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This evening's music features boogie woogie and r&b pianist and singer Little Willie Littlefield. Enjoy!

"The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo; are responsible for their slaughter and enslavement; rain down bombs on defenseless children whenever and wherever they decide that their ‘vital interests’ are menaced, and think nothing of torturing a man to death: these people are not to be taken seriously when they speak of the ‘sanctity’ of human life, or the ‘conscience’ of the civilized world.”

-- James Baldwinr

News and Opinion

Mohamedou Slahi, Author of “Guantánamo Diary,” to Get Hearing on Possible Release

Mohamedou Ould Slahi, the Guantánamo Bay detainee whose memoir, Guantánamo Diary, became a bestselling book, will receive a hearing with the prison’s Periodic Review Board this June that could result in his release.

The hearing date, handed down earlier this month, means that Slahi has finally been granted the review he and his lawyers have been seeking for years.

Slahi has been detained in Guantánamo for the past 14 years despite never having been charged with a crime. If he is cleared for transfer by the review board this June, the Department of Defense could release him from prison within 30 days.

Slahi, now 45, was renditioned into U.S custody after being arrested by authorities in his native Mauritania. After being shuttled to prisons in Jordan and Afghanistan, he arrived in Guantánamo in August 2002. As a detainee, he was subjected to years of torture by his American captors, events he wrote about in harrowing personal detail in Guantánamo Diary.

One Year On, No Justice for Italian Hostage Killed in U.S. Drone Strike

In January 2015, a CIA drone strike killed two aid workers held hostage in an al Qaeda compound in Pakistan. Then, in April, President Barack Obama made an unprecedented announcement from the White House.

He named the two men — an American, Warren Weinstein, and an Italian, Giovanni Lo Porto — and took “full responsibility” for their deaths. Despite hours of surveillance, the president said, no one had detected the presence of the hostages. The White House promised a “full review” of the strike, possible changes to policies around drone strikes, and compensation for the Weinstein and Lo Porto families.

Nearly a year later, little has emerged about the investigation. And while Weinstein’s family is reportedly still negotiating a settlement with the CIA, Lo Porto’s relations have had no contact with the U.S. government, directly or through the Italian authorities. ...

“It’s quite remarkable to me that the administration hasn’t offered a fuller public explanation of the strike,” or payment, said Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, in an email to The Intercept. “But of course all of this is consistent with the broader rule” not to acknowledge or account for civilian deaths in the many hundreds of other attacks that have taken place, he added.

Nobody can parse like Hillary.

Clinton Defends Libya War: We Didn’t Lose a Single Person

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton loudly defended her push for the 2011 NATO war of regime change in Libya last night, insisting “we didn’t lose a single person” in the conflict. Clinton was Secretary of State at the time, and a loud proponent of the war.

The war killed a large number of Libyans, of course, with the Vatican Ambassador confirming that at least 40 civilians were killed in NATO strikes in the Libyan capital of Tripoli.

The claim is even more galling, however, when one remembers that just a year later the US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed in Benghazi. Clinton must be keenly aware of this, as she faced Congressional heat over the incident for the rest of her time at the State Department, and for years after.

‘What certainly influenced me’ to support Iraq war, Clinton says, was Bush’s billions of aid to NYC

Last night on MSNBC, Chris Matthews quizzed the former secretary of state and NY senator about why she supported the war in Iraq, and Bernie Sanders didn’t. And she said they came to the issue from different perspectives. “Why was Bernie Sanders right and you were wrong?” Matthews asked. “What do you think was in him that allowed him to see what you couldn’t see?” Clinton said:

When I went to the White House, there were about four of us senators, the two from Virginia, the two of us from New York And I knew that the Republicans in the White House and in the Senate didn’t want to rebuild New York or at least they weren’t willing to put money into it. So I’m sitting there in the Oval Office, and Bush says to me, ‘What do you need?’ And I said, ‘I need $20 billion to rebuild, you know, New York,’ and he said, ‘You got it.’ And he was good to his word.

So my experience with him on something of great import to our country was positive. Because literally, that same day, I get back to the Capitol, and the Republicans are trying to take that money away. We kept calling the White House, Bush kept saying, “I gave them my word, I’m going to stick with it.”

So, you know, I had a different set of experiences.

Syria: Russian warplanes return, raising hopes for peace talks

Is the U.S. Now at War With the Shabab? Not Exactly

A striking fact about post-9/11 life is that Americans can wake up and discover that they are already at war with yet another Islamist group in yet another part of the world — based not on congressional debate but on an executive branch decision that the group is sufficiently linked to Al Qaeda.

So last week, when the Pentagon announced that an American airstrike on a Shabab training camp in Somalia had killed about 150 people it said were low-level fighters preparing to attack peacekeeping forces, it raised a crucial question: Is the United States now at war with the Shabab, too?

The short answer, several officials said, is no. But there turned out to be a twist that illustrates how the fight against terrorism keeps eroding limits on presidential war-making powers. The Obama administration thinks that the Authorization for Use of Military Force against the perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, or A.U.M.F., enacted by Congress, covered the attack last week — a claim legal scholars described as novel and worthy of attention.

As the distance has grown between the text of the 2001 authorization and the combat waged in its name, critics have called on Congress to vindicate its constitutional role in decisions about war and peace by modernizing it. But Congress has been too polarized and gridlocked to act, essentially acquiescing to the executive branch’s interpretations of what the authorization covers.

Such legislative paralysis only reinforces the executive branch’s inclination to stretch the law. President Obama originally made his claim that the authorization permitted him to attack the Islamic State, even though that group is Al Qaeda’s enemy, because he saw Congress as too dysfunctional to hold a timely vote on any new war measure.

Israel Confiscates Large Tract of Palestine Land in West Bank

Israel announced on Army Radio today that they have “appropriated” a large tract of Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank, confiscating some 579 acres (2.3 square kilometers), which NGO Peace Now referred to as the largest single confiscation of territory in years.

The territory seized is near the Palestinian city of Jericho, and is reportedly slated to be used in the expansion of Jewish settlements in the area, to further prevent the potential of forming a contiguous Palestinian state in the future.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the move as illegal, and urged Israel to immediately reverse the seizure of Palestinian territory in the interest of a comprehensive peace deal. US officials also said the seizure was “fundamentally undermining” the peace process.

The FBI Suspected an Army Vet Was Plotting Attacks in the US — So They Gave Him Guns

Daniel Seth Franey first came to the FBI's attention last summer, when a neighbor in the small, rural town of Montesano, Washington reported that the long-haired and bearded 33-year-old who lived down the road "regularly talked" about his support for the Islamic State (IS), and claimed he wanted to go overseas and "join the fight." ...

US authorities depict Franey as an unstable anti-government militant who deserved a closer look to see how far he might go. One of his neighbors told FBI agents that Franey said he hated the US military for not allowing him "to leave the Army" after he enlisted, and that he railed at the system for "taking away his kids." As US Attorney Hayes put it, the Justice Department was obligated to "pursue all available leads to ensure the public was protected from any possible harm."

But while it seems Franey talked often and enthusiastically about plotting a terrorist attack, there's little indication he ever had any intention of following through with his threats until the FBI's undercover agent came along. After befriending Franey, the agent took him on an eight-month ride — sometimes literally, including a road trip along the West Coast — while recording their conversations, doling out cash, furnishing him with guns, and then busting him for illegal possession of the weapons.

Franey's hometown newspaper, The Daily World of Aberdeen, hinted in its coverage that he might have been any easy mark for a setup. "Though court documents suggest Daniel Seth Franey readily espoused Islamic fundamentalist rhetoric and talked about committing violent acts of terrorism," the paper stated, "the Montesano man and alleged Islamic State supporter also comes off as unsophisticated and lacking wherewithal."

Apple tells judge that US government is well-meaning but wrong in privacy fight

Apple’s lawyers tried to lower the temperature in the company’s fight with the US government on Tuesday, telling a federal judge that America’s Justice Department is well-meaning but wrong in its privacy standoff with the iPhone maker.

The 26-page legal filing is either side’s last argument before they face each other in a California court on 22 March over whether the government can order Apple to weaken the security settings on one of its ubiquitous phones linked to the San Bernardino shooting last December. ...

“The government’s motivations are understandable, but its methods for achieving its objectives are contrary to the rule of law, the democratic process, and the rights of the American people,” Apple’s lawyers wrote. “This case arises in a difficult context after a terrible tragedy. But it is in just such highly-charged and emotional cases that the courts must zealously guard civil liberties and the rule of law and reject government overreaching.”

Whether such rhetoric will convince the federal magistrate judge, Sheri Pym, a former US prosector, and the American public, which is split on the privacy debate, remains to be seen. But Apple also is signaling that even if it loses the first round it is preparing for a lengthy appeals process that will involve high-minded discussions about privacy and law enforcement in the digital age. ...

After a month of testing out various legal theories, Apple and the government appear to have settled on what will be the main question of the case. Does a vague law from 1789 – the so-called All Writs Act – give courts authority to make tech companies remake their products in times of duress?

Lawmaker Who Was CIA Agent Wants Big Data, Not Apple’s Encryption

A former undercover CIA agent turned congressman says the FBI — by trying to force Apple to defeat its own security protocols — is barking up the wrong tree.

Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, said Tuesday that the FBI request might be too intrusive. He said there’s a way to “protect our civil liberties, defend our digital information, and chase bad guys all at the same time.”

His conclusion: “There’s a lot of problems I think we can solve with big data.” ...

But big data collection can have its own civil liberties problems. For instance, big data analytics — compiled from demographic information, court records, education, and more — can be used unfairly to flag people with certain characteristics or backgrounds as dangerous or threatening, subjecting them to additional surveillance.

Founder of German Islamophobic Group Pegida to Stand Trial for Hate Speech

The founder of Pegida, an ultra right-wing, Islamophobic group in Germany, is set to go to trial on hate speech charges after he described Europe's new refugee population as "cattle" and "scum" in a widely viewed Facebook post.

Lutz Bachmann, 43, was charged last October and has been accused of disrupting public order. A Dresden court said on Tuesday that Bachmann's words constituted an "attack on [the refugees'] dignity", according to the AFP. He is set to appear in court in April, with two further hearings scheduled for May.

The decision to pursue charges against Bachmann come at a complex time for Germany. Cracks in the country's "culture of welcome" have started to show in recent months, with anti-immigrant sentiment creeping into political rhetoric in response to the influx of asylum seekers fleeing war and conflict at home. Pegida itself stands for "Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West."

Wow, you should check out the list of offenses that the newly elected opposition wants amnesty for, it's incredible and comprehensive. It also makes you wonder how many were funded by the US or enabled by its spooks.

Venezuela's Right Wing Confesses to 17 years of Political Delinquency: The Amnesty Bill

Venezuela's Right Wing Opposition has just managed to perform an event that surpasses Gabriel Garcia Marquez's magic realism: On 18th February 2016, making use of their majority in the National Assembly, they have passed an Amnesty Bill that seeks to provide legal impunity to acts of political delinquency they and their supporters have perpetrated for 17 years. Venezuela's Right Wing majority in the National Assembly's 'amnesty' bill is not only an admission of guilt for, but also a well organised catalogue of, the political offences they and their supporters have perpetrated since 1999. ...

This Bill is an Opposition's colossal Freudian slip since with it they, unwittingly, have admitted their guilt of more than a decade and a half of illegal, violent and undemocratic political felonies. ... The political felonies and crimes it covers are comprehensive since the bill's scope ranges from misdemeanour at a public rally to terrorist acts involving explosives and firearms. The choice of period gives the game away since it includes ALL the illegal, criminal and law-breaking political acts perpetrated since 1999 by Opposition leaders and their supporters throughout the governments of both Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro. ...

[Long list of crimes at the link. - js]

The plot thickens even further with the inclusion in the Amnesty Bill of offences such as drug trafficking, kidnapping, embezzlement (Art.16 & Art.30), corruption, hoarding, black market speculation, economic boycott, fraudulent product adulteration, selling of items off expire day (Art.19), financing of terrorism, illicit enrichment (Art.20), fraud and usury in the selling and construction of private housing, and not paying of taxes (Art.35).

In short, not only there is provision in the Bill for every offence committed by their supporters mainly as a result of violent and destabilizing political activities, but the amnesty is extended to include all manner of economic crimes committed by bankers, entrepreneurs, and financiers most of whom have avoided Venezuela's justice system by absconding in Miami, Peru, Panama, etc., claiming to be 'political refugees'.

Poland: Lech Walesa at centre of battle to rewrite history

Bloomberg’s Matt Winkler Tells Some Whoppers About Wall Street Reform

Matt Winkler, the Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief Emeritus, wrote an opinion piece and appeared on Bloomberg TV last week to regurgitate the threadbare “Stop Bashing Wall Street. Times Have Changed” refrain. Winkler starts off with this premise:

“One of the reasons the American economy is performing better than any of the largest in Asia and Europe is that its regulators have repaired the damage of the financial crisis and the worst recession since the Great Depression. Led by the Federal Reserve, they replaced incentives for reckless speculation with catalysts for old-fashioned credit creation backed by levels of capital that are unprecedented in modern times.”

If the U.S. economy is doing better than Europe, it has less to do with the banks than with the fact that when Obama took office the U.S. national debt was $10 trillion and now it’s $19 trillion. Washington has resuscitated today’s economy on the backs of the next generation. That $19 trillion doesn’t include the other $4.5 trillion hiding out at the Federal Reserve from buying up the drek from Wall Street banks’ balance sheets. The Federal Reserve had a balance sheet of only $800 billion before its three rounds of drek buying began (a/k/a quantitative easing).

Winkler also fails to note that the U.S. economy has been growing at a rate barely able to fog a mirror, despite the trillions spent in pump priming.

US Congressman Says Bankers Should Find Way to 'Neuter' Sen. Elizabeth Warren

U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, a Republican from Missouri and senior member of the House Financial Services Committee, on Wednesday described Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) as the "Darth Vader of the financial services world" and said bankers should find a way to "neuter" her.

Luetkemeyer, who made the remarks at a meeting of the American Bar Association, is part of a group of lawmakers identified by the Center for Public Integrity as "especially solicitous to the banking industry," Slate noted in 2014. He has raised significant campaign funds from the the finance, insurance, and real estate sector, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The congressman's comments, first reported on Twitter by journalist Joseph Lawler, drew swift rebuke.

Why a Serious Oil Rebound Is Not Coming Soon

Oil prices have shown signs of life over the past few weeks, as production declines in the U.S. raise expectations that the market is starting to adjust. As a result, Brent crude recently surpassed $40 per barrel for the first time in months.

A growling list of companies are capitulating, announcing production cuts for 2016. Continental Resources, for example, could see output fall by 10 percent. A range of other companies have made similar announcements in recent weeks. The energy world has been speculating about declines from U.S. shale, and the declines are finally starting to show up in the data.

Despite the newfound optimism that oil markets are balancing out, crude oil sitting in storage is at a record high in the United States. Energy investors may have preferred to focus U.S. production declines, or the fall in gasoline inventories in early March, but meanwhile crude oil stocks continue to signal that oversupply persists.

Crude stocks rose once again last week, hitting yet another record of 521 million barrels. Storage levels at Cushing, Oklahoma, an all-important hub where the WTI benchmark price is determined, have surpassed 90 percent of capacity. U.S. output may be starting to decline, but it is doing so at a painfully slow rate.

Denouncing Free College in the Name of the Poor

Although corporate media outlets have blasted presidential candidate Bernie Sanders for “living in an economic fantasy world,” his proposed plan for free tuition in public universities is hardly radical. To be funded by a modest financial transaction tax—0.5 percent on stock transactions and 0.1 percent on bond transactions—it’s essentially an older policy being reinstated to create revenue for a social program. ...

And yet a flurry of media “experts” have rushed to denounce not only the financial tax as a means to fund college tuition, but the prospect of socialized higher education as a concept.

Oddly enough, they present their fight against free higher education as advocacy for the poor.

At the Washington Post (2/23/16), education writer Jeffrey J. Selingo capped off “The False Hope of Free College” with “expertise” from the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, concluding with touching concern for students in poverty: “Free tuition fails to change the college-going patterns of low-income students and quickly becomes an entitlement for those students who need it the least.”

Obama to Nominate Merrick Garland for US Supreme Court

Ahead of an official announcement scheduled for later Wednesday morning, news outlets are confirming that President Obama's nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court is Merrick Garland.

Currently the chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit, Garland is widely regarded as a "moderate" choice to replace the seat on the nation's highest court left empty after Justice Antonin Scalia's death last month.

According to MSNBC legal analyst Ari Melber, Garland fits the profile of a nominee who from the White House's perspective is "judicially unassailable"—an important descriptor given that the Republican Party, which currently controls the U.S. Senate, has said it will not even consider or hold hearings for any candidate Obama puts forth.

Ahead of specifically naming Garland, Obama said in a statement about the pending announcement that he was confident his choice for the court would be "not only eminently qualified to be a Supreme Court Justice" but is someone who "deserves a fair hearing, and an up-or-down vote" by the Senate.

Top Chicago prosecutor loses primary focused on handling of police killing

Voters backed Kim Foxx in Democratic race amid criticisms that Anita Alvarez’s office waited over a year to charge officer for fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald

Voters ousted the Chicago area’s top prosecutor on Tuesday, backing Democratic primary challenger Kim Foxx in a campaign dominated by questions about Cook County state’s attorney Anita Alvarez’s handling of the shooting death of a black teenager by a white police officer.

Foxx, who had served as a former chief of staff to the county board president, was among the harshest critics of Alvarez over the Laquan McDonald shooting. The teenager was shot 16 times in October 2014, an incident that was captured on squad-car video. Alvarez charged the police officer with murder, but not until November, more than a year after the incident and hours after a judge ordered city officials to release the tape publicly. ...

Foxx had establishment backing, winning an endorsement from Cook County Democrats who had initially decided to stay neutral in the race. The reversal raised eyebrows about her connections to top Democrats, including Cook County board president Toni Preckwinkle.

During the election Foxx was also hit with about $20,000 in fines from state election officials for failing to report a campaign poll paid for by Preckwinkle and not meeting other campaign disclosure filing deadlines.

Black Lives Matter movement sees series of victories in midwest elections

The protest movement that formed in response to deadly shootings of African Americans by police won a remarkable series of political victories in the American midwest on Wednesday night, including its first oustings of prosecutors in major cities.

In successive upsets, Democratic primary challengers in Chicago, Illinois, and Cleveland, Ohio, wrested the party’s nomination from sitting prosecutors who came under sharp criticism for their handling of the fatal shootings of Laquan McDonald and Tamir Rice.

The electoral wins were declared just hours after the town of Ferguson, Missouri – where nights of unrest followed the killing of a black 18-year-old by a white officer in August 2014 – buckled under pressure to accept federal oversight of its criminal justice system.

Sanders and His Supporters Should Now Call for a Real Political Revolution

Public’s Disgust With the Democratic Party Propels Sanders

Bernie Sanders is a fine politician, but that is not why he has emerged from obscurity to win so many Democratic primaries. The real story here is the breakdown of the ideology pursued for decades by the Democratic Party’s dominant faction.

The Great Recession started in 2007, and for millions of average Americans no recovery has come. For most of the years since then, there has been a Democrat in the White House, and those Americans have a right to wonder why the eloquent hero they voted for has done so little to improve their situation. They see that banks, health insurance companies and Silicon Valley are doing extremely well; why, then, don’t their wages grow?

The answer, and the key to Sanders’s success, is staring us in the face: Because the Democratic Party gave up years ago on its historic mission of serving working people and chose instead to make itself into the party of professionals, of the New Economy’s winners, of a group they love to flatter with phrases like “symbolic analysts,” “wired workers” and the “creative class.” ...

What Bernie Sanders represents is the public’s growing disgust with this kind of liberalism and, hopefully, its final repudiation.

Hillary Clinton Has Big Night; Media Moves to Silence Bernie Sanders Campaign

Blackout Tuesday: The Bernie Sanders Speech Corporate Media Chose Not To Air

Though Bernie Sanders had an admittedly disappointing night on Tuesday, losing four of five primary contests to rival Hillary Clinton, he still took to the stage in Phoenix, Arizona to speak to his supporters and television cameras about his vision for the nation and the drive of his campaign moving forward.

The problem? No cable or major news channel ran the speech. Not all of it. Not even some of it.

In a statement released Wednesday morning, Sanders congratulated Clinton for her wins in Illinois, Ohio, North Carolina and Florida and thanked the people nationwide who have lifted his called for a political revolution. Despite an uphill climb to close the gap with Clinton, Sanders said his campaign has the energy and support to go all the way to the Democratic convention this summer.

"With more than half the delegates yet to be chosen and a calendar that favors us in the weeks and months to come," said Sanders, "we remain confident that our campaign is on a path to win the nomination."

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump surge ahead after key primary wins

Hillary Clinton crushed hopes of a Bernie Sanders surge on a night of sweeping wins that saw her shift her gaze to the prospect of a bitter battle for the White House with Donald Trump.

As Clinton looked set to take all five states in the Democratic contest on Tuesday, Trump also tightened his grip on the Republican race, on the brink of winning four out of five contests and forcing Marco Rubio to suspend his campaign after inflicting a bruising defeat in his home state of Florida.

In the Democratic race, Sanders could not capitalise on last week’s surprise win in Michigan as Clinton won by a distance in Florida, Ohio and North Carolina, before grinding out a much narrower win in Illinois. A recount in two small precincts of Jackson County left the Missouri race on a knife edge, with Clinton leading by just 1,531 votes with 99.9% of the votes in.

In her victory speech, Clinton increasingly turned to face Trump head-on, having secured crucial support from working-class Democrats in the industrial midwest who had shown signs of defecting to the more radical promise of Sanders. ...

After Clinton’s string of victories on Tuesday, her campaign said her lead would be “very hard to overtake” but stopped short of saying it was insurmountable. The campaign also refused to call on Sanders to exit the race.

Trump warns of riots if denied Republican presidential nomination

U.S. Republican front-runner Donald Trump warned on Wednesday of riots if he is denied the party's presidential nomination after a string of primary election victories, raising the temperature even more in a heated White House race.

The outspoken billionaire New York businessman scored big wins in primaries in Florida, Illinois and North Carolina on Tuesday, knocking out rival Marco Rubio and bringing him closer to the 1,237 convention delegates he needs to win the nomination.

But Trump lost the crucial state of Ohio and left the door open for those in the party trying to stop him from becoming the Republican nominee for the Nov. 8 election.

Trump might fall short of the majority required, enabling the party's establishment to put forward another name at the July convention in Cleveland to formally pick its candidate.

In an interview with CNN on Wednesday, Trump said the party could not deny him the nomination should he fail to win enough delegates.

"I don't think you can say that we don't get it automatically. I think you'd have riots. I think you'd have riots. I'm representing many, many millions of people."

Jerry Brown: If Trump Wins, We’ll Build A Wall Around California

A Donald Trump presidency would apparently spur a lot of new construction.

In response to Trump’s insistence that he would build a big, “beautiful” wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) said Monday that his state would have to build a wall around its own perimeter if Trump took the White House.

“We’d have to build a wall around California to defend ourselves from the rest of this country,” Brown said, according to the Sacramento Bee. “By the way that is a joke. We don’t like walls, we like bridges.”

Newly Released Inspection Reports on Keystone XL’s Southern Route Fuel Doubt Over ‘Safest Pipeline Ever Built' Claims

TransCanada’s claim that the southern route of the Keystone XL Pipeline is the safest pipeline ever built in the United States is challenged by the release of new documentation confirming multiple code violations.

Mounting evidence that the pipeline was not built to mandated minimum requirements established by the American Petroleum Institute increases the chances the pipeline will leak or experience a catastrophic spill.

The reports — prepared by federal regulators with the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) — reveal some code violations not previously disclosed. The number of reports also account for less than half the number of days the agency claims it spent inspecting the pipeline while it was being constructed. ...

After mandatory safety tests revealed potential problems with the integrity of the southern pipeline, TransCanada dug up 130 sites and made repairs before the pipeline was permitted to start up.

PHMSA noted in its final inspection report that 37 sections of pipe had to be cut out and replaced and many areas of the pipeline’s coating had to be repaired. ...

Previously released warning letters PHMSA sent to TransCanada reprimand the company for hiring unqualified welders and not protecting the pipeline’s coating during installation. And PHMSA’s final inspection report reveals TransCanada received unsatisfactory marks on welding procedures and installation practices related to the pipeline’s protective coating.

PHMSA did not fine TransCanada for any of the violations it cited in warning letters or require a second pressure test after TransCanada repaired the pipeline, although it has the regulatory power to do so.

Get ready for the "war on corn."

US agency sets sights on grass in bid to make a better biofuel

A US government agency is trying to build a better biofuel, using a higher energy-producing plant with a lower environmental impact than corn ethanol or other known biofuels.

Sorghum, a food and forage crop widely grown in Africa and Central America which has tens of thousands of varieties, has emerged as one of the most exciting prospects.

The $30m Terra project, funded by the US government’s Advanced Research Project Agency – Energy (Apra-E), seeks to use new technologies – including ground-level robots and aerial drones – to breed a fast-growing, drought-resistant biofuel that would thrive outside the rich black soils of the midwest.

The ultimate goal is to develop an alternative to corn ethanol, which demands heavy investment in water and fertiliser and takes premium farm land out of food production. A US government study in 2014 found corn ethanol was worse for global warming than gasoline under some circumstances. ...

Researchers said they were using sensing and imaging equipment loaded on to the robots and drones to zero in quickly on varieties of sorghum that have the greatest energy potential but do not suck up too much water, fertiliser, or farm land that would otherwise be used to grow food.

Lake Huron salmon unlikely to rebound, study says

Lake Huron’s glory days as a salmon fishery are likely gone forever, according to a study whose lead researcher says Lake Michigan is following a similar pattern.

Lake Huron’s population of the alewife, the herring-like fish that are the Chinook salmon’s main food source, collapsed in 2003, according to researchers. Heavy stocking of Chinook in Lake Huron contributed to increased predation of alewives; the sharp Chinook decline started soon after.

In Lake Michigan, populations of alewives and salmon are both declining.

The study, published Monday in Ecosystems, used a food-web modeling approach to determine factors on the decline of salmon in Lake Huron. It determined that heavy stocking of salmon led to increased predation of alewives. The increase in non-native mussels also competed with small fish — such as alewives and rainbow smelt, another salmon food — for nutrients.

“We are seeing all the same warning signs in lakes Michigan and Ontario,” said Yu-Chun Kao in a release.

Also of Interest

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

Meet the presidential candidate who makes Bernie Sanders look conservative

Hillary Clinton Confronted On Support For Regime Change At Town Hall

Clinton Defends Regime Change, 'Wouldn't It Have Been Good to Assassinate Hitler?'

Terrorist Watchlist Errors Spread to Criminal Rap Sheets

Where did ISIS come from? The story starts here.

Civilian Control of the Military is Over, Welcome to Civilian Subjugation

Fotofest 2016: artists capture human impact on a changing planet

A Little Night Music

Little Willie Littlefield - Rockin´ Chair Mama

Little Willie Littlefield - Drinkin' Hadacol

Little Willie Littlefield - Pleading at Midnight

Little Willie Littlefield - Hit The Road

Little Willie Littlefield - Ruby Ruby

Little Willie Littlefield - I Wanna Love You

Little Willie Littlefield W/ Little Esther - Turn The Lamp Down Low