Random News: October 11, 2023

DISCLAIMER: Zak's Random News is very random and doesn't cover many things, and not everything may be accurate, because I'm just some guy. Go find a real news source.

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Good morning. It’s October 11, 2023, and it’s a Wednesday. Some folks call it a Humpday; I call it Wednesday. Lots of news happening in this beautiful but sad world, and we’re better off knowing than not, so let’s do it.

• I mentioned the other day that the USA was sending the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group to the Eastern Mediterranean Sea in order to deter any actor seeking to escalate the situation or widen the war between Israel and Hamas.
• What is the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group?
• It includes the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, with its 8 squadrons of attack and support aircraft, and the Ticonderoga class guided missile cruiser USS Normandy, as well as the Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyers USS Thomas Hudner, USS Ramage, USS Carney, and USS Roosevelt.
• We’re also moving more U.S. Air Force F-15s, F-16s and A-10s to augment existing fighter squadrons in the region.
• Seems like a bad idea to fuck with them.
• Israel’s military says it is amassing hundreds of thousands of troops near the Gaza border “to execute the mission we have been given” from Netanyahu’s government. Israel is expected to launch a ground offensive on the Gaza Strip in an attempt “to make sure Hamas won’t have any military capabilities.”
• It easy to have mixed feelings about this. If you’re like me, you support ridding the world of evil terrorism and getting payback for what’s been done to Israel, and at the same time you also hope that innocent Palestinian people who are just trying to lead normal lives and have nothing to do with Hamas don’t end up suffering the worst of this.
• But that will happen.
• The social media platform owned by Elon Musk called X (formerly known as Twitter) said it is removing accounts affiliated with Palestinian terror group Hamas in an effort to curb the spread of terrorist content online. 
• Users on X have shared more than 50 million posts related to the attack. Some of the posts mischaracterized video or showed graphic footage and have driven the spread of misinformation. 
• X said it will remove newly created Hamas-affiliated accounts and take other steps to stem the proliferation what it referred to as terrorist content on the platform. They also said they’re monitoring the platform for antisemitic speech, which would be a first for them since Elon took it over.
• Meanwhile, Thierry Breton, the European commissioner for the internal market, said in a letter addressed to Musk yesterday that his office has indications that groups are spreading misinformation and violent and terrorist content on X, and urged the billionaire to respond within a 24-hour period.
• Failure to comply with the European regulations around illegal content could result in fines worth 6% of a company’s annual revenue.
• Moving on.
• House Republicans are gathered this morning to pick their nominee for Speaker. It could be a lengthy process, but just how lengthy will depend on whether the GOP adopts a rules change intended to keep the “mess” behind closed doors.
• And as they struggle to come to a consensus, Republicans are staring down a looming government funding deadline and the outbreak of war in Israel. Both items require a Speaker to coordinate the processes of legislation.
• At the moment, they’re even more useless than usual.
• Let’s move on.
• Dozens of witnesses who were interviewed in the federal investigation that led to a four-count indictment against former President and current accused felon Donald John Trump withheld information on the basis of an assertion of attorney-client privilege, per special counsel Jack Smith's office yesterday.
• Smith's office is asking U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan to require El Dumpo’s team to disclose by December whether he plans to argue at trial that he relied on the advice of counsel in the aftermath of his 2020 election loss.
• If Dumples plans to invoke the defense, Smith's team argued that prosecutors should gain access to additional communications between the former president and his lawyer.
• Indeed.
• In related news, yesterday Jack Smith urged Judge Chutkan to implement measures aimed at protecting the confidentiality and safety of potential jurors.
• Smith’s team wants the judge to authorize a questionnaire to begin screening potential jurors in early February, about a month before the case is scheduled to go to trial. That process would help weed out potential jurors who express an inability to participate in the case or judge the matter fairly, but it also would expose their identities to the attorneys in the case.
• No one trusts El Dumpo to not have the jurors or their families harassed or threatened or even killed. That’s the kind of guy he is.
• In other news of the Orange Menace and his Gang of Assholes…
• Per new filings yesterday, prosecutors in the Georgia election interference case are seeking testimony from Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones for the upcoming trial of lawyers Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell.
• Prosecutors are also seeking testimony from former Wisconsin election official Andrew Hitt, one of the fake electors involved in the effort to upend the 2020 vote.
• Get their asses.
• Let’s move on. Hey, how about that lovely guy George Santos (R-NY)?
• A superseding indictment made public yesterday charges Rep. George Santos with stealing the identities of family members and using donors’ credit cards to spend thousands of dollars.
• This fresh round of charges against Santos brings the total number of counts against him to 23. This indictment is wider in scope and provides new and damaging details about Santos’ alleged efforts to personally profit through his campaign.
• We mentioned the other day that Nancy Marks, who worked as his treasurer during the 2022 campaign, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States by committing one or more federal offenses.
• That almost surely means she’ll be acting as a witness for the prosecution against Santos. No one deserves to get thrown out of office more than that guy.
• In related news, Long Island Democrat Thomas Suozzi announced a bid yesterday to retake his former congressional seat now held by Santos.
• Suozzi held New York’s 3rd Congressional District seat for three terms, defeating Santos when he first ran in 2020.
• In other news, dozens of students were trampled Monday night during a candlelight vigil supporting Israel at the University of Florida after a woman fainted at the event.
• Some 30 people were reported injured in the stampede, which university officials say was triggered by “misunderstanding and panic” when campus police officers responded to the woman having a medical issue.
• Calm the fuck down people. Jesus.
• In other news… Ukraine and Israel aren’t the only countries having problems.
• The United States has officially concluded that a military coup d’etat has taken place in Niger, something I mentioned a couple of months ago. As a result, we are suspending most U.S. assistance to the government of Niger. 
• Despite that, the US will maintain life-saving humanitarian, food, and health assistance to benefit the people of Niger, and will continue to work with regional governments, including in Niger, to advance shared interests in West Africa.
• This world is not a happy place right now.
• Moving on…
• Some news I meant to mention a few days back and forgot, but it’s kind of important.
• Hackers have scraped info from the genetic testing service 23andMe, and compiled a giant list of people with Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry
• A database that has been shared on dark web forums has a list of 999,999 people who have used the service. It includes their first and last name, sex, and 23andMe’s evaluation of where their ancestors came from. The database is titled “ashkenazi DNA Data of Celebrities,” though most of the people on it aren’t famous, and it appears to have been sorted to only include people with Ashkenazi heritage.
• People like me.
• The company is still investigating the incident, but the leak is authentic. 23andMe claims it wasn’t hacked per se. Instead, it believes that the hackers simply gained some users’ passwords that had been hacked and leaked from other sites, then exploited the fact that 23andMe can give users vast access to each others’ genetic information.
• 23andMe did a forced reset of all users’ passwords in an attempt to curtail more data scraping, but the damage seems to have been done. What will people do with such a list? 
• I guess if someone wants to go around killing all the Jews, they now have an easily obtainable reference source to do so.
• Moving on.
• Big case at the Supreme Court this morning. They are considering whether the lines of a congressional district in South Carolina are a racial gerrymander that violates the Constitution in a case that tests the intertwining of race and politics.
• The SCOTUS will weigh a ruling from a three-judge district court panel in South Carolina that found state Republican lawmakers intentionally let race drive the design of Congressional District 1.
• What makes this case interesting is it's the first racial gerrymandering claim involving a heavily White district where the claim is that race was used to artificially suppress the Black population of a district.
• We’ll keep an eye on that.
• Five women have sued Tim Ballard, whose life experiences rescuing children from sex traffickers inspired the conservative-lauded movie “Sound of Freedom,” accusing him of sexual assault and battery.
• The lawsuit comes a month after it was publicly revealed that Ballard had resigned from the nonprofit child rescue group he founded, Operation Underground Railroad, or O.U.R.
• Ballard was under investigation by an outside firm hired by O.U.R. for allegedly coercing at least seven women to act like “wives” while on overseas missions.
• And now, The Weather: “Gone 2” by Slow Pulp
• From the Sports Desk… the Baltimore Orioles, who’d had one of the best records in the regular season and went into the ALDS is the top seed, has been swept in three games by the Texas Rangers.
• In other MLB playoffs updates, the Houston Astros lead the Minnesota Twins 2-1 in their series. The Atlanta Braves and Philadelphia Phillies are locked up at 1-1. And the Los Angeles Dodgers are down 2-0 versus the Arizona Diamondbacks, who could complete a sweep tonight unless the Dodgers step the fuck up.
• Today in history… The Daughters of the American Revolution is founded (1890). San Francisco sparks a diplomatic crisis between the United States and Japan by ordering segregated schools for Japanese students (1906). Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first U.S. president to fly in an airplane (1910). The Duke and Duchess of Windsor tour Nazi Germany for 12 days and meet Adolf Hitler a couple weeks later (1937). CBS's field-sequential color system for television is the first to be licensed for broadcast by the FCC (1950). NASA launches Pioneer 1, its first space probe, although it fails to achieve a stable orbit (1958). NASA launches Apollo 7, the first successful manned Apollo mission (1968). Aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan becomes the first American woman to perform a space walk (1984). The AIDS Memorial Quilt is first displayed during the Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights (1987). Professor Anita Hill delivers her televised testimony concerning sexual harassment during the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination (1991). NASA launches STS-92, the 100th Space Shuttle mission (2000). Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that he will extend the settlement freeze if the Palestinian leadership recognizes Israel as a Jewish state, an offer the Palestinians quickly reject (2010).
• October 11 is the birthday of businessman Henry J. Heinz (1944), activist Emily Davison (1872), US first lady Eleanor Roosevelt (1884), racist real estate developer Fred Trump (1905), director/choreographer Jerome Robbins (1918), drummer/bandleader Art Blakey (1919), singer-songwriter Dottie West (1932), singer-songwriter/guitarist Daryl Hall (1946), politician Patty Murray (1950), NFL player Steve Young (1961), actress Joan Cusack (1962), actor Luke Perry (1966), actress Jane Krakowski (1968), rapper MC Lyte (1970), director Justin Lin (1971), rapper Cardi B (1992), and NFL player T. J. Watt (1994).

There’s always more news than I can give you in the time I allot to this activity. Hopefully you learned something, and maybe you started looking deeper into these stories that interest you. Enjoy your day.