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This evening's music features r&b singer Little Esther Phillips. Enjoy!

“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable...”

-- H.L. Mencken

News and Opinion

More releases at The Intercept of Snowden docs today. There's some pretty interesting stuff in the mix. Here's a teaser:

Iraqi Insurgents Stymied the NSA and Other Highlights from 263 Internal Agency Reports

Early in the fight against al Qaeda in Afghanistan and insurgents in Iraq, the National Security Agency was blindsided by enemy fighters’ frequent use of rudimentary wireless communications devices known as “high–powered cordless phones,” according to documents among 263 published today by The Intercept.

The documents, drawn from the agency’s internal news site, SIDtoday, and provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, date mostly to the latter half of 2003, and show the NSA was at the time rapidly expanding its internet monitoring. But even as its digital surveillance grew more sophisticated, the agency saw its targets increasingly adopting crude forms of communications like shortwave radio, SMS cellphone messaging and, most vexingly, high-powered cordless phones. The “poor man’s cell phones,” as the cordless devices were called, spread through Afghan borderlands and along Iraqi roadsides. Meanwhile, the NSA was scrambling to fill what one SIDtoday article referred to as an “intelligence gap” around the devices. The agency assembled more than 500 people at Fort Meade, including foreign intelligence partners and contractors, in order to understand, and plan how to crack into, a type of communication “increasing exponentially worldwide,” as an internal bulletin put it.

The NSA’s scramble to monitor cordless phones helps illustrate how the agency, despite its best efforts to predict the future, can end up blindsided. Just as the military after the Cold War continued to buy sophisticated weapons for use against conventional forces, leaving it poorly prepared for guerilla warfare, so too did the NSA’s state-of-the-art mass internet surveillance leave it unprepared for enemies in rural areas with crude radios.

Ukraine Masses Troops on Crimea Border

Ukrainian residents are reporting that their nation’s military is massing troops and heavy military equipment along the border with the Crimean Peninsula today, following reports from Russian officials of an attempted infiltration of the peninsula, which the Russians identified as a Ukrainian government incursion, and attempted terrorist plot. A Russian soldier and a member of the FSB security service were reported slain in that weekend incident.

Details of the weekend incident are still emerging, but Russian officials reported gunfire, and having captured several of the plotters, who they suspect of being with Ukrainian intelligence, who were aiming to set up a spy network to attack infrastructure in the peninsula.

Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko confirmed the buildup, amid claims of Russian helicopters spotted inside Crimean territory. He added that Ukrainians “should understand that at any minute” a large-scale war with Russia could begin.

Ukrainian officials went on to claim Russian President Vladimir Putin was plotting to invade them because of the weekend cross-border incident, though of course Ukraine’s government has been predicting an imminent Russian invasion for over two years now, with nothing coming of it.

Poroshenko orders forces on border with Crimea and eastern Ukraine on highest alert

Oh my. There's now a flutter of speculation that Putin will invade Ukraine. There's not a bit of propaganda in this Guardian piece. Nope. None at all. There is a clear asymmetry between the sides of this conflict. Apparently, when Putin wants something done he sends "little green men" whom we are told are actually special forces troops - clearly military actions. When the Ukranians engage in some sort of action, like blowing up infrastructure, according to The Guardian, it's "activism." Go figure.

Vladimir Putin may believe time is ripe for another invasion

The situation in Crimea looks ominous. Russia’s FSB spy agency said on Wednesday that it had foiled a series of attacks by armed Ukrainians on the peninsula. Minutes later, Vladimir Putin accused Kiev’s pro-western government of choosing terror over peace. Meanwhile, largely unnoticed by the outside world, Russia has been stealthily shipping military vehicles to Crimea, which Putin annexed in the spring of 2014.

What is going on? As ever in the opaque world of neo-Kremlinology, nobody quite knows. But two years after Putin sent “little green men” – actually undercover Russian special forces soldiers – to overrun Crimea, another military offensive seems distinctly possible. Crimea’s “parliament” said Ukraine had already launched an undeclared war. Ukraine says the supposed plot is FSB fiction.

The new Crimea crisis has come from nowhere. Over in the east there have been daily clashes between pro-Russia rebels and Ukrainian government forces in Donestk and Luhansk, with a spike in recent weeks. But the Perekop isthmus, the rustic sliver of territory between Crimea and Ukraine’s southern Kherson province, has been quiet. There was no fighting here even in 2014, when Putin staged his land grab. ...

In the meantime, Crimeans, most of whom still support Russia, have suffered a series of electricity blackouts and other indignities. Last November Ukrainian activists blew up energy pipelines to Crimea, plunging homes into darkness. People ate dinner by candlelight, factories shut down and for the first few days even traffic lights stopped working. The peninsula’s water supply is also vulnerable. It gets all of its water via the north Crimean canal, currently in Ukraine.

Take this one with a grain of salt. Sky News says claims to have discovered the Russian Blackwater:

Hundreds of secret Russian mercenaries are dying in Syria's civil war, report alleges

On Wednesday, Britain-based Sky News reported that a private military company called 'Wagner' — illegal under the Russian constitution — has been recruiting hundreds of men and flying them down to Syria on Russian military transport planes.

The two men interviewed by Sky News, whose names have been changed to Dmitry and Alexander, claim they were paid the equivalent of $3,900 a month to fight against rebel factions, including the Islamic State. This, despite Russia's claims the only people it has on the ground are instructors and military advisors, and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev telling a German newspaper in February that the presence of foreign powers in Syria could unleash a world war.

Dmitry told Sky News that about 500 to 600 Russians have died in Syria, which stands in stark contrast to the official Russian casualty count of 19.

Wagner is headed by a former special forces soldier known as Nikolai Utkin, who has been described in Russian media as an admirer of the Nazi German Third Reich, with 'Wagner' being an homage to Adolf Hitler's favorite composer, Sky News reported.

Turkish Admiral Seeks Asylum in US

Turkish Rear Admiral Mustafa Ugurlu has formally requested asylum in the United States, following a Turkish government “detention order” which sought to capture him in the wake of last month’s failed military coup. Turkey has rounded up large numbers of generals and admirals in a broad purge of military leadership since the coup.

Rear Admiral Ugurlu is in a different situation, however, because he was stationed in Virginia at the time of the coup, at NATO’s Allied Command Transformation headquarters in Norfolk. Turkish embassy officials say that on July 22, he left his badges and ID at the base and “disappeared,” refusing to turn himself in for detention. ...

Whether the US hands him over or grants his request for asylum, they’re likely to get a considerable backlash, either from the international community in general or from Turkey. Handing Ugurlu over without a hearing would risk accusations the US is kowtowing to Turkey, and doing so after a hearing would suggest the highest ranking Turkish military officer in the US at the time was involved in the coup, which itself would raise more rumors of US complicity.

Turkish officials have been less than understanding about requests for evidence before extraditing Gulen, and are doubtless to be even more adamant that Ugurlu must be returned. In refusing, the US would risk worsening bilateral ties with the key ally even more, and Turkey’s pro-Erdogan media would seize upon it as proof the US is protracting people involved in “their plot.”

Ongoing violence in Aleppo

Lawsuit Aims to Contest US Aid to Clandestine Nuclear Power Israel

A new lawsuit filed by the director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy aims to put an end to some 40 years of the US government violating its own International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act of 1976, related to providing military aid to clandestine nuclear weapons power.

In this case the focus is on Israel, which is widely acknowledged to have a substantial nuclear weapons arsenal, but is not a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Since 1976, the US has provided some $234 billion in military aid to Israel, with a new record deal expected to be finalized soon.

The intention of the law (in particular the Glenn Amendment) was to ensure that the US was not supporting, even indirectly, any nation which had embarked on a program to create nuclear arms. The law provided a loophole, which would allow a president to continue such aid if he could both certify the aid was a key US interest AND that the country in question was to put its entire program under IAEA auspices. Israel, however, has had no such intentions.

The lawsuit further alleges that the US government has made it a matter of policy since 1976 to keep Israel’s nuclear program a secret, citing the FOIA recovery of a heavily redacted directive of the Department of Energy which effectively banned all US officials and contractors, under threat of prison, from mentioning Israel’s nuclear capabilities.

‘Am I not speaking English?’ Reporters grill State Dept over Clinton emails

Emails renew questions about Clinton Foundation and State Department overlap

A new batch of U.S. State Department emails released Tuesday showed the close and sometimes overlapping interests between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department when Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state.

The documents raised new questions about whether the charitable foundation worked to reward its donors with access and influence at the State Department, a charge that Clinton has faced in the past and has always denied.

In one email exchange, for instance, an executive at the Clinton Foundation in 2009 sought to put a billionaire donor in touch with the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon because of the donor's interests there.

In another email, the foundation appeared to push aides to Clinton to help find a job for a foundation associate. Her aides indicated that the department was working on the request. ...

Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, charged that Clinton "hid" the documents from the public because they appeared to contradict her official pledge in 2009 to remove herself from Clinton Foundation business while leading the State Department.

The documents indicate, he said in a telephone interview, that "the State Department and the Clinton Foundation worked hand in hand in terms of policy and donor effort."

Julian Assange to be questioned inside embassy as Ecuador agrees to set date

Julian Assange will be questioned by Swedish prosecutors inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, in a possible breakthrough to end the impasse over his case.

The Ecuadorian attorney general delivered a document agreeing to a request by the Swedish prosecutor to question the founder of WikiLeaks. ...

He has offered to be questioned inside the embassy but Swedish prosecutors have only recently agreed.

A statement issued in Ecuador said: “In the coming weeks a date will be established for the proceedings to be held at the embassy of Ecuador in the United Kingdom.

Half of immigrants held in US 'priority' program have no criminal conviction

A program intended to prioritize the deportation of immigrants who officials call “the worst of the worst” is missing its target, according to a new report.

An analysis of requests by federal officials for local jails to keep immigrants suspected of violating US immigration law in custody found half of the so-called “holds” were placed on people who had been arrested but actually had no criminal conviction.

Some had been picked up during traffic violations, or had their charges dropped. But their arrest triggered a process that ended with their federal immigration detention, and in many cases led to deportation proceedings.

Just one quarter had committed the most serious types of offenses, such as murder or sexual assault, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which is based at Syracuse University and obtained the records through an open records request. The most common conviction was for drunk driving, followed by miscellaneous assaults and simple traffic offenses.

Film-makers demand inquiry into 'targeting' of people who record police

A group of more than 40 documentarians, including eight Oscar winners, has called on the justice department to investigate the “harassment” and “targeting” of citizen journalists who record episodes of police violence.

Noting that the citizens who filmed the deaths of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Freddie Gray and Eric Garner were all subsequently arrested, film-maker David Sutcliffe wrote in an open letter to the documentary community that it is “vital we defend the rights of these individuals to use video as a means of criticizing unjust police activity”. ...

The letter, which is attached to a statement directed at the DoJ, calls actions such as this “evidence of a pattern of systemic and vindictive targeting by law enforcement”, adding that the efforts “reveal an intention to suppress footage, intimidate witnesses, control narratives, obscure brutality and punish”.

Racist & Illegal: Justice Department Slams Baltimore Police for Targeting Black Residents

Vindication for Baltimore Police Critics — But No Action

In the report released Wednesday, Justice Department investigators concluded that over five years, Baltimore officers made 10,163 unlawful arrests, and that the more than 300,000 pedestrian stops during that period were concentrated in predominantly African-American neighborhoods and often lacked reasonable suspicion. ...

“It’s sad that we need an official report to verify things Black citizens have been saying for decades,” Ralikh Hayes, a coordinator with the grassroots Baltimore BLOC, which denounces police abuse in Baltimore on a daily basis, wrote in a message to The Intercept. ...

“We think any DOJ investigation is useless unless we are talking about divesting and demilitarizing as a solution, because they don’t cause transformative change but Band-Aid solutions and Band-Aids can’t solve cancer,” said Hayes. “The culture of policing in this city is extremely corrupt and little things like policy reforms won’t fix it.”

A DOJ “pattern and practice” report, if nothing else, settled arguments about whether there is a problem or not — and usually sets in motion processes for reform like consent decrees between cities and the department. ...

The investigations establish a record and can be used by communities over time to “hold officials’ feet to the fire” and demand accountability and progress, Ezekiel Edwards, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Criminal Law Reform Project, said. But, he acknowledged, they are “a limited remedy.”

That sets the stage for frustration and cynicism around these DOJ investigations —particularly when coupled with the fact that practice and pattern reports don’t hold individual officers accountable.

Baltimore Residents from Rep. Elijah Cummings to Local Activist Speak Out on Being Stopped by Police

Baltimore officers cited for mistreatment of women in DoJ report

The primary findings of the report focused on widespread racial bias in the patterns or practices of Baltimore police department, but there’s another strain of allegations: gender-based bias and mistreatment.

The justice department documented numerous instances in its report of hostility toward alleged sexual assault victims, callous treatment of female suspects, public strip-searches and even allegations of sex in exchange for immunity.

“They treat us differently, they call us bitches, whores, prostitutes, tricks,” one of the women who gave testimony to the DoJ but wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation said of treatment by police.

The DoJ, however, did not deem its findings widespread enough to find that the police department as a whole engaged in “gender-biased policing in violation of federal law”.

The DoJ cites a disturbing email between a police officer and a prosecutor “in which they openly expressed their contempt for and disbelief of a woman who had reported a sexual assault: the prosecutor wrote that ‘this case is crazy … I am not excited about charging it. This victim seems like a conniving little whore. (pardon my language).’; the BPD officer replied, “Lmao! I feel the same.”

“Unfortunately, we were not made aware of these assertions and we do not know the author of this email,” a spokesperson for the state’s attorney’s office said. “If we did, we would take appropriate action for such insensitivity. We denounce any survivor of sexual assault being referred to as a ‘whore’ or any other derogatory term.”

Baltimore Councilman: We Are Past Dialogue, Systemic Police Abuse Must End Now

New NYPD Commissioner’s Focus on Community Policing Is a Distraction, Not a Solution

When New York Mayor Bill de Blasio introduced incoming Police Commissioner James O’Neill last week, he praised him as the “architect” of neighborhood policing — the city’s version of the “community policing” approach being implemented across the country as a solution to the increasingly contentious relationship between law enforcement and people of color. ...

But members of these communities say that knowing their local cops won’t stop them from getting killed by the police. Trust must be earned through accountability, they say, not optics. Advocates for radical change to the country’s policing culture have become increasingly critical of community policing as a meaningless, politically expedient catchphrase that is used to deflect attention from deeper problems within police departments. ...

Community policing has been promoted nationwide, including by President Obama and the Justice Department. But critics say it means nothing when the community remains powerless over policing practices — and that won’t change with more cops walking the beat or handing out ice cream instead of traffic tickets, as officers in Virginia recently did in a widely mocked initiative that, to some, demonstrated the shallowness and tone-deafness of community policing proposals. ...

“We’re fed this idea that we need dialogue,” Lumumba Bandele, a member of the New York-based Communities United for Police Reform, said. “You don’t go to someone who’s in an abusive relationship and say, ‘We need to have more dialogue.’ No, I want the power to stop my abusers. I want to be able to have the power to prevent it.”

In New York, that has yet to happen.

Win for Telecom Giants as Court Puts Dagger in Municipal Broadband

A federal appeals court on Wednesday struck down the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) effort to expand municipal broadband.

Reuters described the decision as "a win for private-sector providers of broadband internet and a setback for FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler."

For his part, Wheeler, who had promoted the policy, said the decision "appears to halt the promise of jobs, investment, and opportunity that community broadband has provided in Tennessee and North Carolina," adding, "The efforts of communities wanting better broadband should not be thwarted by the political power of those who, by protecting their monopoly, have failed to deliver acceptable service at an acceptable price."

In Feb 2015, the FCC passed rules to preempt state limits on municipal broadband rules in North Carolina and Tennessee. That move was praised as "a watershed moment that will serve as a check against the worst abuses of the cable monopoly for decades to come."

But on Wednesday, "A three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit rejected the FCC's justification of its authority and struck down the agency's action," The Hill reports.

Republicans have themselves to blame for the slow economy, study says

Report blames lackluster pace of recovery on GOP-led budget cuts, unwillingness of local officials to spend money, and their refusal to expand Medicaid

The US’s slow recovery from the 2008 recession is due to Republican policies on the local, state and federal level, according to a new study published by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI). ...

The EPI report blames the lackluster pace of recovery on Republican-led budget cuts in 2011 following the row over the US debt ceiling, the unwillingness of local officials to spend money when Republicans in Congress were advocating cuts in spending, and the refusal to expand Medicaid in 19 states.

The report comes as the Republican party once again calls for the reining in of government spending and reductions in the deficit.

“Given the degree of damage inflicted by the Great Recession and the restricted ability of monetary policy to aid recovery, historically expansionary fiscal policy was required to return the US economy to full health,” writes Josh Bivens, research and policy director at EPI.

“But this government spending not only failed to rise fast enough to spur a rapid recovery, it outright contracted, and this policy choice fully explains why the economy is only partially recovered from the Great Recession a full seven years after its official end.”

Clinton Must More Forcefully Reject TPP or Risk Losing Election: Groups

Following in Donald Trump's always-controversial footsteps, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton will give a much-anticipated speech on her economic policy plans in Michigan Thursday—and progressives nationwide are demanding Clinton use the opportunity to roundly reject the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal.

Clinton needs to do so in order to capture the votes of the working and middle classes, observers argue.

[Yeah, yeah. Are these people threatening to withhold their own votes? C'mon, show some commitment, folks! -js]

Indeed, progressive voices are making the case to Clinton that she risks losing the November election if she doesn't convince voters nationwide of her anti-TPP stance—specifically, if she fails to push against President Barack Obama's attempt to have the trade agreement ratified during the upcoming lame-duck session of Congress.

Trump isn't backing down from comments some see as a violent threat against Clinton

Donald Trump and his surrogates on Wednesday attempted to walk back his comments on "Second Amendment people," pulling a dog-eared page from the GOP playbook: blame the media.

The message from Team Trump was not about the words themselves but the interpretation that they were a wink to gun owners that they might have to take matters into their own hands to defend gun rights.

"If [Hillary Clinton] gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do folks," Trump said at a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina. "Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is."

Trump's pal and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani dismissed the remarks on ABC's Good Morning America on Wednesday, saying "the Clinton spin machine is responsible for making a mountain out of a molehill."

That time in 2008 when Hillary Clinton said Obama might be assassinated

This week’s controversy over comments by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and the assassination of his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton by “second amendment people” echoes a flap during the 2008 primary when she mentioned the possibility of someone killing Barack Obama.

For those who don’t remember the events of eight years ago, the Illinois senator had all but locked down his historic nomination, but former first lady was holding on until June, refusing to concede.

She explained during a May 23 editorial board interview with the South Dakota newspaper The Argus Leader that “historically” it made “no sense” for her to drop and that she found it a “bit of a mystery” why so much pressure was being applied to her.

When pressed further, Clinton then raised the memory of Robert F Kennedy’s assassination, and the possibility of Obama getting murdered, as the reason why she was hanging on in there.

Clinton later apologized for the remarks, stating that she had been misconstrued and that her point was that there have been “nomination primary contests that go into June. That’s a historic fact.”

The Great White Hype: No One Is Energizing the White Working Class, Not Even Donald Trump

It has become an article of faith among political pundits that GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump is energizing the white working class.

This week alone, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said Trump could compete in Pennsylvania because of the “sort of white working class bastions that would provide him opportunities to win”; CNN political commentator Matt Lewis declared that Trump’s “populist, protectionist, anti-globalist trade politics … I think plays well with a lot of working class Americans out there”; and conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell “The white poor, the white working class in America feels very cut out by elites like you and me,” but “Trump is tapping into them in a big way.”

And yet, as New York Magazine’s Ed Kilgore recently noted, poll numbers actually show that Trump is now less popular with the white working class than Romney was. In 2012, Romney won 62 percent of noncollege-educated white voters. The latest NBC-Wall Street Journal poll showed that Trump isn’t even winning a clear majority with the group, with just 49 percent backing him. A McClatchy/Marist poll puts him even lower, at 46 percent. This is a reversal from earlier in the summer, when Trump’s support among the group was in the 60s, higher than Romney’s, though not by leaps and bounds.

Much of the analysis of Trump’s support was based on the fact that he did very well indeed among a particular group of white working-class voters early on: those who planned to vote in the GOP primary. ... Just 14 percent of eligible adults took part in the presidential caucuses and primaries, 9 percent of the total American population. White working-class Trump voters were a small subset of that number, not really enough to make much of a difference. ...

If a candidate were to come along who was able to win most white working-class voters – and energize them enough to boost their overall voter participation – that would indeed be noteworthy. But the evidence so far suggests Trump isn’t that candidate.

To Stop Climate Change, Don’t Just Cut Carbon. Redistribute Wealth.

Boulder, Colorado made history in 2006 by enacting the country’s first municipal-level carbon tax. Voters reauthorized it by a landslide in 2012 — in part, no doubt, due to an annual revenue haul of nearly $2 million. Jurisdictions in Maryland and California have since followed suit and set up their own municipal carbon pricing mechanisms.

But a clean energy economy catalyzed by a carbon tax is only a progressive victory if it’s also a just economy. That means the policies to fight climate change also have to help end inequality. Why? Because the two are inextricably linked.

Sure, wealthy people may be in a better position to buy an electric car, cover their roofs in solar panels, and pay a premium for energy-saving appliances. But studies, including one by economists Thomas Piketty and Lucas Chancel, show that the rich are actually super-polluters. In the United States, the top 1 percent of income earners have an average carbon footprint two orders of magnitude bigger than someone in the bottom 10 percent of income earners.

A carbon tax could help transfer wealth from people at the carbon-intensive top to less polluting middle and lower-income households, and ensure the costs of addressing climate change are distributed equitably. But it this won’t happen automatically. It will take thoughtful and inclusive policy design and implementation.

An epic Middle East heat wave could be global warming’s hellish curtain-raiser

Record-shattering temperatures this summer have scorched countries from Morocco to Saudi Arabia and beyond, as climate experts warn that the severe weather could be a harbinger of worse to come.

In coming decades, U.N. officials and climate scientists predict that the region’s mushrooming populations will face extreme water scarcity, temperatures almost too hot for human survival and other consequences of global warming.

If that happens, conflicts and refugee crises far greater than those now underway are probable, said Adel Abdellatif, a senior adviser at the U.N. Development Program’s Regional Bureau for Arab States who has worked on studies about the effect of climate change on the region. ...

Parts of the United Arab Emirates and Iran experienced a heat index — a measurement that factors in humidity as well as temperature — that soared to 140 degrees in July, and Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, recorded an all-time high temperature of nearly 126 degrees. Southern Morocco’s relatively cooler climate suddenly sizzled last month, with temperatures surging to highs between 109 and 116 degrees. In May, record-breaking temperatures in Israel led to a surge in ­heat-related illnesses.

Temperatures in Kuwait and Iraq startled observers. On July 22, the mercury climbed to 129 degrees in the southern Iraqi city of Basra. A day earlier, it reached 129.2 in Mitribah, Kuwait. If confirmed by the World Meteorological Organization, the two temperatures would be the hottest ever recorded in the Eastern Hemisphere.

France fires: 2700 hectares of land ravaged in Marseille region

Hundreds evacuated from path of wildfire in southern France

Hundreds of people are still unable to return to their homes in Marseille, but authorities have said that wind-whipped fires are no longer threatening the southern French city.

At least two wildfires had been burning toward the Mediterranean port, forcing the airport to reroute incoming flights to make way for firefighting aircraft. With winds still high, authorities said on Thursday the danger was not over for some nearby towns, and roads in the area were closed.

Whipped on by high winds, the blaze destroyed homes in the town of Vitrolles, about 25km (15.5 miles) north of Marseille, and in nearby Pennes-Mirabeau.

Firefighters in Portugal are also battling multiple blazes fed by brush in a hot, dry summer for a sixth straight day. A total of 186 wildfires were counted on Wednesday on Portugal’s mainland alone and on Thursday, 12 were burning out of control.

Meanwhile, Spanish authorities said five major fires were raging in the north-western region of Galicia, with 10 others under control.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Leftists Against Clintonism: It's Not Just About the Lies, It's About the Record

Hillary Clinton’s Turn to McCarthyism

Hate Trump? You should still hold Clinton's feet to the fire

Google Maps Palestine row: why neutrality in tech is an impossible dream

Housing official in Silicon Valley resigns because she can't afford to live there

A Little Night Music

Little Esther Phillips - MoJo Hannah

Little Esther - Wild Child

Little Esther - If its News To You

Esther Phillips - The Double Crossing Blues

Little Esther Phillips - Cherry Wine

Esther Phillips - Mainliner

Esther Phillips - I'm Gettin' Along Alright

Esther Phillips - How Blue Can You Get

Esther Phillips - No Headstone On My Grave