Chris Hedges's Blog, page 504

Trump Piles On as Turkish Currency Tumbles

ANKARA, Turkey—A financial shockwave ripped through Turkey on Friday, when its currency nosedived on concerns about its economic policies and a dispute with the U.S., which President Donald Trump stoked further with a promise to double tariffs on the NATO ally.

The lira tumbled 14 percent in one day, to 6.51 per dollar, a massive move for a currency that will make the Turkish poorer and further erode international investors’ confidence in the country.

The currency’s drop — 41 percent so far this year — is a gauge of fear over a country coming to terms with years of high debt, international concern over President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s push to amass power, and a souring in relations with allies like the U.S.

The diplomatic dispute with the U.S. was one of the triggers that turned market jitters into a full-blown route this week.

Turkey has arrested an American pastor and put him on trial for espionage and terror-related charges linked to a failed coup attempt in the country two years ago. The U.S. responded by slapping sanctions on Turkey and threatening more.

The sides held talks in Washington this week but failed to resolve the spat, and Trump took advantage of Turkey’s turmoil on Friday to turn the screws on the country.

Trump tweeted that he had authorized the doubling of steel and aluminum tariffs “with respect to Turkey.”

Trump said the tariffs on aluminum imports would be increased to 20 percent and those on steel to 50 percent as the Turkish Lira “slides rapidly downward against our very strong Dollar!”

“Our relations with Turkey are not good at this time!” he wrote.

The United States is the biggest destination for Turkish steel exports with 11 percent of the Turkish export volume. The lira fell further after Trump’s tweet.

In what appears to be a diplomatic riposte, Turkey later said Erdogan had held a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss economic ties. It did not disclose details, but suggests Turkey might gravitate further away from its NATO allies toward cooperation with Russia, whose relations with the West are at their lowest since the Cold War.

Turkey’s woes have been aggravated by investor worries about the economic policies of Erdogan, who won a new term in office in June with sweeping new powers.

Erdogan has been putting pressure on the central bank to not raise interest rates in order to keep fueling economic growth. He claims higher rates lead to higher inflation — the opposite of what standard economic theory says.

Independent analysts argue the central bank should instead raise rates to tame inflation and support the currency.

In modern economies, central banks are meant to be independent of governments to make sure they set policies that are best for the economy, not politicians. But since adopting increased powers, Erdogan appears to have greater control over the bank as well.

Erdogan on Friday appealed for calm and called on people to change foreign money into local lira.

“Change the euros, the dollars and the gold that you are keeping beneath your pillows into lira at our banks. This is a domestic and national struggle.”

He appeared to blame foreigners for trying to hurt Turkey, saying: “This will be my people’s response against those waging an economic war against us.”

On Thursday, Erdogan said “If they have their dollar, we have the people, we have Allah.”

The defiant tone and war rhetoric only hurt the lira more, before Erdogan’s finance chief and son-in-law, Berat Albayrak, tried to ease investor concerns during a conference, saying the government would safeguard the independence of the central bank.

“One of our principles will be ensuring the full independence of monetary policy,” Abayrak said as he outlined his ministry’s “new economic model.”

The currency drop is particularly painful for Turkey because the country finances a lot of its economic growth with foreign money. As the currency drops, Turkish companies and households with debt in foreign currencies see the cost of repaying those loans expand.

Coupled with an inflation rate of nearly 16 percent, that could cause severe damage to the local economy.

Foreign investors could be spooked and try to pull their money out, reinforcing the currency drop and potentially leading to financial instability.

Aylin Ertan, a 43-year-old caterer in Ankara, said she was concerned over the future of her small business.

“The price of the food that I buy increases day by day, the fuel that I put in my car to distribute lunches is more expensive, but I cannot raise my prices from one day to the next,” she said. “On some days, I end the day with a loss.”

Turkey’s woes also shook world markets, pushing down stock indexes. The euro sagged to a 13-month low against the dollar on concerns that European banks operating in Turkey could suffer losses.

But analysts say that while there may be losses at some banks, Turkey’s economic problems do not pose a big threat to Europe or other big economies like the United States.

Court Orders Trump EPA to Ban Pesticide That Harms Children’s Brains

In a “major victory for public health,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit on Thursday ruled the Trump administration illegally blocked a ban on chlorpyrifos—a pesticide linked to brain development delays in children and nervous systems issuesfor all people and animals exposed to it—and ordered that it be outlawed within 60 days.

“Children, farmworkers, rural families, and science are all huge winners today,” responded Kristin Schafer, executive director of Pesticide Action Network (PAN) North America. “The court affirmed that EPA’s job is to protect public health, not industry profits.”

While the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) outlawed household use of the chemical in 2000, citing concerns about children’s health, it has resisted a ban to stop farmers from spraying chlorpyrifos on crops—which PAN and other pesticide critics have demanded for more than a decade.

“Some things are too sacred to play politics with—and our kids top the list,” asserted Erik Olson of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The court has made it clear that children’s health must come before powerful polluters.”

“Our agricultural fields should be a source of life, not sickness,” declared Labor Council for Latin American Advancement executive director Hector Sanchez Barba. “Allowing the use of this toxic chemical is not only irresponsible, it is a crime.”

“The people who feed us deserve a safe and healthy workplace,” added Erik Nicholson, national vice president of United Farm Workers of America. “The EPA has put the women and men who harvest the food we eat every day in harm’s way too long.”

Ruling 2-1 in favor of the advocacy groups and state attorneys general who filed suit against the EPA, the panel reprimanded the agency for neglecting its responsibility to the public by stalling the agricultural ban.

Judge Jed Rakoff wrote in the opinion (pdf), “The time has come to put a stop to this patent evasion.” He also slammed the EPA for its “utter failure” to respond to objections after President Donald Trump’s disgraced former agency chief Scott Pruitt thwarted a decade-long effort to outlaw chlorpyrifos, ignoring research from EPA scientists.

In 2016, the EPA was about to ban chlorpyrifos on food crops, but after Trump took office, they illegally delayed the ban. So @NRDC, @Earthjustice, and our partners sued and today we won! https://t.co/egG65WE3BV

— NRDC

The Rise and Fall of Female Moviemakers in Hollywood

A recent report from the Media, Diversity & Social Change Initiative at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism finds that women remain grossly underrepresented behind the camera in film and television. That hasn’t always been the case. As award-winning critic and historian Carrie Rickey reveals, the earliest decades of the film industry featured highly talented and provocative film directors like Lois Weber, who made a series of movies about abortion, infidelity and sexual harassment on the job as early as 1915.

Then followed decades of systemic exclusion of female writers and directors.

With the rise of the modern women’s movement came a wealth of new opportunities, but they soon dried up in an industry that remained heavily dominated by men. “The year I started as a movie critic was 1980,” Rickey tells Truthdig’s Robert Scheer, “when female TV and movie directors were 0.5 percent. And by 2000, it was 11 percent, so I thought, ‘OK, we’re going in the right direction.’ But you know what? Eighteen years after 2000, it’s still 11 percent. We’re stalled.”

In the latest episode of “Scheer Intelligence,” Rickey debunks some of the most common rationalizations for the lack of female representation in Hollywood, and argues that the only way to make the industry more inclusive is to stop talking and just do it. “Having majority men behind the camera is inimical to equal employment, equal pay, and equal representation,” she contends. “When you see a world that is as it is now, 89 percent seen through the eyes of male directors, there’s a lot you’re not seeing.”

Rickey’s five-part series for Truthdig, titled “What Happened to the Female Directors of Hollywood?,” earned an award from the Los Angeles Press Club, whose judges said it “[stood] out for its examination of the gender gap in the film industry—how it started, and how it has been allowed to continue for so long. The research is exhaustive and the writing engaging.”

Listen to her full interview with Robert Scheer below:

Sinclair Effort to Expand Its Right-Wing TV Empire Collapses

NEW YORK—The $3.9-billion buyout of Tribune Media by Sinclair collapsed Thursday, ending a bid to create a massive media juggernaut that could have rivaled the reach of Fox News.

Tribune Media Co. said Thursday that it is suing Sinclair for breach of contract and at least $1 billion in damages, according to its complaint.

Sinclair used “unnecessarily aggressive and protracted negotiations” with the Department of Justice and Federal Communications Commission over regulatory requirements, the Chicago company said, and it refused to sell the stations it needed to in order to gain regulatory approval.

Sinclair Broadcast Group wanted the Chicago company’s 42 TV stations and had initially agreed to dump almost two dozen of its own to score approval by the FCC.

The media company, which has enjoyed the support of President Donald Trump, appeared to be cruising toward approval by U.S. regulators.

Last month, however, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said that he had “serious concerns” about the deal, saying that Sinclair might still be able to operate the stations “in practice, even if not in name.”

That drew a rebuke from Trump.

“So sad and unfair that the FCC wouldn’t approve the Sinclair Broadcast merger with Tribune,” Trump tweeted. He said that allowing Sinclair to expand its reach would have led to a “much needed conservative voice by and for the people.”

Sinclair operates 192 stations, runs 611 channels and operates in 89 U.S. markets. It would have been able to expand rapidly into numerous new markets with the Tribune acquisition.

Sinclair has become a significant outlet for conservative views.

It was admonished by media watchdogs in April after Deadspin, a sports news site, pieced together clips of dozens of TV anchors for Sinclair reading from the same script, which warned viewers about “biased and false news” from other media outlets.

Sinclair has defended the decision to have its anchors read from the same script across the country as a way to distinguish its news shows from unreliable stories on social media.

The Maryland company said Thursday in a prepared statement that the Tribune lawsuit is “entirely without merit.”

“We unequivocally stand by our position that we did not mislead the FCC with respect to the transaction or act in any way other than with complete candor and transparency,” said CEO Chris Ripley.

Free media advocacy groups cheered the demise of the deal.

Public Knowledge, an advocacy group that has been critical of the FCC under Pai, has been against a tie up between Sinclair and Tribune from the start.

“While what has apparently killed this deal was Sinclair’s pattern of deception at the FCC — a fact that should affect its future dealings at the Commission — the deal was bad on its own merits, and this latest development is good for consumers,” said Phillip Berenbroick, senior policy counsel at the organization. “Broadcasters are supposed to serve their local communities. This deal would have contributed to the trend where ‘local’ news and ‘local’ programming is created or scripted out of town.”

You Are Here

“ Never Lost Again: The Google Mapping Revolution That Sparked New Industries and Augmented Our Reality”

A book By Bill Kilday

Bill Kilday opens his tech memoir about the digital mapping revolution with a rumination about angrily getting lost on Boston’s convoluted highways. Now practically unheard of, and inconceivable to the smartphone generation, this was once a daily source of misery for travelers: “Somehow I got turned around on my way home,” Kilday writes in “Never Lost Again.” “In frustration, I pounded my fist against my car’s dashboard, yelling at nobody but myself, while driving five miles in the wrong direction down Route 2, looking for the next roundabout. Or maybe it was 3A?”

Click here to read long excerpts from “Never Lost Again” at Google Books.

How routine it now is that we can simply swipe open a detailed and updated map of almost any place on Earth, with a bright, blue dot announcing YOU ARE HERE. As with almost every technology that first seemed a miracle before becoming commonplace, GPS navigation followed a tortured and convoluted path to ubiquity. Kilday is well-positioned to recount the story. A very early employee of a company called Keyhole (which, after many twists and turns, is now known as Google Maps), he was present at the creation. Kilday’s memoir shines in its description of the volatile oddities of start-up life: the birth of the initial idea that first sounded crazy, the constant cash-flow problems and efforts to keep bankruptcy at bay, and the perplexing search for a sustainable business model.

While Keyhole’s engineers pioneered the unsexy but critical back-end infrastructure necessary to manage terabytes of detailed satellite images—tiling all that data into a seamless mosaic was at the core of the innovation—Kilday waded into the chaos of industry conferences to sell the wizardry. The company’s first big clients unexpectedly were commercial real estate brokers who wanted a simple way to investigate properties. Mapping shopping centers in Nowheresville wasn’t part of the original dream, but the journey had other moments of transcendent grace that kept the mission alive. Keyhole’s technology was so novel—and magical—that every demo of the product immediately created a scrum of awed onlookers wanting to scroll, like gods, across the Earth’s surface. What every new user did, Kilday tells us, was find their own house and see their own domestic life on Keyhole. The map both flattered human vanity by putting you at the middle of creation (that blue dot) and located your mundane existence within a greater whole. But despite the demo magic, not many people were actually buying it.

Then one day, whoosh! As with so many start-up stories, the flukiest stroke of luck decided the company’s fate. After 9/11, Keyhole made a deal to provide CNN with mapping software for its coverage of the wars in far-off deserts and cities. Keyhole’s wily CEO, John Hanke, insisted that CNN include a link to Keyhole’s website on any CNN graphic, and as soon as the network went live with coverage, the company was deluged with so much interest that the map servers started crashing (always a good sign for a start-up).

That soon snowballed into growing revenue and interest from a still-private search company called Google. Despite some initial skepticism—what was a search company buying a mapping company for?—Keyhole warmed and finally agreed to be acquired, a successful outcome for a very fraught venture.

Much like an entrepreneur’s life, the book settles into a lower (and slower) gear after the successful acquisition and the ingestion of Keyhole into Google. Gone were the days of (almost) bouncing payroll checks and cheap Costco snacks in the kitchen. Instead, here was a tech utopia populated by armies of smart, motivated engineers and executives where cost or revenue was rarely discussed, all in a theme-park paradise of free massages and gourmet food.

But with all that came a new and foreign specter: politics. Google was just then going public in a much-watched IPO, and the company had curdled into competing fiefdoms and egos. The Keyhole team, still blinking in astonishment at its wild ride and thunderously successful conclusion, was plopped into a budding corporate battlefield. Kilday spends many pages describing his tiptoeing in and around the internal empire of Marissa Mayer, notable early Googler and later Yahoo CEO with a reputation for prickliness. He watches as his much-respected former chief executive and boss elbows his way into a position of influence so the Keyhole dream will survive the jungle of competing priorities.

Fortunately for Keyhole, its technology had the support of the only two fully indispensable and unquestionable Googlers: founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. In a memorable early meeting, Kilday, mystified by the lack of discussion about concrete revenue or usage targets, blurts out the question: “Larry, Sergey, ten million dollars or ten million users, what would you prefer?”

Such pedestrian concerns seem to puzzle the Google golden boys. Eventually, they very pointedly reply, “I think you guys should be thinking much bigger than that,” and punctuate the thought (and the meeting) with a withering look at Keyhole’s now-former CEO Hanke. Those figures seemed impossible at the time to a company whose numbers were nowhere near that.

This is the strutting hubris and hyperbolic sense of scale untethered from reality that sets up tech titans, whether from Google or elsewhere, for mockery from mere mortals. But here the Google founders were correctly envisioning our present (better than even the technology’s creators did) and pushing them to make it a reality.

Coming down a few notches from Page and Brin, Kilday also gives us an almost day-by-day chronicle of the lives of midlevel Google executives. Tech insiders will be amused by the early vignettes of people who are now part of Silicon Valley’s power elite. The more casual reader might be bored at the parade of unknown names.

Kilday’s writing style is that of the product marketing man with an MBA, not the frenetic, reckless start-up renegade we’ve come to associate with Silicon Valley. The prose reads like the launch documents Kilday surely once authored: clear, well-paced, with the occasional (but tempered) narrative flair. This is not the Hunter S. Thompson treatment of start-ups. The personal barely creeps into Kilday’s account and is limited to passing mentions of children and bits of group bonding at college football games. This is tech done by adults: grown men and women with spouses and mortgages and careers they are forging. It’s a necessary reminder that the most important technologies are not cooked up solely by the T-shirt-wearing, late-night-coding, social-media-oversharing, 20-something adult-olescents who populate shows like HBO’s “Silicon Valley.”

That pulsing blue dot, which now lives everywhere, is the real sort of world-changing disruption that the unostentatious persistence of Kilday and his associates produced. Thanks to them, every soldier, sailor or just workaday commuter can unfailingly reach their destination. “Never Lost Again”—the title itself describes our new world. The book, like an orderly set of Google Maps instructions, describes how we got there.

Garcia-Martinez is a former Facebook product manager and Twitter adviser, and is the author of “Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley.”

©2018 Washington Post Book World

NFL Players Protest During Anthem, Drawing Rebuke From Trump

NFL players demonstrated during the national anthem at several preseason games Thursday night, protests that again drew a rebuke from President Donald Trump.

Writing on Twitter from his New Jersey golf resort, Trump said Friday that players “make a fortune doing what they love,” and those who refuse to stand “proudly” for the anthem should be suspended without pay.

He contended “most of them are unable to define” what they’re demonstrating against. Instead, he said, players should “Be happy, be cool!”

In Philadelphia, Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins and cornerback De’Vante Bausby raised their fists during the anthem, and defensive end Chris Long placed his arm around Jenkins’ shoulder. Jenkins had stopped his demonstration last December.

Defensive end Michael Bennett walked out of the tunnel during the anthem and walked toward the bench while it played. It appeared all the Steelers stood.

“Everybody is waiting for what the league is going to do,” Jenkins said. “We won’t let it stop what we stand for. I was very encouraged last year with the direction and that obviously took a different turn.

“I think it’s important to utilize the platform as we can because for whatever reason, we have framed this demonstration in a negative light, and often players have to defend why we feel the need to fight for everyday Americans, and in actuality we’re doing the right thing.”

At Miami, Dolphins receivers Kenny Stills and Albert Wilson and defensive end Robert Quinn protested during the anthem. Stills and Wilson kneeled behind teammates lined up standing along the sideline. Quinn stood and raised his right fist. There were no apparent protests by the Buccaneers.

“As a black man in this world, I’ve got an obligation to raise awareness,” Quinn said. “If no one wants to live in unity, that’s why we’re in the situation we’re in.”

Stills kneeled during the anthem during the 2016-17 seasons and has been vocal discussing social injustice issues that inspired the protest movement by NFL players.

Former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, a leader of the movement, tweeted support for Stills and Wilson.

“My brother @kstills continued his protest of systemic oppression tonight by taking a knee,” the tweet said. “Albert Wilson joined him in protest. Stay strong brothers!”

And in Seattle, three Seahawks players ran into the team’s locker room prior to the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Defensive linemen Branden Jackson and Quinton Jefferson, and offensive lineman Duane Brown left the field following team introductions and before the start of the anthem. They returned to the sideline immediately after it concluded. All three were among a group of Seattle players that sat during the anthem last season.

Brown and Jefferson said they intend to continue the action all season. Seattle coach Pete Carroll said the team discussed the topic and decided to support individual decisions. Brown said he didn’t believe there had been much progress made from the demonstrations of last season.

“Everyone was clear on my decision and understands and supports it,” Brown said. “We all have different realities in this country and they understand my perspective. We’re all on good terms.”

In Jacksonville, four Jaguars remained in the locker room during the national anthem, and team officials said it would be up to the players to explain why they weren’t on the field. Cornerback Jalen Ramsey, linebacker Telvin Smith, and running backs Leonard Fournette and T.J. Yeldon joined teammates on the sideline after the anthem.

“As a man, I got certain beliefs,” said Smith, who wore “Salute the Service” cleats. “You know what I mean? This is not going to become a distraction, and Jacksonville’s not going to become a distraction for this team. I got beliefs. I did what I did. I don’t know if it’s going to be every week, can’t answer if it’s going to be every week.

“But as a man I’ve got to stand for something. I love my team, I’m dedicated to my teammates, and that’s what we’re talking about. I did what I did. It was love. I hope people see it and respect it. I respect views.”

At Baltimore, both teams stood, but while most of the Ravens lined up shoulder to shoulder on the sideline, second-year linebacker Tim Williams stood alone in front of the bench with his back toward the field.

All players on each team at New England appeared to stand for the anthem, some bowing their heads and others placing their hands on their hearts. The Patriots observed a moment of silence beforehand for Weymouth, Massachusetts, police officer Michael Chesna, who was killed last month in the line of duty.

The league and the players’ union have yet to announce a policy for this season regarding demonstrations during the anthem after the league initially ordered everyone to stand on the sideline when the anthem is played, or remain in the locker room.

“The NFL has been engaged in constructive discussions with the NFL Players Association regarding the anthem and issues of equality and social justice that are of concern to many Americans,” league spokesman Brian McCarthy said in an email.

“While those discussions continue, the NFL has agreed to delay implementing or enforcing any club work rules that could result in players being disciplined for their conduct during the performance of the anthem.

“Meanwhile, there has been no change in the NFL’s policy regarding the national anthem. The anthem will continue to be played before every game, and all player and non-player personnel on the field at that time are expected to stand during the presentation of the flag and performance of the anthem. Personnel who do not wish to do so can choose to remain in the locker room.

“We remain committed to working with the players to identify solutions and to continue making progress on important social issues affecting our communities.”

Kobach Recuses Himself From Kansas Vote Count Amid Public Pressure

TOPEKA, Kan.—Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach said Thursday that he will remove himself from the further counting of votes while his Republican primary battle with Gov. Jeff Colyer hangs in the balance, describing it as a “symbolic” step in response to a public demand from Colyer.

The governor publicly accused Kobach, the state’s top elections official, of giving county election officials information about the handling of yet-uncounted ballots “inconsistent with Kansas law.” He demanded in a letter to Kobach that Kobach stop advising county officials and have the state’s attorney general do it instead.

The close contest between the embattled governor and a conservative lightning rod took another acrimonious turn as Kobach’s already tiny lead shrunk from 191 votes to just 121 out of 311,000 ballots cast, after two counties reported discrepancies between their tallies and what Kobach’s office reported on its website.

Kobach needled Colyer in a Fox Business network appearance Thursday evening, saying it would be “pointless” to remove himself from the process because the state’s 105 counties handle the counting of ballots but he might do so just to make Colyer “feel good.”

But a little more than an hour later, questioned on CNN, Kobach said: “I said, ‘Of course, if he wants me to, I would,’ and he has said, ‘OK, I do want you to,’ so I will.”

The counting is not complete because state law says mail-in ballots that are postmarked Tuesday can be accepted by the counties as late as Friday. And county officials still must review perhaps several thousand provisional ballots, given to voters at the polls when their eligibility is in question. They have until Aug. 20 to finish.

Colyer released his letter to Kobach after his campaign announced that it had set up a “voting integrity” hotline and urged people to report their complaints about the election. Colyer spokesman Kendall Marr said it received “countless” reports, adding that he personally knows of several dozen.

“It has come to my attention that your office is giving advice to county election officials — as recently as a conference call yesterday — and you are making public statements on national television which are inconsistent with Kansas law and may serve to suppress the vote in the ongoing primary election process,” Colyer said in his letter to Kobach.

In the letter, Colyer questioned whether Kobach was advising counties not to count some mail-in ballots, including those with missing or unreadable postmarks, even if they arrived by Friday. He also said he heard reports that some unaffiliated voters — who by law can declare an affiliation at the polls and vote in a primary — were given provisional ballots instead of the regular ballots they were due.

And Colyer wrote that circumstances “obviously increase the likelihood that one of the candidates may seek a recount, or even the possibility of litigation.”

Kobach, a vocal advocate of tough immigration and voter identification policies, advised Trump’s campaign in 2016 and the White House afterward and served as vice chairman of Trump’s now disbanded commission on election fraud. Trump tweeted his endorsement of Kobach on Monday, less than 24 hours before polls opened.

But Kobach’s no-apology, hard-right conservatism has alienated even some fellow Republicans, and Colyer has sought to project a more mild-mannered, steadier style.

As secretary of state, Kobach sets rules, gives county officials guidance and appoints election commissioners in the state’s four most populous counties. Kobach spokeswoman Danedri Herbert said he would respond to Colyer’s letter Friday.

Kobach told reporters Wednesday that he knew of no significant reports of irregularities in Tuesday’s primaries, outside of long delays in reporting results from the state’s most populous county. There, Johnson County in the Kansas City area, results were delayed by problems with uploading data from new voting machines.

But the totals for the GOP primary for the governor’s race in at least two counties posted on the secretary of state’s website did not match the totals from the counties themselves.

First, in Thomas County in the state’s northwest corner, the final, unofficial results posted on the secretary of state’s website show Kobach winning there with 466 votes to Colyer’s 422. But the tally posted by the Thomas County clerk’s office shows Colyer with 522 votes, or 100 votes more, a number the clerk confirmed to The Associated Press on Thursday.

Bryan Caskey, state elections director, said county officials pointed out the discrepancy Thursday following a routine request for a postelection check of the numbers to counties by the secretary of state’s office.

“This is a routine part of the process,” Caskey said. “This is why we emphasize that election-night results are unofficial.”

Thomas County Clerk Shelly Harms said it’s possible that her handwriting on the tally sheet faxed to the secretary of state’s office was bad enough in the rush of primary-night business that the number for Colyer wasn’t clear. But a copy she provided to the AP showed that the number for Colyer is unambiguously “522.”

“They just misread it,” she told the AP.

On CNN, Kobach suggested the mistake was among the kind of “keystroke errors” that happen routinely and are caught later.

And in Haskell County, elections officials said they had not initially reported returns from one precinct. Once those votes were added, the net result was a gain of 30 votes.

Parkland Victim’s Father Channels His Grief Into Art and Activism

On Aug. 4, Joaquin Oliver would have turned 18, officially becoming an adult old enough to vote. Hundreds of people sang him “Happy Birthday” as they gathered outside the headquarters of the National Rifle Association (NRA) in Fairfax, Va. Joaquin was among the 17 people killed in Parkland, Fla., on Valentine’s Day at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. As activists took their fight to the NRA last weekend, they remembered the popular 17-year-old, his fellow students and school staff members who had been lost to yet another senseless mass shooting.

The Parkland massacre felt like a turning point in the long and bloody battle to curb gun violence in the U.S., especially after young survivors of the shooting made it their mission to #NeverAgain allow a tragic incident like it to occur. Leading into the midterm elections, many of these activists are now working to make a political allegiance to the NRA a liability and gun control more broadly an election issue.

Among those who protested outside the NRA headquarters on Saturday was Joaquin’s father, Manuel Oliver, an artist and founder of the new organization Change the Ref. Oliver has been reminding politicians across the country of his son’s murder through powerful wall murals in cities including Los Angeles, Springfield, Mass., and Fairfax, Va. He calls them Walls of Demand. Most feature his son’s face and the word “Demand.”

In an interview he told me, “I didn’t just lose a son that day, I lost a partner. He was an awesome kid, a guy that you want to hang out with.” He added, “I miss him a lot.” The remarkable father marked his son’s birthday on Saturday with a mural of Joaquin’s face over 18 candles and the message, “We demand to blow out our candles.” “I happen to be an artist,” he said. “I decided to take the path of using art as an instrument to talk to people, and also it’s a way to give Joaquin a voice. Joaquin can use my art to send messages to people.”

In the months since the Parkland shooting, Congress has failed to pass a single meaningful federal bill controlling the easy availability of guns. There have been more school shootings, like the one in May at Santa Fe High School in Texas, where 10 students were killed in what is now a sickeningly familiar script of an introverted white boy picking people off one by one.

In Florida, where Oliver still lives, echoes of Trayvon Martin’s tragic murder were felt in the recent shooting of Markeis McGlockton. McGlockton was an African-American father of three who was killed in a parking lot by a white vigilante claiming self-defense under the state’s controversial “stand your ground” law. Chicago was the site of dozens of shootings over the past weekend, ironically occurring just days after a major anti-violence march. The death toll continues to ratchet up with no end in sight as politicians kowtow to the NRA and offer meaningless “thoughts and prayers” in the wake of each tragedy.

Oliver suggested one idea to reverse the relationship between the gun lobbyist and elected officials: Use the NRA’s infamous grading system for politicians against them. The NRA has for years used the system to strike fear into politicians’ hearts. Anything less than an “A” grade would mean the lobbyist might target you with negative ads. But what if gun control activists started to campaign for candidates with failing grades from the NRA? An “F” from the nation’s most vicious gun promotion organization could be viewed as a badge of honor for candidates seeking to woo voters on the increasingly popular issue of gun control. “It helps us vote for whoever has the worst grade,” said Oliver. “So they’re doing our homework for us.”

A new poll found that public support for gun control has increased and that Democratic politicians would do well to make support for gun control a prominent campaign platform. Indeed, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo appears to be doing just that. Rolling Stone recently reported on a lawsuit the NRA is filing against the state of New York for “irrecoverable loss and irreparable harm” to its finances stemming from state regulators who cracked down on the organization’s illegal gun-related insurance policies.

Earlier this year Cuomo tweeted, “The NRA is an extremist organization. I urge companies in New York State to revisit any ties they have to the NRA and consider their reputations, and responsibility to the public.” Incidentally, Cuomo is facing a primary challenge from the left by actor-turned-political-candidate Cynthia Nixon, who also supports strict gun control.

Joaquin’s parents are throwing their weight behind a gun control advocate named Philip Levine running in the Aug. 28 governor’s primary race in Florida. They went as far as being featured in political ads for his campaign. Another candidate in the same race, Andrew Gillum, backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, has pushed for the repeal of the state’s stand your ground law and for stricter gun laws.

If the federal government continues to fail Americans over gun proliferation, hope may lie at the state level where candidates with “F” grades from the NRA might be able to win office and take on the gun lobby. Already there have been a flurry of gun safety and control measures passed at the state level since the Parkland massacre. The Christian Science Monitor reported that “[t]his was a year of unparalleled success for the gun-control movement in the United States,” with “50 new laws restricting access to guns.” More than a dozen of the states where this has happened even have Republican governors.

It is not out of the realm of possibility that the NRA could go from one of the most influential groups in Washington to a fringe organization. When I asked Oliver if he thought the NRA could lose so much money that it would cease to exist, he responded, “I do know that they will disappear. For me, the NRA is not unlike a cartel. They are just like the tobacco industry that is also vanishing from our nation.”

Like the inspiring student survivors of the Parkland shooting, Oliver is determined to keep fighting until the end of his life. “I am a father until the last day of my life,” he said. “We won’t stop. ‘Never Again’ means we will never again stop.” He encourages others to join the fight, whether or not they have lost loved ones to gun violence. “I cannot protect my kid,” he said, “But many other parents can still protect their kids. You don’t have to pay the price that I paid.”

As for taking on the aggressive gun lobby group, Oliver asserted, “We’re not afraid of the NRA. We lost all fear on Feb. 14.”

France: 1,600 Evacuated as Flash Floods Threaten Camp Sites

PARIS — Hundreds of rescuers backed by helicopters evacuated about 1,600 people, most of them campers, in three regions of southern France where heavy rain caused flash flooding and transformed rivers and streams into torrents, the interior minister said Thursday.

Hardest hit was the Gard region, where 119 children, many of them from Germany, were evacuated from their campsite at Saint-Julien-de-Peyrolas, Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said in a statement.

About 750 people in all were evacuated in Gard, mainly from campsites, a top district official, Thierry Dousset, told France’s BFM-TV news channel.

Search teams that included divers combed swollen waters for a man reported missing. BFM-TV said he was a 70-year-old German citizen serving as a monitor at the Saint-Julien-de-Peyrolas site and feared to have been swept away by flood waters along with his van.

However, Dousset, the top aide of the Gard administration, said no one knew for certain yet that the man was in his van at the time.

Four German children were hospitalized for hypothermia in Bagnols-sur-Ceze, a town on the Ceze River, Dousset said. They were among 10 people hospitalized with minor injuries, the Gard Gendarmerie said on its Facebook page.

After a hot spell, the flash flooding in the northern part of the Gard region turned the Ceze and L’Ardeche rivers into churning waterways that quickly spilled out of their banks. Nearby regions — all part of the verdant and mountainous Cevennes — also saw flooding.

Collomb, the interior minister, said in a statement that 1,600 people were evacuated as a precaution in the Gard, the Ardeche and the Drome regions.

“No one has suitcases. We just have what we’re wearing,” Rita Mauersberger, a visitor from Germany who was among the campers taking shelter in a local hall in Saint-Julien-de-Peyrolas, told France Info radio.

More than 400 firefighters and gendarmes, many sent in from other regions, helped in the evacuations, using helicopters to spot camp sites and occasionally to perform rescues.

Numerous roads in the area remained cut off as night fell.

Authorities warned that the flooding would take time to recede and urged people to be vigilant.

German Drug Company Sues Nebraska Over Use of Drugs for Lethal Injection

The Washington Post reports that a German drugmaker, Fresenius Kabi, has sued the state of Nebraska in federal court over what the company believes is Nebraska’s plan to use two of its drugs in the lethal injection of convicted murderer Carey Dean Moore.

Moore was sentenced in 1979 for killing two Omaha cab drivers. Moore, the Post says, “is not contesting his sentence.” Still, as the Post reports, “the German company’s lawsuit could tie up his death sentence as the case moves through the legal system.”

While Nebraska has not revealed its sources for the drugs it plans to use for the execution, the Post reports that they are “a mix of the narcotic painkiller fentanyl citrate, the sedative diazepam, the muscle relaxer cisatracurium and potassium chloride, a drug that stops the heart.”

Fresenius Kabi believes it would be the source of the last two drugs. The Nebraska attorney general’s office said in a statement that “Nebraska’s lethal injection drugs were purchased lawfully and pursuant to the state of Nebraska’s duty to carry out lawful capital sentences.”

The death penalty is outlawed in the European Union, of which Germany is a member. Because of that ban, Fresenius Kabi’s lawsuit states that it could suffer “great reputational injury” if its drugs are used in Moore’s execution.

This isn’t the first time a pharmaceutical company has objected to its products being used for lethal injection. The Post reports that in July:

Multinational pharmaceutical company Alvogen accused the heads of Nevada’s prisons of working to illegally buy one of its drugs to use in an execution of [Scott Raymond] Dozier, who was convicted in 2007 of robbing, killing and dismembering a 22-year-old man in Las Vegas. He was also convicted in Arizona in 2005 of another murder and dismemberment near Phoenix.

In recent months, the Post continues, “Injectable drugs have become difficult to obtain because of several drug manufacturers’ refusal to sell their products to prisons for use in executions.”

An anonymous national death-penalty expert also told the media that these two cases could be a setup for a “showdown” between the makers of injectable drugs and states that uphold the death penalty.

Moore’s lethal injection was originally scheduled for next week.