Embattled Tesla CEO Elon Musk has reached a settlement with the SEC over his misleading tweets about taking the company private, CNBC reports. Musk and Tesla will each pay a $20 million fine—about one tenth of one percent of Musk’s nearly $20 billion fortune—and Musk will step down as chairman of the company’s board for at least three years, while retaining his position as CEO. Tesla will also be required to appoint two new independent directors to its board and undergo additional changes to its corporate governance. The settlement still requires court approval.
Following Senator Jeff Flake’s dramatic call for a week-long FBI investigation into sexual assault allegations against supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, the entire nation speculated as to what shape that investigation might take. Who should the FBI talk to? How would the logistics work? How easy would it be to buy a calendar from 1982 on eBay? On Saturday, NBC News gave us our first glimpse at the answer: The FBI seems to be taking a fast-moving, fluid approach to the case, in the sense that their investigation will assume the shape of whatever bullshit-shaped container Donald Trump pours it into.
An American woman who accused Cristiano Ronaldo of rape in 2009 is speaking publicly about the incident for the first time. In an interview with German publication Der Spiegel, Kathryn Mayorga details the alleged assault, which she reported to police nine years ago in Las Vegas and which eventually resulted in an out-of-court settlement between the two parties. Ronaldo agreed to pay Mayorga $375,000, and she signed a non-disclosure agreement. Mayorga is now looking to void the previous settlement, and she filed a civil suit against the soccer star in Nevada last week.
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Lost among the all-consuming Brett Kavanaugh confirmation debate, a federal judge on Friday allowed a lawsuit against President Trump filed by 200 congressional Democrats, alleging the Trump Organization’s ongoing business with foreign governments violates the Constitution’s emoluments clause, can proceed. The Justice Department sought to have the case dismissed, but Federal Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled that the Democratic legislators did, in fact, have legal standing to bring the case.
Following a dramatic reversal at the conclusion of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s day-long exploration of Christine Blasey Ford’s sexual assault allegation, the committee, spurred by Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake’s change of heart on Kavanaugh’s confirmation, agreed, in principle, to allow a one-week FBI investigation into the matter. Suddenly lacking the votes to ram through their guy, the GOP Senate leadership acquiesced to the demand. But would Trump, a president accused of multiple sexual assaults order an FBI investigation into a Supreme Court nominee accused of multiple sexual assaults? No matter what course the Senate charted, the executive branch needed to formally request the probe, meaning Trump himself would need to order the investigation by an institution he rails against almost daily in an effort to discredit its investigation into his Russia-links.
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An earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia Friday, powerful enough to sweep away entire buildings, has officially killed hundreds with the death toll expected to rise significantly as rescue workers scour the affected areas looking for survivors. Indonesia’s National Disaster Management Agency said Saturday that more than 384 people have died in the city of Palu alone, which was preparing to host a beach festival when the 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck, triggering a tsunami that swept through the coastal city. “Many bodies were found along the shoreline because of the tsunami, but the numbers are still unknown,” Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for the country’s disaster agency told Reuters. “When the threat arose yesterday, people were still doing their activities on the beach and did not immediately run and they became victims,” he said during a press conference. Some people were able to survive the tsunami by climbing 18-foot trees nearby, he said.
Darius Bradwell and Corey Dauphine each had two touchdowns and Tulane beat Memphis 40-24 on Friday night to snap an 11-game losing streak in the series.
The Tulane defense, allowing 491.5 yards per game, held Memphis to 277 yards — including just 51 rushing yards for the national leader Darrell...
It was emblematic of the turbulent path San Francisco’s Jefferson Airplane navigated in the 1960s and ‘70s that when the group showed up to play a 1969 festival that was supposed to be the West Coast version of Woodstock, founding member Marty Balin got knocked out cold.
The event was the Altamont...
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Thursday’s judiciary committee hearing was a study in contrasts whose differences were oddly erased by their result. Christine Blasey Ford seemed terrified but brimmed with good will. The extent of her cooperation is measurable: She went to great lengths to be as painfully precise as she could be, clarifying her comments at every turn. She was considerate of the committee and answered every question, repeatedly going out of her way to offer more than was asked. Her effort to comply under difficult circumstances was unrelenting, even as she downplayed the negative effects of all this on herself and her family. (Asked how her husband and children were doing, she said they were basically “OK.”) She came across as dedicated, responsible, and motivated by a sincere desire to help.
On Friday, Sen. Jeff Flake was joined by Sen. Lisa Murkowski and other swing-vote senators in calling for a one-week FBI investigation into the recent allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh to be completed before a final vote on his confirmation is held. Senate Republicans and the White House then announced that the bureau would, in fact, take a week to review “current credible allegations” against Kavanaugh.
The Senate Judiciary Committee voted along party lines on Friday to bring Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination to a full Senate vote after Republican Sen. Jeff Flake called for a weeklong FBI investigation into the sexual assault allegations levied against the nominee before the final vote. President Trump authorized the supplemental investigation later in the day.
A woman who said she was inspired watching Christine Blasey Ford testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday has publicly accused a prominent Washington state legislator of raping her 11 years ago.
By the end of Thursday’s Senate hearings over Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation that Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her, Senate Republicans had engineered a shrewd narrative. Ford wasn’t lying, GOP senators insisted, but she must have confused Kavanaugh for someone else. The Supreme Court nominee was just too convinced of his own innocence, too swell a guy to commit such a heinous crime. In fact, Republicans insisted that Kavanaugh himself was the real victim—a reframing that the nominee all but demanded in his defiant and seething opening statement. If you vote against me, Kavanaugh declared, you are smearing me with a false claim, assassinating my character at the bidding of Democrats, “the Clintons,” and “left-wing opposition groups.”
Hours after Facebook announced on Friday a huge data breach that affected at least 50 million users, the news got worse.
On Friday, the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination to the full Senate on a party-line vote. In a surprise move, the committee also requested that the FBI conduct a supplemental background investigation of “current credible allegations against the nominee” after Sen. Jeff Flake seemed to come to a last-minute agreement with Democrats that he would not vote for Kavanaugh on the Senate floor without the probe being renewed. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced that President Donald Trump had accepted this request and ordered the investigation reopened.
The Beatles. Led Zeppelin. The Clash. Talking Heads. The Police. Nirvana.
