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https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/02/politics/donald-trump-iran-subpoena/index.html

Exclusive: Trump attorneys haven’t found classified document former president referred to on tape following subpoena

By Kaitlan Collins, Paula Reid and Katelyn Polantz, CNN

Updated 2:12 PM EDT, Fri June 2, 2023

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CNN  — 

Attorneys for Donald Trump turned over material in mid-March in response to a federal subpoena related to a classified US military document described by the former president on tape in 2021 but were unable to find the document itself, two sources tell CNN.

Prosecutors issued the subpoena shortly after asking a Trump aide before a federal grand jury about the audio recording of a July 2021 meeting at Trump’s golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey. On the recording, Trump acknowledges he held onto a classified Pentagon document about a potential attack on Iran.

EXCLUSIVE: Trump captured on tape talking about classified document he kept after leaving the White House

Prosecutors sought “any and all” documents and materials related to Mark Milley, Trump’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Iran, including maps or invasion plans, the sources say. A similar subpoena was sent to at least one other attendee of the meeting, another source tells CNN.

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The sources say prosecutors made clear to Trump’s attorneys after issuing the subpoena that they specifically wanted the Iran document he talked about on tape as well as any material referencing classified information – like meeting notes, audio recordings or copies of the document – that may still be Trump’s possession.

The fact that Trump’s team was unable to produce the document underscores the challenges the government has faced in trying to recover classified material that Trump took when he left the White House and in understanding the movement of government records that Trump kept.

Over the course of the Justice Department’s investigation, prosecutors have expressed skepticism that all classified documents had been returned. The federal government recovered dozens of documents with classified markings from Trump at various points throughout 2022.

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The special counsel’s office complained late last year to a federal judge that they couldn’t be sure Trump had turned over all documents with classified markings in his possession, even after the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago last August, CNN previously reported.

The dispute resulted in several sealed court proceedings where the prosecutors sought to hold Trump in contempt, but the judge declined at that time, and Trump’s team hired two people to search his properties.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

It is unclear if the government already possesses a copy of the Iran document from the boxes Trump’s legal team returned to the National Archives last year or recovered in the subsequent FBI search.

Trump’s lawyers have said Trump and his staff did not review in advance materials in the boxes the former president returned to the Archives and have not been told what documents were recovered from Mar-a-Lago.

Trump’s lawyers wouldn’t receive full access to classified documents seized in the FBI search and have only been able to view recently the boxes Trump returned to the Archives in January 2022 with markers in them in place of classified documents that had been returned in those boxes.

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The document Trump references on tape was created before Milley was named as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, CNN was told, and Milley was later interviewed by investigators. Sources have been unable to specify if Trump had the document in question with him as he discussed it in the meeting in 2021 or was simply referencing it.

The recording, first reported by CNN, is now in the hands of special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the Justice Department investigation into Trump. Smith has focused in recent months on the meeting as part of the yearlong criminal investigation into the former president’s handling of national security secrets.

The audio of Trump acknowledging he had a classified document undercuts Trump’s repeated claims that he declassified everything he took from the White House when he left office.

Trump on Thursday said he didn’t know anything about the summer 2021 meeting and again called the Justice Department investigation a “witch hunt” and an attempt to interfere with the 2024 presidential election.

“I don’t know anything about it,” Trump said during a Fox News town hall. “I have the right to declassify as president.”

Trump aides and two people working on the autobiography of Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows attended the Bedminster meeting with Trump. That autobiography includes an account of what appears to be the same meeting, where Trump recalls a report “typed up” by Milley and containing a plan to attack Iran.

The subpoenas were issued immediately after Trump aide Margo Martin, who attended the meeting, appeared before the grand jury in Smith’s investigation and was asked about it. That’s also when Trump’s legal team found out prosecutors had the recording.

The Justice Department had access to a version of the recording before Martin’s grand jury appearance in March, according to one source. Martin’s attorney declined to comment.

After receiving the subpoena to Trump, his legal team spoke with aides and collected materials responsive to the subpoena, including the transcripts of recordings made by Trump aides and any other documents that mentioned Milley or Iran, sources say.

The legal team was unable to locate the document Trump mentions on the tape, the sources say, and it remains unclear if it was ever returned to the government or where it is now.

Trump attorney Jim Trusty declined to say on CNN this week whether the document was ever returned to the National Archives.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/02/middleeast/israel-sea-urchins-coral-reefs-mime-intl/index.html

Black sea urchins have disappeared from the Gulf of Aqaba. Their loss could kill off an entire coral reef

By Hadas Gold, CNN

Updated 1:29 PM EDT, Fri June 2, 2023

Something is missing in this coral reef and it's threatening an entire ecosystem

04:53 - Source: CNN

Editor’s Note: A version of this story appears in CNN’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, a three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. Sign up here.

Eilat, Israel CNN  — 

Under the bright blue water of the Gulf of Aqaba on the Red Sea, the view is stunning. Expansive coral reefs teeming with life; colorful fish and invertebrates. But something crucial has gone missing from this beautiful scene, and that could threaten this entire ecosystem.

Black sea urchins.

In January, Tel Aviv University scientists at the Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences in Eilat noticed that in the span of just a few days, the entire population of the black sea urchins in the northern part of this gulf were gone.

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These creatures – jet black, round-bodied and with long spikes – may be better known for their painful stings. But they are also a crucial part of the ecological system of these coral reefs. Without them, the reefs are at risk.

Disappearing in days

Dr. Omri Bronstein leads the team of researchers here. He says he received a panicked phone call from his PhD students one evening in January after they had gone on a regular monitoring night dive.

“They came out of the water, still with their diving suits. And they called and said, ‘Listen, there is something very strange going on our site … the sea urchins are completely gone,’” Bronstein said. “It was shocking. It was simply shocking, because this is a site we know intimately well, for the past five years. And we’ve never seen any fluctuations on that magnitude.”

Bronstein and his team soon realized whatever was killing the sea urchins, most likely a waterborne pathogen, was doing so quickly. And it is spreading to the waters off countries in the region, including Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Greece, and Turkey.

“It takes 48 hours for an individual to go from a live healthy individual to basically bare skeleton,” Bornstein said, adding that the urchins all but vanish within a day because their remains nearly all break down into the water.

The epidemic only affects the black sea urchins, and was even killing them in the research lab’s tanks, and Eilat’s aquarium – which all use freshly circulating seawater.

“We know that it is transmitted through the water, they don’t need direct contact,” Bronstein said.

The tanks are now covered in the algae the sea urchins normally eat.

When we visited, a lone young sea urchin remained in the tanks that once hosted dozens. But these creatures are the kind that can only survive in large numbers.

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“When you see an individual, or even a few individuals, even when they survive, that’s not enough to sustain a population. There is a minimum critical size, population size that is needed in order to maintain thriving population,” Bronstein said. “In addition, one of the strategies of this species in terms of protecting themselves [from predators] is that they normally form aggregations of dozens, and sometimes even in the past hundreds of individuals. And then by creating this cushion of spines, basically, they provide protection for the entire group. When you’re alone, your chances are not so good.”

A key part of the reef’s ecosystem

Beachgoers may be relieved they don’t have to worry about stepping on their spikes. But the urchin’s disappearance is incredibly dangerous for the unique coral reefs here and elsewhere in the Mediterranean region.

Black sea urchins feed on the algae that grows on the reef. Bronstein said they’re sometimes called the gardeners of the sea for that reason. Algae competes with coral for sunlight. So by eating it, the urchins give the corals the chance to grow, rather than be suffocated by algae, which has a much faster growth rate than coral.

“There is nothing we can create manually to clear the algae, even in the lab setting,” Bronstein said. “So it’s now not just the sea urchins themselves that are damaged, but the entire network – in our lab or in the sea – that relies on these crucial components.”

A similar pathogen killed off 98% of the black sea urchin population in the Caribbean in the 1980s, and seemingly returned to the Caribbean in 2022. That may be where the Red Sea pathogen came from, Bronstein said.

“There is a very good chance that there’s been transport based on maritime transport that actually basically helped this pathogen jump across the entire Atlantic,” Bronstein said. “The other hypothesis that is still not been overruled is that we might be looking at a pathogen that has always been here, or has been in the environment for many years. And for some reason, something changed and triggered it to be more violent, and cause the mortalities that we see today.”

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The threat to the Red Sea’s coral reefs is not just a threat to a beautiful site. These reefs are unique in the world because of their ability to withstand high temperatures, which causes coral bleaching, and the effects of climate change.

Omri Omesi, a marine ranger with the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, called the situation a “catastrophe” not only for this gulf, but potentially for all of the Earth’s coral reefs.

“This is one of the most northern tropical reefs in the world, this is actually a miracle that they exist,” Omesi said. “It’s very, very important to keep this place going because gives hope for other coral reefs in the world. We can learn why we have this resistant coral bleaching.”

A major aspect of Bronstein’s team’s research is studying the environmental DNA of the water. Without the need for more invasive methods, the DNA analysis can also help predict what may be happening – like another epidemic and spawning activity – before researchers can physically see it.

Time is running out

Given how quickly the urchins disappeared, Bronstein said scientists have little time to take action. His team skipped the normal academic process that can take months or years to conduct studies and release journal papers, choosing to sound the alarm as quickly as possible with fast-paced academic articles and public appeals.

“We need to understand, and decision makers need to understand, that the window of opportunity to take action is very, very narrow. And it’s closing rapidly,” Bronstein said.

The first step, needed in the coming weeks, is to establish “broodstock populations” that will eventually help repopulate and reintroduce the black sea urchins into the region. But the surviving sea urchins that could be used to do so are themselves under threat.

“[The mass mortality] is currently occurring south of Turkey and Greece, but it is making its way down along the eastern Mediterranean coastline, towards Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. Once it gets there, we probably will have pretty much closed our window of opportunity to take action,” Bronstein said.

The Middle East is running out of water, and parts of it are becoming uninhabitable

Bronstein said he’s been in constant contact with government agencies as well as other researchers in the region.

Israel shares the gulf with Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, with which it has no formal relations. But underwater there is no such thing as politics, and Bronstein said international cooperation will be key to fixing this issue.

“It is our mandate, it is our responsibility to make sure that we do everything that we can to make sure these reefs, these unique reefs, probably the most unique coral reef in the world, it is our responsibility to make sure that they will remain here for future generations,” Bronstein said.

 

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https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/31/us/just-climate-thresholds-significant-harm-study/index.html

If climate goals are meant to protect us from ‘significant harm,’ then they aren’t good enough, scientists say

By Rachel Ramirez, CNN

Published 11:00 AM EDT, Wed May 31, 2023

A thick plume of smoke wafts from an out-of-control fire that engulfed multiple homes in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Sunday.

Kelly Clark/The Canadian Press/AP

CNN  — 

For years, the world has been focusing on a key climate change threshold: limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. But even at that threshold – which could begin to be breached within the next five years – millions of people will still face “significant harm,” including death, displacement and food and water scarcity, an international commission of researchers reported Wednesday.

In a study published in the journal Nature, the panel of more than a dozen researchers integrated environmental justice – the idea that climate thresholds should minimize significant harm – with climate science. And with that standard, they found the world has already breached critical boundaries, leaving less safe, habitable space for life on Earth.

At 1.5 degrees Celsius, the authors found that more than 200 million people could still be exposed to unprecedented heat, and more than 500 million people would be exposed to longterm sea level rise. And they said that the key climate threshold nations pledged to meet in the Paris Agreement in 2015 – one that would ensure a “safe and just” world – should have been 1 degree Celsius.

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But the planet’s average temperature has already soared to around 1.2 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial levels, which has already triggered catastrophic and deadly climate and weather changes, including more extreme heat waves, floods and landscape-altering wildfires.

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“Science is showing clearly that we are at risk of destabilizing the entire planet and its life support systems,” said Johan Rockström, the lead author on the study and director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and co-chair of the Earth Commission.

“Unfortunately, the doctor will tell you that we are moving in the wrong direction on basically all of these living components that build up this complex, adaptive, self-regulating system,” he told reporters, likening the study to a doctor’s visit, and that the prescription is “a list of quantitative safe and just boundary conditions that you have to live within to be able to cure yourself.”

While past scientific efforts to define Earth’s boundaries have been strong and compelling, climate science has historically looked at the conditions needed to maintain the planet’s stability, but excluded justice as a key component, said Joyeeta Gupta, a co-author on the study and an environmental researcher at the University of Amsterdam.

“We argue that there is no safe planet without justice,” Gupta said, underscoring that incorporating justice to the Earth system’s boundaries reduces significant harm to communities and individuals.

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The research is a “worthy attempt” to identify and quantify the human toll associated with different levels of environmental degradation, such as climate change, water availability and biodiversity, said Kim Cobb, climate scientist at Brown University who was not involved with the study but was a lead author on the most recent UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.

“This paper highlights the human costs of the emissions choices we are making every single year – costs that will extend many generations into the future, when we do not move to enact emissions in line with the most ambitious targets,” Cobb told CNN. It also “provides further ammunition to climate justice advocates as policymakers seek a greater understanding of how continued warming will worsen existing climate injustices from region to region and across the next decades to centuries.”

Scientists are calling on governments, businesses and policymakers to take the crisis more seriously as climate thresholds are breached and the world gets warmer.

“The intention of this paper was to try and show that there is already a lot of damage at 1 degree, and that this is more just than a 1.5-degree target,” Gupta said. “We want to make sure that countries take this as seriously as possible.”

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https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/01/business/florida-homeowner-insurance-rates/index.html

Florida’s homeowner insurance rates are four times the national average. That’s not getting better anytime soon

By Chris Isidore, CNN

Updated 8:08 AM EDT, Thu June 1, 2023

Talukder Mahtab surveys the roof of his business after it was hit by the winds and rain from Hurricane Ian on September 29, 2022 in Bartow, Florida.

Gerardo Mora/Getty Images

New York CNN  — 

Hurricane season officially starts Thursday. But no matter how many storms hit Florida this year, the state’s residents are already struggling as they try to get homeowners’ insurance.

National insurers have very little presence in Florida. Big insurance companies dominate more than half the market in the rest of the country. But in Florida, State Farm has about 7% of the market, according to the Insurance Information Institute, an industry trade group. No other major insurer has as much as 2%.

Meanwhile, the regional and local insurers left to provide coverage are in bad shape. Just more than half of insurers based in Florida are on the state insurance regulator’s watch list due to their financial health. Six were forced to liquidate last year, another one earlier this year. And to try to stay solvent, the remaining insurers are charging rates nearly four times as high as the national average. Homeowners in the state pay private insurers about $6,000 a year, compared to a national average of $1,700.

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The insurance industry insists that the state’s risk from hurricanes is only part of the problem, and points to a legal system it says promoted litigation abuse and excess claims.

“This is a man-made crisis,” said Mark Friedlander, spokesperson for the Insurance Information Institute, who is based in Florida. The insurance industry pushed for and won a number of reforms meant to curb what it saw as abuse, but so far it hasn’t changed the outlook for insurers, partly because of a flood of nearly 300,000 lawsuits the III said was filed just before the law took effect.

“That will muddy the marketplace for years to come,” said Friedlander. “That volume of lawsuits will drive more of these regional companies out of business. The laws have changed. The market conditions have not changed. It’s still a mess.”

Florida’s location and low elevation makes It particularly susceptible to hurricane damage. The Atlantic hurricane season is projected to be about normal this year, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, with a 30% chance of an above normal season, and a 30% chance of fewer hurricanes than normal.

Last year was a bad year. Hurricane Ian last fall caused $114 billion in inflation adjusted damage, according to NOAA, making it the most expensive storm to ever hit the state, and the third most expensive in US history after 2005’s Katrina and 2017’s Harvey.

But for the most part Florida has gotten off fairly easy in recent years, with no hurricanes making landfall in the state from 2019 through 2021.

Much of the damage caused by hurricanes comes in the form of flood damage, which is covered not by private insurers but by the National Flood Insurance Program, a federal agency. But wind damage to homes and roofs are covered under homeowners’ insurance policies.

Trial lawyers push back

Trial lawyers dispute that frivolous or fraudulent lawsuits are the cause of the problem, blaming lack of proper regulation on the insurance industry by the state.

“We’ve seen reform after reform. Insurance companies have been allowed to plunder profits from the state in the form of excessive payouts to executives and sister companies and by shortchanging policyholders,” said Stephen Cain, president elect of the trade group representing Florida trial lawyers. “The homeowner’s insurance crisis is a regulatory failure. Had the market been properly regulated through the good years, when there were no hurricanes, the abusive and undercapitalized companies would not have been let loose on the homeowners of Florida while their executives plundered the profits.”

Even Friedlander said it is possible that the new limits on lawsuits will leave some homeowners unable to collect on legitimate claims. But he said to the extent that happens, “it’s because of the abuse that has gone on for so many years.”

Citizens Property Insurance Corp.

The state does provide an alternative to the private sector — the Citizens Property Insurance Corp., which was set up in 2002 as an insurer of last resort for those who couldn’t find coverage in the private market.

The only way someone qualifies for insurance from Citizens is if the lowest quote they get from a private insurer is more than 20% greater than the Citizens’ quote. Its average policy is far below the private market — about $3,700. But that’s a statewide average.

In areas with high hurricane risks, such as the Atlantic coast in South Florida, the countywide averages for a Citizens’ policy range from $5,100 to $6,800. Still, in those counties it has a dominant share of the market: about 42% in Miami-Dade and 30% in Broward just to the north, along with 36% in Monroe County, which includes the Florida Keys.

And with affordable insurance from private insurers becoming tougher and tougher to find, more and more Florida homeowners are turning to Citizens. It now has 1.3 million policies, about 16% of the market, and it’s growing at a rate of about 3,000 policies a month. The number of policies is up nearly 50% from this time last year. And that itself poses a huge risk for the market.

The board of Citizens admits that the premiums it charges are not sufficient to cover the risk it has assumed. If one or more major hurricanes come ashore in South Florida’s Atlantic Coast, it could quickly wipe out Citizens’ reserves and force it to impose emergency assessments on not only its policyholders, but other insurance customers across the state. That could mean an additional 45% for current Citizens policyholders, according to III. Even those who don’t have Citizens policies could be hit by a 2% assessment on all their insurance premiums, both home and car, if the financial setback is great enough.

Even without those assessments, Citizens is asking for a 14% rate increase to take effect later this year, which will be considered by Florida’ insurance regulator next week. And other insurers are seeking steep increases as well.

A major reason is that reinsurance companies, the companies that insurance firms turn to in order to cover some of their risks, are hiking their premiums by 30% to 40%, according to Matthew Carletti, an insurance industry analyst for JMP Securities.

“If you are a reinsurer, you have lost money for the last five years,” said Carletti. “They’ve had enough.”

Carletti said that while Florida’s recent legislation should help the market, it won’t be enough to roll back premiums, especially with the concerns about rising risk caused by climate change and more powerful hurricanes to come. There’s also the inflation driving up the cost to repair or rebuild homes, both from increased labor costs to higher prices for materials.

“The reforms at a minimum should result in less increases than would otherwise be the case in Florida,” he said. “But prices and premium are going up across the country.”

First Recorded Stand-Up Comedy Sketch from 500 Years Ago Discovered in 15th Century Manuscript

 

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First Recorded Stand-Up Comedy Sketch from 500 Years Ago Discovered in 15th Century Manuscript

Rare All-White Panda Spotted Again in China–The Only One of its Kind in the World (WATCH)

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Rare All-White Panda Spotted Again in China–The Only One of its Kind in the World (WATCH)

Jun 1, 2023

63 to 36: The Senate vote was much closer than the House about raising the debt

 Though some Republicans and Democrats in the House voted against the debt Ceiling bill even more (percentage wise) Senators voted against the Debt Ceiling Bill with only 3 votes beyond what they neede for passage which I find interesting.

Some people called this bill a "Turd Sandwich" but I think that many Republicans and Democrats agreed with this sentiment.

However, Negotiations are exactly how democracies stay democracies. It is when you don't have negotiated agreements between parties that Nations collapse and move towards actual civil War.

The Slippery Slope of AI

I can remember watching the movie Terminator(1984) at a local theater then and going into the rest room with tears in my eyes realizing just how prophetic this movie might be (especially with my background in computer programming and computer operations during college and after.

But, the reason I say that Artificial intelligence is a slippery slope is that often it brings great good into people's lives too along with great potential bad.

Remember when the Internet first started in the 1990s?

People thought it would be wonderful. Was It? For example, Alexa stealing people's children's private moments as well as their own (making love) with a whole company watching or listening or both for example. 

I wouldn't own an Alexa just because of my knowledge of the industry. However, to many people Alexa and other "sentient" products that talk to you seem like fairty tales come true. 

However, they never were. Your phones take pictures with latitude and longitude built into every shot for example, Unless you unhook it's ability to do that (and how many of you can do this?) Even I with my background might be hard pressed to do this myself. So, my solution is to NEVER Publish any photos I take at my website in order to protect everyone. 

But, many people aren't as knowledgeable as someone like me who has actually worked in the field and actually knows things like this.

The Same is true of present AI that can write your term paper on any subject you want it to to the point where a Teacher or professor might not be able to tell that you didn't do it yourself.

But, what else can it do?

So, the point here is: "Everything might be okay until it is not!"

And this is the problem. Will you recognize when you or your family are being harmed by Artificial Intelligence or will you learn about how your whole family was harmed years later?

Or will a robot simply rip off one of your arms because no one told it you weren't another metal robot to begin with and that we are built more fragile than it is? (I saw this in "The Recruit" by the way which is a netflix series).

Senate passes debt ceiling bill to avoid default

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Senate passes debt ceiling bill to avoid default