The Speaker Editors 
At the Arab and Muslim leaders summit this weekend, attended 50 dignitaries, mostly Sunnis, Trump gave a speech in which he talked about common enemies: Islamic terrorism and Iran.
Trump recently completed a $350m (over the next 10 years) arms deal with Saudi Arabia, the biggest in U.S. history.
The fourth monument to be taken down by the New Orleans city council and Mayor Mitch Landrieu was the Robert E. Lee statue which sat on a 70-foot perch downtown.
The previous 3 statues had been removed in the middle of the night without warning while workers wore masks to hide their identity and police and snipers were on duty to ensure orderly removal.
Opponents of the movement claim it is a rewriting or erasing of history, and the moves have been protested as well as supported.
Last week, the Louisiana statehouse passed HB71 to require a referendum before any memorial could be altered, removed, relocated or destroyed. Black members walked out to demonstrate their opposition to the law. The move was taken in order to prevent local governments like Landrieu’s from removing more Confederate monuments.
Julian Assange has been holed up in a room in London for years after being given refuge by Equador in their London embassy building. In 2010, he was charged with sex crimes in Sweden — a couple of women he was involved with at the time made complaints not long after Wikileaks published video and other documents of American military activities in the Middle East — and Assange fled to England. British courts in 2012 ruled Assange should be given up to Sweden, and Assange violated his bail to flee to the embassy.
He has lived indoors since then, only making public appearances from a balcony or via the internet.
The case has been repeatedly reviewed by Swedish courts, and now they have found that in the interests of proportionality it is not worth continuing. Essentially, authorities made the decision because all legal options had been exhausted and because the prosecutor wasn’t working harder to pursue the matter.
The Swedish public prosecutor wrote in a statement, “In view of this, and that to continue with legal proceedings would require Julian Assange’s personal appearance in court, there is no longer any reason to continue with the investigation.”
The validity of the charges have always been questioned. There have been claims the charges were politically motivated because the U.S. government was very upset with the recent leaks.
The women in question are ones who each met Assange at conferences he was a speaker at and had consensual sex. Later on, the two women discussed Assange, and afterwards laid charges for forms of non-consensual sex (alleged to have happened in addition to the consensual sex). One of the charges was molestation, one was for unlawful coercion, and one was rape, according to Swedish law (the alleged acts had to do with not wearing condoms although the woman said he must and sex while the partner was sleeping). Originally, Swedish prosecutors didn’t think there was evidence of rape and that the molestation charge would still go forward but it wasn’t serious enough for a warrant. The lawyer for the 2 women made an appeal to a special department and after police interviewed Assange, the director of prosecution reopened the case for rape.
Over time, the molestation and unlawful coersion charge was dropped because Swedish authorities ran out of time to question Assange, and the UN found Assange was being arbitrarily detained and should be compensated for “deprivation of liberty.” The rape charge was the only one remaining until now, although Assange may still be found in contempt of court for violating his bail and fleeing.
British authorities have said Assange will be arrested if he leaves the embassy. The expectation is that he would then be extradited to the U.S.
In the middle of the night Wednesday morning in New Orleans cranes removed Gen. Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard’s statue. Police and snipers were in place during the operation to ensure no one interfered.
The city council and mayor plan to remove the statue of General Robert E. Lee next.
This week the FCC voted to move forward with repealing and replacing net neutrality protections enacted in 2015.
The issue is public access to an open, equal internet. The laws from 2015 placed providers (the companies that pipe internet into your house or phone) in a special category of communications. The laws made it so that internet providers couldn’t increase or decrease internet speeds for whatever content, apps, or services they wanted to prioritize. Citizens feared this would lead to service providers throttling content and apps they didn’t profit from while boosting stuff they could profit from.
While recent polling suggests the majority of Americans want net neutrality, the argument was given voice by Mozilla (who makes the Firefox browser). Mozilla summarized:
“Today’s FCC vote to repeal and replace net neutrality protections brings us one step closer to a closed internet. Although it is sometimes hard to describe the ‘real’ impacts of these decisions, this one is easy: this decision leads to an internet that benefits Internet Service Providers (ISPs), not users, and erodes free speech, competition, innovation and user choice.”
Musk announced this week via Twitter that his solar roofs were now for sale globally, and Tesla would start delivering them probably at the end of this year in the States and overseas next year.
And on the Tesla website there was information about the warranty for the roof tiles: “Glass solar tiles are so durable they are warrantied for the lifetime of your house, or infinity, whichever comes first.”
He sent a message to the third meeting of the Russia – Islamic World strategic world group in Grozny, Chechnya (held there for the first time), which was later published by the Kremlin website. The message included the following statement:
“Today, many Muslim countries are facing serious challenges, including terrorism and violent extremism, growing ethnic and religious contradictions, economic and social difficulties. I would like to stress that the Islamic World can fully count on Russia’s support and cooperation.”
He also said Russia would help search for peaceful means of resolving crises. “I am confident that by joining our efforts, we can do much to strengthen global security and stability, as well as to build a fair and democratic world order, free of any kind of intolerance, discrimination and military dictate,” he stated.
The New York Times has reported that, according to James Comey, Trump tried to get a “pledge of loyalty” from the former FBI head, which Comey would not give, days before Trump fired Comey. There were questions flying around if the reason for the firing was Comey’s refusal.
NYT reported that Comey became concerned about what was going on between the president and himself and kept memos of the conversations which he shared with associates. They reported that during a Feb. 14 private meeting, Trump expressed concern about leaks and suggested maybe they should throw a couple of reporters in jail to send a message. Trump also talked to Comey about Michael Flynn, who he fired earlier for his relations with Russia, and suggested Comey just let Flynn go, which Comey interpreted as dropping the investigation into Flynn’s dealings, according to the Times.
The White House responded to the NYT article, stating it was “not a truthful or accurate portrayal of the conversation.”
White House National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster made a public statement in response to the Washington Post and other news organisations stories this week that Trump told Russian officials information he say he shouldn’t have, denying the news.
McMaster stated:
“The story that came out tonight, as reported, is false. The President and the Foreign Minister reviewed a range of common threats to our two counties, including threats to civil aviation.
“At no time – at no time – were intelligence sources or methods discussed. And the President did not disclose any military operations that were not already publicly known. Two other senior officials who were present, including the Secretary of State, remember it being the same way and have said so. Their on-the-record accounts should outweigh those of anonymous sources. And I was in the room. It didn’t happen.”
However, none of the news stories had anything to do with the things McMaster said the president didn’t say — the reports were that Trump revealed highly classified intel to an American adversary. Later, when asked, McMaster did not deny that, but said he doubted whether the president “wasn’t even aware of where this information came from. He wasn’t briefed on the source or method of the information either.”
Microsoft issued a large Windows update days after the WannaCry malware pandemic infected thousands of computers and led to a huge wave of Windows users updating their OSs to close the SMBv1 exploit left open by Windows until March when a leak of NSA intel made the vulnerability, as well as the NSAs exploit tool, public.
The update was unusually large, taking over an hour on some computers.
Most noticeable changes after the update: Microsoft adds a mail icon to the toolbar (currently, more people use Google for mail); OneDrive is added to the tools menu; Windows Defender Security Center also added to toolbar. In “Apps & Features,” Microsoft OneConnect (paid Wi-Fi cellular) is added.” Techies have recommended the removal of OneConnect, which has been part of Windows “Pre-Installed Apps” for a while.
It also “installs” apps that you already have installed, so it is more difficult to find what things Microsoft actually added when you update. However, Windows installed a lot of new apps (their own) in this update.
Microsoft removed the option to set the program to open types of files with. Now, it only opens automatically with Windows new file viewing apps. (This can be corrected by going to “Default Apps” in Start Menu and selecting apps for media types.)
Two days before the French Election, there is a media blackout for anything political.
This is supposed to provide a few days of uninterrupted consideration of the candidates, without the distraction of big news headlines, scandalous revelations, or campaigning last minute.
Similar things are done in other countries.
In the UK, for example, on the day of an election news can’t be about anything that could potentially favor a particular party. The parliament, as soon as it is dissolved before an election, enters a state of “purdah” (a Persian word for “curtain”) and can’t announce any controversial or contentious legislation.
Spain, although it does not have a media blackout, does have a “reflection” period after official campaigning ends the day before the election, and no more electoral acts are performed. They also forbid news to publish polls in the week leading up to an election.
Many parties are concerned about hacking having an effect on the election, and there are questions about whether false material is mixed in with the email leaks, which are purported to be from four top-level members of the Macron campaign.
Macron is the front-runner in the the election, which is itself a runoff (with Macron and Le Pen combined receiving less than 50% of the vote in the first stage of the election.
In France, the media is not allowed to report on political topics 24 hours before the election begins.
Some are alleging that the hacks stem from the Russian government, which has been active in trying to influence other elections around the world. There is no hard evidence to support this, though, and no evidence is likely to be found, given the nature of the type of activity (cyber).