pelespirit

A $1.6 Billion Federal Loan Guarantee

What Joseph Dominguez failed to mention when he proclaimed that Constellation was not asking for a penny from the state or from utility customers to restart Three Mile Island was that in May it applied for a $1.6 billion federal loan guarantee — which coincidentally is precisely the amount of money it plans to invest to restart the shuttered reactor. According to the Washington Post, the taxpayer-backed loan could give Microsoft and Constellation Energy a major boost in their unprecedented bid to steer all the power from a US nuclear plant to a single company. Microsoft is one of many large tech companies scouring the nation for zero emissions power for its data centers and one of the leaders in the field of artificial intelligence.

Currently, just over 1,000 people in Miami-Dade have no roof to sleep under. For many of those people, that may still be the case come Jan. 1, when the county is legally responsible for keeping them off the streets. That threat of lawsuits could bring people experiencing homelessness into greater contact with law enforcement. Because the law applies to counties and cities — not individuals — it makes no mention of arrests or jail time.

Enforcement is entirely up to local governments, who run the risk of being sued if their execution of the law is ineffective and people are caught sleeping in public.

Different police departments will receive different marching orders. But Steadman Stahl, president of the South Florida Police Benevolent Association, a union with 6,500 members in police departments throughout South Florida, guesses that most officers will, at least at first, try to just move along people who are sleeping on the street.

Comment by TherapyGary@lemmy.blahaj.zone

Long as fuck article so here's a summary provided by GPT-4:

The article "The Lies Russia Tells Itself" by Thomas Rid discusses the Russian disinformation campaign known as Doppelganger, which targets Western countries with fake news and misinformation. The campaign, orchestrated by the Social Design Agency (SDA), creates cloned websites of legitimate news outlets to spread pro-Russian narratives. The U.S. Department of Justice seized 32 domains associated with this campaign and released extensive internal documents revealing its operations

Key insights

• Tactics and Methods: Doppelganger uses fake articles, videos, and social media to manipulate public opinion, often exploiting existing societal tensions
• Self-Deception: The SDA's reports exaggerated its impact, misleading both its funders and itself about the effectiveness of its campaigns
• Western Response: Despite being exposed, the campaign continued, partly because exposure increased its perceived effectiveness among Russian bureaucrats

Key Numbers and Facts

• Document Leak: The leaked documents from the Social Design Agency (SDA) comprised more than 3,000 individual files detailing their disinformation strategies and operations.

• Fake Websites: Between November 2023 and August 2024, the Doppelganger campaign produced over 700 fake websites, marking it as one of Russia's largest known disinformation factories.

• Social Media Activity: The SDA pushed out 3,161 social media comments promoting its fake articles on Bild and 3,277 links to fake Daily Mail stories between mid-May and mid-July 2022.

• Views of Fake Websites: The investigation by Bavarian intelligence revealed that Doppelganger achieved just over 800,000 views of its 700 fake websites across all its campaigns during the specified period.

• Target Audience Engagement: The majority of views came from France and Germany, with the SDA's fake websites targeting Americans receiving fewer than 180,000 clicks.

• Performance Metrics: The SDA kept extensive records of its social media interactions, logging hundreds of thousands of comments in spreadsheets to track their perceived impact.

• Ambitious Goals: One internal document set key performance indicators for a disinformation campaign in Germany, aiming to increase support for the right-wing Alternative for Germany party and sow “fear of the future” among the German public.

“I am convinced you would do it all over again if you could. You’re as defiant as any defendant this court has ever seen,” Barrett told her in handing down the sentence. “You are no hero. You abused your position and you’re a charlatan.”

Jurors found Peters guilty in August for allowing a man to misuse a security card to access to the Mesa County election system and for being deceptive about that person’s identity.

The man was affiliated with My Pillow Chief Executive Mike Lindell, a prominent promoter of false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the election from then-President Trump. The discredited claims trace back to Trump himself, whose supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol because of them and who still repeats them in his third run for president.

Two years after some of Texas’ largest oil companies withdrew from Russia because of U.S. sanctions over the country's invasion of Ukraine, they and other U.S. corporations are under threat of Russian litigation claiming they are in breach of contract.

The legal claims are largely being heard behind closed doors by arbitration panels in Europe and Russia, keeping the proceedings confidential. But U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt, a Houston Republican leading bipartisan legislation to block the Russian effort, said Texas oil companies were among those being targeted.

“I can’t name them directly, but there are several,” he said. “American companies should never be sued by Russian assets for complying with U.S. sanctions.”

The Russian Embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.

Bids opened Monday for a contract to supply the state Department of Education with 55,000 Bibles. According to the bid documents, vendors must meet certain specifications: Bibles must be the King James Version; must contain the Old and New Testaments; must include copies of the Pledge of Allegiance, Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights; and must be bound in leather or leather-like material.

A salesperson at Mardel Christian & Education searched, and though they carry 2,900 Bibles, none fit the parameters.

But one Bible fits perfectly: Lee Greenwood's God Bless the USA Bible, endorsed by former President Donald Trump and commonly referred to as the Trump Bible. They cost $60 each online, with Trump receiving fees for his endorsement.

The justices said they will review a ruling by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that found that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission exceeded its authority under federal law in granting a license to a private company to store spent nuclear fuel at a dump in West Texas for 40 years. The outcome of the case will affect plans for a similar facility in New Mexico.

Political leaders in both states oppose the facilities.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas has said his state “will not become America’s nuclear waste dumping ground.”

The push for temporary storage sites is part of the complicated politics of the nation’s so far futile quest for a permanent underground storage facility.

The Supreme Court has agreed to review the appeals court ruling allowing Mexico’s lawsuit against U.S. gun manufacturers, granting Smith & Wesson’s petition for the justices to hear the case. It will be argued during the new term that starts Monday, with a decision expected by the summer.

The Supreme Court on Friday left in place Biden administration regulations aimed at curbing oil and gas facility emissions of methane, a major contributor to climate change.

In a separate action, the court also rejected a bid to block a regulation aimed at curbing emissions of mercury and other toxic pollutants from coal-fired power plants.

In both cases, the court rejected emergency applications without comment, with no noted dissents. Litigation against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will continue in lower courts.

Former President Donald Trump’s media company has forced out executives in recent days after internal allegations that its CEO, former Rep. Devin Nunes, is mismanaging the company, according to interviews and records of communications among former employees.

Several people involved with Trump Media believe the ousters are retaliation following what they describe as an anonymous “whistleblower” complaint regarding Nunes that went to the company’s board of directors.