Scott

As Republicans take control of the House, they're gearing up to make good on their promises to investigate Hunter Biden. Now, CBS News has looked at the data of Hunter's infamous laptop that came directly from the source who said they provided it to the FBI under subpoena, and determined that it had not been doctored in any way, as some past reports have suggested. CBS News commissioned an independent forensic review of the laptop to determine its authenticity, which found that the data obtained is indeed from Hunter Biden's laptop and is real. In the past, questions were raised as to whether the files from the laptop were doctored or if additional files were added by operatives looking to frame the Biden family. https://www.rawstory.com/hunter-biden-laptop-2658728508/

Five people were killed Saturday night at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado, according to police. Another 18 people were injured in the mass shooting at Club Q. Authorities received numerous 911 calls starting at 11:57 p.m. and responded to the scene, said Colorado Springs Police Lt. Pamela Castro. “They did locate one individual who we believe to be the suspect inside,” said Castro. “At this point in time, the suspect is being treated, but is in custody.” https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/20/us/colorado-springs-shooting-gay-nightclub/index.html

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) trolled her opponent, Republican Kelly Tshibaka, after she took a lead in the first-place votes for the state’s Senate race. Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system means voters ranked the candidates from first place to last, and a candidate must win a majority of first-place votes to win outright without additional rounds being needed. While no candidate is projected to win a majority of first-place votes in the first round, Tshibaka led Murkowski narrowly since Election Day, but Murkowski took a lead and noted it in a tweet on her campaign account Friday. https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3742812-murkowski-trolls-alaska-senate-challenger-as-she-takes-lead-in-first-place-votes/

Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday appointed a special counsel to oversee the criminal investigations into the retention of national defense information at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago report and parts of the January 6, 2021, insurrection. Both investigations implicate the conduct of Trump, who on Tuesday declared his candidacy in the 2024 presidential race, making him a potential rival of President Joe Biden. “Based on recent developments, including the former President’s announcement that he is a candidate for President in the next election, and the sitting President’s stated intention to be a candidate as well, I have concluded that it is in the public interest to appoint a special counsel,” Garland said at the Justice Department on Friday. https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/18/politics/justice-department-trump-special-counsel/index.html

Christina Zielke and her husband were excited when she got pregnant in July. It was her first pregnancy at age 33 – everything was new. But during the ultrasound at her initial prenatal appointment in Washington D.C., there was no heartbeat. Bloodwork taken a few days apart showed her pregnancy hormone levels were dropping. A doctor from her Ob-Gyn's office called her to confirm that the pregnancy had ended in a miscarriage. They laid out her options: Take medication to make the pregnancy tissue come out faster, have a dilation and curettage or D&C procedure to remove the pregnancy tissue from her uterus, or wait for it to come out on its own. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/11/15/1135882310/miscarriage-hemorrhage-abortion-law-ohio

Elon Musk is now facing a new crisis at Twitter as a wave of employees seemed to reject his ultimatum of an “extremely hardcore” Twitter 2.0 or leave the company. Hours after a deadline for workers to check “yes” on a Google form accepting “long hours at high intensity, it seems a large number of employees have rejected Musk’s vision. Exactly how many employees opted for severance over remaining at Twitter isn’t yet clear. https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/twitter-hit-with-mass-resignations-after-elon-musk-hardcore-ultimatum-004304057.html

The UK faces its biggest drop in living standards on record as the surging cost of living eats into people's wages. The government's forecaster said that household incomes - once rising prices were taken into account - would dive by 7% in the next few years. It also expects the number of people who are unemployed to rise by more than 500,000. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-63659936

A Dutch court has found three men guilty of murder for shooting down a passenger jet over eastern Ukraine in 2014, killing 298 people. The court found that a Russian-made missile supplied from Russia and fired by an armed group under Russian control brought down flight MH17. The men - two Russians and one Ukrainian - were found guilty in absentia and sentenced to life in jail. A third Russian was acquitted. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63637625

Republicans have secured the 218 seats needed to win a majority in the lower chamber of the US Congress, the BBC's US partner CBS News projects. The party's majority in the House of Representatives is razor-thin, but it is enough to stall President Joe Biden's agenda for the next two years. It marks a return to divided government, with Democrats still retaining power in the Senate. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63629003

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump’s longtime finance chief is still a company man, collecting a hefty salary from the former president’s namesake Trump Organization even as he makes his long-awaited turn as the prosecution’s star witness in a criminal tax fraud trial. Allen Weisselberg testified Tuesday that until recently he was working as a senior adviser for the company — out as CFO following his arrest last year, but with no loss in pay — and is now on a paid leave of absence after pleading guilty in August to evading taxes on $1.7 million in company-paid perks. Weisselberg, who’s still collecting his usual $640,000 salary and $500,000 in annual bonuses, said he even celebrated his 75th birthday at Trump Tower with cake and colleagues just hours after finalizing the plea agreement, which now pits him against the company where he’s worked since the mid-1980s.

Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday filed his paperwork establishing his candidacy to run for the presidency again in 2024. Trump’s paperwork landed with the Federal Election Committee shortly before he was expected to make his announcement at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida waterfront estate. On the brink of a campaign launch that elicits both enthusiasm and dread from different corners of his own party, Trump’s quest to return to the Oval Office could face untold obstacles in the months to come, even with his loyal base firmly intact. https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/15/politics/trump-2024-presidential-bid/index.html

In the early 2020 days of the pandemic, when most of the world was desperately implementing lockdowns and trying to limit the damage, one country stood out. Unlike its peers, Sweden didn’t want to lock down, and it didn’t really want masks and social distancing. Instead, the country championed a different approach that many saw (or wanted to see) as an alternative. The “Swedish model” became hotly debated, with many anti-lockdown advocates citing it as an example. https://www.zmescience.com/other/pieces/remember-the-infamous-swedish-pandemic-model-turns-out-it-really-didnt-work/

Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs has defeated Republican Kari Lake in Arizona's race for governor, NBC News projected Monday. Hobbs' victory is key for Democrats in a presidential battleground and a rebuke to a prominent election denier — though the closeness of the contest left the result up in the air for nearly a week. A record number of early ballots were dropped off on Election Day in Maricopa County, officials said, which had to be processed in a more time-intensive manner that includes signature verification. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2022-election/democrat-katie-hobbs-defeats-maga-favorite-kari-lake-high-stakes-race-rcna55172

In isolation, a modest slide in the economy of 0.2% over three months might fall into the category of regrettable but unsurprising in the circumstances. But looking ahead, the Bank of England and others anticipate that this is the first of a run of several quarters marking the start of a lengthy recession. And looking backwards now, it is very concerning that the UK economy remains smaller than just before the pandemic three years ago. Not only is the UK the only major economy to be shrinking in the three months to September, but it is the only one not to have recovered in full the chunk of the economy lost during the pandemic. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-63596773

A lawyer for former President Donald Trump described Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as “key” to Trump’s plan to delay Congress’ certification of President Joe Biden’s victory through litigation after the 2020 election, according to emails recently turned over to the House select committee investigating January 6. “We want to frame things so that Thomas could be the one to issue” a temporary order putting Georgia’s results in doubt, Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro wrote in a December 31, 2020, email, adding that a favorable order from Thomas was their “only chance” to hold up Congress from counting electoral votes for Biden from Georgia. John Eastman, another attorney for Trump, responded to that email saying he agreed with the plan. https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/02/politics/clarence-thomas-trump-eastman-emails/index.html

Image source, EPA By Shayan Sardarizadeh BBC Monitoring Paul Pelosi, the husband of US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was attacked by a hammer-wielding intruder at the couple's San Francisco home in the early hours of Friday. Within hours of the attack, a series of unsubstantiated claims began circulating in fringe far-right circles that contradicted the official police account of how the attack unfolded. Those misleading claims have since gone viral after being amplified by new Twitter chief Elon Musk and a number of conservative influencers. https://www.bbc.com/news/63477452

One of the Justice Department's most experienced national security prosecutors is joining the team investigating the storing of classified documents at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort, The Washington Post reports. National security law experts speaking to The Post say prosecutors "appear to have amassed evidence in the case that would meet some of the criteria for bringing charges against the former president — an unprecedented action that they said likely would only happen if the Justice Department believes it has an extremely strong case." David Raskin worked on the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, who was tried in Virginia as a co-conspirator in the 9/11 terrorist attacks that killed almost 3,000 people. He was also part of the team that prosecuted Ahmed Ghailani in federal court in Manhattan in connection with the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa. https://www.rawstory.com/trump-investigation-2658566075/

Liz Truss will become Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister ever, after announcing her intention to resign just six weeks into a disastrous term that pitched Britain deep into political and economic turmoil. Truss said Thursday that she would step aside for a new leader to be chosen within the next week, after a growing number of her own Conservative Party’s lawmakers said they could not support her any longer. It brings to an ignominious end a catastrophic tenure in Downing Street, which appeared doomed ever since Truss’s flagship economic agenda sent markets into panic and led to a fall in the value of the pound. https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/20/uk/liz-truss-government-crisis-thursday-gbr-intl/index.html

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the release of emails from John Eastman, a former Donald Trump attorney, to House investigators, saying the communications were made in furtherance of a crime related to Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election. “The emails show that President Trump knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong but continued to tout those numbers, both in court and to the public,” Judge David O. Carter wrote. “The Court finds that these emails are sufficiently related to and in furtherance of a conspiracy to defraud the United States,” he added. https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/19/politics/eastman-house-trump-documents/index.html

Ukrainian officials said at least four people were killed when Russia launched a barrage of Iranian-made “kamikaze” drone attacks in Kyiv on Monday, setting off warning sirens across the capital. Four people were injured in the attacks and 19 people trapped under the destruction have been rescued, according to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, a senior official working for Ukraine’s president. The strikes on Kyiv appear to be part of a wider assault involving drones and cruise missiles aimed at critical infrastructure, especially power sources. https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/17/europe/kyiv-kamikaze-drone-strikes-intl/index.html

In the summer of 2020, Black Lives Matter protests swept through the United Kingdom, demanding the nation weed out systemic racism across its institutions. England’s footballers took the knee at every Euro 2020 match, books on racial injustice sold out, and the government agreed to hold inquiries. A racial reckoning was coming. Two years on, the urgency to find equitable paths forward appears to have been lost. The government is pressing ahead with plans to send to Rwanda hundreds — eventually tens of thousands — of men who arrive in the country from the Middle East, Africa and Asia seeking asylum. The government calls them “illegal” migrants because they arrive by boat. In reality, most are refugees. At the same time, the UK has opened its doors to more than 100,000 Ukrainians since Russia launched its war. https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2022/10/uk/othered-systemic-racism-uk-gbr-cmd-intl/

The EU has said leaks in two major gas pipelines from Russia to Europe were caused by sabotage - but stopped short of directly accusing Russia. European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen said deliberate disruption would meet the "strongest possible response". The EU has previously accused Russia of using gas supplies as a weapon against the West over its support for Ukraine. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63057966

European countries on Tuesday raced to investigate unexplained leaks in two Russian gas pipelines running under the Baltic Sea near Sweden and Denmark, infrastructure at the heart of an energy crisis since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Experts and also Russia, which built the network, said the possibility of sabotage could not be ruled out. Sweden’s Maritime Authority issued a warning about two leaks in the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, shortly after a leak on the nearby Nord Stream 2 pipeline was discovered that prompted Denmark to restrict shipping in a five nautical mile radius. https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/27/energy/nord-stream-pipeline-leaks/index.html

The New York state attorney general filed a sweeping lawsuit Wednesday against former President Donald Trump, three of his adult children and the Trump Organization, alleging they were involved in an expansive fraud lasting over a decade that the former President used to enrich himself. In the more than 200-page lawsuit, Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, alleges the fraud touched all aspects of the Trump business, including its properties and golf courses. According to the lawsuit, the Trump Organization deceived lenders, insurers and tax authorities by inflating the value of his properties using misleading appraisals. “This conduct cannot be brushed aside and dismissed as some sort of good-faith mistake,” James said at a news conference in New York. https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/21/politics/trump-new-york-attorney-general-letitia-james-fraud-lawsuit/index.html

Queen "died peacefully" at Balmoral Castle The Queen died peacefully this afternoon, the Royal Family announced on its social media accounts. Her son Charles, who is now King, will return to London on Friday.