The prestige press has some explaining to do — for subjecting the nation to a long, cruel ordeal named “collusion” and “obstruction.” Almost two years and millions of column inches later,
Here are the 10 worst, drawn from among many more:
10. CNN bungles Comey testimony
It took four bylines — including those of CNN stars Jake Tapper and Gloria Borger — to completely botch the most important aspect of former FBI Director James Comey’s June 2017 congressional testimony.
No senior US official has done more damage to the credibility of the intelligence community than John Brennan. Last month, Brennan confidently predictedthat “Friday [March 8] is the day the grand-jury indictments come down” against Trump associates and family members over “criminal conspiracy involving the Russians and US persons.” Nope.
6. The Guardian concocts a collusion meeting
Among foreign outlets, none covered itself in as much shame as The Guardian. The British paper in November 2018 published a story — bylined to superstar writer Luke Harding and two others, one of whom later mysteriously disappeared from the paper’s Web site — about secret talks between one Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort and WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange that took place at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. The sourcing was flimsy, to put it generously, and sure enough, as Glenn Greenwald notes at The Intercept, “Nothing in the [Mueller] report even hints, let alone states, that [Manafort] ever visited Julian Assange.”
“The Trump campaign worked behind the scenes” ahead of the Republican National Convention “to make sure the new Republican platform won’t call for giving weapons to Ukraine to fight Russian and rebel forces.” So reported The Washington Post’s Josh Rogin.
4. The Atlantic accuses Jeff Sessions!
In June 2017, the combustible young reporter Julia Ioffe wrote an article for The Atlantic, running to several thousand words, that cast doubt on former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ claim that he didn’t meet with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak as a Trump surrogate but rather as a matter of routine in his role at the time as a US senator.
3. David Corn’s dossier debacle
It was the document that set off the whole shebang. In October 2016, days before the election, David Corn of Mother Jones wrote of an unnamed “former senior intelligence officer for a Western country,” Christopher Steele (unnamed at the time), who claimed that the Russians had dirt on Trump they could use to blackmail him.
2. McClatchy catches Michael Cohen in Prague
Speaking of the dossier, remember when McClatchy’s Greg Gordon and Peter Stone reported that Mueller had evidence that Trump consigliere Michael Cohen had “secretly made a late-summer trip to Prague during the 2016 presidential campaign,”
1. Buzzfeed knows who told Cohen to lie
Which brings us to the top foul-up of the whole sordid saga. That would be BuzzFeed’s report, by Jason Lepold and Anthony Cormier, in January claiming that Trump had directed Cohen to lie to Congress about talks to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.
Dozens of people braved wind and rain on Good Friday to attend the 25th annual “Way of the Cross” drama in downtown Greensburg.
For the 17th time, Rick Zabrosky reprised his role as Jesus in the hours before his crucifixion — driven relentlessly through the streets of Greensburg by eight Roman soldiers.
“It truly brings the Scriptures to life,” Zabrosky, of Greensburg, said. “I have been stopped after the event by several people who joined the procession and told how moving it was and how it brought tears to their eyes.”
The re-enactment started on the steps of the Westmoreland County Courthouse with Jesus’ trial before Pontius Pilate. Following his sentencing, he was led by the guards down a route comprising South Main Street, West Otterman Street, South Pennsylvania Avenue and West Third Street.
Yellow vest protestors in Paris battled police during violent clashes Saturday–newly enraged at the billions of dollars that have been pledged to rebuild fire-damaged Notre Dame Cathedral, overshadowing their anti-wealth cause.
Former Vice President Joe Biden is expected to join the crowded 2020 Democratic presidential race next week.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Vice President Joe Biden is expected to join the crowded 2020 Democratic presidential race next week.
The decision answers one of the most significant outstanding questions of the early presidential primary season, which has already seen announcements from 18 high-profile Democrats. Biden, 76, would be the oldest and most experienced politician in the race.
His plans were confirmed by three people with knowledge, who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The announcement is expected as early as Wednesday and would cap months of deliberation over his political future.
A 5-year-old boy who authorities say was thrown from a third-floor balcony at Mall of America is showing “real signs of recovery,” a lawyer for boy’s family told CBS Minnesota on Friday. Police said the suspect, Emmanuel Aranda, told them he went to the mall “looking for someone to kill” and chose the boy at random.
“We have good news to share with you on this Good Friday. Our miracle child is showing real signs of recovery. New test results have been positive, though he remains in intensive care with a long road ahead,” attorney Stephen Tillitt said Friday on behalf of the boy’s family.
Surveillance video at the mall shows Aranda walking in the mall on the third floor, looking over the balcony several times, before approaching the victim and his mother, CBS Minnesota reports.
A woman who pleaded guilty to reckless driving for running over her 9-year-old son while dropping him off at school in Michigan has been ordered to serve 30 days in jail.
It’s time to pour one out, because BlackBerry Messenger is shutting down.
It was announced today that the consumer version of BBM is closing on May 31st, 2019. After that date, the BBM app will stop working. Emtek, who licensed the BBM consumer business from BlackBerry in 2016, says that BBM stickers and BBMoji can’t be exported out of the app, so you won’t be able to use them after the shutdown. You can issue refunds of your in-app purchases for stickers that you’ve bought, though.
Teenage victim found shot in area of Dinsmore and Pirl streets
“Detectives learned that the victim was with some of other teens in the 1300 block of Hamilton Street when an unknown person began shooting at them. Only the victim was hit by the gunfire,” police said in a written statement.
Investigators have not established a motive for the shooting.
No suspects have been identified. Homicide detectives continue to investigate.
Anyone with information is asked to call the county’s tip line at 1-833-ALL-TIPS (1-833-255-8477). Anonymous calls will be accepted.
Democrats in Congress are debating how to pick up Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation where he left off. Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, joins “CBS This Morning” to discuss his plans to subpoena the full Mueller report and why he doesn’t think Attorney General William Barr is doing his job properly.
An armed right-wing militia group operating along the U.S.-Mexico border posted several videos to social media this week, including one in which they held about 200 asylum seeking migrants at gunpoint near Sunland Park, NM until U.S. Border Patrol agents arrived.
Police in Northern Ireland say the dissident republican group the New IRA was probably responsible for the fatal shooting of a journalist during overnight rioting in the city of Londonderry.
Three prominent mountain climbers are presumed to have died in an avalanche that hit Alberta’s Banff National Park this week.
American alpinist Jess Roskelley and Austrian climbers David Lama and Hansjörg Auer were missing after they tried to climb the east face of Howse Peak on the Icefields Parkway and “local search and rescue has assumed the worst,” outdoor apparel company The North Face said in a statement. The three were reported overdue on Wednesday, one day after the avalanche struck.
It took a couple deflected shots to get pucks past the Capitals netminder
Last night, through two periods and change, Capitals netminder Braden Holtby looked dialed in, like he was going to be tough to beat. The Penguins kept at it, giving him their best looks but he was all over everything sent his way.
Into the third period, you could just feel that it was going to take a bounce or something tricky to get one behind him and the floodgates might open.
The Penguins rallied from down 2-0 to up 3-2 in 4 minutes and 46 seconds, with two of the three goals coming on deflected pucks from in front of the net.
On the first goal, Justin Schultz exercised great patience to wait out a diving Alexander Ovechkin before putting a shot on net that Patric Hornqvist would redirect around the defense and past Holtby.
Minutes later, Sidney Crosby would send a puck towards the Capitals net, where Jake Guentzel would get a stick on and just find enough room past Holtby to give the Penguins the lead, which they would hold onto for the 3-2 win.
A New Jersey man’s plans for his winnings include helping his family, others and restoring a classic sports car.
(CNN) —
Richard Wahl had $22 in his pocket to buy gas, a Diet Coke and a few Mega Millions lottery tickets. Days later, he won one of the largest lottery jackpots in history.
Wahl, of Vernon, New Jersey, won the $533 million Mega Millions jackpot on March 30 after playing the lottery two times. He has decided to take the cash option of $324.6 million over the annuity.
“I drive past that (Mega Millions) sign every day and don’t buy,” he told reporters Friday at a press conference at the New Jersey Lottery headquarters in Trenton where he was announced as the winner.
Wahl, 47, purchased his first ticket last month just after chatting with a co-worker about retirement. He didn’t win.
A week later, he stopped at a Lukoil gas station in Riverdale, New Jersey, went inside the store and bought more tickets.
When the winning numbers were announced on Good Friday, he initially thought he had won $1 million.
You may want to check your eggs as more than 200 million are being recalled because of potential salmonella contamination.
The eggs that are part of the recall can be identified by the plant number, P-1065, with the Julian date range of 011 through 102 printed on either the side portion or the principal side of the carton or package.
The FDA urges consumers to stop using the recalled eggs right away and return them to the store you bought them from for a full refund.
According to the FDA, the recalled eggs may be contaminated with salmonellabraenderup, an organism that can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems. Healthy individuals can experience fever, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain.
Videos posted online show officers handcuffing the men in the downtown establishment Thursday
Melissa DePino@missydepino
@Starbucks The police were called because these men hadn’t ordered anything. They were waiting for a friend to show up, who did as they were taken out in handcuffs for doing nothing. All the other white ppl are wondering why it’s never happened to us when we do the same thing.
“What did they do,” one man can be heard saying in the video. Another says, “They didn’t do anything, I saw the entire thing.”
Late Saturday, Starbucks’ CEO Kevin Johnson issued a statement saying the situation had a “reprehensible outcome.” He promised the company has “immediately begun a thorough investigation of our practices.”
Johnson insisted “Starbucks stands firmly against discrimination or racial profiling.”
If you still haven’t filed your tax return (which is due April 17 this year), you’re far from alone
The IRS processes about 152 million individual returns every year. As of April 6, just over 103 million had been filed. That means nearly 50 million taxpayers have either spent the last week scrambling to locate key documents and file their returns, or have scrambled to locate key documents and instead filed for an extension.
Nearly 1 in 10 tax filers takes advantage of an even further delay that IRSautomatically grants: the 6-month extension. About 14 million Americans will get an extension this year, the IRS said in a press release.
An extension, however, only serves to delay any refund you have coming; any tax owed must be paid by Tuesday.
Western leaders warned Syria on Saturday that they could launch further missile strikes if chemical weapons are used again, while the pre-dawn attacks were denounced by Damascus and its backers as illegal actions that would carry repercussions.
U.S. forces were “locked and loaded” to strike again if Syria unleashed another chemical assault, said Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, at an emergency Security Council meeting called by Russia.
Most major credit cards are dropping the requirement to sign a receipt or bill, citing changing technology
Credit card signatures are now going the way of old-fashioned carbon copy slips: discarded in favor of streamlined transactions.
The three major credit card companies will stop requiring signatures on purchases this week, with MasterCard, American Express and Discover relaxing their policies on Friday and Visa set to do so on Saturday. It doesn’t mean that you won’t be asked to sign receipts ever again, but the change is likely to result in fewer of your John Hancocks landing on the dotted line.
The reason for the change is due to technology and changing consumer habits. Inan October blog post about the pending changes, MasterCard said that more than 4 out of 5 transactions in North America didn’t require a signature at checkout.
Getting rid of the signature requirement “is another step in the digital evolution of payment and payment security,” MasterCard executive vice president Linda Kirkpatrick wrote in the blog post.
For many years cardholders were required to sign their name when they purchased something by credit or debit card. But think about the purchases you’ve made over the past week or month. How many of them required you to sign on the dotted line? In my case, I made three quick stops on the way into work this morning and didn’t scribble my name for any of those purchases.
Did you know that more than 80 percent of Mastercard in store transactions in North America today do not require a cardholder signature at checkout? That number could now reach 100 percent after April 2018, when we will no longer require signatures at checkout for any credit or debit purchases in Canada and the U.S.
Eliminating the need for signature is another step in the digital evolution of payments and payment security. At first glance, this might sound like a radical proclamation, especially to people who have had credit and debit cards for decades. However, the change matches all of our expectations for fast and convenient shopping experiences. Our consumer research found that a majority of people believe it would be easier to pay and that checkout lines would move faster if they didn’t need to sign when making a purchase.
President Trump on Saturday praised an allied nation airstrike on the Assad regime in Syria, thanking France and the United Kingdom and declaring “Mission Accomplished!”
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
A perfectly executed strike last night. Thank you to France and the United Kingdom for their wisdom and the power of their fine Military. Could not have had a better result. Mission Accomplished!
Pentagon officials said the attacks targeted the heart of Assad’s programs to develop and produce chemical weapons.
Syrian television reported that Syria’s air defenses, which are substantial, responded to the attack. Syrians poured into the streets for defiant demonstrations of their national pride.
”We don’t know the situation, but to make this choice, to be strong enough to make this choice is wonderful.”
MICHIGAN CITY, Ind. —
For the second time in five months, an infant has been left in a baby box at a northwestern Indiana volunteer fire station.
Lt. Chuck Kohler of the Coolspring Township Volunteer Fire Department outside Michigan City said everything worked as planned and he was on scene tending to the baby girl less than a minute after receiving a page Sunday night that the Safe Haven Baby Box’s alarms had been triggered.
WSBT reports the infant still had the umbilical cord attached.
“The whole first responder, father thing kicks in. You want to make sure that the baby is OK,” Kohler said.
He said there are no words to describe how he felt when he heard the child crying inside.
“When I pulled the baby out of the box, actually my first thought was ‘baby Grace’… ‘Saving Grace.’ It just popped into my head,” said Kohler.
Kohler said he wants to thank Grace’s parents for putting the child somewhere safe.
“We don’t know the situation, but to make this choice, to be strong enough to make this choice is wonderful,” said Kohler.
The girl appeared healthy and was taken to a hospital for care. She will be placed in the custody of the Indiana Department of Child Services.
On Nov. 7, another baby girl was safely rescued after being left in the box. She was named “Hope.”
The padded, climate-controlled baby box was installed about two years ago. There’s also one near Fort Wayne.
A body was found in the Allegheny River in Blawnox on Thursday.
According to the Allegheny County Police Department, someone called 911 around 7:30 p.m. to report a male floating in the Allegheny River near Sycamore Island.
A single tree plunged more than half of the island’s population into darkness. It was a humbling reminder for some that power restoration is not yet complete in more remote parts of the island.
One tree was all it took. Around 12:30 p.m. on Thursday, a wayward trunk tumbled over onto a major transmission line in Puerto Rico’s still-fragile electrical grid and cut power to roughly 840,000 customers, affecting more than half of the island’s population.
Officials from the island’s electric utility company – PREPA — said the accident occurred in the region of Cayey, where crews were working to restore power to people still waiting nearly seven months after Hurricane Maria. Increasingly, that work requires clearing away heavily forested mountainsides to gain access to the large utility poles that carry transmission lines from one mountain peak to the next.
Pope Francis is celebrating Easter Mass this year facing a fresh round of bloodshed targeting Christians in Sri Lanka.
A mayor in Westmoreland County has resigned in the wake of being accused of pointing a gun at teenagers earlier in April.
The prestige press has some explaining to do — for subjecting the nation to a long, cruel ordeal named “collusion” and “obstruction.” Almost two years and millions of column inches later,
Yellow vest protestors in Paris battled police during violent clashes Saturday–newly enraged at the billions of dollars that have been pledged to rebuild fire-damaged Notre Dame Cathedral, overshadowing their anti-wealth cause.
Former Vice President Joe Biden is expected to join the crowded 2020 Democratic presidential race next week.
The Duquesne Incline was stuck and 40 passangers were trapped on board for nearly two hours Thursday afternoon.
Teenage victim found shot in area of Dinsmore and Pirl streets
At least one person was shot and flown to a hospital after a shooting early Friday morning in Uniontown, emergency dispatchers said.
An armed right-wing militia group operating along the U.S.-Mexico border posted several videos to social media this week, including one in which they held about 200 asylum seeking migrants at gunpoint near Sunland Park, NM until U.S. Border Patrol agents arrived.
Police in Northern Ireland say the dissident republican group the New IRA was probably responsible for the fatal shooting of a journalist during overnight rioting in the city of Londonderry.
Three prominent mountain climbers are presumed to have died in an avalanche that hit Alberta’s Banff National Park this week.
It took a couple deflected shots to get pucks past the Capitals netminder
:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/10731523/Screen_Shot_2018_04_27_at_8.42.17_AM.png)
Steamboat Geyser — the world’s tallest active geyser — erupted Friday morning in Yellowstone National Park.
A New Jersey man’s plans for his winnings include helping his family, others and restoring a classic sports car.
Melissa DePino@missydepino
If you still haven’t filed your tax return (which is due April 17 this year), you’re far from alone
A senior Pentagon official told reporters that the Syrian government still retained a “residual” chemical capability after the attack.
President Trump on Saturday praised an allied nation airstrike on the Assad regime in Syria, thanking France and the United Kingdom and declaring “Mission Accomplished!”
Donald J. Trump
”We don’t know the situation, but to make this choice, to be strong enough to make this choice is wonderful.”
A body was found in the Allegheny River in Blawnox on Thursday.
