StupidiNews!

• A federal judge in Texas has blocked President Obama's executive actions on immigration, but the White House says it will appeal the ruling.
• Japanese officials have issued a tsunami advisory after a magnitude 6.9 earthquake rocked northern coastal Japan early Tuesday.
• Egypt is asking for UN action in Libya as Islamic State militants continue to control wide sections of the country and are rebelling against the government in Tripoli.
• Greece continues to defy EU ultimatums on seeking European bank loans in order to stay in the eurozone as time is running out on a deal before the end of the month.
• Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab is all but accusing the NSA of running a government-sponsored hacking ring dubbed "Equation Group" since 9/11.

Last Call For Who Needs Obamacare, Anyway?

Attention red state Republicans:  more of you than you will ever admit have bought plans on the federal insurance marketplace, and now have health care coverage because of it.  Your GOP leaders in Washington are trying to take this coverage from you, and are using the Supreme Court in order to make it unaffordable.

Erin Meredith, a fifth-generation Republican who lives in Austin, was no fan of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which she considered just another wasteful government handout. She didn’t sign up for a health plan until late last year, when she felt she had no other choice. 

By then, Meredith, who is 37 and has two children, had gotten divorced and lost the insurance provided through her husband. Her new job, as an office manager for a roofing company, didn’t offer benefits. About the same time, she learned that her headaches and fatigue were the result of a rare condition that affects the oxygen level in her blood. She couldn’t afford to spend thousands of dollars on doctor’s visits, and her desperation slowly turned to panic. 

In November, at a friend’s urging, Meredith looked for a health plan on the federal online marketplace. With an income of about $30,000 a year, she discovered she qualified for a government subsidy of $132 a month. Her premium would be $89 a month. 

Now that she has coverage, she doesn’t want to lose it. “I can still feed my kids and put gas in my car,” she said. “I’m not trying to go to Cancun or carry a Michael Kors bag. I drive a 2009 Mazda and I’m just trying to make it in my little apartment and not be on government assistance.”

Sorry Erin, according to the Republicans in your state of Texas, you never wanted affordable health care, you never wanted subsidies to make it affordable to you and your family, and you are now nothing more than a welfare queen to them.

Welcome to being one of "those people".

“If they’re not going to participate in Obamacare and I’m not going to have these financial benefits, which will force me to pay $220 a month for coverage, do you know if Greg Abbott, our governor, has any plan to offer something comparable?” Meredith asked in an e-mail. “I understand and support his efforts to put Washington back in its place. I just don’t want that to come at the cost of hard-working Texans and their ability to maintain medical coverage.”

You're no longer a "hard-working Texan" anymore.  You gave up that status when you decided that the federal government was no longer your enemy, and that it could ever "help" you.  You're a welfare cheat on Obamacare.  You might as well be a Democrat, dear.

And if King v Burwell goes bad, your health insurance premiums will triple, and your Republicans will not lift a finger to fix it.

Count on it.

Because That's Where the Money Is

Russian cyber security firm Kaspersky Lab says it has discovered evidence that as many as 100 banks in 30 nations (including the US) may have lost a total of nearly a billion dollars to hackers in a massive cybertheft criminal ring.

In a report to be published on Monday, and provided in advance to The New York Times, Kaspersky Lab says that the scope of this attack on more than 100 banks and other financial institutions in 30 nations could make it one of the largest bank thefts ever — and one conducted without the usual signs of robbery.

The Moscow-based firm says that because of nondisclosure agreements with the banks that were hit, it cannot name them. Officials at the White House and the F.B.I. have been briefed on the findings, but say that it will take time to confirm them and assess the losses.

Kaspersky Lab says it has seen evidence of $300 million in theft through clients, and believes the total could be triple that. But that projection is impossible to verify because the thefts were limited to $10 million a transaction, though some banks were hit several times. In many cases the hauls were more modest, presumably to avoid setting off alarms.

The majority of the targets were in Russia, but many were in Japan, the United States and Europe.

No bank has come forward acknowledging the theft, a common problem that President Obama alluded to on Friday when he attended the first White House summit meeting on cybersecurity and consumer protection at Stanford University. He urged passage of a law that would require public disclosure of any breach that compromised personal or financial information.

But the industry consortium that alerts banks to malicious activity, the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, said in a statement that “our members are aware of this activity. We have disseminated intelligence on this attack to the members,” and that “some briefings were also provided by law enforcement entities.”

How'd they do it?  You know all those times your company's IT department says "Don't open weird emails in your work account?"   Bank employees did just that, and ended up installing a piece of malware called "Carbanak" on bank computers.  It would secretly record keystrokes and screenshots of bank transfers at local branches to learn procedures and passwords, and leave the PCs vulnerable to remote access from outside the bank.

Then once they had the keys to the kingdom, they would send money to fake accounts, make wire transfers to overseas accounts, or even make ATMs dispense money at certain times.  As a former bank IT employee, I can tell you the number one vulnerability of any bank network are the people who access it daily.

Think about how much of a pain in the ass it is to change your network password at work. Believe me, the higher up in a company you are, the more likely it is that you're going to ignore procedures, and the bigger the target you make for social engineering hacks like this one.  Eventually a hack like this is going to get a hold of an account that has the authorization to make these multi million dollar transfers, and boom.  Gone.  Temporarily add some zeroes to the end of one account balance and transfer the extra away.  It's the oldest bank hack trick in the book.

At best, bank protection departments have way too many accounts to manage.  Finding these hit and run transfers is nearly impossible because by the time the bank figures out what happened, it's too late.  No red flags or alarms get raised because the attack comes from authorized accounts.

So yes, listen to your IT guys for once. 

The Orange Dimension

House GOP Speaker John Boehner is living in a fantasy dimension.  First, he believes that he alone is somehow in charge of America's foreign policy, and not the person actually elected to do that (and constitutionally required to handle that.

"Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace on Sunday quizzed House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) on his decision to invite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak before Congress.

Boehner invited Netanyahu without consulting the White House, leading numerous congressional Democrats to boycott the speech.

"Haven’t you taken one of the few bipartisan issues in this country — support for Israel — and turned it into a political football?" Wallace asked.

"I have not. The fact is that we had every right to do what we did," Boehner responded. "I wanted the prime minister to come here. There’s a serious threat facing the world. And radical Islamic terrorists are not going to go away."

"And then when it comes to the threat of Iran having a nuclear weapon, these are important messages that the Congress needs to here and the American people need to hear," the speaker continued. "And I believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu is the perfect person to deliver the message of how serious this threat is."

Wallace then pointed out that Boehner asked Ron Dermer, Israel's ambassador to the U.S., not to tell the White House about the joint meeting with Netanyahu.

"Why would you do that?" Wallace asked.

"Because I wanted to make sure that there was no interference. There’s no secret here in Washington about the animosity that this White House has for Prime Minister Netanyahu. I frankly didn’t want that getting in the way, quashing what I thought was a real opportunity," Boehner responded.

Such complete and utter disrespect of the presidency is shameful.  You took it upon yourself to invite a foriegn leader to berate your president and you tried to ambush him with the request because of "interference" from the White House?  Can you name another time in which a House Speaker so brazenly tried to subject a sitting president to humiliation by a foreign leader, on US soil?

No.  No president in US history has even been treated like a non-human insect quite like Republicans treat our nation's first black president.  This is why I despise Republican politicians, the preening arrogance and assumption of privilege is just infuriating.

Oh, but there's more.  In the Orange Dimension, it's Democrats who are somehow in charge of a Republican congress shutting down DHS funding.

The House passed a bill funding the DHS that also contained riders rolling back President Barack Obama’s executive order delaying deportations. Senate Democrats blocked its passage, demanding a “clean” continuing resolution. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said that the ball was back in the House’s court, which was where Wallace found Boehner Sunday morning.

“The House has acted. We’ve done our job,” Boehner said. “Senate Democrats are the ones putting us in this precarious position. And it’s up to Senate Democrats to get their act together.”

Wallace invoked a rising sense of terror threats, and asked if Boehner and Republicans were prepared let the DHS shut down.

“Certainly,” Boehner replied, adding that Senate Democrats “would be to blame.”

John Boehner is going to let the DHS shut down and put Americans at risk because of their petty hatred of Obama.  That's it.  And he thinks you are stupid enough to believe that Republicans, who have been talking about shutting the government down for months now in order to stop President Obama on his legal immigration policies, aren't to blame.

What a strange place Speaker Boehner lives in.

StupidiNews!

• Egypt has retaliated with airstrikes against ISIS targets in Libya after Islamic State militants beheaded more than a dozen Egyptian Coptic Christians over the weekend.
• The biggest US oil refinery strike since 1980 enters its third week as there appears to be no sign of reaching an agreement between workers and management.
• Another round of snow in Boston has put this February as the snowiest month in the city's history, and more is on the way this week.
• Danish police have detained two people in connection with this weekend's series of shootings in Copenhagen that left two dead and five wounded.
• The FAA is proposing ground rules for operating drones in US airspace, the new rules propose among other things no flights above 500 feet, no night flying, and a certification program.

Last Call For Talking It Out

Had the honor of being a guest on the Tim Corrimal Show this week with guest host Sarah Cosgrove.  Sarah's a good friend of mine and we had a nice roundtable discussion about what the Democrats need to do in order to win big in 2016 with Sarah, myself, Justice Putnam of Netroots Radio, and Lori Paquette of FlirtyGrrl.com.

Give a listen to Episode 322.  I enjoyed being on the show a lot, hopefully it won't be my last appearance.

The Peak Of The Mountain

Congrats, older Millennials and young Gen Xers like myself!  Your earnings peak is pretty much at age 40 and after that it's all downhill from there.

By age 40 you're done. That's the conclusion of a report from the New York Fed that looks at lifetime earnings from age 25 through retirement.  

The top chart shows average earnings by age. It's a little hard to immediately see how dramatic the income peak is since the y-axis shows the log of earnings, but if you do the arithmetic it demonstrates that, on average, by age 40 you're within about $1,000 of your peak earnings. You'll get inflation adjustments after that, but for the bulk of us, that's it. Real earnings pretty much plateau after age 40. 

Here's the charts they are talking about:

 

The bottom chart illustrates this in a different way. The yellow rectangle shows earnings growth for the bottom 80 percent. The blue line is for ages 25-35, and there's a fair amount of earnings growth except at the very bottom. The red line is for ages 35-45, and it's pretty close to zero. There's virtually no earnings growth for anyone. And the green line is for ages 45-55. It's actually negative. If you put the latter two age groups together, the report concludes that "average earnings growth from ages 35 to 55 is zero." 

Now, outside the yellow box we have the top 20 percent: the well off and the rich. Those folks show a lot of earnings growth when they're young, but they also show fairly healthy growth between ages 35-45. 

And the top 1 percent? That's on the very far right, and as you can see, they show earnings growth at every age level.

So for any early 90's kid like myself, this is about as good as it gets in the paycheck department right about now. You've got 15, maybe 20 years out of college to get to where you're going to be in life, and after that you can expect to make that salary or less from then on out.  If you're a younger Millennial and you're still in retail or food service, well...clock's ticking, guys.

Unless you're a one percenter, that is.  Then the sky's the limit.

Bobby Jindal, Moderate Republican(?)

When pundits look back on the 2016 GOP race, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal will hold a special place as a man who not only turned his back on his constituents for political expediency, but also shredded his degree in biology for the same reason.

Planned Parenthood began construction here last year on a clinic that would perform abortions and provide other medical services for women. “High-Quality, Affordable Health Care for New Orleans,” a sign promised. “Seeing Patients Early 2015.”

That sign is now crumpled on the ground behind a chain-link fence at the project’s abandoned construction site, victim of efforts by Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) and other abortion opponents to block the clinic.

The push against the project began last year, when the Catholic archbishop of New Orleans wrote a public letter threatening to blacklist contractors on the clinic from any of the church’s numerous real estate projects. That led to several subcontractors walking away from the project, delaying work on the facility. An inspector for the State Licensing Board for Contractors also began making weekly visits, which one of the major contractors said was unprecedented.

Then last month Jindal’s administration denied Planned Parenthood an operating license, stating that the group failed to show the need for the clinic. Work has stopped at the site on a busy thoroughfare west of downtown, at least for now, while Planned Parenthood vows to appeal.

There's nothing moderate about Jindal anymore.  He knows his road to the nomination in Cleveland in July 2016 goes through Tea Party central, and he's trying to prove he's the guy who can punish his constituents the most.

In 2010, Louisiana had the sixth-highest rate of unintended pregnancies, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

Before opening its $4 million clinic, Planned Parenthood had to undergo a “Facility Need Review” under a 2012 rule created by Jindal’s Department of Health and Hospitals. In its 74-page application, Planned Parenthood used statistical analysis to estimate that its entrance into the market would allow another 2,844 women to get abortions per year. In its rejection, the state agency’s top official said Planned Parenthood had failed to establish the need for another abortion facility.

Of the five that exist in Louisiana, one is in New Orleans and another is in the suburban city of Metairie.

“The safety and protection of women is not an issue of economic debate,” the governor’s press secretary, Mike Reed, said in an e-mail.

So yeah, Jindal has gone full Tea Party these days.  He had before, but now it's official.

Last Call For The Other Shoe In Oregon

And now we know why Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber is going gently into that good night:  a major FBI grand jury investigation into his conduct is on the way.

A federal grand jury in Portland has launched a sweeping investigation of Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber and fiancée Cylvia Hayes that ranges from the state's 10-year budget plan to the proposed Port of Morrow coal terminal.

The investigation came into public view Friday when investigators delivered the three-page subpoena to the state Department of Administrative Services. It came hours after the Democratic governor had announced he will resign next Wednesday.

The subpoenas shed light on what looks to be the largest criminal investigation of a public official in Oregon. State officials are ordered to turn over to the grand jury records that are a catalog of Kitzhaber's climate and economy-related initiatives:Genuine Progress Indicator, Pacific Coast Collaborative, Oregon Prosperity Initiative, low carbon fuel standards and sustainable economic development.

Investigators are after any state record mentioning Hayes, her private consulting business and her role in the governor's office. They want her personal tax returns and those of her company dating back to 2009. The state also must turn over records of her use of state credit cards.

The state is ordered to turn over emails, correspondence, memos and other state records about Hayes' clients, including Demos, Resource Media, Energy Foundation, Rural Development Initiatives, Clean Economy Development Center, Waste to Energy.

It was the mounting scandal over those contracts, which paid Hayes at least $213,000 since 2011, that prompted the state's top Democratic leaders to call for Kitzhaber's resignation, setting in motion his announcement Friday.

It looks like Kitzhaber is in at least as much trouble as disgraced Virginia Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell, who got 2 years in prison for his bribery scandal (and his wife faces sentencing next week).  We'll see what happens, but I'm betting he's ending up in jail for a while.

Permission To Screw Things Up

President Obama's policies on Syria and dealing with the Islamic State are a place where I greatly differ from him, and I'm with Greg Sargent on the notion of another AUMF: It asks for far too much power and the damage in Syria and Iraq are already done.

A mere six months after military operations began against the Islamic State, the White House today formally requested that Congress authorize military operations against the Islamic State. The full text of the resolution proposed by the Obama administration is right here. 

Some Democrats criticized the proposal as too broad and too vague. They are right. Several critics I spoke to note that, in its current form, at least, it would not only do little to limit Obama right now, but could also leave thenext president with enormous war-making latitude — whether he or she is a Democrat or a Republican. 

To be clear, the proposal is merely an invitation to Congress to offer its own restrictions on Obama’s war-making authority. Still, it falls well short of what is needed, and it remains to be seen whether Congress can step in and do better.

The notion of this particular Congress "doing better" on anything at all is laughable, let alone the notion that they would craft a smart, limited authorization.  They're way too eager to send in tens of thousands of US troops and saddle us with another dozen years of boots on the ground.

The proposal would authorize armed force against “ISIL or associated persons or forces,” a category that is loosely defined as any entity that is fighting “alongside ISIL” or is a “closely-related successor.” It would not authorize the use of force in “enduring offensive ground combat operations,” which is also pretty loose wording and doesn’t say what operations force would be limited to. It says authorization would terminate three years after the proposal’s enactment by Congress, which means it might be operative after the mission is accomplished, however that might be defined. 

“This is a constructive proposal, but it’s not sufficiently limited,” Jameel Jaffer of the American Civil Liberties Union tells me. “It lacks geographic limitations, it uses loose language to describe the category of groups that can be targeted, and it fails to state at all clearly the specific objective for which military force is being authorized.”

In other words, Obama's authorization language after the Republicans get a hold of it is a disaster waiting to happen.  The problem is the GOP Congress will almost certainly make it worse. Depending on what they come up with, I'm hoping that Democrats will vote no.

The entire situation is just another decade plus of ground war waiting to happen, and there's no way in hell we can handle it.

In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions

BooMan, on Rick Perry:

“Texas has been criticized for having a large number of uninsured,” he said, “but that’s what Texans wanted. They did not want a large government program forcing everyone to purchase insurance.”

Texas wanted “a large number of [medically] uninsured” people in their state. 

Why would anyone want that?

Well, it's really simple.  Texans believe Obamacare is a handout to blacks and Latinos from a black President.  They'd rather see blacks and Latinos go without insurance rather than help all uninsured Texans for two reasons, one, because they've been convinced they're "paying for healthcare" for people too lazy to go buy insurance, and two, because to Texans like Rick Perry, blacks and Latinos are subhuman scum who deserve to die.

Long and the short of it.

Last Call For Flowers In Concrete

I've been relatively silent on the decision by Little League International to strip the 2014 World Championship from Chicago's Jackie Robinson West squad, mainly because of the boiling rage the prospect has enkindled in my heart. The indispensable Dave Zirin manages to explain better than I ever could the heart of the problem: race and gentrification of cities like Chicago.

As for the decision itself, ironies abound. Jackie Robinson West was the first entirely black team to represent the United States in the Little League World Series. And yes, waiting until Black History Month to strip JRW of their title is at best tin-eared. But that insult shouldn't blind us to the greater injury. Recall their damnable offense: Jackie Robinson West didn't use 16-year ringers or cork their bats. They had players suit up who lived “beyond their geographical boundary”. The fact that the adults in charge of JRW felt the need to breach this rule perhaps has something to do with the fact that today’s urban landscape supports baseball about as well as concrete makes proper soil for orchids. A plurality of Major Leaguers is made up of people from either the US suburbs or the baseball factories of the Dominican Republic. Many of the few African American players on Major League rosters actually come from the suburbs. This is because 21st century neoliberal cities have gentrified urban black baseball to death. Boys and Girls Clubs have become bistros. Baseball fields are condos and in many cities, Little League is non-existent. The public funds for the infrastructure that baseball demands simply do not exist, but the land required for diamonds are the crown jewels of urban real estate. That's what made JRW such a profound anomaly. In Chicago particularly, which under Mayor Rahm Emanuel has seen school closures and brutal cuts to physical education programs, their success made people believe that—with apologies to Tupac—flowers could in fact grow in concrete.

And the fact that these boys had a championship ripped away from them because of literally where they lived just has me seeing red.

I'm glad Zirin wrote this column.  Give it a read.

Friday News Dump: The Big Kitz-Off

And it's official: Oregon Dem Gov. John Kitzhaber is resigning effective Wednesday, February 18th. His resignation statement is a doozy.

I am announcing today that I will resign as Governor of the State of Oregon.

It is not in my nature to walk away from a job I have undertaken – it is to stand and fight for the cause. For that reason I apologize to all those people who gave of their faith, time, energy and resources to elect me to a fourth term last year and who have supported me over the past three decades. I promise you that I will continue to pursue our shared goals and our common cause in another venue. 

I must also say that it is deeply troubling to me to realize that we have come to a place in the history of this great state of ours where a person can be charged, tried, convicted and sentenced by the media with no due process and no independent verification of the allegations involved. But even more troubling – and on a very personal level as someone who has given 35 years of public service to Oregon – is that so many of my former allies in common cause have been willing to simply accept this judgment at its face value. 

It is something that is hard for me to comprehend – something we might expect in Washington, D.C. but surely not in Oregon. I do not know what it means for our shared future but I do know that it is seriously undermining civic engagement in this state and the quality of the public discourse that once made Oregon stand out from the pack. 

Nonetheless, I understand that I have become a liability to the very institutions and policies to which I have dedicated my career and, indeed, my entire adult life. As a former presiding officer I fully understand the reasons for which I have been asked to resign. I wish Speaker Kotek and President Courtney and their colleagues on both sides of the aisle success in this legislative session and beyond. And I hope that they are truly committed to carrying forward the spirit of bipartisanship and collaboration that has marked the last four years in Oregon.

Oregon's Secretary of State, Democrat Kate Brown, will succeed him in the office (Oregon has no Lt. Governor) and she will be the first bisexual governor in US history, but she's not without her political controversies either.

Brown will have almost two years to govern before facing voters for the right to fill out the rest of Kitzhaber’s term, but Republicans are already critical of her record and stumbles during her first term as secretary of state. She angered Republicans when she scheduled an election for state Labor Commissioner in November 2012, rather than in May. 

Republicans said the decision was an overtly political act aimed at saving the Democratic nominee, Brad Avakian, who won. She fired several employees, including her chief of staff and the head of the state’s elections division, amid the criticism. Most major papers in the state endorsed her Republican opponent in 2012, though she won reelection in a favorable Democratic year. 

Brown also took fire for a letter she sent to the Federal Communications Commission in support of Comcast’s bid to take over Time Warner. The tech Web site The Verge reported that Brown’s letter was drafted by a Comcast lobbyist after the company contributed nearly $10,000 to her secretary of state campaigns. Brown has refused to answer questions about the letter.

We'll see how soon-to-be Governor Brown fares.  Meanwhile, if any political crisis consultants are looking for a new client to take on, I'd start in Salem..

Be Careful What You Wish For

There are some in the House GOP Tea Party brigade that want Mitch McConnell to end the filibuster completely in order to take Senate Democrats out of the equation for the next two years, starting with the Republican bill to defund President Obama's immigration actions.

A growing number of House GOP conservatives are pressuring Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Thursday to invoke the "nuclear option" and change the chamber's rules to pass a bill defunding President Obama's executive actions on immigration.

Reps. Raúl Labrador (R-Idaho) and Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.) said McConnell should change Senate rules, so the House-passed Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding bill, which includes language to revoke Obama's immigration-related actions, can bypass a Democratic filibuster in the upper chamber. 

Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.) also endorsed the idea at a Thursday news conference. He said there’s a “way to change the rules to allow us to move forward” and “take away the ability to filibuster.”

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) was the first House Republican to advocate such a rules change Wednesday evening, arguing that now-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had established a precedent during his time in the majority.

But Senate Republicans don't see the point with Obama sure to veto the bill anyway, and they know that only holding the upper chamber with a four-seat lead means the Dems will someday be back in charge.

“The answer is not to change Senate rules,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said during the same news conference at which Mulvaney spoke. "The answer is for Senate Democrat not to be obstructionists.”

“I don’t think that’s an option we’re looking at right now,” freshman Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) added, arguing that things should move forward according to current Senate rules.

However the House Tea Party is getting pissed.  They see Obama winning and they want to change the game somehow.  Never mind that it's the Senate GOP who has to do the work here.

Labrador suggested Senate Republicans should just "pack up" and go home if they "don't want to fight" on the DHS funding issue.

"If they don't want to fight, if they don't want to work, if they don't want to do the hard work that is necessary to do the will of the American people, then maybe they just need to pack up, and they need to decide that for the next two years, we're just not going to do anything in the Senate," Labrador said.

Otherwise, Labrador argued, Senate Republicans might as well hand the majority back over to the Democrats.

"If we're going to allow seven Democratic senators to decide what the agenda is of the House Republican conference, of the Senate Republican majority, then we might as well just give them the chairmanships, give them the leadership of the Senate," he asserted.

Why, this doesn't look like a united front to me.  It looks like Republicans are in charge of a branch of Congress with approval ratings in the teens, and they are now 100% responsible for the mess.

Be careful what you wish for, folks.

StupidiNews!

• After more than 400 days in jail, two Al Jazeera journalists were freed on bail from an Egyptian prison today pending a retrial on charges of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.
• New York Times media columnist David Carr has died at 58 after collapsing Thursday evening in the newsroom and being rushed to a nearby hospital.
• Joint US and Jordanian air strikes in Syria have killed at least 20 Islamic State fighters in the northeastern border area of the country near Iraq, according to human rights monitors.
• News that Germany's economy is on the rise pushed the country's DAX index to a new record as Greek and European Union leaders are getting closer to a compromise.
• A computer researcher has adapted medical imaging diagnosis software to develop an algorithm to identify authentic Jackson Pollock paintings among mimics.