Some 803 complaints were made in the last fiscal year compared with 787 the previous year. Only 144 were considered credible and subsequently investigated by the Inspector General. In total, 49 senior officials were eventually found guilty of misconduct.

READ MORE: 60 US Navy admirals snared in ‘Fat Leonard’ corruption scandal

The number of cases “involving substantiated senior official misconduct involved approximately two percent of the DoD senior official population,” according to the latest report. The data was released Wednesday during a House Armed Services personnel subcommittee hearing.

Misconduct is taken to mean improper personal behavior or ethical violations, improper sexual advances or relationships, misuse of government resources and arranging official travel for personal reasons.

“There are a significant number of substantiated allegations against senior officials engaging in inappropriate relationships,” said Glenn Fine, the Pentagon’s acting inspector general. Substantiated misconduct cases included “an Army major general who engaged in a sexual relationship and ‘swinger lifestyle’” with an employee.

The number of whistleblower reprisal complaints and investigations has also increased, although the substantiation rate for such cases remains low at four percent. This may be because the whistleblower reprisal process is being misused, said Lt. Gen. David Quantock, the Army’s inspector general. Whistleblower complaints are often made by lower-level employees following punishment for misconduct or inadequate performance, Quantock told the subcommittee.

The data released however raises questions about transparency and fair process in the Armed Services. Democrat Representative Jackie Speier says higher-ranking officers often receive more lenient treatment. “There is a phrase in the military that goes like this, ‘Different spanks for different ranks.’ Many senior leaders who should be the essential core of the chain of command are not being held to the same standard as the rank and file. This corrupts fairness, justice and morale,” Speier said.

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Following the article’s publication on Thursday, Timothy was accused of anti-Semitism in the front-page exclusive he co-authored, and which RT UK along with many other national outlets picked up.

The article outlines how Soros, described by the Telegraph as the “man who broke the Bank of England” in reference to the fortune he made betting against the sterling in the 1990s, is attempting to undermine the Tory government by donating £400,000 (US$560,000) to pro-EU group Best for Britain. The group is campaigning for a second referendum on the final Brexit deal agreed between Parliament and the EU.

The accusations of anti-Semitism were made by Guardian columnist Owen Jones, academic Bonnie Greer and King’s College professor Jonathan Portes, among others. Portes drew a response from Timothy when he asked if he and the right-wing paper were really endorsing “anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.”

Jones called out the Telegraph for “anti-Semitic dog whistling,” before doubling down on his statement.

Portes and Jones made the allegations on the contents of a separate comment box halfway down the article which details how Soros had been accused of “meddling” with governments’ “internal affairs” through his Open Society Foundation (OSF). The authorship of the comment box is credited to Callum Adams.

Adams details how Soros, a survivor of Nazi Germany, was accused by “hardline Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban of trying to orchestrate an ultra-liberal crusade in the country.” Orban himself faces accusations of anti-Semitism.

Timothy rebutted allegations of anti-Semitism, saying they are “as absurd as they are offensive.” 

Despite Timothy’s protestations, the allegations were backed by some of the UK’s most prominent journalists and commentators.

Jewish Chronicle editor Stephen Pollard highlighted the controversial implications of using the phrase “secret plot.”

Journalist James Ball cautioned May and her government to distance herself from such rhetoric.

Some did, however, come to Timothy’s defense. Sir Eric Pickles, the former Tory cabinet minister who is the prime minister’s Special Envoy for Post-Holocaust, branded the claims “ludicrous” due to Timothy being “a consistent friend of Israel.”

Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage chipped in tweeting at Alastair Campbell, writing: “Why is it as soon as Soros is mentioned, suddenly you’re an anti-Semite? Is the man beyond question?”

While others argued critics are missing the point altogether, as there should be more uproar over Hungarian-American businessman Soros chucking the eye-watering sum of £400,000 to an anti-Brexit campaign group.

In turn, the Russian embassy in London appeared to echo this as it expressed frustration over the UK government’s failure to act on the news of the alleged “political collusion” by Soros. When it comes to pointing the finger at Russia, however, the government needs no second invitation.

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Though Democrats have accused President Donald Trump of “colluding” with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election, which they thought Hillary Clinton was sure to win, they have offered little to no evidence to prove the claim. Meanwhile, Trump has said the real collusion was between Clinton and the Russians on Uranium One, a Canadian-based mining company that owns 20 percent of US uranium deposits.

In 2010, the Obama administration approved the sale of Uranium One to Rosatom, a Russian state energy company. This was the era of the infamous “reset” in US-Russian relations, when Hillary Clinton was the US secretary of state. An FBI informant who worked with the companies involved now says Moscow greased the deal with millions of dollars intended for the Clintons’ charity.

On Wednesday, William Douglas Campbell testified before the Senate Judiciary, the House Intelligence and the House Oversight and Government Reform committees. He was not sworn in and the meeting was held behind closed doors, making it possible for Democrats and Republicans to assert different versions of what happened.

According to The Hill, which says it has a written statement by Campbell in its possession, the informant said he was told by Russian nuclear executives that they had hired a US lobbying firm called APCO Worldwide specifically because it had ties to the Clintons. APCO was paid $3 million a year to lobby for the deal.

“The contract called for four payments of $750,000 over twelve months. APCO was expected to give assistance free of charge to the Clinton Global Initiative as part of their effort to create a favorable environment to ensure the Obama administration made affirmative decisions on everything from Uranium One to the US-Russia Civilian Nuclear Cooperation agreement,” Campbell testified, according to The Hill.

Moreover, Campbell told lawmakers he was personally involved in channeling bribes from the US-based company Transportation Logistics International (TLI) to executives from the Russian company Tenex, which was involved in the Uranium One deal. According to the Department of Justice, TLI executive Daren Condrey and Tenex official Vadim Mikerin pleaded guilty to conspiracy and bribery charges in 2015.

Now, Campbell told the lawmakers that he was “speechless and angry” when the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) decided to approve the Uranium One sale in 2010, given the TLI and Tenex bribery schemes.

“The response I got was that ‘politics’ was somehow involved,” he testified, according to journalist Sara Carter. “I remember one response I got from an agent when I asked how it was possible CFIUS would approve the Uranium One sale when the FBI could prove Rosatom was engaged in criminal conduct. His answer: ‘Ask your politics.’”

All too eager to turn the accusations of “Russian collusion” against their purveyors, Republicans have seized upon Campbell’s testimony as proof of the Clinton’s pay-to-play practices and evidence of a conspiracy to sell the US uranium mines to Russia during the Obama administration.

“You would have to be politically blind not to see the significance of the story, as is alleged the Clinton Global Initiative was a front for receiving illicit payments using the now patented Clinton pay-to-play,” legal and media analyst Lionel told RT. “It will be fascinating to see how the Clinton-friendly mainstream news media handle this most sticky situation.”

Not surprisingly, Democrats and the media have countered that the story is a whole bunch of hot air, that Campbell is an unreliable witness and that Clinton absolutely had nothing to do with anything improper or illegal, because she says so.

“Just yesterday the committee made clear that this secret informant charade was just that, a charade. Along with the widely debunked text-message-gate and Nunes’ embarrassing memo episode, we have a trifecta of GOP-manufactured scandals designed to distract from their own President’s problems and the threat to democracy he poses,” Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said in a statement.

So the “debunked” texts that clearly show problems within the FBI, and the Nunes memo indicating that the bureau using a Clinton-funded dodgy dossier as key evidence in spying on American citizens are nothinburgers, and the real story here is the “vast right-wing conspiracy” against the Clintons, as Hillary has famously claimed since 1998.

“It is a routine practice of the Clintons to muddle the waters by accusing their political opponents of the committing the same crimes they have committed,” Neil W. McCabe, a national political reporter for Big League Politics, told RT. They do it “it consciously and with malice,” he said.

Once the details of the Uranium One deal are finally known, Americans will see the “Russian collusion hoax for the cheap distraction it always was,” McCabe added.

Interestingly, when Campbell first spoke up about Uranium One, back in October 2017, he was swiftly subjected to a hit piece by Michael Isikoff, the same Yahoo! News reporter who in 2016 published a story based on information from British ex-spy Christopher Steele, later cited by the FBI as “corroborating” Steele’s dodgy dossier, according to the Nunes memo.

“He came out because he thought he was dying from cancer and he wanted his story to be told,” Campbell’s lawyer, Victoria Toensing, told Fox News on Thursday. “They can go attack all they want to. He’s got the truth, he’s got briefings, the FBI has all kinds of videotapes.”

Campbell apparently also tried to sue the DOJ in order to recover approximately $500,000 in bribes that he paid on FBI’s behalf, for which he had not been reimbursed. Then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch wrote that this would violate the confidentiality agreement he signed. That gag order was lifted late last year by the current Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

In January 2016, Campbell said, the FBI handed him a $50,000+ check and commended him on all the work done between 2009 and 2014 to investigate the Russian nuclear energy industry. Now all of a sudden he is being declared an unreliable witness, his information is all wrong, and there’s nothing to see here? How curious.

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Every February, historians, pundits, and celebrities declare Black History Month dead. Why do we need a special month to commemorate African American history, the critics say, when it is no longer ignored the rest of the year?

For almost a century, Black History Month has been debated and disparaged. But in the current political climate, the country needs these midwinter reflections. Not the rah-rah version of a history that sings the praises of African American heroes and heroines and reduces them to postage stamps. But the radical incarnation that exposes the darkest corners of that history and challenges people to seek out unvarnished truths about the meaning and making of the United States.

When Carter G. Woodson created Negro History Week in 1926, the Mississippi Valley Historical Review, the era’s most prestigious U.S. history journal, said the celebration was “animated by a spirit of propagandism which ill accords with the spirit of true scholarship.” The journal editor dismissed Woodson’s aim to teach the world there was “no such thing as superiority or inferiority of races,” and urged all prominent men in arts and letters to stay as far away as possible from Woodson’s enterprise.

That declaration launched decades of debates about the wisdom of setting aside a specially designated time for black history. (The week turned into a month in the mid-1970s, and Congress passed a joint resolution designating February as Black History Month in 1986.)

Woodson, the first and only professional historian whose parents had been born into slavery, launched Negro History Week after he turned 50. He stood on the margins of a patrician, lily-white profession and may well have been the lone scholar with a history Ph.D. who had grown up working with his hands. (He had labored in a West Virginia coal mine as a teenager.) As the founder of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, Woodson was the center of gravity for an ambitious, emerging movement to transform the writing, teaching, and commemoration of American history.

The leading history textbooks of the 1920s portrayed African Americans as “fit” for slavery and “unfit” for citizenship. These books abounded with stereotypes, including the faithful Mammy, the buffoonish black legislator, and the lecherous newly emancipated freedman whose lust for white women knew no bounds.

In Woodson’s view, the crusade to reform a biased history curriculum was even more important than the anti-lynching campaign. “There would be no lynching if it did not start in the schoolroom,” Woodson wrote in the inaugural Negro History Week pamphlet. “Why not exploit or enslave a class that everybody is taught to regard as inferior?” We should emphasize not Negro History, but the Negro in history.” Anticipating the accusation that studying black history would simply replace anti-black prejudice with a self-aggrandizing black chauvinism, Woodson added: “What we need is not a history of selected races or nations but the history of the world void of national bias, race hate, and religious prejudice.”

For white folks, studying black history would be a kind of vaccination, inoculating them against the disease of race prejudice. For black folks, it would be a booster shot of race pride. “If you teach the Negro that he has accomplished as much good as any other race,” Woodson said, “he will aspire to equality and justice without regard to race.”

But who deserved Black History Month honors? The topic quickly became controversial. Woodson himself denounced an event he attended in 1935: the organizers projected the faces of the local pastor and school principal on a screen next to those of Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass. “History on this occasion,” Woodson said, “had descended to the level of vainglory and self-admiration.” Woodson also disapproved of Negro History Week-themed dances and teas that had turned into social affairs where style counted for more than substance.

After the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, another view emerged: Negro History Week reinforced a dangerous racial separatism. The mid-1950s saw an annual February rush of commentaries in the black press dedicated to the question of whether the week hindered the struggle for “the integration of the Negro in American life.” For some, preserving a separate week for black history was a little too close to maintaining separate black water fountains.

In the 1960s and 1970s, however, a new generation of Black Power activists pilloried Negro History Week as an anodyne, hopelessly old-fashioned Uncle Tom event. The only thing you would learn during this week, Malcolm X said, was that George Washington Carver “took a peanut and made [a] white man rich.” Carver was a scientist, all right, but “he died broke,” he said.    

In recent years, critics argue that Black History Month has outlived its usefulness. This claim has plenty of merit. The once-revolutionary propositions that black history and black culture are integral to the American experience are conventional wisdom now.

The battle for black representation in textbooks, schools, and museums has been won. Black men and women have been important national heroes in textbooks and the minds of students for years. A 2008 survey of high school students published in the Journal of American History found that Martin Luther King Jr., Harriet Tubman, and Rosa Parks topped the list of the “most famous Americans in history,” excluding presidents. Some of the most treasured and distinctively American musical forms are spirituals, blues, jazz and hip-hop. The recently-opened National Museum of African American History and Culture, which sits at “the geographic center of American civic identity,” on the National Mall, is a $540 million building devoted to telling the “nation’s story” through “a people’s journey.”

Yet despite the mainstreaming of African American history, Black History Month continues to play an important role in American culture. While polite society eagerly celebrates the contributions and achievements of African Americans, many people still cannot face up to what Woodson called the “whole truth” of U.S. history. That’s why a large segment of the population can say—with a straight face—that Confederate monuments have everything to do with Southern “heritage” and nothing at all to do with white supremacy.

“Simply put, Negro History Week was more than a celebration: It was a reckoning.”

Woodson had one overarching goal: he wanted Americans to reflect on the “wickedness of human exploitation and injustice” that characterized too much of the nation’s past and present. Simply put, Negro History Week was more than a celebration: It was a reckoning. The history lessons delivered over the course of seven days questioned the appealing and naïve myth that U.S. history was a chronicle of unrelenting, forward progress. Instead, audiences learned how disenfranchisement, sharecropping, and Jim Crow segregation shattered the promise of Reconstruction.

The week’s events also featured Woodson and others’ pioneering accounts of the history of racial violence, including the subjection of enslaved black women “to the whims and desires of white men,” the “abysmal horror of lynching,” and the gruesome race riots that gripped cities across the country from 1917 to 1919. Woodson argued that violence against black people was not an anomaly but rather a concerted—and recurrent—strategy to enforce the boundaries of the color line by any means necessary.

Many Americans imagine that the black experience can be understood as a straightforward progression from slavery to freedom. Rather than always moving onwards and upwards, historians like Woodson documented how the journey to the promised land of racial equality was slow, arduous, and marked by setbacks, like the progress along a “tortuous mountain pathway.”

Woodson and his colleagues believed that arming the public with “cold-blooded facts” was the only way to “face the future with clear eyes and a sure vision.” In an age of “alternative facts” and lightning-speed spin—often delivered by a president who dismisses “bad” news as “fake news”—Black History Month provides an immensely refreshing commitment to get to the bottom of things, even if there are hard truths to uncover.

Curator Vyki Sparkes said she has been hoping for a fatberg for a number of years to preserve for the museum.

“Nobody has ever tried to preserve a fatberg before – they normally just take them out and destroy them,” she told Wired.

So when the disgusting vast sewer blockage, made up of congealed cooking oils, baby wipes, condoms and other rubbish, was found under the streets of Whitechapel, Sparkes knew this was her chance.

It took Thames Water nine weeks-worth of hacking at the terrible mass, which weighs as much as 11 double decker busses, before they were able to suck a chunk through a manhole cover and pop it into a quarantined area.

That is where the foul mess dried for seven weeks, hardening into a shoebox-sized bit of sewage. It was then placed into two perspex viewing boxes. The exhibition – called ‘Fatberg!’ – opens Friday.

“This is a live experiment basically. It’s its own little microworld,” Sparkes said.

But why put the blob on display at all? Sparkes said there is a lot learn about modern life through the fatberg, considering everything that ended up in it was flushed or thrown away by a Londoner to begin with.

“It’s got that play-off between fascination and disgust,” she said.

“For me it sums up the power of an object, you can really start a difficult conversation by putting something on display.”

There is concern the mass will disintegrate with time. A second chunk of the Whitechapel fatberg obtained by the London Museum broke apart after it was dried.

Sparkes worries the remaining lump won’t survive the full five month exhibition.

“At the back of my mind I still have a slight concern that it will turn into a massive bundle of flies or a pile of dust,” she said.

See the only remaining piece of the Whitechapel fatberg at the Museum of London’s exhibit when it opens February 9.

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The informant, Douglas Campbell, told three separate congressional committees via written statements that Moscow had routed millions of dollars to the US with a view to leveraging then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s influence to negotiate a deal for roughly 20 percent of the US uranium reserves.

The former FBI agent was told by executives at Rosatom, Russia’s nuclear energy agency, that they had hired the lobbying firm APCO Worldwide to assist on a potential uranium purchase deal, as the company claimed to be in a unique position to influence the Obama administration via the Clintons. In exchange, the Clinton Foundation would allegedly receive kickbacks.

Democrats have dismissed the entire issue as a right-wing conspiracy theory, with debunking sites publishingmultiple ‘takedowns‘ in recent months, insinuating that it is merely a smoke-and-mirrors ploy by Republicans to detract from their own public corruption investigations.  

“Just yesterday the committee made clear that this secret informant charade was just that, a charade. Along with the widely debunked text-message-gate and Nunes’ embarrassing memo episode, we have a trifecta of GOP-manufactured scandals designed to distract from their own President’s problems and the threat to democracy he poses,” Clinton spokesperson Nick Merrill told The Hill.

Needless to say, Trump supporters, conservatives and anti-Clinton advocates have seized the opportunity to once again shine a light on alleged abuse of power by Hillary Clinton during her time as Secretary of State under the Obama Administration.

Regardless of which side of the aisle is beset by an alleged corruption scandal, it seems blaming the Russians will remain the most popular political sport in Washington DC for some time to come.

On Apr. 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, while assisting striking sanitation workers.

That was almost 50 years ago. Back then, the wholesale racial integration required by the 1964 Civil Rights Act was just beginning to chip away at discrimination in education, jobs and public facilities. Black voters had only obtained legal protections two years earlier, and the 1968 Fair Housing Act was about to become law.

African-Americans were only beginning to move into neighborhoods, colleges and careers once reserved for whites only.

I’m too young to remember those days. But hearing my parents talk about the late 1960s, it sounds in some ways like another world. Numerous African-Americans now hold positions of power, from mayor to governor to corporate chief executive — and, yes, once upon a time, president. The US is a very different place than it was 50 years ago.

Or is it? As a scholar of minority politics, I know that while some things have improved markedly for black Americans since 1968, today we are still fighting many of the same battles as Dr. King did in his day.

That Was Then

The 1960s were tumultuous years indeed. During the long, hot summers from 1965 to 1968, American cities saw approximately 150 race riots and other uprisings. The protests were a sign of profound citizen anger about a nation that was, according to the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, “moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal.”

Economically, that was certainly true. In 1968, just 10 percent of whites lived below the poverty level, while nearly 34 percent of African-Americans did. Likewise, just 2.6 percent of white job seekers were unemployed, compared to 6.7 percent of black job seekers.

A year before his death, Dr. King and others began organizing a Poor People’s Campaign to “dramatize the plight of America’s poor of all races and make very clear that they are sick and tired of waiting for a…

Britain’s Digital, Media, Culture and Sport Committee is hearing evidence on Thursday at George Washington University as part of its inquiry. YouTube’s Juniper Downs told MPs: “[YouTube] have conducted a thorough investigation around the Brexit referendum and found no evidence of interference.

“Again, we looked at all advertisements with any connection to Russia, and we found no evidence of our services being used to interfere in the Brexit referendum. We are happy to cooperate with any further efforts,” she said.

The investigation into Russian meddling has produced no substantial results so far. In January, Twitter told MPs that its investigation had found no evidence to substantiate claims of Russian meddling in the 2016 referendum.

In December, Facebook said in response to the inquiry that a mere $0.97 was spent by Russia’s Internet Research Agency on referendum-related ads. Google, which has also been asked for input in the probe, said it had found no proof of Russian interference.

Meanwhile, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson was forced to concede he had “seen no evidence” of Russian interference in British democracy.

READ MORE: Parliamentary fake news probe puts struggle for evidence against Russia on public display

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Animosity between Republicans and Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee has become so intense that Republican members of the committee are reportedly going to construct an actual, physical wall separating their staffers from Democrats, according to CBS.

“The level of trust and the level of everything down there is – it’s poison. It’s absolute poison down there,” Republican Tom Rooney said when questioned about the plan by CBS.

While Republicans remain coy about the specifics of the wall, Republican Mike Conaway appeared to imply that the idea for a wall originated from Devin Nunes himself, the Republican Chairman of the Committee and the author of the memo that has been sending shockwaves in Washington. 

“I’m not part of that decision. You’ve got to talk to Devin. I don’t know what they’re trying to do one way or the other,” Conaway told CBS.

Discussion of a wall between committee members epitomises the recent breakdown in trust and cooperation between Republicans and Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee. It comes in the wake of the release of the ‘Nunes memo’ and allegations of high-profile leaks within the committee.

The Nunes memo was compiled by Republican staffers on the House Intelligence Committee and alleges improper surveillance by the Justice Department and FBI as part of the investigation into Russian collusion in the 2016 election.

Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, was lambasted on Monday by Trump as “a leaker and a liar.” 

Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have called publicly for Nunes to be removed as Chairman.

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During the Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) in the Commons on Wednesday, the Tory leader was quizzed on the exact terms of any post-Brexit trade deal between the UK and US President Donald Trump’s administration.

Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat leader, asked: “Can she give an absolute guarantee that, in those negotiations, the NHS will be excluded from their scope?

“Can she confirm that, in her conversations with President Trump, she has made it absolutely clear to him the NHS is not for sale?”

But the PM dodged the question, saying what sort of “requirements” the US would have for a trade deal are yet to be outlined. “We are starting the discussions with the American administration,” May replied.

“He doesn’t know what they are going to say in their requirements for that free trade agreements. We will go into those negotiations to get the best possible deal for the United Kingdom.”

Many have taken to Twitter to blast the PM over her failure to guarantee Britain’s much-loved NHS will be safe from being taken over by the privately-managed US healthcare system and US big pharma.

One user pointed out that if the PM had no intention of selling off the NHS to its US ally, she would have taken the opportunity to say so right on the spot.

Another asked the PM how “dare” she undermine the safety of Britons by putting them into US hands.

Pro-EU campaign group Open Britain asked whether this was what people had signed up for when they voted to leave the EU back in 2016.

Another person slammed May’s remarks as “utterly appalling.”

A spokesperson for Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn replied to the Conservative leader’s comments saying: “Any attempt to push Britain into a race to the bottom in standards and regulation is completely unacceptable and obviously a faction in the conservative party leadership wants that.

“It is a matter of great concern. The British people do not want the cherry-picking or privatization of the NHS.”

The news comes days after Trump came under fire for tweeting that people in the UK had taken to the streets to protest against the Labour-founded NHS.

Critics explained how demonstrators were actually calling for a stop to NHS privatization, and to plug a shortage of funds which has plunged the service into a “third world” crisis.

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The data mining program, called Geofeedia, was run by the Boston Regional Intelligence Center between 2014 and 2016, gathering social media posts about political and social activism, religious issues, and personal matters.

“This system explicitly targeted users’ First Amendment protected speech and association,” the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) stated on Wednesday.

“It collected thousands of social media posts about political and social activism, current events, religious issues, and personal matters irrelevant to law enforcement concerns,” the report said.

“It treated ordinary citizens discussing ordinary affairs as justifiable targets of surveillance.”

The one thing that the system did not do, according to the documents obtained by the ACLU through a public records request, was thwart or help solve serious crimes.

“There is no indication that the wide net BPD [Boston Police Department] cast over social media using Geofeedia was ever instrumental in preempting terrorism or other violence, solving serious crimes, or providing the residents of Boston with any other public safety benefit,” the authors of the report said.

“This is unsurprising, given that many of the search terms fed into — or, frequently, provided by — Geofeedia were terms associated with political activism, like ‘#blacklivesmatter’ and ‘protest.’”

According to the report, Boston police also used Geofeedia to monitor the use of various basic Arabic words and the hashtag #muslimlivesmatter, “suggesting that BPD considered Muslims as a group to be legitimate targets of surveillance.”

Among the categories of keywords the police tracked using the surveillance system was ‘Islamic Extremist Terminology,’ which included not only references to Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) or similar terrorist organizations but also Arabic words routinely used to discuss religion or community, such as ‘ummah’ (which means ‘community’ in Arabic).

Even in cases where cops searched for keywords like ‘ISIS’ the surveillance turned up nothing criminal, with the posts mentioning IS proving to be either jokes or references to current events, the civil rights organization said.

“BPD used Geofeedia to track numerous Arabic terms for no apparent reason other than their frequent use in the Muslim community,” the report stated.

Kade Crockford, co-author of the report and director of the group’s Technology for Liberty Program, said: “The Boston Police Department should never conduct surveillance targeting political speech or religious expression, but that’s exactly what their own records show they did when they used this social media monitoring software.”

Law enforcement officials told AP that the ACLU’s conclusions were misguided, and that the surveillance system actually helped police successfully monitor events that posed a risk to security.

“Our main focus in all of this is public safety, not targeting speech, not targeting people’s political affiliations,” Lt. Det. Michael McCarthy said. He added that law enforcement didn’t focus on individuals, but rather on keywords in response to actual events happening across the US.

The ACLU, however, likened the law enforcement’s social media monitoring to the notorious ‘stop and frisk’ New York police practice, saying that the Boston version has been “tainted by the same kind of racially disparate enforcement.”

Boston police used Geofeedia for a fortnight in 2014 and then again for over a year starting in January 2015, AP reported, citing the documents. The department’s use of the program was unveiled in late 2016 after it solicited bids to spend a whopping $1.4 million.

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Cambridge University graduate Matthew Falder admitted to 137 offences relating to 48 people, including the extortion of indecent abuse images from his victims. The court heard he distributed the pictures on the dark web and ‘hurtcore’ websites, which are hosts of material depicting rape and abuse.

Falder, 29, of Edgbaston, Birmingham, had racked up so many offences it took as long as 35 minutes for them to be read out in full.

The scientist, who pursued his illicit acts for at least eight years, also admitted to encouraging a young person to rape a four-year-old boy.

Prosecutors told the court how he targeted vulnerable individuals, including anorexic teenagers, by posing on the internet as a depressed female artist offering them money for images.

Opening the case, Ruona Iguyovwe said Falder got victims “to produce increasingly severe self-generated indecent images of themselves, the focus of these images being to humiliate and degrade the victims.”

The court heard that once he got hold of the first compromising material, he would then hold that against his victims to get more pictures out of them. Falder is also accused of blackmailing one of his victims to lick toilet seats and eat dog food.

The 29-year-old is alleged to have told one to “choose carefully,” or he would “send the images to everyone on Facebook associated with your school, and in letters to your parents and teachers, explaining with printouts of all the pictures that you will strip for money.”

The pedophile was tracked down and arrested at Birmingham University, where he was doing a postgraduate course, on June 21 last year.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) sought help from Britain’s intelligence agency GCHQ, America’s FBI and law enforcement in Israel, Slovenia, Australia and New Zealand to capture the offender.

Three of his victims reported having attempted suicide after being subjected to the degrading treatment. Describing the impact of Falder’s actions, one of his victims told the court: “I feel dirty, like used goods.”

In a statement, the victim said her personal relationships had collapsed because of the mental scars the traumatic experiences had left, and that she had consequently run away from home. “Part of me believes that’s all I am good for anymore – to be abused,” she said.

Judge Philip Parker QC told her she was “exceedingly brave” for coming to court.

The trial continues.

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Williams was found dead at his home on August 11, 2014, and the following day police confirmed his death was a suicide, believed to be caused by asphyxia due to hanging. Researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health analysed monthly suicide rates in the US before and after Williams’ death to examine the potential effect of high-profile suicide on the general population amid today’s 24-hours news cycle.

The study found that there were 1,841 more suicides than expected from August to December 2014. While higher numbers were found across gender and age groups, men aged 30 to 44 were particularly affected, with 577 more suicides than projected.

READ MORE: Robin Williams death confirmed a suicide

The death of Williams was widely reported in the media but initial reports did not mention Williams’ struggle with a form of dementia, researchers noted. “Williams’ death may have provided the necessary stimulus for high-risk segments of the US population, especially middle-aged men in despair, to move from suicidal ideation to attempt,” study author David S. Fink said.

The team analysed suicide rates from the Centers for Disease Control from January 1999 to December 2015 by sex, age, and method. “Specifically, we observed a 32.3 percent increase in the number of suffocation suicides in the five months that followed Williams’ death, compared to a 3.1 percent increase in the number of suicides from all other methods combined,” the study published in PLOS One journal notes.

“Although we cannot determine with certainty that these deaths are attributable to the death of Robin Williams, we found both a rapid increase in suicides in August 2014, and specifically suffocation suicides, that paralleled the time and method of Williams’ death,” Fink said.

The team also looked at news media reports on suicide and Robin Williams from June 2013 to January 2015. The World Health Organization has long had media guidelines for reporting on suicide, recommending media outlets avoid sensationalising the death and refrain from repetitive accounts of the story. Headlines in the case of Williams suggest that media outlets deviated from established suicide reporting guidelines, the paper noted.

Researchers also observed an increase in online posts about suicidal expressions and thoughts in the ‘SuicideWatch’ support forum on Reddit. Fink says the role of social media in the dissemination of information after the death of a celebrity is important to note, highlighting that in the case of Kurt Cobain’s suicide in 1994 there was minimal change in suicide rates.

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Soros, notorious in the UK for his links to a 1992 run on the pound, is among three donors backing the ‘Best for Britain’ campaign, which is lobbying MPs to call a second referendum or general election which would allow for the public to vote on any final Brexit deal, according to a strategy document leaked from a meeting of the group.

The Telegraph reports Soros also plans to recruit major Tory donors in an attempt to undermine Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit plans. The Hungarian-American reportedly hosted Tory and Labour donors at his house in London.

Among the guests at his house were businessman Stephen Peel, former Labour minister Lord Malloch-Brown and chief executive of WPP, Sir Martin Sorrell, it was reported.

Best for Britain plans to launch a nationwide advertising campaign this month, which they hope will lead to a second referendum. A leaked document says the campaign must “wake up the country and assert that Brexit is not a done deal. That it’s not too late to stop Brexit.”

It adds that a series of Momentum-style mass rallies and concerts are planned and the campaign will have a “heavy youth focus.” The memo also reveals a plan to “pressure” MPs in 100 Leave-supporting constituencies, and sets out how organizers “have a range of guerilla marketing tactics” to build momentum.

Best for Britain was co-founded by Gina Miller, who took the UK government to court over the triggering of the Article 50 process to leave the EU.

Soros is understood to have made the £400,000 ($555,154) donation through his pro-EU Open Society Foundation. The revelation comes after the magnate previously said the UK could re-apply to join the 27-member state bloc soon after Brexit.

The billionaire has already come under intense scrutiny after former UKIP leader Nigel Farage warned MEPs in Brussels over Soros’ “truly extraordinary” influence on Brexit. The comments were made after it emerged Soros injected $18 billion (£12.97 billion) into the Open Society fund.

“I fear we could be looking at the biggest level of international, political collusion in history,” Farage said in the European Parliament last year. “When we are talking about offshore money, when we are talking about political subversion, when we are talking about collusion, I wonder if we are looking in the wrong place.”

“And I say that because George Soros recently gave Open Society, which of course campaigns for freedom of movement of people and supranational structures like the European Union, $18 billion. And his influence here and in Brussels is truly extraordinary,” Farage said.

Lord Malloch-Brown confirmed Soros’ donation, saying the campaign is a “democratic and patriotic effort to recover our future and we welcome support for our efforts from many quarters.”

The news was reported in an article on the Telegraph written by May’s former chief of staff Nick Timothy, who claimed the Best for Britain campaign’s objective is “to convince MPs to vote against the deal Theresa May negotiates with Brussels, regardless of its content.”

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The texts were released in a 25-page report titled ‘The Clinton Email Scandal and the FBI’s Investigation of it,’ which was released by the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on Tuesday. The report included numerous messages between Strzok and Page, but noted that they “do not provide a full and complete picture” and that “further investigation and inquiry is necessary.”

Below are some of the extracts from the report.

FBI staffers could have been using non-official email accounts to conduct business: 

“Text messages exchanged between Strzok and Page suggest that FBI officials used non-official email accounts and messaging programs to communicate about FBI business. For example, on April 10, 2016—after Strzok expressed his frustration about being ‘left out of the loop’—he wrote to Page: ‘Gmailed you two drafts of what I’m thinking of sending Bill, would appreciate your thoughts. Second (more recent) is updated so you can skip the first.’ In another exchange, on October 25, 2016, about a letter to Congress regarding the Clinton investigation, Page wrote, ‘Remind me I need to ask you something. Tomorrow is fine.’ Strzok responded: ‘[S]ure. You can also imsg [iMessage] me.’ Strzok and Page also discussed Page potentially receiving an FBI-issued iPhone for which the FBI information technology office proposed to stop following ‘security/monitoring’ requirements. These texts raise questions about the FBI’s retention of records associated with its investigation.”

Questions on whether James Comey lied under oath: 

“On July 1, 2016, following Attorney General Lynch’s announcement that she would follow the FBI’s recommendation in the Clinton investigation, Page wrote, ‘it’s a real profile in couragw [sic], since she knows no charges will be brought’ against Secretary Clinton. Director Comey held the exoneration announcement press conference on July 5, 2016. Appearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on July 7, 2016, Director Comey testified that he ‘did not coordinate [his statement] with anyone. The White House, the Department of Justice, nobody outside the FBI family had any idea what I was about to say.’ These statements seem to be at odds. The statements by both Comey and Lynch were carefully crafted for public consumption. Page’s text message, in contrast, was never intended to see the light of day, was therefore more candid, and may have greater credibility. Because Director Comey’s July 7 statement was given under oath, this discrepancy requires further investigation.”

More anti-Trump rhetoric: 

“On August 9, 2016, Page wrote to Strzok about Trump, ‘He’s not ever going to become president, right? Right?!’ On August 15, 2016, Strzok replied to Page, ‘I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office—that there’s no way he gets elected—but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40…’ Because of what these texts imply, they demand further investigation.”

READ MORE: Newly revealed FBI texts raise questions about Obama’s involvement in Clinton email probe

“Throughout the primary and general elections, Strzok and Page repeatedly demonstrated hostility to then-candidate Trump and Republicans in general. Page called Trump a ‘loathsome human,’ before writing ‘I can not [sic] believe Donald Trump is likely to be an actual, serious candidate for president.’ Strzok called Trump ‘an idiot’ and opined Clinton ‘should win 100,000,000 – 0.’ Strzok and Page also used expletives to describe Trump. Page also expressed disdain for Americans participating in the 2016 March for Life, writing that she ‘truly hate[s] these people.’ Strzok called Virginians who apparently voted against FBI Deputy Director McCabe’s wife for a local Senate seat ‘ignorant hillbillys [sic].’ These statements raise questions about whether personal political bias may have affected the FBI’s investigation.”

Who are Peter Strzok and Lisa Page?

Peter Strzok is an FBI agent who was assigned to both the Clinton email probe and the Russia investigation. He was removed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation team over the summer, after Mueller learned of the texts. He was reassigned to the FBI’s human resources division at that time.

Lisa Page, a lawyer and Strzok’s mistress, was briefly on Mueller’s Russia investigation team. She left before the text messages were revealed, going back to work in the office of the FBI’s general counsel. Page has been described as a trial lawyer with vast experience in money laundering and organized crime cases.

Over the course of their two-year extramarital affair, Strzok and Page exchanged some 50,000 text messages. The last one was written by Page to Strzok on June 23, 2017. “Please don’t ever text me again,” she wrote. It remains unclear whether that message was written because she had become aware that their text exchanges had been discovered.

Additional text messages outlined in the report include one which raises the question of former president Barack Obama’s role in the Clinton email probe, and questions the timeline of when the FBI found out about relevant Clinton emails. 

The data, compiled by Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), shows the UK traded arms with Honduras in the year leading up to the Central American nation’s disastrous 2017 election – which saw mass social unrest and the assassination of Honduran environmentalists and political activists.

According to the Consolidated and National Arms Export Licensing Criteria, the UK does not grant licenses if there is a clear risk that the items sold might be used for internal repression.

Andrew Smith, a CAAT spokesman, told RT that by arming the regime in Honduras, the UK government is complicit in how this equipment is used.

“The UK has a long and shameful history of arming and supporting human rights abusing regimes,” Smith said.

“Since the Brexit vote there have been worrying moves towards even closer relationships with dictatorships and authoritarian rulers … The UK is at a crossroads, and irrespective of how people voted on Brexit, the vast majority of people want the UK to be a force for good in the world and stand up for human rights and democracy, not to arm and support human rights abuses.”

Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle, who sits on the new Committees on Arms Export Controls, also lashed out at Secretary of State for International Trade Liam Fox over the arms licensing, accusing him of being “complicit in the erosion of human rights in Honduras.”

“The British government has sold Honduras monitoring and decrypting technology expressly designed to eavesdrop on its citizens, months before the state rounded up hundreds of people in a well orchestrated surveillance operation,” Russell-Moyle told RT.

“British law is unambiguous. It says that the government cannot licence arms to nations that repress their own people.

“Before the government licensed these weapons it knew that the security services of Honduras were killing environmentalists, gay people and anyone in general who disagreed with them with impunity.

“It knew that the country had no independent judiciary, and it knew that Honduras’s deadly prisons are filled with people who have not faced justice, and may of whom are unfree due to their political beliefs.

“The government in general and Liam Fox in particular are complicit in the erosion of human rights in Honduras.

“I am not surprised the Tories don’t give a fig for human rights abroad but, as a new MP, I’m frankly astonished that the government so flagrantly breaks its own arms export law.”

Russell-Moyle has previously accused the Conservative Party of pushing forward with arms deals as a way to make the UK’s post-Brexit industrial landscape seem stronger.

“So why does Fox spend up to a billion pounds of our money every year to prop up such a controversial, dangerous and dysfunctional export industry? Because he is an ideologue. He believes that by exporting arms, Britain can somehow project power,” Russell-Moyle said in an op-ed for the Guardian in December.

A Whitehall source also told RT that “the UK’s post-Brexit industrial strategy is to let Liam Fox play fast and loose with UK arms export law and licence arms anywhere.”

A Department for International Trade (DIT) spokesman said assessments are made on a case-by-case basis to determine the impact of providing arms equipment and technology and its capabilities.

“The Government takes its arms export responsibilities very seriously operating one of the most robust arms export control regimes in the world,” the DIT spokesman told RT.

“Risks around human rights abuses are a key part of our licensing assessment.  

“We do not export equipment where we assess there is a clear risk that it might be used for internal repression, or would provoke or prolong conflict within a country, or would be used aggressively against another country.”

Fox has been approached for comment.

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By Rachel Lang, RT UK

Reading proficiency among third graders in Flint has dropped from 41.8 percent in 2013 to 10.7 percent in 2017.

Flint switched its water supply in April 2014, which sparked the water’s lead contamination. Officials failed to adequately treat the water coming from the Flint River, which caused the pipes to corrode, leading to lead contaminating the water. Dangerous levels of bacteria were also found in the water, and an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease killed 12 people.

Lead is a neurotoxin and poisoning can affect a child’s IQ, attention span and can stunt their growth and cause behavioral issues.

While reading proficiency has declined across Michigan as a whole, going from 61.6 percent to 44.1 percent between 2013 and 2017, the fall in Flint is more severe.

Just between between 2016 and 2017, reading proficiency scores in Flint dropped by half. Currently only 10 percent of the district’s third-graders are considered proficient. When it comes to math, only 10 percent of Flint’s third graders are considered proficient, compared to 46.8 percent statewide.

A number of factors contribute to the statewide decline, including increased standards and new testing which were introduced in 2015.

“We’re in crisis mode,” Flint school board vice president Harold Woodson told the Detroit Free Press. Woodson has placed a nurse in each of the district’s elementary schools and is “investing more in looking at the behavior of the children,” but warned, “the impact from the lead might not manifest itself for another year or two.”

Woodson also highlighted the need to address poverty in the area, which he said contributes to the low scores.

Michigan Superintendent of Education Brian Whiston said the figures are “not acceptable,” but pointed to the more difficult exam which was introduced a few years ago as playing a part in the drop.

“I certainly think that some of the [drop in proficiency] could be due to it [lead poisoning],” Whiston told the Free Press. “But some of it could be stress. I’m certainly disappointed that it’s at that level. These families have gone through a lot of stress. So I wouldn’t be surprised to hear things dropped considerably.”

Flint only introduced a registry to assess residents exposed to lead in the water two weeks ago. The city has long been criticized for its failure to address the crisis, and is yet to replace all of the contaminated water pipes in the area.  

When Flint residents began complaining about the water looking and tasting different soon after the switch, officials denied there was anything wrong. But further testing revealed dangerous levels of lead in the water, along with rising levels of lead in children’s blood. The water supply wasn’t switched back until October 2015.

Last year, a group of Flint students filed a lawsuit against the state which accused officials of failing to help children affected by lead poisoning.

The mission has been launched from within the Tory party, in order to find an MP who can stop the increasingly ambitious Brexiteers, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson, from taking the reins from Theresa May.

The backbenches are being scoured in the hunt for a “Stop BoMogg” candidate – a task as cringeworthy as the title given to it.

Despite Brexit-backing, red-line supporting Rees-Mogg gaining support from Tory members and backbenchers, several pro-EU MPs have warned they could not support a party with him at the helm.

As May’s premiership becomes increasingly fraught, the cracks in cabinet are no longer easy to hide. One insider said there is “whiff of death” around May’s administration after a year of rumored coup plots.

Remain supporters Justine Greening and Anna Soubry hinted this week that they could walk away from the party if hardline Brexiteers take control of government,

A hypothetical leadership race presents serious problems for the Remainers, which also include Chancellor Philip Hammond. ‘Spreadsheet Phil’ is unlikely to be backed, while none amongst his allies are popular options either.

The promotion to the role of defense secretary of May’s ally, Gavin Williamson, caused outrage among top military brass, and Jeremy Hunt is deeply unpopular over problems with the NHS.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd has hardly made an impression on the national popularity radar, and her majority in the Hastings constituency remains dangerously slim.

Although some observers are predicting the emergence of up to 20 candidates in the race for the Tory leadership, not a single name has the current appeal of Rees-Mogg, who has battered the government in media interviews and has come close to accusing Downing Street of failing on Brexit.

Soubry also blasted the PM in a BBC interview when she told her to ‘grow a backbone.’ She told Newsnight on BBC Two: “If it comes to it, I am not going to stay in a party which has been taken over by the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson. They are not proper Conservatives.”

“It is easy to keep one person off the final ballot that goes to members,” one senior minister said. “It is harder to stop two. We need an ‘Anybody but BoMogg’ candidate.”

Others are backing Soubry in a split that could rupture the fractured party. “She is spot on,” said one senior minister. “This needs saying. People will not put up with this Johnson, Mogg, Gove nonsense. They need to shut the f*** up.”

Insiders believe BoJo will run for PM with Rees-Mogg and Michael Gove at his side, claiming the May leadership could fall at any moment. One cabinet minister told The Times: “It could all suddenly end tomorrow. If someone texted me now and said she’d resigned I wouldn’t be all that surprised. There is a whiff of death about it all.

“It’s not absolutely clear who in Downing Street is running things — it’s just about getting through to the end of the day. There’s no vision, no plan, it’s just about survival.”

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In December, Moscow declared the defeat of all major Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) terrorist clusters in Syria and withdrew the bulk of its forces from the country. The US however kept 2,000 troops to “advise and assist” the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which have repeatedly clashed with pro-government troops in recent years.

On Wednesday, the US-led coalition said it was forced to retaliate against “pro-regime” forces after foreign troops embedded with the SDF allegedly came under fire east of the Euphrates River. Paul Vallely, a retired US Army Major General and Chairman of the Stand Up America organization, warned that unless Washington changes course in Syria more clashes are bound to erupt between the opposing forces.

“There has always been a motive to see Assad removed and a new government and a new leader put in Syria. I know that has been one of the motivations of the United States,” Vallely told RT.

Further complicating the situation, the US troops fighting alongside Syrian Kurdish militias have recently become collateral targets of the Turkish army, which alongside another umbrella organization, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), continues to advance into the Syrian province of Afrin. ‘Operation Olive Branch’ was launched after the US ignored its NATO ally’s repeated calls to abandon arming and supporting Kurdish elements on its borders.

Washington, however, continues to manipulate its “partners” to maintain a stronghold in Syria, and even mulled creating a 30,000-strong Kurdish dominant border force to secure control of Syria’s north. Yet in Iraq, the US abandoned the Kurds when they voted for Kurdistan’s independence and faced a crackdown by Baghdad.

“The Turks do not want to see an independent Kurdish state,” said Vallely. “The United States is ambivalent partly because they support the Iraqi government through northern Iraq and the Kurds there. Yet, on the other hand, you get caught in the middle whether there should be an independent Kurdish state in the northern part of Syria and Iraq. And that has got to be worked out.” He called on Washington to come to the negotiations table and discuss the ongoing Syrian crisis with both Ankara and Moscow.

“The United States and Russia can solve this problem if they can sit down and work something out with all Syrian elements, all organizations,” Vallely noted, urging for all sides to negotiate. “They have to look at the part of the Free Syrian Army, they have to look at the Kurds in northeastern Syria,” the retired general stressed, warning that unless that happens “we’re going to see a continuation of these conflicts.”

One thing the retired US general failed to mention is that the US refused to attend the Syrian Congress of National Dialogue in Sochi, which saw a massive turnout of over 1,500 delegates, representing various groups of Syrian society. After two days of discussions, the congress, brokered by Russia, Iran and Turkey, reaffirmed its full commitment to the “sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and unity” of Syria.

The congress in Sochi was not designed to replace but rather to boost the UN-sponsored Syrian peace process, which has stalled for years. Yet the Saudi Arabia-based High Negotiations Committee (HNC), an umbrella body created back in 2016 to represent some of the Syrian rebel groups at the Geneva talks, decided to boycott the congress.

Despite major breakthroughs in the battle against IS and the ongoing reconciliation process, the US announced its desire to remain in Syria indefinitely. Damascus in its turn is determined to “end the presence of the US,” which pledged to continue to back the SDF to counter Bashar Assad and Iranian influence in the Kurdish dominant part of Syria. Russia meanwhile sees such a change of emphasis as preparation for carving up Syria.

“It’s very likely that the Americans have taken a course of dividing the country. They just gave up their assurances, given to us, that the only goal of their presence in Syria – without an invitation of the legitimate government – was to defeat Islamic State and the terrorists,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned earlier on Wednesday.

“Now they are saying that they will keep their presence till they make sure a steady process of a political settlement in Syria starts, which will result in regime change,” the minister said during a conference in Sochi, stressing that the US has “plans of virtual division of Syria.”

The UK mum was tied up, shoved into the back of a car, and held captive after flying to Milan for what she believed would be a luxury photoshoot, it is claimed.

The trial of Lukasz Herba began in Italy on Wednesday, with the Polish man accused of planning to sell the model as a sex slave. Chloe, 20, was drugged and held captive in an isolated farmhouse for six days before being released, a court was told.

The mother-of-one states that her capture was botched when the men realised she had a child. They proceeded to leave her in a suitcase outside the British consulate in Milan last July.

The prosecutors at Milan’s main criminal court say the model from Coulsdon, South London, would have been sold for a quarter of a million pounds.

Herba arrived at the Corte d’Assise today for a trial expected to last several weeks, during which prosecutor Paolo Storari is reported to be calling more than 50 witnesses.

The accused, who faces up to 25 years in prison, claims the abduction was a publicity stunt and Ayling had agreed to take part in the plot with him and his brother Michal

The other Herba brother is in prison in Britain, awaiting extradition to stand trial in Italy.

Lukasz Herba is accused of being part of the so-called ‘Black Death’ group on the “dark web.” It is reported that users of the dark web pay huge fees to buy women who have been kidnapped from across Europe. Herba reportedly handed Ayling a business card for Black Death when he let her go.

The trial continues.

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Messages between FBI agent Peter Strzok and bureau attorney Lisa Page, who were having an extramarital affair at the time, were included in a 54-page appendix to the 25-page report released late Tuesday by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee.

President Donald Trump seemed excited by the discoveries, calling the texts “bombshells.”

By contrast, the Democrats’ media operatives dismissed them as irrelevant, and used the timing of one of the messages to argue it had nothing to do with the Clinton investigation.

So, which is it?

Multiple outlets have pointed out that this couldn’t have had anything to do with the Clinton email investigation, since that had been closed in July. The FBI only reopened the probe in late September, after finding a number of emails from Hillary Clinton’s home server on the laptop of disgraced congressman Anthony Weiner, husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin.

It’s worth noting that the text exchange reveals that those emails were found on September 28, 2016, a month before Comey publicly informed Congress about reopening the probe. Comey’s letter came less than two weeks before election day, amid the daily drip of emails from Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta’s private account being released by WikiLeaks. Clinton and the Democrats later blamed Comey and Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe for her loss, but that abruptly stopped after Comey’s firing by President Donald Trump in May 2017.

It is far more likely that Strzok’s text refers to the FBI briefing Obama on the so-called “Russian collusion” probe, the bureau’s counterintelligence investigation into the Clinton camp’s claims that Trump was somehow in league with the Russian government.

Take that, Republicans! Except if that’s the case, it raises even more questions about what Obama knew and when.

Though the committee’s report was titled ‘The Clinton Email Scandal and the FBI’s Investigation of it,’ it clearly wasn’t limited to it. The Strzok-Page texts included in the appendix continue long after the probe was closed for the second time, with the very last one dated June 25, 2017.

There is no denying that the texts show the two FBI officials’ absolute disdain for Trump. For example, on election night of November 8, 2016, Strzok describes the results as “f***ing terrifying” and Page responds with “Omg, I am so depressed.”

On November 14, Page references a meeting that makes her angry, because there is “lots of high fallutin’ [sic] national security talk. Meanwhile we have OUR task ahead of us.”

Wasn’t the FBI’s probe into Trump’s “Russia collusion” a national security matter? What, then, was “our task” that Page was referring to? Inquiring minds would want to know.

There are also references to someone possibly within the FBI leaking to the New York Times and the Washington Post, but the names of the suspected leakers have been redacted. Strzok complains on June 15, 2017 about being excluded from a meeting on leaks, even though dealing with those is “what I do for a living.”

This is just two FBI officials whose biases were brought into the open because they carelessly exchanged over 50,000 text messages, plus emails and iMessages. An unknown number of texts between mid-December 2016 and mid-May 2017 were not included in the document, presumably because the FBI told the Senate they had been “misplaced.” The bureau’s inspector-general says he has them, however.

What these texts reveal, or hint at, is not quite a slam-dunk some of President Trump’s supporters would like it to be. But they are hardly nothing, as Democrats claim. In Washington, however, truth still takes a back seat to politics.

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The article, which was also reported by RT UK among other publications, headlined ‘Two Freemasons’ lodges operating secretly at Westminster’, claimed there are two lodges up and running at parliament, namely the New Welcome Lodge, which recruits MPs, peers, and parliamentary staff, and the Gallery Lodge, reserved for the political press corps.

A letter of complaint issued by the United Grand Lodge of England (UGLE) and published on Freemasonry Today’s website on Tuesday, however, claims the lodges are not operating covertly, as their meeting place – reported to be in Camden, north London – is in fact “open to the public.”

It also dismissed claims that the ‘brotherhood’s’ existence is so covert that journalists at Westminster are completely oblivious to it.

The article claims the New Welcome Lodge, has about “30 to 40 members… only about four of the current members are MPs.” But the UGLE branded the statement “fictitious,” as it merely has 22 members, none of whom are MPs.

“The article stated ‘Exclusive: Lodges for MPs and journalists are so covert even lobby reporters do not know members.’ The Lodges in the article do not have any MPs or journalists as members,” the letter by the UGLE CEO David Staples said.

Challenging the Guardian’s “exclusive”, the letter claims that details of the Lodges’ foundations had been already been reported by the Daily Telegraph.

The complaint also outlines how there have been Wikipedia pages on both lodges for the past 12 years, and how they have also been referenced in academia.

“It is therefore willfully misleading for the Guardian to state that the Lodges operate secretly or to imply that their existence is ‘secret’ or ‘covert,’” Staples writes.

Staples accuses the Guardian of “damaging” the reputation of Freemasonry, as he writes: “By publishing inaccuracies which foster and promote popular prejudices against Freemasonry concerning corruption, power and control, the article damaged the reputation of the United Grand Lodge of England as a membership organization and encouraged further discrimination against individual Freemasons.”

The United Grand Lodge of England has demanded the Guardian to retract the article and issue a formal apology.

The Guardian has not responded to RT’s request for comment at the time of publication.

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“I am looking to get a position teaching English to students in the Islamic State,” the jobseeker wrote in a letter to the ‘Director’ of a university in Mosul, northern Iraq. Warren Clark, who graduated from the University of Houston, referred to himself by his jihadi name, Abu Muhammad al-Ameriki, in his letter.

Clark went on to outline his experience teaching English, which includes a stint in Saudi Arabia. “I consider working at the University of Mosul to be a great way of continuing my career,” he said. Mosul was an IS stronghold until it fell to coalition forces in July 2017. 

“I am looking to get a position teaching English to students in The Islamic State,” he wrote.

The unusual job application was revealed in the George Washington study, ‘The Travelers: American Jihadists in Syria and Iraq,’ which examined Americans who traveled to join jihadist groups in the Middle East.

The application was apparently found in a house in Mosul. “We had a source in Iraq whose neighborhood was taken over by ISIS fighters and when it was taken back by Iraqi forces, there were documents left behind and that’s how we received the cover letter and resume,” Seamus Hughes of the university’s Program on Extremism told NBC.

Clark is thought to have joined IS and is believed to be still alive. At least 64 Americans have joined the terrorist group in Iraq and Syria. The report states at least 50 others were stopped by law enforcement before they could leave the US.

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Students from the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS) gathered outside the university to protest against GI’s “increase in activity in the UK in general, but specifically within university campuses.”

GI is an ethno-nationalist movement which was founded in France and then spread across the EU, with its most prominent chapters in Austria and Germany.

One of the group’s tenets is ‘ethnopluralism,’ an idea which advocates racial segregation as a means of preserving ethnic differences.

Britain first had a taste of the alt-right group when one of the movement’s key activists, Markus Willinger, visited London to address a meeting of the far-right Traditional Britain group back in 2013.

Then in 2017, the group garnered media attention over its Defend Europe mission – an attempt to hamper NGOs’ efforts to save migrants from drowning in the Mediterranean.

In July that year, a Facebook page for Generation Identity Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland was launched, billing itself as the “newest branch of the pan-European Identitarian movement.” The page currently has just over 3,000 followers.

Now SOAS students, known for their social activism, are protesting against the group allegedly distributing propaganda on it campus and “showing this off” in a video.

One of the SOAS demonstrators, who went by the pseudonym Ben Blissit, told RT the public should not be deceived by the GI’s claim to be any different from “fascism.”

“They are commonly described as the alt-right and try to construct themselves as a pretty face of fascism, using pseudo-intellectual items.

“Which is why they try to place themselves into universities doing flyering, and lots of outreach… to differentiate themselves from the fascism that we traditionally recognize, even though in our opinion the message is the same.”

The protest comes as the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) revealed last year that far-right extremism now accounts for nearly one-third of terrorism cases referred to the government’s flagship counter-radicalization program Prevent.

The Prevent strategy itself has come under the spotlight ever since it was implemented in schools and universities in 2015. The program obliges staff workers and academics to “have due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism.”

While it claims to tackle all forms of extremism, the strategy has been accused of being “built upon a foundation of Islamophobia and racism,” and was ineffective and counterproductive.

Muslim communities across England, however, are understood to have expressed distrust in the system after being quizzed about it by Max Hill QC, the government’s independent reviewer of terrorism laws, in the wake of the Westminster, Manchester, London Bridge, and Finsbury Park attack.

When asked if he thought the group’s establishment in the UK represents an increased terrorist threat by the far-right, Blissit said: “We don’t think fascism has never not been a threat.”

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By Claire Gilbody-Dickerson, RT

The cyber-crime network, known as the Infraud Organization, operated under the slogan “in fraud we trust,” the DOJ told reporters on Wednesday. Members of the group were charged on nine criminal counts, including wire fraud, computer crimes, and conspiracy to racketeer.

The group used a scheme that enabled the purchase and sale of US Social Security numbers, as well as birthdays and passwords stolen from around the world.

“Today’s indictment and arrests mark one of the largest cyberfraud enterprise prosecutions ever undertaken by the Department of Justice,” said John Cronan, Acting Assistant Attorney for the DOJ’s Criminal Division.

Infraud members “operated like a business to facilitate cyberfraud on a global scale,” Cronan said. The network was formed in 2010 by Svyatoslav Bondarenko, a 34-year-old Ukrainian, according to the indictment.

Prosecutors claim that the scammers aimed to inflict losses of $2.2 billion in stolen revenue.

The indictment “marks a significant step in the battle against transnational cyber crime,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General David Rybicki told reporters on a conference call Wednesday.

The department also alleged that the network provided an ‘escrow,’ or third party account, to allow people to launder their money using digital currencies including Bitcoin, Liberty Reserve, Perfect Money and WebMoney.

Of the 36 people indicted, 13 have been arrested in the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Serbia and Kosovo, the breakaway Serbian province the US has recognized as an independent state. Other defendants have yet to be caught and the investigation is ongoing.

The online giants had reportedly offered to send their top American executives to London to face the inquiry, but according to sources familiar with the offer, the Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee shunned the idea. They decided to fly 11 MPs across the pond for the one-day hearing instead, BuzzFeed reports.

The MPs in fact landed on Tuesday for a three-day trip, although it is unclear what the Commons personnel intend to do once the Thursday hearing is over.

BuzzFeed was told by a committee spokesperson that Facebook and Google executives had expressed a desire to give the testimony in the US.

Nonetheless, in what is bound to leave the public even more baffled is the fact that not only did the MPs have to travel to the US, but the executives themselves were still forced to travel across the continent, as all the tech firms are based in California.

“It’s also worth noting the US executives attending are based in California,” said a source familiar with the witnesses at the inquiry. “Not only is the whole delegation flying from London to New York and Washington but the executives – who had offered to come to London – are also flying across the United States to see them.”

Conservative MP and inquiry chairman Damian Collins is trying to pressure the internet giants into giving evidence of ‘fake news’ on their platforms to the Commons.

He has been relentlessly trying to dig up ‘the truth’ on the alleged Russian interference in the Brexit vote and 2017 general election. The US companies, however, have repeatedly stated they have found no evidence that could substantiate Russia’s alleged attempt to influence the EU referendum outcome.

On Thursday, each tech company will be questioned for an hour as it faces the committee in a small room at George Washington University. Among them will be Google’s vice president of news, Richard Gingras, YouTube’s global public policy chief, Juniper Downs, Facebook’s head of policy, Monika Beckert, and Twitter’s US-policy chief, Carlos Monje.

READ MORE: Hypocrisy? Experts slam Tories’ fake news security unit as govt ‘peddles misinformation’

The trip has stirred even more controversy as it emerged that the MPs will also be invited to attend a drinks event hosted by the News Media Alliance, the lobbying group for the US newspaper industry, an obvious competitor of Facebook and Google.

David Chavern, CEO of the News Media Alliance, dismissed claims it amounts to a conflict of interest at the hands of British MPs.

“I know ‘hosted’ is a word you’re digging to use,” Chavern told BuzzFeed News. “Let me be very clear; We are holding a reception for them. That is all.”

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Ithaca High School group Students United Ithaca wrote a letter in January requesting the role of Esmeralda be re-cast after a white student was chosen to play the Roma character.  

The students described the actress as being the “epitome of whiteness,” due to her blonde hair and hazel eyes. “At best, this is cultural appropriation. At worst, it is whitewashing, a racist casting practice which has its roots in minstrelsy,” the letter wrote.

The group called on the school to recast the role with some of “the many talented brown and black female students,” at Ithaca. Alternatively, it urged the school to choose a different play with new auditions.

The students pointed to the play’s “message of inclusion, particularly for those who have historically been oppressed,” and explained Esmerelda’s “oppression, and that of her people, which allows her to better understand the perspective of the Hunchback and to ultimately advocate for him.”

The school announced the decision to cancel the production last Monday, and said another collaborative project would take place instead.

“The active community engagement and conversation about the selection of the Hunchback of Notre Dame for the Ithaca High School musical has led to many conversations in our school district,” the school said in a statement. “This dialogue has affirmed our observations and wishes to have a more inclusive and culturally responsive learning community.”

The student group also posted an updated version of the letter on Facebook, which calls on the school district to stop “hiring adults who have heard complaints from theater professionals, concerned parents of color, and social justice activists time and time again, and have not listened or changed their actions.”