s uncontacted tribes, who has long received threats from the loggers and miners seeking to invade their lands.
Phillips, who is working on a book about the environment with support from the Alicia Patterson Foundation, is based in the Brazilian city of Salvador and has been reporting on Brazil for more than 15 years for newspapers including the Guardian, the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Financial Times.
The Guardian, UK
The level of carbon dioxide in the world’s atmosphere is now more than 50% higher than during the pre-industrial era, further pushing the planet into conditions not experienced for millions of years, well before the emergence of humans, US government data shows.
The latest measurements showing the relentless upward march of CO2follows scientists’ new warning that the world may still barrel into disastrous climate change even if planet-heating emissions are drastically cut, which governments are still failing to achieve.
“It’s depressing that we’ve lacked the collective will power to slow the relentless rise in CO2,” said Ralph Keeling, a geochemist who runs CO2measurements for the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in Hawaii. “Fossil-fuel use may no longer be accelerating, but we are still racing at top speed towards a global catastrophe.”
The Guardian, Australia
New minister Madeleine King has asked resource companies to find more gas to direct into Australian markets as she considers pulling the so-called gas “trigger”.
However, the resources minister has also claimed more coal supply was key to combating a brewing energy crisis.
It comes as treasurer Jim Chalmers called on the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to investigate factors behind spiking energy prices, flagging the new Labor government was mulling “a number of actions” to address electricity and gas concerns.
“Given the interdependence between gas and electricity, managing coal supply issues is crucial in relieving unusually high spot prices in the gas market,” King said.
The Guardian, Australia
The incoming federal environment minister has been urged to block the construction of a fertiliser plant on a world heritage-nominated site in Western Australia, and to act swiftly to stop the multinational company behind the plans from removing Indigenous rock art.
Perdaman is planning a $4.5bn plant on the Burrup Peninsula, in the Pilbara region. The plant, which is strongly supported by the state government and was backed by the former federal government, will require the removal of Aboriginal art produced over a period starting about 50,000 years ago.
In March, then-environment minister Sussan Ley ordered Perdaman to stop work at the site while
she considered an application made by two traditional owners, Raelene Cooper and Josie Alec, for emergency protection of the rock art.
The Guardian
Nearly half of Republican voters think the US just has to live with mass shootings, according to a poll released in the aftermath of the Texas elementary school murders last month and as politicians in Washington negotiate for gun reform.
Nineteen young children and two adults were killed at Robb elementary school on 24 May by an 18-year-old who bought his weapon legally.
But clear national support for a ban on such rifles or changes to purchasing ages and background checks is not mirrored in Congress. Most Republicans, supported financially by the powerful gun lobby, remain implacably opposed to most gun reform.
In an effort fueled by horror at events in Uvalde, senators led by Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut elected after the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting killed 26 in 2012, and John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, have expressed optimism that some changes may be possible.
The Guardian
Ukrainian partisans in occupied areas of the country are increasing attacks and sabotage efforts on Russian forces and their local collaborators, with organised underground efforts appearing to spread.
Six Russian border guarders were reportedly killed last week when their position came under fire near the Zernovo border checkpoint in Ukraine’s north. Two days later an explosion struck close to the office of Yevgeny Balitsky, a pro-Kremlin Ukrainian official in Melitopol.
The increase in partisan warfare, particularly in the country’s south around Kherson, follows warnings at the outset of Russia’s war against Ukraine that any area under occupation was likely to see the emergence of guerrilla warfare.
BBC
Four Scottish Tory MPs confirmed they voted against Boris Johnson in the confidence motion which the prime minister has won.
Scottish leader Douglas Ross was first to reveal his intentions.
Scottish Borders MP John Lamont also voted against the PM, as did former Scottish Secretary David Mundell and West Aberdeenshire MP Andrew Bowie.
Dumfries and Galloway MP, Scottish Secretary Alister Jack, supported Mr Johnson, along with David Duguid.
The confidence vote result was announced at 21:00 with Mr Johnson winning by 211 to 148.
On Monday, he said he had heard "loud and clear" the anger over the breaking of Covid rules in Downing Street.
John Lamont also announced that he has resigned as parliamentary private secretary to Foreign Secretary Liz Truss after voting against Boris Johnson.
NPR
PARIS — Marat Gabidullin's face is lined from years of exposure to the elements, and his hair is thinning. But at 56, he has the trim physique and muscular arms of a man 30 years younger. He wears a chunky ring bearing the image of a skull.
The skull is the symbol of the Wagner Group — a private Russian mercenary force believed to be financed by an oligarch with close ties to President Vladimir Putin. The group is fighting alongside the Russian army in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region. And it's widely believed that at least some of the "little green men" — well-trained fighters who wore fatigues without insignia or markings — who took over part of eastern Ukraine in 2014 were Wagner Group soldiers.
This week, Ukraine accused at least two Wagner Group members of war crimes.
But Wagner Group activities aren't limited to Ukraine. The organization has also been active across Africa in recent years — Libya, Sudan, Mozambique, Mali and the Central African Republic. Today there are thought to be some 10,000 Wagner Group members.
NPR
A wave of mass shootings has plagued the country in recent weeks, including in Buffalo, New York; Uvalde, Texas; Tulsa, Oklahoma; and Philadelphia.
There have been more than 240 mass shootings this year, a grim statistic that follows gun violence being at its highest point in more than 20 years in 2020, according to CDC data.
It's a pattern some doctors have noticed even without the numbers in front of them.
Wounds from handguns vs. assault weapons
Bullets from lower caliber weapons, such as handguns, typically pierce straight through a target, medical experts say. By comparison, higher caliber guns, such as the AR-15s used in many mass shootings, can liquefy organs because of their much higher projectile speeds.
"Assault weapons ... cause a condition called cavitation, meaning that as the projectile passes through tissue, it creates a large cavity," said Dr. Ian Brown, a trauma surgeon at UC Davis Health in Sacramento, California. "And that does a ton of of tissue damage, both initially at the impact, and then even further as that tissue begins to necrose, or die off."
Reuters
WASHINGTON/MEXICO CITY, June 6 (Reuters) - The White House on Monday excluded Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua from the U.S.-hosted Summit of the Americas this week, prompting Mexico's president to make good on a threat to skip the event because all countries in the Western Hemisphere were not invited.
The boycott by Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and some other leaders could diminish the relevance of the summit in Los Angeles, where the United States aims to address regional migration and economic issues. U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, hopes to repair Latin America relations damaged under his Republican predecessor, Donald Trump, reassert U.S. influence and counter China.
The crew of the Overnight News Digest consists of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, eeff, Magnifico, annetteboardman, Rise above the swamp, Besame and jck. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Interceptor 7, Man Oh Man, wader, Neon Vincent, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck (RIP), rfall, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) and jlms qkw.