Chris Hedges's Blog, page 518

Scientists Link Heat Waves in Northern Europe to Climate Change

BERLIN—Researchers say heat waves of the kind currently being seen in northern Europe have become twice as likely due to climate change.

Scientists from the World Weather Attribution team said Friday they have compared observations and forecasts for the Netherlands, Denmark and Ireland with historical records going back to the early 1900s. They concluded the likelihood of three-day stretches of extreme heat in those areas has increased at least two-fold.

The group, which works to determine if there’s a link between weather phenomena and climate change, said current temperatures further north are so unusual there’s not enough data to predict their future likelihood.

Erich Fischer, an expert on weather extremes at ETH Zurich in Switzerland who was not involved with the study, said the authors use well-established methodology and “their estimates may even be rather conservative.”

Trump Denies Knowing in Advance About Trump Tower Meeting

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump denied Friday that he knew in advance about a Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 between a Russian lawyer, his eldest son and other campaign aides that had been convened to hear dirt on his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

Trump tweeted, “NO,” he “did NOT know of the meeting with my son, Don jr.”

CNN reported Thursday that Trump’s former longtime lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, claims Trump knew in advance about the meeting. CNN cited anonymous sources saying Cohen was willing to share that information with special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia.

A person familiar with the investigation confirmed the CNN report to The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because the person wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.

Cohen wasn’t at the Trump Tower meeting and Cohen has not offered evidence to support the claim that Trump knew about the meeting. He does not have any recordings of the meeting, the person said.

Trump’s team met with the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, believing she had dirt on Clinton to share.

The Associated Press reported this week that Veselnitskaya worked more closely with senior Russian government officials than she previously let on, based on scores of emails, transcripts and legal documents that show her to be a well-connected attorney who served as a ghostwriter for top Russian government lawyers and received assistance from senior Interior Ministry personnel in a case involving a key client.

Trump, who in the past has denied knowing about the meeting before it happened, also shot back at Cohen, who was once so loyal to Trump that he said he’d take a bullet for his boss.

“Sounds to me like someone is trying to make up stories in order to get himself out of an unrelated jam,” Trump tweeted, adding: “(Taxi cabs maybe?). He even retained Bill and Crooked Hillary’s lawyer. Gee, I wonder if they helped him make the choice!”

Cohen, whose business dealings are being investigated by the FBI, has longtime dealings in the taxi industry and owns several medallions for New York City yellow cabs that allow them to pick up passengers on the street.

Cohen lawyer Guy Petrillo did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

Cohen is under federal investigation in New York. The Justice Department has been investigating Cohen for months, raiding his home, office and hotel room in search of documents related to a $130,000 payment the attorney facilitated before the 2016 election to Stormy Daniels, an adult-film actress who says she had sex with Trump in 2006.

In an interview with ABC News earlier this month, Cohen declined to answer if Trump knew about the Trump Tower meeting in advance, citing the advice of his lawyers and the ongoing investigation.

Trump also on Friday dismissed as “ridiculous” a report that Muller’s team is looking at Trump’s tweets as they investigate possible collusion and obstruction of justice.

Trump complained that he had returned from a trip Midwest Thursday “only to be greeted with the ridiculous news” that Mueller and his team “cannot find Collusion… so now they are looking at my Tweets (along with 53 million other people).”

“(T)he rigged Witch Hunt continues!” he complained, adding: “How stupid and unfair to our Country.”

Mueller is known to be scrutinizing Trump’s tweets about Attorney General Jeff Sessions and former F.B.I. director James Comey. A list of potential questions for Trump compiled by the president’s legal team following conversations with investigators and released earlier this year made clear that Mueller is interested in some of Trump’s tweets to the extent they raise obstruction of justice concerns.

Trump Demands Release of U.S. Clergyman, Threatens Turkey

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump declared on Thursday the United States will impose sanctions on Turkey, a crucial NATO ally, in retaliation for the detention of an American pastor on terror and espionage charges.

Turkey’s response was both harsh and dismissive, calling his words “unacceptable” and a “cheap threat.”

Trump’s promise of unspecified punishing action marks the latest deterioration in relations between Turkey and the U.S. as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s powers expand two years after a failed coup against his government.

Trump also has praised his counterpart, saying Erdogan’s leadership is “getting very high marks.”

The U.S has long depended on a key air base in Turkey’s south, most recently to launch airstrikes against the Islamic State group.

Pastor Andrew Craig Brunson was first detained by Turkish authorities in the aftermath of the failed 2016 coup. On Wednesday, he was let out of jail after 1 1/2 years, transferred to house arrest because of “health problems,” according to Turkey’s official Anadolu news agency.

Trump said that was insufficient.

“He is suffering greatly. This innocent man of faith should be released immediately!” Trump wrote on Twitter.

The announcement of sanctions — though no details of how or when — came as the State Department was holding a three-day event promoting religious freedom. Brunson’s case has become a cause for conservative Christians who form an important part of Trump’s political base.

Turkey responded that Brunson’s detention falls within the jurisdiction of its independent judiciary. “Rule of law is for everyone; no exception,” said Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, also via Twitter.

And an Erdogan spokesman warned the U.S. to “reconsider its approach and adopt a constructive position before inflicting further damage to its own interests and its alliance with Turkey.”

Vice President Mike Pence announced the threat of action at the religious freedom conference, then Trump tweeted that his government “will impose large sanctions on Turkey for their long time detainment of Pastor Andrew Brunson.”

Trump could impose certain sanctions unilaterally or try to act through Congress. Senators have previously taken steps toward blocking the sale of F-35 jets to Turkey, citing Brunson’s detention as an instance of Erdogan’s disregard for the rule of law.

White House spokesman Hogan Gidley declined Thursday to discuss the timing of a sanctions announcement or the decision-making process.

“The president was clear on Twitter today, as was the vice president, that they fully expect, the president expects and wants Pastor Brunson to be returned immediately to the United States and, if not, they can expect sanctions,” Gidley said.

Brunson, 50, an evangelical Christian pastor originally from North Carolina, could face up to 35 years in prison if convicted of espionage and “committing crimes on behalf of terror groups without being a member,” references to outlawed Kurdish militants and the network of a U.S-based Muslim cleric blamed for the failed coup attempt.

Brunson denies the charges.

“Brunson is an innocent man, there is no credible evidence against him,” Pence said in his remarks Thursday.

Trump said on Twitter last week that the pastor’s detention was “a total disgrace.” One of Brunson’s attorneys is Jay Sekulow, who also represents Trump in the federal Trump-Russia investigation.

Ties between NATO ally Turkey and the United States have been strained by other issues.

Turkey recently finalized a deal to purchase Russia’s long-range S-400 missile defense system, refusing to back down despite strong opposition from the U.S. and other NATO members.

The U.S. and Turkey have also clashed over American backing of Kurdish fighters in Syria who Ankara considers “terrorists.”

At the conference, Pence highlighted cases of what he said were religious repression in Nicaragua, Iran, North Korea, China and Myanmar. He also condemned Islamic State group violence toward religious minorities and what he described as rising anti-Semitism in Europe.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also spoke. He announced additional aid for a region of Iraq previously held by the Islamic State group. Pompeo said the U.S. would provide $17 million for de-mining efforts in Nineveh, an area of Iraq historically home to many of the country’s religious minorities.

Erdogan has previously linked Brunson’s return to the U.S. to the extradition of cleric Fethullah Gulen, the man Turkey’s government holds responsible for the failed 2016 coup.

Gulen, who denies orchestrating the coup attempt, lives in Pennsylvania. Turkish requests for his arrest and extradition have not been granted.

More than 77,000 people have been arrested across Turkey since the government declared a state of emergency in the failed coup’s aftermath. The crackdown has targeted journalists, activists and opposition figures.

Brunson has lived in Turkey for 23 years and served as pastor of Izmir Resurrection Church, a small Protestant congregation.

During a recent hearing, Brunson he rejected charges against him.

“I believe in and support Turkey’s territorial integrity,” he told the court. “I forgive those who lie and bear false witness against me.”

Brunson’s case has been adjourned until Oct. 12.

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Associated Press writer Cinar Kiper in Istanbul contributed to this report.

N. Korea Returns Some Remains of U.S. Service Members

PYEONGTAEK, South Korea — North Korea on Friday returned the remains of what are believed to be U.S. servicemen killed during the Korean War, the White House said, with a U.S military plane making a rare trip into North Korea to retrieve 55 cases of remains.

The handover follows through on a promise North Korean leader Kim Jong Un made to President Donald Trump when the leaders met in June and is the first tangible result from the much-hyped summit. Trump welcomed the repatriation and thanked Kim in a tweet.

The United Nations Command said 55 cases of remains were retrieved from North Korea. The White House earlier confirmed that a U.S. Air Force C-17 aircraft containing remains of fallen service members had departed Wonsan, a Northern coastal city, on its way to the Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, near the South Korean capital of Seoul. A formal repatriation ceremony will be held there Wednesday.

At the air base, U.S. servicemen and a military honor guard lined up on the tarmac to receive the remains, which were carried in boxes covered in blue U.N. flags.

About 7,700 U.S. soldiers are listed as missing from the 1950-53 Korean War, and 5,300 of the remains are believed to still be in North Korea. The war killed millions, including 36,000 American soldiers.

U.S. Forces Korea commander Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, in a statement from the U.N. Command, called the retrieval mission successful. “Now, we will prepare to honor our fallen before they continue on their journey home.”

Following the honors ceremony on Wednesday, the remains will be flown to Hawaii for scientific testing. A series of forensic examinations will be done to determine if the remains are human and if the dead were American or allied troops killed in the conflict.

Trump late Thursday tweeted the repatriation was occurring and said, “After so many years, this will be a great moment for so many families. Thank you to Kim Jong Un.”

Officials in North Korea had no comment on the handover on Friday, the 65th anniversary of the end of the Korean War, which the country celebrated as the day of “victory in the fatherland liberation war.”

Despite soaring rhetoric about denuclearization before Kim and Trump met in Singapore, their summit ended with only a vague aspirational goal for a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula without describing when and how that would occur.

The repatriation of remains could be followed by stronger North Korean demands for fast-tracked discussions to formally end the war, which was stopped with an armistice and not a peace treaty. South Korea’s Defense Ministry also said the North agreed to general-level military talks next week at a border village to discuss reducing tensions across the countries’ heavily armed border.

The U.S. military last month said that 100 wooden “temporary transit cases” built in Seoul were sent to the Joint Security Area at the Korean border as part of preparations to receive and transport remains in a dignified manner. U.S. Forces Korea spokesman Col. Chad Carroll also said, at the time, that 158 metal transfer cases were sent to a U.S. air base and would be used to send the remains home.

The remains are believed to be some of the more than 200 that North Korea has held in storage for some time, and were likely recovered from land during farming or construction. The vast majority of the war dead, however, have yet to be located and retrieved from cemeteries and battlefields across the countryside.

Efforts to recover American war dead had been stalled for more than a decade because of a standoff over North Korea’s nuclear program and a previous U.S. claim that security arrangements for its personnel working in the North were insufficient.

From 1996 to 2005, joint U.S.-North Korea military search teams conducted 33 recovery operations that collected 229 sets of American remains. The last time North Korea turned over remains was in 2007, when Bill Richardson, a former U.N. ambassador and New Mexico governor, secured the return of six sets.

The North marked Friday’s anniversary with ceremonies at war-related memorials; the capital Pyongyang and other cities were decked out in national flags and bright red banners. For the first time since 2015, Kim Jong Un has announced a general amnesty will be granted for prisoners who have committed crimes against the state.

North Korea has held out the return of remains as a symbol of its goodwill and intention to improve ties with Washington. Officials have bristled, however, at criticism from the U.S. that it seeks to profit from the repatriations by demanding excessive fees for handling and transporting the remains.

Pyongyang has nevertheless expressed its willingness to allow the resumption of joint search missions in the country to retrieve more remains. Such missions had been held from 1996 until they were cancelled by President George W. Bush amid heightening tensions over the North’s nuclear program in 2005.

Post Kim-Trump summit talks between U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and senior North Korean officials got off to a rocky start earlier this month, with the North accusing the Americans of making “unilateral and gangster-like” demands on denuclearization. The North also said U.S. officials came up with various “conditions and excuses” to backtrack on the issue of formally ending the war.

“The adoption of the declaration on the termination of war is the first and foremost process in the light of ending the extreme hostility and establishing new relations between the DPRK and the U.S.,” the North’s Korean Central News Agency said in a statement on Tuesday, referring to North Korea by its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. “Peace can come only after the declaration of the termination of war.”

Pompeo said Wednesday that a great deal of work remains ahead of a North Korea denuclearization deal, but he dodged requests to identify a specific denuclearization timeline in testimony to members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Experts say a declaration to officially end the war, which could also involve Seoul and Beijing, would make it easier for Pyongyang to steer the discussions with Washington toward a peace treaty, diplomatic recognition, security assurance and economic benefits. Some analysts believe that North Korea would eventually demand that the United States withdraw or dramatically reduce the 28,500 troops it keeps in South Korea as a deterrent.

Washington has maintained Pyongyang wouldn’t get sanctions relief and significant security and economic rewards unless it firmly commits to a process of completely and verifiably eliminating its nuclear weapons. There are lingering doubts on whether Kim would ever agree to fully relinquish his nukes, which he may see as a stronger guarantee of survival than whatever security assurance the United States could offer.

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Kim reported from Seoul and Baldor from Washington. AP journalists Eric Talmadge in Pyongyang, North Korea, Kim Yong-ho in Pyeongtaek and Foster Klug in Seoul contributed to this report.

Why the Georgia Governor’s Race May Become One of 2018’s Most Contentious

Editor’s note: This report is an updated excerpt from “Democracy Betrayed: How Superdelegates, Redistricting, Party Insiders, and the Electoral College Rigged the 2016 Election,” by Steven Rosenfeld, Hot Books.

If past is prologue—and in the world of elections it often is—the race for the next governor of Georgia may be one of the dirtiest of 2018.

That’s because the winner of this week’s runoff for Georgia’s Republican gubernatorial nominee, Secretary of State Brian Kemp, is among a handful of high-ranking state officials who have notorious records tilting the fine print of the voting process to create barriers aimed at the opposition’s presumed base. His Democratic opponent is Stacey Abrams, a black tax lawyer, author and voter registration activist who served in the state legislature for a decade, rising to be House Minority Leader—who has clashed with Kemp before.

Republicans in Georgia are not shy about aggressively preserving their power. This year, they came close to passing a bill that would have closed polling places in Atlanta an hour earlier and curtailed voting on the Sunday before Election Day.

They showcased similar bad behavior in 2016—just as they did in the 2014–2015 cycle, underscoring the state would be politically purple were it not for GOP efforts to preempt voters and stymie voting to keep its rule red.

This pattern can be seen locally and at the highest reaches of state government, where they have been led by Kemp. One eyebrow-raising local example came in 2015, when white Republicans in rural Hancock County, who are a majority on its county board of elections, sent sheriff deputies knocking on the front doors of more than 180 black voters in the town of Sparta. They weren’t concerned about real crime; they were questioning voter registrations. Their goal in dogging one-fifth of the town’s voters was to help a white mayoral candidate, a lawsuit that followed said. The county attorney, a Republican state legislator, defended the police action by alleging sloppy voter rolls. This was outright intimidation by whites to keep blacks from voting.

While Sparta was a local drama, a fight with statewide consequences involving registrations broke out that same year between Kemp and Abrams. Seen from afar, it looked like Kemp was modernizing the process by instituting online voter registration that year. But Abrams was leading an effort called the New Georgia Project that was running traditional voter drives, where canvassers went door-to-door and registrants filled out paper forms. In October 2014, it emerged that more than 41,000 of the 87,000 forms led by the Project were not going to be processed by Election Day.

This disclosure was not accompanied by the usual gripe from local officials about voter drives—that activists dump mountains of paper on their desks at the last minute. Instead, Kemp announced he was launching a major voter fraud investigation as one of his state’s biggest drives in years was cresting. That accusation and the bureaucratic stonewalling that ensued was completely disingenuous. His investigation, completed months after Election Day, found problems with 25 of the 87,000 voter forms submitted—0.03 percent. But there’s far more that Kemp did to block voters in the 2015–2016 cycle.

Voter registration may seem like a straightforward process; fill out some fields in a registration form, swear you are a citizen and eligible voter—under penalty of perjury—and do so before state filing deadlines. Those data fields are one’s name, address, birth date, and driver’s license or Social Security number. Kemp deliberately politicized a process that is similar to what is used in many states. When people do not register online, local election offices end up typing the information from paper forms into computers and the statewide voter file. Beyond illegible handwriting and typos that occur—and cause some people to not be registered—local officials also do electronic checks to verify the information. States validate a would-be voter’s identity by pinging their driver’s license database and the federal Social Security database using the last four digits of an applicant’s Social Security number. Some also ping prison records to screen for felons. Under Kemp, any unconfirmed match rejected the registrants.

Where this becomes insidious is every one of those databases has had known accuracy problems or shortcomings that disqualify eligible voters. In 2009, the Social Security Administration (SSA) Inspector General’s office assessed how reliable its voter verification was. Compared to “other [Social Security number-based verification] programs used by the states and employers… (the voter registration) no-match rate was two-to-five times higher,” rejecting an additional 16 percent of registrants, it found. Why? That bigger gap was because other SSA programs used the full nine-digit Social Security number, while the voter program only used the last four digits. Less precise matching yields more errors.

In 2005, Congress’s Government Accountability Office issued a report finding state driver’s license databases confuse names, including full names, names with or without middle initials, aliases, etc. “Even a 1 percent error rate on a match validating names, driver license numbers, etc., could generate tens of thousands of bad matches,” the nonpartisan congressional analysts reported.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution noted how this process unfolded in their state in late 2014. “If everything goes right, a match comes back and the voter’s name is sent to the Secretary of State’s Office. But it sometimes does not go right,” they wrote. They cited the problems with Social Security and driver’s license data, and noted why state prison records also were unreliable. “County officials must also ping the state Department of Corrections database, which may lag by up to several months in its information,” the paper wrote. “The Social Security Administration database only comes back as a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ match, giving county officials no help in determining what further information may need to be provided by the applicant. A hyphenated last name can cause hiccups with the state’s identification database, as can unintentional data entry errors by county clerks, said former North Carolina [state] election director Gary Bartlett, who submitted an affidavit on behalf of the voter groups [who sued over the botched processing of registrations].”

In other words, Kemp did not just masquerade behind the badge of fighting nonexistent voter fraud to thwart a registration drive led by a powerful elected Democrat. He also was winnowing voter rolls to impact the finish line—who can vote on Election Day. And there’s more. Between October 2012 and November 2014, he purged more than 370,000 inactive voters, which exceeded the number of newly registered voters.

But at the starting line—voter registration—he was knowingly using a shoddy verification process to disqualify or hold registrants in limbo. Using porous data and imprecise analytics produces a politically expedient result: false positives. A lawsuit over Kemp’s matching that was settled in early 2017 found that of the nearly 35,000 registrants whose registrations he canceled between July 2013 and July 15, 2016, 64 percent were black, 8 percent were Latino, 5 percent were Asian, and 14 percent were white. Meanwhile, of those 41,000 registrants that Kemp kept from voting in 2014, 18,000 were approved after the election in which they registered to vote. This is how nuanced and targeted voter suppression works.

Kemp’s tactics, especially using error-prone data mining, are not unique. One of its top proponents is Kris Kobach, who, as Kansas secretary of state, oversees the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program. That project was created in 2005 by state election directors with the goal of identifying voters registered in more than one state and instances of illegal double voting. It does so by matching first and last names, birth dates, and state turnout data. It was used by 28 states in 2016. You would be correct if you concluded that it surfaces hardly any illegal activity—single-digit instances from states each with tens of millions of voters. But its imprecise methodology generates hundreds of thousands of false positives. (A July 2018 report by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School said eight of those states have since left the program and another eight have stopped using its data for voter registration purposes.)

Yet in 2015, Crosscheck helped Kemp identify some 540,000 Georgia voters who were in danger of being purged before the 2016 election. That’s one-eighth of the Georgians who voted in the presidential election that fall. This points to another fight in the lead-up to the election—mass purges by GOP secretaries of state of tens of thousands of infrequent but legally registered voters in Democratic strongholds. In early 2017, Georgia and more than a dozen red states filed a brief at the Supreme Court urging it to hear a case in its fall term over Ohio’s purge of 144,000 infrequent voters in blue epicenters before the 2016 election. These red states sided with Ohio’s partisan mass purge. The Court this June upheld Ohio’s removal procedure, based on Ohio exploiting ambiguity in the wording of federal voting laws.

Meanwhile, the battle between Kemp and Abrams is far from over. Both are running for governor in 2018 (as is Kobach in Kansas). But the tactic that Kemp and Kobach engaged in—targeting and freezing out new voters, and partisan purges of infrequent voters—is all about cynically exploiting what should be a simple bookkeeping process for political gain.

Meanwhile, investigative journalists have found that some of these same voter suppression barriers targeting Georgia’s blue voters remain. As Reuters noted in a report this spring, the state’s blacks are being disproportionately disqualified for registration form errors:

“The tiniest discrepancy on a registration form places them on a ‘pending’ voter list. A Reuters analysis of Georgia’s pending voter list, obtained through a public records request, found that black voters landed on the list at a far higher rate than white voters even though a majority of Georgia’s voters are white.

“Both voting rights activists and Georgia’s state government say the reason for this is that blacks more frequently fill out paper forms than whites, who are more likely to do them online. Paper forms are more prone to human error, both sides agree. But they disagree on whether the errors are made by those filling out the forms or officials processing the forms.

“Republicans say the aim of the ‘exact match’ law is to prevent voter fraud. Voting rights groups, however, object to the tiniest, inadvertent error creating an obstacle to a person’s fundamental right to vote.”

And who is the Georgia official who is overseeing the state’s election of its next governor? It’s Secretary of State Brian Kemp, the GOP nominee for the job.

This article was produced by Voting Booth , a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Amazon’s Facial Recognition Software Is Prone to Racial Profiling, Report Says

Amazon’s business practices have been under fire from multiple fronts in 2018. Consumer advocacy groups claim that it sells books, toys and clothing with racist messages and symbols that violate the company’s own anti-hate speech policies.

In June, Amazon employees signed an open letter demanding that CEO Jeff Bezos stop selling AWS Rekognition facial recognition software to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). They feared the product was being used to racially profile immigrants. In the letter, employees said they “refuse to contribute to tools that violate human rights.”

A new report from the ACLU shows that those workers may be right.

Using Amazon’s Rekognition software and 25,000 publicly available arrest records, researchers built a database and a face-searching tool. They then searched the database against all members of the U.S. House and Senate.

“The false matches,” the ACLU writes, “were disproportionately of people of color, including six members of the Congressional Black Caucus, among them civil rights legend Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.).”

The report also points out that the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) had already raised concerns about accuracy and racial profiling to Amazon:

In a recent letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, the Congressional Black Caucus expressed concern about the ‘profound negative unintended consequences’ face surveillance could have for Black people, undocumented immigrants, and protesters.

The ACLU researchers believe that their findings back up the CBC’s fears. They write, “Nearly 40 percent of Rekognition’s false matches in our test were of people of color, even though they make up only 20 percent of Congress.”

When BuzzFeed contacted Amazon for a comment, a spokesperson defended Rekognition, saying the ACLU’s test would be improved by “ ‘following best practices’ around setting the confidence thresholds — the percentage likelihood that Rekognition found a match — used in the test.”

The spokesperson continued, “While 80% confidence is an acceptable threshold for photos of hot dogs, chairs, animals, or other social media use cases, it wouldn’t be appropriate for identifying individuals with a reasonable level of certainty. … When using facial recognition for law enforcement activities, we guide customers to set a higher threshold of at least 95% or higher.”

The ACLU countered that Amazon doesn’t ask what their clients are using the facial recognition software for. What’s more, Amazon might recommend certain parameters for law enforcement use, but that doesn’t mean law enforcement will follow those parameters.

Jacob Snow, an attorney for the ACLU of Northern California, also points out that Amazon’s own website suggests an 80 percent confidence in matching human faces, not the 95 percent the spokesperson claimed.

Snow told BuzzFeed he believes “[t]hese results demonstrate why Congress should join the ACLU in calling for a moratorium on law enforcement use of face surveillance.”

Lawmakers are also alarmed. Rep. Luis Gutiérrez, D-Ill., who is among those falsely matched with an arrest record, asked in an email to BuzzFeed, “Are you sure Amazon isn’t just talking to Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson and Breitbart? Because they think all Latinos are criminals.”

He continued, “But on a more serious note: If this technology has not been proven effective and has a systematic bias against people of color, then it will hurt, not help, law enforcement and anyone else who uses it.”

Ryan Opposes Rosenstein Impeachment Try, Dooming It for Now

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Paul Ryan spoke out against an effort by a small group of conservatives to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Thursday, dooming the endeavor for now and easing a months-long standoff between House Republicans and the Justice Department.

Ryan said the tussle over document requests between House Republicans and Rosenstein, who oversees the federal Trump-Russia investigation, doesn’t rise to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors” that could warrant impeachment under the Constitution.

“I don’t think we should be cavalier with this process or with this term,” Ryan said. He also said he is encouraged by progress on the document production.

Ryan made the comments a day after the group of 11 House Republicans sharply escalated the extended clash with the Justice Department by filing articles of impeachment against Rosenstein, who oversees special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Their move late Wednesday came after months of criticism aimed at the department — and the Russia investigation in particular — from President Donald Trump and his Republican allies in Congress. Trump has fumed about Mueller’s probe and has repeatedly called it a “witch hunt,” a refrain echoed by some of the lawmakers.

Mueller is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether Trump’s campaign was involved.

The impeachment effort was led by North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows, the chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus who talks to Trump frequently and often defends him to colleagues.

As Ryan voiced his disapproval, Meadows acknowledged that he didn’t currently have the votes to pass the impeachment resolution and said he wouldn’t use procedural maneuvers to trigger an immediate vote — something he had threatened to do. The House left Thursday afternoon for a five-week recess.

Instead, Meadows said he had a commitment from leaders to vote on holding Rosenstein in contempt of Congress when the House returns in September if certain documents are still outstanding. The agreement came after discussions on the House floor with Judiciary Committee Chairman Robert Goodlatte, R-Va., and the No. 3 House GOP leader, Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana.

The contempt resolution would first have to move through the Judiciary Committee, according to Republican aides.

Meadows said the five-week delay would give the department “one last chance” to deliver. He didn’t rule out trying for an impeachment vote in the future.

“Now it’s in Rod Rosenstein’s court,” Meadows said.

Ryan’s tone was far different.

“We do not have full compliance, and we have to get full compliance, but we have been making tremendous progress to that point,” he said of multiple document requests.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended Rosenstein in a Boston speech, saying he has the “highest confidence” in his top deputy. Rosenstein has overseen the Russia investigation since last year, when Sessions recused himself following reports of his own meeting with the Russian ambassador.

Asked in May about rumblings that House Republicans might move to impeachment, Rosenstein was defiant.

“I think they should understand by now, the Department of Justice is not going to be extorted,” he said.

Meadows, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan and the other Republicans who introduced the resolution have criticized Rosenstein and Justice Department officials as not being responsive enough as House committees have demanded documents related to the Russia investigation’s inception and a now-closed investigation into Democrat Hillary Clinton’s emails.

The five articles of impeachment would charge Rosenstein with failing to produce information, though the department has provided lawmakers with more than 800,000 documents. The resolution notes that Rosenstein was one of several department officials who approved what some Republicans say was improper surveillance of Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

The impeachment resolution also criticizes Rosenstein for refusing to produce a memo that outlines the scope of the investigation and questions whether the investigation was started on legitimate grounds.

It is highly unusual, if not unprecedented, for lawmakers to demand documents that are part of an ongoing criminal investigation.

At a House hearing last month, Rosenstein, along with FBI Director Christopher Wray, faced angry Republicans who alleged bias at the FBI and suggested the department has conspired against Trump. Still, some GOP lawmakers said they would draw the line at impeachment.

“Impeachment is a punishment; it’s not a remedy,” said House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Trey Gowdy, who has led one of several House GOP investigations into the department and has complained of anti-Trump bias. “If you are looking for documents, then you want compliance, and you want whatever moves you toward compliance.”

The impeachment resolution came about two hours after Meadows, Gowdy, Goodlatte and other GOP lawmakers met with Justice Department officials about the documents. The department has created new search systems, set up classified reading rooms and tasked dozens of employees to produce the hundreds of thousands of documents that Republican lawmakers have requested over the past year.

Democrats on the House Judiciary, Oversight and Government Reform and intelligence committees called the impeachment effort a “panicked and dangerous attempt to undermine an ongoing criminal investigation in an effort to protect President Trump as the walls are closing in around him and his associates.”

So far, the special counsel has charged 32 people and three companies. That includes four Trump campaign advisers and 12 Russian intelligence officers.

Democratic Reps. Jerrold Nadler of New York, Elijah Cummings of Maryland and Adam Schiff of California said Rosenstein “stands as one of the few restraints against the overreaches of the president and his allies in Congress.”

In addition to Meadows and Jordan, the Republican lawmakers who sponsored the impeachment articles are Reps. Jody Hice of Georgia, Jeff Duncan of South Carolina, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Louie Gohmert of Texas, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Scott DesJarlais of Tennessee, Paul Gosar of Arizona, Bill Posey of Florida and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania.

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Associated Press writers Alan Fram, Kevin Freking and Lisa Mascaro in Washington and Philip Marcelo in Boston contributed to this report.

Jerry Brown Declares Emergency as Fires Rage Through California

IDYLLWILD, Calif. — Fire stoked by hot and windy weather raged through a forest in far northern California on Thursday. In mountain communities east of Los Angeles, calmer conditions aided firefighters on the lines of a suspected arson wildfire that forced thousands of people to flee.

California Gov. Jerry Brown on Thursday issued emergency proclamations in both Riverside County in the south and Shasta County in the north. The declarations authorize the state to rally resources to local government.

In the north, new evacuations were ordered for communities in the wilderness recreation region near Whiskeytown Lake as that wildfire tripled in size to more than 31 square miles (80 square kilometers). It had already forced residents out of French Gulch, a hamlet dating to the Gold Rush.

French Gulch resident Raquel Hines said she had two hours to evacuate and that others in the former mining town had as little as 30 minutes to leave.

The community has faced two wildfires in the last two weeks, Hines said.

“It’s terrifying. You know you’re frightened a little bit because you don’t know if you’re going to come back to your house and the town is going to be different,” she told KRCR-TV.

Cal Fire Unit Chief Mike Hebrard told the Record Searchlight newspaper that the blaze made a huge push overnight and that engine crews were in the community of Old Shasta trying to save structures.

Hundreds of miles to the south, winds were absent over the fire in Southern California’s San Jacinto Mountains. But temperatures were rapidly rising, and forecasters said highs could hit 100 degrees (38 Celsius). They also warned of possible afternoon wind gusts that could create dangerous fire conditions.

Elsewhere in the state, a huge forest fire continued to grow outside Yosemite National Park. A total of 100 homes were still considered under threat in the San Francisco Bay community of Clayton, although firefighters had stopped the progress of a small fire there after one house burned.

The blaze in the San Jacinto Mountains erupted Wednesday and quickly turned into a wall of flame that torched timber and tinder-dry brush. In a matter of hours, it grew to 7.5 square miles (19 square kilometers).

About 3,200 people in the town of Idyllwild and nearby communities were ordered to evacuate. An estimated 600 homes were threatened.

The fire was the largest of at least five that police believe were purposely set Wednesday by a man whose car was reportedly spotted at the starting point of the blaze in Riverside County, officials said.

Brandon N. McGlover, 32, of Temecula was booked on suspicion of five counts of arson, state fire officials said. It wasn’t clear whether he had an attorney.

Authorities ordered residents to leave Idyllwild and several neighboring communities, home to about 12,000 people.

William Blodgett of Idyllwild said he couldn’t get home because of the fire and had to wait along with others at a gas station in nearby Mountain Center — until the fire hopped a highway and began to move in his direction.

“We were all peeling out of there as fast as we could,” he told KNBC-TV. “It was apocalyptic.”

Horses and other animals were taken to shelters, as were several hundred children who were evacuated from summer camps. About 200 were at a local high school serving as a shelter, KCAL-TV reported.

The fire in the San Bernardino National Forest sent up a cloud 50,000 feet high that was so enormous it created its own weather in the form of lightning, the National Weather Service reported.

Throughout the day, helicopters and planes dumped water and fire retardant that turned swathes of land and homes pink. Fire engines also were stationed to protect homes.

Yosemite Valley, the scenic heart of the national park, was closed at noon Wednesday during the height of tourist season as smoke cast a pall on the region from a fire in the Sierra Nevada. The closure was heartbreaking for travelers, many of whom mapped out their trips months in advance to hike and climb amid the spectacular views of cascading waterfalls and sheer rock faces.

“We had one guest who planned a weeklong trip,” said Tom Lambert, who owns a vacation rental property near Yosemite Valley. “It was a father-daughter trip, for her high school graduation … Now it’s done. It’s sad.”

Another guest had to delay plans to climb Half Dome.

Officials emphasized that Yosemite wasn’t in imminent danger from the fire, which grew to more than 67 square miles (173 square kilometers) in the adjacent Sierra National Forest. Authorities decided on the shutdown to allow crews to perform protective measures such as burning away brush along roadways without having to deal with traffic in the park that welcomes 4 million visitors annually.

Yosemite Valley will be closed until at least Sunday, along with a winding, mountainous, 20-mile (32-kilometer) stretch of California’s State Route 41 that leads into the area, Gediman said.

At least 1,000 campground and hotel bookings were canceled — to say nothing of the impact on day visitors, park workers and small businesses along the highway, Gediman said.

The last time the 7.5-mile-long (12-kilometer-long) valley was closed because of fire was 1990, he said.

Over nearly two weeks, flames have churned through 60 square miles (155 square kilometers) of timber in steep terrain of the Sierra Nevada just west of the park. The fire was just 25 percent contained.

More than 3,300 firefighters are working the fire, aided by 16 helicopters. One firefighter was killed July 14, and six others have been injured.

___

Noah Berger reported from Yosemite; Chris Weber from Los Angeles. AP reporters Robert Jablon, Michael Balsamo and John Antczak in Los Angeles contributed.

Facebook Stock Off 19% in One Day: A $119 Billion Market Value Loss

NEW YORK—The Latest on the aftermath of Facebook’s release of user growth and expectations for the company ahead (all times local):

4:50 p.m.

The 19 percent loss in Facebook’s stock chopped $119 billion off its market value.

It was the company’s worst trading day since going public in 2012, and among the biggest one-day losses of market value in U.S. stock market history.

The loss came a day after Facebook revealed that its user base and revenue grew more slowly than expected in the second quarter as it grappled with privacy issues.

Those revelations stunned investors, who believed the company had weathered the recent scandal over users’ privacy and pushed the stock to an all-time high Wednesday of $217.50.

12:45 p.m.

The erosion in the value of Facebook as it is perceived on Wall Street involves some staggering numbers.

In midday trading Thursday, the company’s market value (the number of outstanding shares multiplied by the value of a single stock), fell by more than $122 billion.

That means that in one day, just the decline in Facebook’s market value is roughly the entire market value of McDonald’s or Nike, give or take a few billion. And it far exceeds to total market value of major U.S. multinational corporations such as General Electric, Eli Lilly or Caterpillar.

The company still has a total market value close to $511 billion, which exceeds the annual gross domestic product of countries like Poland, Belgium and Iran.

Facebook was downgraded by a number of industry analysts who were caught off guard by slowing growth in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Company shares fell 19 percent Thursday.

10:40 a.m.

Facebook may be heading for its worst day on the markets in its history a day after the company revealed that user growth, amid swirling questions about how their information is used, has slowed.

The stock plunged 19 percent in early trading Thursday, eradicating well in excess of $100 billion in market value.

The social media company’s financial results, released late Wednesday, fell short of Wall Street expectations as the company continues to grapple with privacy issues. It also warned that revenue would decelerate as it promotes new products

Facebook had 2.23 billion monthly users as of June 30, up 11 percent from a year earlier, but well short of what industry analysts had been expecting.

The results are from the first full quarter following the revelation of the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal. The company is also contending with European privacy rules that went into effect in May.

China, Russia, Iran Conduct Economic Spying, Report Says

WASHINGTON—Iranian hackers known as “Rocket Kitten” repeatedly target American defense companies in hopes of stealing information to boost Tehran’s missile and space programs. Russian hackers last year compromised dozens of U.S. energy companies. A Chinese cyberespionage group called APT10 relentlessly attacks U.S. engineering, telecom and aerospace industries.

While Moscow’s efforts to meddle in the 2016 U.S. presidential election are widely known, spy services from China, Russia and Iran, along with their proxy hackers also are hard at work trying to steal trade secrets and proprietary information from the United States, according to a government report released Thursday.

“Foreign economic and industrial espionage against the United States continues to represent a significant threat to America’s prosperity, security and competitive advantage,” the National Counterintelligence and Security Center said. “China, Russia and Iran stand out as three of the most capable and active cyber actors tied to economic espionage and the potential theft of U.S. trade secrets and proprietary information.”

Cyberespionage is a relatively low-cost, high-yield way to access and acquire information from U.S. research institutions, universities and corporations, the report said, adding that cloud computing and new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, will expose even more vulnerabilities in U.S. networks,

Cyberoperations are the preferred method for conducting economic espionage, the report said, but U.S. adversaries also acquire sensitive information by hiring sophisticated hackers, recruiting spies or gleaning material from foreign students studying at American universities.

The report listed two dozen technologies that have piqued the interest of foreign intelligence collectors. They include oil, gas and coal-bed methane gas energies; smart grids; solar and wind technologies; biopharmaceuticals and new vaccines and drugs; defensive marine systems and radar; hybrid and electric cars; pollution control; high-end computer numerically controlled machines, which are used to control factory tools and machines in manufacturing; space infrastructure and exploration technology; synthetic rubber; rare earth materials; quantum computing; and next generation broadband wireless communications networks.

China uses joint ventures to try to acquire technical know-how, the report said. It said Beijing seeks partnerships with U.S. government labs to learn about specific technology and information about running such facilities, and uses front companies to hide the hand of the Chinese government and acquire technology under U.S. export controls.

“If this threat is not addressed, it could erode America’s long-term competitive economic advantage,” the report said.

Russia conducts offensive cyberoperations to gather information that can help Moscow make decisions and benefit its economic interests, according to the report. Experts say Russia needs to diversify into technology and other sectors to expand its gross domestic product.

“In support of that goal, Russian intelligence services have conducted sophisticated and large-scale hacking operations to collect sensitive U.S. business and technology information,” the report said. It also said that Russian “military modernization efforts also likely will be a motivating factor for Russia to steal U.S intellectual property.”

Iranian’s operations have typically targeted adversaries in the Middle East, such as Israel and Saudi Arabia. But it also tries to infiltrate U.S. networks to acquire technologies to bolster economic growth, modernize its military and increase exports.

“The loss of sensitive information and technologies not only presents a significant threat to U.S. national security,” the report said. “It also enables Tehran to develop advanced technologies to boost domestic economic growth, modernize its military forces and increase its foreign sales.”