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Good evening. Here’s the latest.
1. The White House is preparing to establish a panel to study whether climate change is a national security threat, as the government’s own scientific and intelligence agencies have warned.
A White House memo describing the panel said it would include William Happer, a climate change denialist, suggesting a new effort by the Trump administration to play down or distort the impact of global warming. Above, heavy rainstorms breached a levee in Novato, Calif., last week.
Mr. Happer, a physicist serving as Mr. Trump’s deputy assistant for emerging technologies, is notorious within the science community for his comments that carbon dioxide — the greenhouse gas scientists say is trapping heat and warming the planet — is beneficial to humanity.
2. A Coast Guard lieutenant and self-described white nationalist was plotting to kill a long list of journalists and Democratic politicians when he was arrested last week, the authorities said.
Lt. Christopher Paul Hasson was arrested Friday on charges of illegal gun possession, above, but prosecutors said in a filing on Tuesday that the charges were just the “proverbial tip of the iceberg.” They described him as a “domestic terrorist” and said he should be held in detention pending trial because he “intends to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country.”
This is a developing story. Check back here for updates.
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3. Wall Street is setting its sights on a new target: distressed main streets.
Hedge funds and other wealthy investors are raising money for so-called opportunity funds. Spurred by a provision of the 2017 tax package that provides capital gains relief for spending on projects in poor areas, more than 80 of the funds have sprung up since January 2018.
They aim to invest in about 8,700 designated “opportunity zones,” like the one above in downtown Salt Lake City, across the country and in Puerto Rico.
Fund managers are pitching investors on a combination of outsize returns and a feel-good role in fighting poverty, but skeptics worry that the promises are overly optimistic.
4. The Supreme Court found its way to a unanimous ruling: stronger limits on police power to seize private property.
The justices found that the Eighth Amendment’s bar on “excessive fines” should include actions in states and localities, in a ruling that stemmed from the case of a small-time drug offender whose $42,000 Land Rover was seized by Indiana officials.
The practice, called civil forfeiture, has been widely used to raise revenue. It has drawn fire from across the political spectrum, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for eight of the justices, noted its use in Southern states to “subjugate” blacks after the Civil War.
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5. “I can’t believe it. I ruined my life. I ruined my future.”
Four years ago, Hoda Muthana, above, was a 20-year-old college student in Alabama convinced of the righteousness of the Islamic State. But after being married to three Islamic State fighters and witnessing executions like those she had once cheered on social media, she wants to come home.
We spoke with her and a second American woman at a refugee camp in northeastern Syria where they are being held. Less than 24 hours after we published the article, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said she had no legal basis to return, and President Trump tweeted that he had directed Mr. Pompeo “not to allow Hoda Muthana back into the Country!”
Separately, Vera Mironova, a visiting fellow at Harvard University who has embedded with Iraq’s special forces, writes in an Op-Ed essay that women are playing an increasingly important role in the Islamic State — and that security forces are not prepared.
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6. The clashes between California and the Trump administration now include a transportation improvement project.
A day after the state joined a lawsuit challenging President Trump’s emergency declaration along the border, the Transportation Department said it wanted California to pay back $2.5 billion in federal funds that had already been spent on a bullet train to connect Los Angeles and the Bay Area. The department also said it was terminating a $929 million federal grant for the line. Above, the first leg of the rail line in Fresno, Calif.
Both Gov. Gavin Newsom and Mr. Trump linked the rail decision to the fight over the border wall.
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7. Jussie Smollett is now considered a suspect in the case the “Empire” actor reported as a hate crime against him last month.
The Chicago police said that Mr. Smollett was suspected of filing a false police report and that detectives were presenting evidence to a grand jury that he had committed a felony. Mr. Smollett said he had been attacked by two white men in “MAGA” hats who yelled anti-gay slurs, but questions about whether he might have staged the episode have been growing.
Mr. Smollett, through his lawyers, has denied any role in coordinating an attack.
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8. Pope Francis and other church leaders will kick off an unprecedented conference on Thursday aimed at addressing clerical sexual abuse. Above, Francis at the Vatican today.
Victims’ advocates are calling for a uniform set of laws and zero-tolerance policies around the world, but Vatican officials and other leaders have warned that denial about abuse in some parts of the world and legal and cultural barriers to identifying abusers make a worldwide standard for the church virtually impossible.
We interviewed bishops and priests on four continents and found that, indeed, views vary widely on the urgency, extent and very existence of sexual abuse by priests. In places where Catholics are a minority, reporting a priest to the authorities could be a death sentence.
10. Finally, a horse of a different color.
Researchers in Britain dressed up horses in zebra coats to confirm a theory about the evolution of zebra stripes. The stripes seem to make it difficult for flies to land on their bodies, which might explain why they evolved in the first place, researchers found.
The high contrast between black and white most likely tricks the fly’s low-resolution vision, which relies on sensing movement. “It’s probably just blowing the fly’s vision away,” one researcher said.
It’s also probably time to invest in some zebra print.
Have a wild night.
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Source : Nytimes
