In March, Facebook announced that hundreds of millions of Facebook user passwords and thousands of Instagram passwords were stored insecurely. Facebook assures users that the passwords were visible to no one but Facebook employees, and Facebook can totally be trusted, right? Well, they weren’t exactly honest about how many Instagram passwords were leaked––and they revealed …

At least 100 preschool day care centers in the Netherlands have banned unvaccinated children from attending, with 25 having to enforce that ban. Refusing to admit children to day care centers is actually illegal in the Netherlands, unless there is a public health crisis. The anti-vaccination movement is facing increasing pressure (aside from the continual …

Chinese tech thieves and hackers and business cheaters are costing the American economy a whopping $57 billion per year, and American companies are too afraid to come forward. For nearly two-decades, China has been stealing secrets from American companies. The companies are so deeply embedded in trade with China that they feared short-term profit losses …

Stanford University has rescinded the admission offered to a student who was linked to the massive college admissions scam uncovered in March. The student’s application materials included falsified sailing credentials, and after she was admitted Stanford sailing received a $500,000 donation through head sailing coach John Vandemoer. Vandemoer has been fired after admitting to taking …

The Food and Drug Administration will hold a public hearing on legalizing CBD in food and drinks, in an effort to figure out how to regulate the recently-legalized cannabis-based product. The outgoing FDA commissioner said in a statement: “It’s critical that we address these unanswered questions about CBD and other cannabis and cannabis-derived products to help inform the FDA’s regulatory oversight of these products — especially as the agency considers whether it could be appropriate to exercise its authority to allow the use of CBD in dietary supplements and other foods.”

The hearings follow the recent announcements of two major pharmacy chains. Walgreens has announced that it will sell CBD products in in 1,500 stores. For legal reasons, Walgreens can only sell the products in the following states: Oregon, Colorado, New Mexico, Kentucky, Tennessee, Vermont, South Carolina, Illinois and Indiana. Weeks earlier,  CVS announced it would start selling CBD products in 800 stores across eight states: Alabama, California, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland and Tennessee. CVS will sell a variety of topical cannabidiol products––things like creams, sprays, and roll-ons, as “an alternative source of relief” for pain.

If the FDA hearings signal that CBD products will soon be legally sold in food or drinks, the market could expand widely. 

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The United States declared measles eliminated in 2000, thanks to aggressive vaccination campaigns. But since then, anti-vaccination movements have caused the virus to spread. There have been a total of 87 individual, confirmed cases of measles in 15 states from January 1 to March 28, making this current outbreak  streak the second highest. The dubious honor of first goes to an outbreak that infected 667 in 2014. The recent swath of outbreaks comes individuals returning from places like Israel, Ukraine and the Philippines, which are all experiencing major outbreaks. Measles outbreaks are only going to get worse as more parents refuse to vaccinate their children. 

The rise in measles outbreaks have led to an increased outcry against the anti-vaccine movement. GoFundMe recently announced plans to put a stop anti-vaccination fundraisers that help spread the anti-vaccination message. This decision follows a rash of disease outbreaks. Unvaccinated children are causing outbreaks all over the world, especially of measles. The anti-vaccination movement is spurred by the (mistaken) belief that vaccines are tied to autism. Not that it will matter to the anti-vaccination crowd, but another study involving over 650,000 vaccinated children has just demonstrated with a respectable degree of certainty that there is no connection between autism and vaccines. 

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An increasing number of critics are speaking out against Attorney General William Barr, and chair of the House Intelligence Committee has all but rejected Barr’s summary of the report. 

Patrick Cotter, former federal prosecutor at the Justice Department and colleague of Barr from the 1990s, has said, “I’m not sure why Barr felt this was the appropriate way to go about handling potentially privileged information.” Cotter went on to explain that Barr had better options he could have pursued, such as setting up an independent committee to review the report for sensitive information. 

Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, meanwhile, delivered an impassioned speech presenting his own evidence that Trump is guilty of collusion. Schiff’s diatribe follows House Republicans on the committee calling for Schiff to resign. 

Although the report was objectively good news, many are furious that no one has seen the report yet––only the Barr letter. Six Democratic committee chairs in the House have demanded that the Mueller report be released by April 2, though Mitch McConnell blocked the release of the report.

Some are even accusing Barr of covering up for Trump’s obstruction by pardoning him.

Unfortunately, it looks like things are only going to get worse in the next few months.

There has been worldwide fallout over the recent shooting in Christchurch. One of the perhaps unexpected consequences of that shooting is that critics from around the world blame the Unite States for spreading such the kind of white supremacist ideology that inspired the Christchurch killer. Donald Trump denied that white supremacy is on the rise around the world a a consequence of the United States. 

Critics, however, say otherwise. Karam Dana, a professor of Middle East politics and director of the American Muslim Research Institute at the University of Washington, Bothell, has said that the “United States is the epicenter of the world in terms of how white identity is seen.”

Former FBI agent Ali H. Soufan, founder of the security consultancy Soufan Group, predicted last year that Trump’s rhetoric would lead to violence. According to a CBS report, white supremacist violence in the U.S. is on the rise. The FBI has around 900 domestic terrorism cases, including those with links to white supremacists and such ideology. 

Jim Accosta from CNN has rebuffed the president’s denials, saying in an interview with Anderson Cooper that the Christchurch killer used the same kind of language as Trump, “so, the White House can’t whitewash the white nationalism every time.” 

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In yet another instance of a faked hate crime, right-wing propagandist Jacob Wohl has faked death threats against himself. This is merely the latest in a long string of such events.

Several months ago, actor Jussie Smollett claimed to have been attacked by two white men wearing ski masks. According to Smollett, the men threw an unknown chemical on him, wrapped a rope around his neck like a noose, yelled racist and anti-homosexual slurs at him, and then shouted “This is MAGA country!” before fleeing the scene.

The incident led civil rights activist groups to denounce the incident for its racism and homophobia, and to claim that America was still very racist and homophobic. The attack was the most recent in a series of allegedly racist and homophobic incidents perpetrated against cast of the show “Empire.”

Journalist Andy Ngo has listed a variety of fake hate crimes on his Twitter feed. Ngo argues that the Southern Poverty Law Center––an organization that has been criticized for its liberal bias––is trying to incite panic against Trump and Republicans. This line of reasoning suggests that a fake hate crime may be a political ploy, or a means of bringing attention to causes.

Ngo’s Twitter long list of hoaxes shows that they are occurring more frequently. While most of his examples are progressive hoaxers, the Wohl incident serves as a reminder that the both extremes of the political spectrum are seeking to profit off the contemporary culture of victimization.

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The United States and Canada are the only two countries that have not banned the Boeing 737 Max 8. The nearly worldwide decision to ground the plan follows the crash Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, which plummeted shortly after takeoff. The plane struggled to ascend at a stable speed, and then the pilot issued a distress call after the. The jet was cleared to return to Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa, but it lost contact with air traffic control six minutes after takeoff and then crashed. The plane had 157 people on board, including passengers from at least thirty-five different countries. 

The crashed plane, a Boeing 737 Max 8, was the same kind of plane involved in the Lion Air crash in Indonesia in which 189 people died. Both American and Indonesian officials suggest that automated anti-stall software may have caused the Lion Air crash.

The UK, Oman, Singapore, Australia, Ireland and France and Norwegian Airlines suspended the whole Boeing 737 Max range. India, Dubai, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Iceland, Germany and the airlines LOT Polish, TUI Airways, GOL Linhas Aereas, Aeromexico, Aerolíneas Argentinas, Cayman Airways, Comair Airways, Eastar Jet, Jet Airways, Mongolian Airlines, China Airlines, China Eastern, China Southern, Lion Air and Silkair have suspended the Max 8. Turkey suspended Max 8 and 9 models.

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Allies of President Donald Trump have expressed concern, in public and in private, that the investigation currently underway in the Southern District of New York may be the beginning of the end of his presidency.

Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie said that Cohen “was in constant contact with the Southern District of New York, and that he believes the president committed other crimes but he can’t talk about it because he’s working with the Southern District of New York.” 

An anonymous source told CNN that: “Allen knows where all the financial bodies are buried,” they said. “Allen knows every deal, he knows every dealership, he knows every sale, anything and everything that’s been done — he knows every membership. Anything you can think of.”

Trump, meanwhile, appears to know that things are no going well for him. In a rambling, two-hour speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump said that the Russia investigations were  “a phoney witch-hunt,” and he called democratic oversight “bullshit.” Trump tends to act out like this when he i sin serious political trouble. 

If Trump does get impeached, his political detractors shouldn’t get too excited. Several media outlets have picked up on Elizabeth Warren’s retort to Joe Biden, who said Pence was a “decent guy.” Warren said, “I’m sorry. I followed Pence’s history on LGBTQ Americans, and I don’t think that is a decent position.” The Washington Post goes farther and says that Pence isn’t “decent,” he’s “insidious.”

On Wednesday, former Trump fixer Michael Cohen testified before Congress. The entire situation was a spectacle, from Cohen’s very unflattering descriptions of working for Trump to the Democrats grandstanding as they attempted to nail Trump to the wall to the Republicans attempting to discredit Cohen. There’s so much to take away from this testimony that we’re going to offer a few of the standout points.

First, if you need a general summary of the hours-long testimony and questioning, take a look at this New York Times summary.

To see what this testimony means in the grand scheme, start here. It’s important to note that this public testimony covers only that which the Mueller investigation does not cover. What he could talk about revealed that Trump intentionally lied to the American people while he was president (specifically about Stormy Daniels). 

Cohen’s testimony may also exacerbate Trump’s legal trouble in New York.

Cohen also suggested, several times, that Trump was becoming an autocrat. Cohen even went so far as to suggest that Trump may not leave office peacefully in 2020 if he lost.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also made a splash by getting Cohen to admit (though it probably didn’t take much work) that Trump committed tax fraud.

Finally, Matt Gaetz is being investigated by the Florida State Bar for his tweets threatening Cohen. He could be disbarred for witness tampering. 

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