An 800-year-old tradition of counting the swans owned by Britain's Queen Elizabeth started on Monday, an annual ceremony of "swan upping" that in modern times has become a means of wildlife conservation.
Talk about getting it wrong. There are mistakes, and then there are mistakes, and this is the latter. On Monday, a woman, Maria Butina, was arrested and charged, federal agents saying she worked as a “foreign agent” who conspired to set up private communications between the Russian government and Republican politicians in the United States.
It would be a pretty big deal if it turned out there was a photo of that Russian agent in the White House, and an even bigger deal if it were the Oval Office with President Donald Trump, and a huge red siren big deal if she were in the Oval Office on the very week former FBI Director James Comey was fired.
And that’s exactly what Mic reporter Emily Singer reported on Twitter on Tuesday. Only she was flat wrong.
Here is the original tweet:
Only that isn’t so. That’s not her. The Daily Beast‘s Lachlan Markay first heard from the White House that it might be Cari Lutkins, a White House staffer, who was actually pictured.
A fmr WH official tells me he thinks the person in this NYT photo is Cari Lutkins, the WH's deputy director of events, who plans logistics for events like these pic.twitter.com/NZJ0z7IUqt
The photo was still going around, though, and Buzzfeed’s Tom Namako confirmed that it was event planning Lutkins in the Oval Office and not Russian operative and federal detainee Butina.
This photo is going around: That is not alleged Russian spy Maria Butina in the Oval Office With Trump. It’s an NSC staffer, a NSC source tells BuzzFeed News. pic.twitter.com/k1pDeIBZiK
That is a major screw-up. It’s not merely a tweet. This was a reporter, treated credibly, retweeted credibly, saying that a Russian foreign agent was in the Oval Office. The photo is from the day after the Comey firing was announced.
Just look how liberal democrat blog DailyKos jumped on it:
The damage is out there. Here’s a Newsweek reporter repeating the totally unverified claim about the photo, AFTER it was not only already debunked several times, but after Singer’s tweet was deleted.
Recall that it was incorrect reporting on Russia and Trump that got Brian Ross suspended from ABC, eventually resulting in his departure, after he falsely claimed that Michael Flynn had been directed to contact Russia during the campaign. (It actually happened after the election.)
It is the biggest story in the world. Russia and Trump, meddling or collusion, and the media’s most constant story for almost two years now. Reporting that an arrest Russian operative was in the Oval Office with Trump is not a casual mistake.
It’s a very, very big one. An avoidable one. And it should have been avoided.
Enlarge / ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer joined Chinese colleagues in Yantai, China, to take part in their sea survival training on August 19, 2017. (credit: ESA)
This week, the European and Chinese space agencies held a workshop in Amsterdam to discuss cooperation between Europe and China on lunar science missions. The meeting comes as Europe seems increasingly content to work with China on spaceflight programs.
Although the meeting is not being streamed online, space systems designer and lunar exploration enthusiast Angeliki Kapoglou has been providing some coverage of the meeting via Twitter. Among the most interesting things she has shared are slides from a presentation by Pei Zhaoyu, who is deputy director of the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center of the China National Space Administration.
Very very interesting statement by CNSA’s Pei Zhaoyu. “NASA will focus on building the LOPG. CNSA will build the lunar scientific research station on the surface” Moreover, according to Pei the LOPG has low economic effectiveness. #MoonVillage#ESA_ISRUpic.twitter.com/Tbg9SQ4LhZ
Overall, Pei does not appear to be a fan of NASA's plan to build a deep space gateway, formally known as the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway, at a near-rectilinear halo orbit. Whereas NASA will focus its activities on this gateway away from the Moon, Pei said China will focus on a "lunar scientific research station."
The son of a Greek billionaire was found dead at the Cleveland Marriott Downtown on Saturday night surrounded by three bags of cocaine, authorities and a police report confirmed.
According to police reports, Socrates S. Kokkalis, 34, died in a suspected drug overdose. An official cause of death will be determined by the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner, cleveland.com reports. The medical examiner told News 5 that Kokkalis' death was "untimely."
Socrates Kokkalis Jr., 34
Police and an ambulance were called to his room about 2:45 p.m. Saturday for a report body found in the room, according to police report. Three baggies of cocaine were found inside the room, according to the police report. It appeared he died about 12 hours prior to being found, the police report says.
Kokkalis is the son of Socrates P. Kokkalis Sr., a Greek business tycoon, according to Bloomberg. The elder Kokkalis is the founder of Intracom, a Greek telecommunications giant and was accused in 2002 of being a spy for East Germany beginning in 1963. Intracom is the largest telecommunications company in southeastern Europe and has some 5,700 employees, according to the company's website.
Kokkalis Sr is also the chairman of the Greek soccer team Olympiacos, where his son served as vice president of the team and was the executive in charge of business development for Intracom, according to the soccer team's website. Kokkalis was also on the board of directors of Intralot Interactive, a Greek gambling technology company.
"His premature passing...left the entire Olympiacos family in mourning for the unexpected loss of our Club's Vice-president B,'" the statement said.
A statement provided to CNN Greece by the Kokkalis Foundation translates to: "The Kokkalis family, with deep sorrow, announces the sudden death of Socrates S. Kokkalis, 34, during a business trip to Cleveland, USA, Saturday July 14, 2018".
The Greek "Capital" newspaper reported that the younger Kokkalis was in Cleveland on a business trip related to a sports betting project. Police interviewed the last two people to see Kokkalis. A business partner told police he last saw Kokkalis after dinner the previous evening at about 10:15 p.m. while the business partner was getting off the elevator to go to his suite for the night. The other person interviewed said he last saw Kokkalis exiting the elevator the previous evening after dinner.
Cleveland police's specialized drug-overdose death unit, the Heroin Involved Dead Investigation team, responded to the hotel to help investigate.
A group of former Ohio State University (OSU) wrestlers is suing the school for allegedly failing to protect athletes from sexual abuse decades ago.The class action federal lawsuit, filed Monday in Columbus, was ...
“Given the strange and uncertain times that we are in, and they are strange, and they are uncertain…each day’s news cycles bringing more head spinning and disturbing headlines.”
Those are the words of former President Barack Obama — speaking at an event in South Africa.
And those words drew the ire of former George W. Bush White House staffer Brad Blakeman Tuesday on Fox News.
“Disgraceful,” Blakeman said. “The fact that a former American president on foreign soil would say the comments he did — veiled comments, by the way, not direct — about this president and the current state of American affairs…It’s beyond the pale that the president would do that.”
The fiery reaction to what seemed to be — at most — a mild critique from the ex-president set off former Obama staffer and current vice DNC chair Michael Blake.
“This is absurd that we listen to Republicans convey this foolishness,” Blake said. “As someone who actually worked for President Obama, for you to convey it is disgraceful that Barack Obama said we’re in strange and uncertain times when Donald Trump literally sided with a thug at a dictator yesterday is ridiculous to me.”
The two battled for a bit over Trump’s performance in Helsinki before Blakeman went on to claim that Obama was guilty of colluding with Russians when he was heard telling that nation’s outgoing president that he’d have “more flexibility” after his re-election.
“That’s colluding with the Russians on an election!” Blakeman said.
In the wake of Donald Trump's meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) has accused the summit's critics of "Trump Derangement Syndrome."
The comment came during a Monday appearance with PBS' NewsHour. Earlier in the interview, Paul argued that having a conversation, "even with our adversaries," is beneficial for addressing the countries' mutual interests. "It would be nice to have help from Russia on North Korea as far as denuclearization," he told Judy Woodruff. "We have the Ukraine situation. So...I think that we won't have any progress if we don't have any conversations."
Later, Paul addressed the meeting's critics:
I think Trump is different, and he's willing to meet with foreign leaders and, actually, I think you may get a breakthrough because of the meetings. And I think, if this were anybody else, if there weren't such acute hatred for Trump, such Trump Derangement Syndrome on the left, I think, if this were President Obama—and it could have actually been President Obama early in the first term, when they were trying to reset our relations with Russia, that could have easily had a meeting like this—and the left and the media would have had a lovefest over President Obama.
Paul also published a defense of the president's meeting in Politico, writing: "Politicizing international affairs is a dangerous game, but that hasn't stopped far too many in Washington, who seem to have forgotten that a vital part of keeping America safe and secure is avoiding war through strong and consistent diplomacy, from playing politics."
Trump tweeted a word of thanks to Paul on Tuesday morning after the senator made similar comments on CBS' This Morning.
Thank you @RandPaul. "The President has gone through a year and a half of totally partisan investigations - what's he supposed to think?"
Earlier this week, Paul sparked a bit of outrage when Trump critics focused on a line from his Sunday interview with CNN's Jake Tapper. Paul observed that the U.S., like Russia, has meddled in foreign elections, saying, "We all do it." Though Paul made the statement in the midst of calling for stronger protections for the American electoral process, like Mother Jones' David Corn called Paul a traitor.
Members of the far-right "Proud Boys" were chased out of a Los Angeles bar on Saturday by a group of democratic socialist protesters.Video from the incident shows the left-wing activists shout...
Security on Monday forcibly removed a reporter moments before President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin began a press conference.The person appeared to be carrying a sign and protesting.CNN identi...
#MoonVillage #ESA_ISRU pic.twitter.com/Tbg9SQ4LhZ
An Arizona couple captured video of a firenado that swept across the Colorado River and turned into a waterspout.
