Wisconsin Republican Representative Sean Duffy
Wisconsin congressman and former Real World: Boston cast member Sean Duffy appeared on CNN Tuesday to defend the Trump administration’s fixation on the public safety threat presented by natives of seven specific majority-Muslim countries in the Middle East and Africa. (No immigrant from those countries has ever carried out a terror attack in the United States.) CNN anchor Alisyn Camerota asked Duffy why the White House wasn’t expressing similar concerns about the threat presented by white extremists in light of last week’s murder of six Muslims by a white supremacist Trump supporter in Québec City. That’s when Duffy started doing something that is colloquially known down by the docks as “talking out of his ass.”
Camerota: Why isn’t the president talking about the white terrorists who mowed down six Muslims praying at their mosque?
Duffy: I don’t know. But I would just tell you there’s a difference, again, death and murder on both sides is wrong, but if you want to […]
William Christopher Gibbs
Credit: Facebook
William Christopher Gibbs, a 27-year-old man from Fannin County, Georgia is under FBI investigation after driving himself to the hospital last week, claiming he came into contact with the deadly substance ricin.
Fannin County Sheriff Dane Kirby confirmed that Gibbs’ car tested positive for ricin, a deadly poison that is found in castor beans. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the substance can come in the form of a powder, a mist, a pellet, or can be dissolved in liquid and just a small amount of it can kill. The CDC notes, “It would take a deliberate act to make ricin and use it to poison people.”
It is unclear how or for what reason Gibbs came into contact with the ricin. The FBI “identified no evidence that any poisonous or toxic substances have been dispersed or that the public is at risk,” according to prosecutors who spoke with Fox News.
Gibbs’ Facebook profile indicates the 27-year-old white man is a member of the Georgia Church Of Creativity […]
Newly confirmed Attorney General Jeff Sessions
Credit: Saul Loeb/AFP
Jeff Sessions is your new attorney general. After a marathon session of testimony about the long-serving Alabama lawmaker’s record on voting rights, race, and criminal justice, Sessions has been confirmed, as expected, by his colleagues in the U.S. Senate, by a margin of 52 to 47. (West Virginia’s Joe Manchin was the only Democratic senator to vote for Sessions’ confirmation. Sessions himself abstained.)
What this means is that one of Donald Trump’s most loyal advisers is now the country’s most powerful law enforcement official. As the head of the Department of Justice, he will enjoy access to Trump’s ear while bearing the burden of his whims. In the process he will transform a federal agency that has, for the past eight years, been used as a tool for advancing civil rights, extending mercy to drug offenders and intervening on broken police departments plagued by systemic racism and cruelty.
Under Sessions—a man […]
Workers walk past solar panels in Jimo, Shandong Province, China, April 21, 2016.
Credit: China Daily/Reuters
China’s installed photovoltaic (PV) capacity more than doubled last year, turning the country into the world’s biggest producer of solar energy by capacity, the National Energy Administration (NEA) said on Saturday. (emphasis added)
Installed PV capacity rose to 77.42 gigawatts at the end of 2016, with the addition of 34.54 gigawatts over the course of the year, data from the energy agency showed.
Shandong, Xinjiang, Henan were among the provinces that saw the most capacity increase, while Xinjiang, Gansu, Qinghai and Inner Mongolia had the greatest overall capacity at the end of last year, according to the data.
China will add more than 110 gigawatts of capacity in the 2016-2020 period, according to the NEA’s solar power development plan.
Solar plants generated 66.2 billion kilowatt-hours of power last year, accounting for 1 percent of China’s total power generation, the NEA said.
The country aims to boost the mix of non-fossil fuel generated power to 20 percent by 2030 from 11 […]
President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency has said he wants to review tough federal gas mileage and greenhouse gas standards for 2025 that were set up under President Barack Obama. One effect of a rollback could be to slow down the auto industry’s momentum toward producing affordable electric cars.
In a meeting with President Trump in late January, auto executives asked him to ease up on the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. And EPA nominee Scott Pruitt — who as Oklahoma attorney general repeatedly sued the EPA to overturn various regulations — said in his confirmation hearings he wanted to review how the Obama EPA set those standards.
With an easing of the standards, auto companies could narrow their efforts to improving traditional internal combustion engines with less need to refine and sell electric vehicles. “Loosening of the 2025 CAFE standards would unquestionably allow automakers to refocus their attention on combustion-only vehicles at the expense of affordable electric cars,” said Michael Harley, executive analyst for Kelley Blue Book.
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
