Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have been making significant investments in the development of artificial intelligence to moderate content and automate the removal of harmful posts. These decision­making technologies typically rely on machine-learning techniques and are specific to types of content, such as images, videos, sounds, and written text. Some of these AI systems, developed to measure the "toxicity" of text-based content, make use of natural language processing and sentiment assessment to detect harmful text.WIRED OPINIONABOUTDennys Antonialli is a privacy law scholar and executive director of InternetLab, an internet law and policy think tank based in São Paulo, Brazil.While these technologies may appear to represent a turning point in the debate around hate speech on the internet, recent research has shown that they are still far from being able to distinguish context or intent. If such AI tools are entrusted with the power to police content online, they have the potential to suppress legitimate speech and censor the use of specific words, particularly by vulnerable groups.At InternetLab, we recently conducted a study focused on Perspective, an AI technology developed by Jigsaw (owned by Google's parent company, Alphabet). The AI measures the perceived level of “toxicity” of text-based content. Perspec­tive defines "toxic" as "a rude, disrespectful, or unreason­able comment that is likely to make you leave a discussion.” Accordingly, the AI model was trained by asking people to rate internet comments on a scale from "very healthy" to "very toxic." The level of perceived toxicity indicates the likelihood that a specific comment will be considered toxic.We used Perspective’s API to compare the perceived levels of toxicity of well-known drag queens and far-right political figures. The study compared the Twitter accounts of all the former participants of RuPaul's Drag Race with those of far-right leaders such as David Duke, Richard Spencer, Stefan Molyneux, and Faith Goldy. Additionally, we included prom­inent non-LGBTQ Twitter users, including Donald Trump and Michelle Obama. We analyzed over 114,000 tweets posted in English with Perspective’s most recent version.Our results indicate that a significant number of drag queen Twitter accounts were calculated to have higher perceived levels of toxicity than white nationalist leaders. On average, the toxicity levels of the drag queens’ accounts ranged from 16.68 percent to 37.81 percent, while the white nationalists’ averages spanned from 21.30 percent to 28.87 percent. The toxicity level of President Trump’s Twitter account was 21.84 percent.We also ran tests measuring the toxicity level of words commonly found in the tweets of drag queens. These words had significantly high levels of toxicity: gay (76.10 percent), lesbian (60.79 percent), queer (51.03 percent), and transvestite (44.48 percent). That means that, even when used in a neutral context, such words were ranked as significantly toxic by Perspective's AI. This indicates important biases in Perspective’s tool.Additionally, words such as fag (91.94 percent), sissy (83.20 percent), and bitch (98.18 percent) registered high levels of toxicity. Though those words might be commonly perceived as harmful, their use by members of the LGBTQ community most often serves a different purpose.Drag queens can be sharp-tongued. From “reads”—a specific form of insult that acerbically exposes someone’s flaws—to harsh jokes and comebacks, drag queens often reclaim words traditionally used as slurs to build a distinctive communication style.In person, it is easier to understand context and see this as a form of self-expression. But when reading such missives online, it is significantly more challenging to distinguish between harmful and legitimate speech—especially when that assessment is made by machines. These in-group uses were also found in various tweets we analyzed. But in many of those cases, Perspective still deemed the post extremely toxic:Level of toxicity: 95.98 percentLevel of toxicity: 91.16 percent

编者按：本文经授权编译自MIT Tech Review原题为“MAGIC LEAP’S HEADSET IS REAL, BUT THAT MAY NOT BE ENOUGH”的文章在佛罗里达Plantation的一幢普通建筑里，Magic Leap开发了一款设备，它是真实的，而且很酷，可以将3D虚拟图像与现实结合，结合的方式比其它我所见到的AR或者VR头盔都要好。现在的问题在于：大家会用这款头盔干什么？Magic Leap希望开发者与其它创作类型冒出来，很快给出答案。最近，Magic Leap开始销售期待已久的头盔，它有点像护目镜，名叫Magic Leap One。请注意，这款头盔不是给平民百姓用的。首先，你必须以开发者的名义注册，Magic Leap希望能搭建一个开发者社区，让它们为头盔开发App，就像开发者为手机开发产品一样，头盔定价2295美元。微软HoloLens头盔瞄准的也是开发者，价格3000美元或者5000美元。你如果想申请，年龄必须达到18岁，最开始推出时，产品只能邮寄到美国几个城市，比如纽约、西雅图。如果这些障碍在你面前不算障碍，就能收到头盔，还有一台穿戴计算机，它与头盔连接，另外还有一个单手控制器。设备安装充电电池，续航时间最长3小时。从2011年开始，Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz及团队其它人就在开发产品，Magic Leap One是所有努力的最终成果。之前，Magic Leap曾经展示一些炫目的画面，比如让鲸鱼从体育馆的地板上跳出来，将小象棒在手心，这些宣传片告诉我们：产品可以将数字图像与真实世界融合，激起用户的好奇心。对于Magic Leap来说，新头盔是一次机会，它可以借此证明之前的宣传所言非虚。Magic Leap One与小型穿戴计算机连接，用配套手持控制器操纵。从许多方面看的确如此。上个月，我拜访了Magic Leap，试用头盔，我看到海龟在房间内游动，尾巴后面还有小小的气泡，当我戳它时会跳开。我还拿起射线枪，反击外星机器人，它们从墙壁上的大门内涌出来。总体看来，视觉图像相当清晰，生动，有时我还能在同一时间看到几幅数字图像，它们处在不同的深度。2014年年末时，我首次拜访Magic Leap公司，当时曾看到原型产品，与早期原型产品相比，Magic Leap One小很多，更便携。那时，我看到一台巨大的设备，就像支架一样，从固定镜头中，我看到极为逼真的蓝色怪兽。还有一台设备，像购物小车一样，也不便携，通过这台小设备，我可以看到一个飞行机器人，它充满蒸气朋克味道，我还可以用手戳它。即使如此，我还是感到惊讶，MIT Technology Review居然将它的技术评为2015年十大技术突破之一。公司已经融资23亿美元，围绕如何将数字图像投射到真实世界，Magic Leap申请了几百项专利，有几十项专利已经获得批准。不过在Magic Leap身上到处是秘密，还有夸张的营销宣传，所以许多开发者和科技消费者认为，Magic Leap产品有点像雾件。2015年Magic Leap在YouTube发布一段视频，名叫“在办公室的另一天”（Just another day in the office），在视频中，我们看到机器人从天花板的大门内掉出来。公司介绍说，这是一款游戏，公司员工目前正在自己的办公室玩。事实上，这段视频与几个月前我看到的作品有点相似，当时公司告诉我说，它只是一段游戏预告片。单是在YouTube平台，已经有400万人观看视频，后来视频换了名字，叫作“原创概念视频”。在最近的Twitch直播中，Magic Leap又展示了Magic Leap One，我们看到小怪兽投掷石头，体验有点糟糕，结果被人嘲笑。今年夏天，Magic Leap邀请我去佛罗里达试用Magic Leap One，产品快要与公众见面了，我当时猜想，我看到的图像肯定很模糊，很糟糕。看了两段体验之后，我改变看法，认为Magic Leap One是目前最好的AR头盔。没错，虽然Magic Leap做到了许多人们原以为做不到的事，不过前面还有一个艰巨的任务要完成：说服开发者，让他们为新计算形式制作富有吸引力的内容，对于大多人来说，这种计算形式都是新的，甚至不知道它的存在；还要让开发者相信技术对什么有好处，这点就更不用说了。搞清这一点并不容易。在我看来，Magic Leap似乎还没有找到答案。Abovitz有点累，但是很高兴。昨天晚上，他一直工作到凌晨2点，对Magic Leap One做最后润色。他坐在办公室里，这个房间设有玻璃墙，位于佛罗里达Plantation办事处的中央，离Fort Lauderdale海滩大约10英里。Abovitz的后面是架子，上面摆满玩具，有射线枪，有摇滚乐手Jimi Hendrix的人像，还有宜家夜间照明灯，还有很多书，比如“做出艰难的决定”“Graphics for Engineers”。在架子的一角摆了一个小盒子，里面有雕像，比如粉色、绿色怪物，恐龙。旁边还有一个Thwaxo’s Space Fudge盒子，它相当于纪念品。2012年，Abovitz在佛罗里达Sarasota参加TedX活动，发表演讲，上台时，中央摆了一个Thwaxo’s Space Fudge盒子，两只怪物围着盒子蹦跳，他自己穿着太空服走出来。自从上次我们见面之后，在Magic Leap又发生了什么事？这就是他想告诉我的。他说，如果生活就是电视剧，那么2014年年末拜访Magic Leap相当于试播季（Pilot Season），现在已经到了第四季。他带着我浏览幻灯片，告诉我在过去几年里原型产品是如何进化的，当年我看到的产品很大（绰号The Bench），后来越变越小。很明显，Abovitz想传达一个消息：在过去许多年里，公司不断开发原型产品，优化各种组件，最终才有了Magic Leap One。数字图像如何与真实世界完美融合？公司没有给出明确的解释。从本质上讲，公司将晶片装进头盔镜头内，光穿过透明的晶片，晶片直接将光线射到眼睛上。这样一来，头盔就可以生成光场数字模拟幻像，在特定体积内，光线会朝着每一个方向传输，你可以在周围的空间中看到对象，浮在空中。Abovitz说，有了Magci Leap One，用户可以近距离观看清晰的3D图像，视觉光场从距离脸部14.6英寸的地方开始，一直延伸到远方。看起来应该很自然。我们交流一番，查看了许多机器，Magic Leap用这些机器制作透明晶片。然后Abovitz带着我穿过大厅，来到一个房间，这个房间装有白色玻璃门。房间就像时髦的客厅，里面有一张皮革沙发，有墙边桌，有书架，还有搁脚凳。总之，布置精心，就像是住宅的一部分。另一边还有一张桌子，上面摆了几款Magic Leap One头盔。Magic Leap技术营销主管Shanna De luliis教我如何戴上头盔：先要拆开头带，戴在头上，确保角度正确，然后系紧。戴上头盔就像在室内戴着太阳镜。Abovitz解释说，头盔设计选择了暗色调，主要想让头盔看起来足够坚固，不希望产品发出的光太明亮，刺激眼睛。在设计时，头盔并没有将眼镜考虑进去，如果你戴了眼镜，可以藏在下面；公司说，如果戴了处方眼镜，可以购买订制镜头，根据你的眼睛度数定制。当时我穿了裙子，没有口袋，我只能将圆形互联Lightpack计算机绑在带子上，带子缠在肩膀上。Lightpack计算机完成处理任务，渲染图像。Magic Leap管这款头盔叫作Lightwear，重325克，Lightpack重415克。戴在头上，如同戴了一幅滑雪护目镜，连接到一个相当轻的钱包。Shanna De luliis将黑色控制器递给我，上部有一个触摸垫，下面有扳机。我玩了一些Demo（演示品），它们要么预装到Magic Leap One，或者放进Magic Leap World，也就是Magic Leap的程序店。第一个Demo是游戏，名叫“Dr. Grordbort’s Invaders”，游戏的确可以玩，但是当Magic Leap One最初推出时不会有这款游戏。游戏开始后，前面的墙壁上打开一扇矩形门。黑色外星机器人走出来，朝我开枪。我避开火力，用手上的控制器反击。此时，会有一层数字图像覆盖在现实世界之上，它是一把红色射线枪，看起来有点复古。如果我击中墙壁或者家具，或者是别的其它什么东西，上面会出现黑色污点。体验让我想到了几年前的视频，也就是“在办公室玩游戏”的那段视频，只是这一次的游戏我们真的可以在办公室玩。Magic Leap在Twitch展示演示品，当时的演示相当糟糕，现在看到的演示品完全不一样。当我击中机器人，机器人倒在地上。我站在一个机器人上，检查“残骸”：看起来相当坚固。Abovitz曾经告诉我，如果想知道他开发了什么，最好自己去尝试一下，他说得没错：这些机器人（以及我查看的其它大多东西）看起来好很多，在头盔中观看比在平面显示器上观看要好很多。如何让数字图像与现实融合，Magic Leap似乎取得了不小的进步。在AR领域有一个巨大的挑战，让人造对象遮挡真实对象，反之亦然；要做到很难，因为你必须精准控制光线。从我看到的演示品看，公司做得不错，大多时候不错。有时，机器人会从房间的沙发后面冒出来，如果你不能很快找到它们，头盔内的扬声器会帮你判断位置。当我蹲在椅子后，想看看它们是否会消失，机器人图像似乎有点弯曲，朝着我走来，而不是被家具阻挡。还有一件演示产品是NBA App，在应用内你可以通过平面屏幕观看篮球比赛，我可以用控制器移动或者调节屏幕。我将屏幕挂在墙壁上，图像很清楚，除非近距离观看才模糊一些。当你离图像大约6英寸时，图像会消失，取代的是网格线条。里面还有“Court View”功能，启用之后，你会看到一个桌面大小的3D篮球场。我让它漂浮在前面的地板上，看见用计算机生成的LeBron James投篮。还有一个App叫作Create，有了它，通过头盔和控制器就可以搭建自己的AR世界。我可以抓起一些小东西，比如雷克斯霸王龙、骑士、海龟，将它们放在现实环境中。我抓起一只霸王龙，它会咆哮，我将霸王龙放在凳子上。霸王龙翻滚，然后站了起来，站在织物表面上，相当真实。我将3D骑士摆在霸王龙身边，霸王龙毫不留情将他粉碎。我拖起一只海龟，放在空中，它悠闲游动。当我拍打，它会根据我的手部动作给出回应，如果我用控制器戳它，甚至还能感受到反弹。我让森林在家具、地板上生长。我拿起一只虚拟彩笔，在Abovitz的头顶乱涂乱画，他站在房间的另一头，很快，我画的东西就将它覆盖。到了某个时间点，视野会弹出错误信息。很明显，你无法再添加任何东西了，因为东西太多，头盔受不了，我只能删除一些，然后才能再次添加。Abovitz开玩笑说：“你把它弄得崩溃了。”头盔还有其它一些问题。虽然画面看起来很清晰，当我摇头时能保持静止，但是当我移动时，有时会分解成红、绿、蓝。Magic Leap系统工程团队创始人之一、主管之一Sam Miller说，之所以出现这样的问题，主要是硬件和软件的不同部分要协调工作。视野可能是一个更大的问题。对Magic Leap如此，对于其它想将现实与数字图像混合的企业也一样。Magic Leap One的对角可视角度是50度，HoloLens只有35度，不过还是不够大，当你离虚拟平板电视几英尺远时，才能看到整个电视，太近就不行了。VR头盔的视野角度比Magic Leap产品大，想扩大AR视野比较难，VR容易一些。斯坦福虚拟人机交互实验室的创始主管Jeremy Bailenson解释说，VR要将屏幕摆在你的眼前，AR不一样，它发射光线，从表面反弹，然后进入视网膜。在Magic Leap我遇到一些员工，他们很兴奋。一些员工在过去几年里一直在开发产品。在演示房间内，我们看到的体验的确有趣，视觉效果惊人，但是并不能真正让人大呼过瘾。我希望能真正感受到机器人向我开火。我希望鲸鱼能从体育馆内跳出来，就跟真鱼一样大。我希望自己能够忘掉头上的头盔和身上的计算机，凝视增强世界。如果想达到目标，硬件必须更小，更棒。Magic Leap One的确挺酷，但问题仍然存在：它能赚到钱吗？Abovitz之前曾说过，公司的第一款产品会是消费版产品，不是给开发者用的测试版产品，但是Magic Leap One显然是开发版。现在Abovitz又说：“我们清楚知道不能绕开创作者，也就是那些创造体验的 人。我们要将他们摆在第一位。”如果大多人想购买产品，现在不是时候，还没有准备好，不论是技术、硬件、还是体验，都还不完美。Abovitz认为，只有等到第四代产品推出时，才会变成你一直都想使用的流行设备。正因如此，Magic Leap才会依赖开发者和合作伙伴，比如NBA、卢卡斯影业等品牌，让他们帮助自己寻找下一站。未来会是怎样的？就连Magic Leap的领导者也说不清。Magic Leap首席内容官Rio Caraeff告诉我说，Magic Leap正在开发一些App，用于测试，它们更多只是激活用户内心好奇的一面，并不是用来提高企业生产力、改进医疗成像。他还说，Magic Leap肯定想增强开发者能力，“将他们的指纹印在世界上”。Magic Leap互动主管Aleissia Laidacker也谈到了相似的看法：“我希望，当产品推出之后，能看到开发者着手开发许多惊艳而疯狂的东西。”总之，公司遵循百花齐放的策略。他还说：“想成为Magic Leap开发者，不必非要是大公司，孩子在车库内也可以为我们开发体验。”可惜，孩子如果真想开发，先要掏2295美元购买头盔。这个问题是Magic Leap必须面对的。就像市场上的VR头盔一样，Magic Leap也在寻找“杀手级App”。在新计算平台上，开发者也许能找到惊艳实用的东西，也可能找不到，在过去许多年里，VR开发者没有获得成功。Abovitz承认，虽然自己开发的东西虽然有期待，但是这种期待是无法控制的，不过他不后悔。Abovitz说：“不能有遗憾。”编译组出品。编辑：郝鹏程

(Reuters) - A liberal-leaning California-based federal appeals court that has often ruled against President Donald Trump dealt him another setback this week in a major immigration case and soon could be asked to weigh in on a pipeline project he has championed. FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump talks to reporters prior to departing for Paris, France from the South Lawn of the White House for in Washington, U.S., November 9, 2018. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File PhotoThe 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco, has been a thorn in Trump’s side since he took office last year and has drawn the Republican president’s ire for its decisions in high-profile cases. His latest setback before the 9th Circuit came on Thursday when a three-judge panel rejected his bid to rescind a program launched by his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, that protects from deportation hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants brought into the country as children. The 9th Circuit has handed him defeats on his travel ban targeting people from several Muslim-majority countries and his bid to withhold federal funds from so-called sanctuary cities that limit cooperation on immigration enforcement. It also is set to rule on the administration’s appeal of a judge’s order blocking Trump’s move to put restrictions on transgender people serving in the U.S. military. The 9th Circuit would hear any appeal by Trump’s administration of the ruling late on Thursday by a federal judge in Montana blocking construction for environmental reasons of the Keystone XL pipeline project that is designed to carry heavy crude oil from Canada to the United States. The Justice Department said on Friday it is reviewing the Keystone XL ruling to decide its next step. TransCanada Corp said it remains committed to building the $8 billion, 1,180-mile (1,900-km) pipeline. “The 9th Circuit is an easy punching bag for Trump because not only has it been traditionally liberal but California is its beating heart, and we all know how Trump fares in California,” said Barry McDonald, a law professor at Pepperdine University in Malibu. “He probably sees much of the West Coast as a nemesis for him.” California, the most populous U.S. state, is a liberal bastion that is unfriendly political territory for Trump. The president regularly belittles the 9th Circuit, as he did on Friday after the court’s ruling preserving the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. “The DACA will now hopefully go to the Supreme Court where it will be given a fair decision,” Trump told reporters. Trump already has appointed two justices to the nine-member Supreme Court, solidifying its 5-4 conservative majority. The 9th circuit has 16 judges who were appointed by Democratic presidents and seven who were named by Republican presidents. Democratic presidents tend to appoint more liberal jurists while Republican presidents favor more conservatives judges. It is one of the series of powerful regional federal appeals courts that are one step below the Supreme Court. These circuit courts often provide the last word in a legal dispute because the Supreme Court hears only a limited number of cases. The 9th Circuit hears appeals in federal cases spanning a huge region in terms of both geography and population, covering the states of Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. Trump already has named two judges to the 9th Circuit, with six other vacancies waiting to be filled. Trump will not be able to create a conservative majority on the 9th Circuit, however, without additional vacancies caused when actively presiding judges retire. Slideshow (2 Images)Aided by fellow Republicans in the U.S. Senate, Trump has made it a top priority to rapidly appoint judges in a bid to make the federal judiciary more conservative. Trump has suggested his policies do not get a fair shake in the 9th Circuit and has touted the idea of breaking up that court. Trump last year decried the 9th Circuit’s “ridiculous” ruling on the travel ban, and said that court has “a terrible record of being overturned” by the Supreme Court - an often-made charge that the 9th Circuit’s chief judge took issue with in congressional testimony. (For a graphic showing Trump’s impact on federal appeals courts, click tmsnrt.rs/2PPsGtM ) Reporting by Andrew Chung; Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Will DunhamOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

The critics were plentiful. They claimed Apple Music, launched in the summer of 2015 into an already-crowded music-streaming market, would never catch up to the likes of industry leader Spotify—and that it would flop. If not immediately, then soon after.The opposite has happened. A Wall Street Journal report (paywall) reveals that Apple Music, now more than two years old, is up to 36 million paid global users. That update puts its monthly growth rate at 5%, compared to Spotify’s 2%. At this pace, Apple Music will be bigger than Spotify in the US—the world’s biggest music market—by the summer.Apple Music’s unexpected success contains several lessons. First, it shows that the strategy of essentially copying Spotify’s ideas, such as offering a personalized-discovery playlist, has worked just fine: The world’s appetite for streaming is enough to sustain both services, and a few smaller ones as well. It also proves that subscriptions—which ask users to pay a regular monthly fee, roughly $10 across the different services, for on-demand access to a buffet of tens of thousands of songs—are indeed the future of music.Spotify, famously, has both a paid-subscription tier and a free, ad-supported one, the latter of which has been frequently criticized because it means less money for musicians. As Spotify gears up for its long-delayed and somewhat unusually structured IPO later this year, and especially as Apple Music gains on it, justifying the continued existence of the free tier is starting to look a bit tough.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House Intelligence Committee Republicans said on Monday the panel had finished investigating Russia and the 2016 U.S. election, and found no collusion between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Moscow’s efforts to influence the vote. The committee Republicans said they agreed that Russia sought to influence the election by spreading propaganda and false news reports via social media. However, they disputed the findings of the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation that Moscow sought to aid Trump, who won a surprise victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton. “We’re through with interview phase. We’re now in the report drafting phase,” Republican Representative Mike Conaway, who has led the panel’s investigation for the past year, told Reuters. Representative Adam Schiff, the top committee Democrat, strongly disagreed, and blasted the announcement as a premature shutdown. The House investigation, one of three main congressional probes of Russia and the 2016 election, and possible collusion or obstruction of justice by Trump or his aides, has been marred for months by partisan wrangling, including the release of rival Republican and Democratic memos related to the probe. The House Intelligence Committee’s chairman, Republican Representative Devin Nunes, recused himself from the investigation last year amid reports he had a secret meeting at the White House. Nunes denied wrongdoing. The House Republicans made their announcement even as Robert Mueller, the U.S. special counsel for the Russia probe, seems to be stepping up his investigation. Last week, former Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg spent six hours before a grand jury called by Mueller, and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort pleaded not guilty to criminal charges. “While the Majority members of our committee have indicated for some time that they have been under great pressure to end the investigation, it is nonetheless another tragic milestone for this Congress, and represents yet another capitulation to the executive branch,” Schiff said in a statement. Conaway rejected that charge. Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX) asks questions as executives appear before the House Intelligence Committee to answer questions related to Russian use of social media to influence U.S. elections, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., November 1, 2017. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein Trump took to Twitter to note the announcement, typing in all capital letters, that the House committee had found no evidence of collusion or coordination after a 14-month-long “in-depth investigation.” Republican members of the House of Representatives committee had been saying for weeks they were near the end of the interview phase of the probe, saying they needed to release their findings to prepare for the next general election in November. Democrats have accused committee Republicans of shirking the investigation in order to protect the Republican president and his associates, some of whom have pleaded guilty to charges including lying to investigators and conspiring against the United States. Trump has repeatedly denied collusion between his campaign and Russia. Russia denies meddling in the 2016 U.S. campaign. Schiff said evidence was “clear and overwhelming” that U.S. intelligence agencies’ assessment was correct that Russia sought to boost Trump, hurt his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and sow discord. “On a whole host of investigative threads, our work is fundamentally incomplete, some issues partially investigated, others, like that involving credible allegations of Russian money laundering, remain barely touched,” Schiff said. Conaway accused Democrats of seeking to prolong the probe ahead of the mid-term elections. The Republicans’ current control of both houses of Congress is up for grabs in the November vote, and early polls show they face a difficult fight in particular to retain a majority in the House. “There’s opportunity for this investigation to go on forever if in fact you don’t want to come to any conclusions... if you want to make hay in the run up to the election,” Conaway said in a telephone interview. Slideshow (2 Images)The House Republicans’ announcement shifts attention across the Capitol to the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has been conducting its own investigation. Republicans and Democrats have both described that probe as far less partisan than the House’s. The House Republicans said they had already completed a draft version of what they said would eventually be the committee’s final report on the investigation. Conaway said he hoped to work with Schiff on the probe but Democrats are expected to release their own report. Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Lisa ShumakerOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said Wednesday that the panel had seen an “abundance” of evidence of collusion with Russia and obstruction by Donald Trump’s campaign and administration that is not yet public.Speaking to reporters in Washington, Schiff said a lot of information was already in the public domain that pointed to extensive contacts between the Trump campaign team and the Kremlin, and later efforts by the Trump entourage to cover up those contacts. But Schiff said there was much more to come out.He said: “There is certainly an abundance of non-public information that we’ve gathered in the investigation. And I think some of that non-public evidence is evidence on the issue of collusion and some … on the issue of obstruction.”Trump has repeatedly asserted that there has been no collusion and no obstruction involving him or his team during the 2016 presidential election or since he took the White House.Schiff, from California, added on Wednesday that the intelligence committee had also seen evidence pointing towards money laundering involving Trump’s circle, but had been hindered by the partisan deadlock that has paralysed its investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.He said: “It is a tried and true maxim. As a former prosecutor, you follow the money. We have not been able to adequately follow the money. And I think the allegations on money laundering are credible enough that we ought to, in the exercise of due diligence, see if this was one of the other vectors of the Russian active measures campaign.”He added: “We know that in other places they use money laundering as a way of entangling people, as a way of compromising people. To me that is far more potentially compromising than any salacious video would be.”This refers to the possible existence of a compromising video of Trump in Moscow, allegedly held by Russian intelligence and first referenced last year in the dossier compiled by former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele.Schiff did not name names in relation to money laundering allegations. Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and a business associate, Rick Gates, denied money laundering and other charges last year in a federal court in Washington, on the same day it emerged that former campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos had pleaded guilty to lying to FBI investigators over contact with people apparently linked to the Russian government.Those indictments were the first issued by Robert Mueller since he was appointed special counsel to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible collusion by members of the Trump campaign.Schiff was speaking on Wednesday just a day after US intelligence chiefs testified that Russia would attempt to disrupt and influence this year’s midterm congressional elections. He outlined his recommendations on protecting the integrity of the vote.“What we really need is a fast response from the social media companies when they identify foreign meddling. We also need to make sure that the social media companies get timely information from the intel[ligence] community when the intel community has identified actors that are abusing their platforms,” Schiff said.Most of all, he argued, it required political will from the White House, in light of Tuesday’s testimony that intelligence chiefs have been given no orders from the presidency on a strategy to counter Russian interference.“Probably the most significant thing that we can do to protect ourselves in 2018 requires a couple of things. It requires the commander in chief to decide this is a priority and to instruct all of its relevant cabinet officials to develop a game plan to protect against foreign interference in our elections,” Schiff said. “It requires that we develop a nonpartisan, bipartisan consensus that if a foreign power meddles again we will all reject their interference no matter who it helps or who it hurts.” Schiff is engaged in a battle of wits with the committee’s Republican chair, Devin Nunes, who last year stepped aside from the Russia investigation but has been increasingly involved, most recently by releasing a memo alleging wrongdoing by FBI investigators. Topics Trump-Russia investigation US politics Donald Trump Trump administration Russia news

California’s biggest wildfire on record is expected to burn for the rest of the month, fire officials said on Tuesday, as hot and windy conditions challenged thousands of fire crews battling eight major blazes burning out of control across the state.The Mendocino Complex grew to span 1,176 sq km (454 sq miles) by Tuesday morning, with barely a third of it contained since two wildfires merged at the southern tip of the Mendocino national forest, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) said.It is the largest of eight major fires burning out of control across California, prompting Donald Trump to declare a “major disaster” in the state.On Monday, twin fires north of San Francisco burning just miles apart became the largest collective wildfire in state history after destroying more than 1,147 sq km (443 sq miles) of forest and rural land across an area nearly the size of Los Angeles.In all, more than 14,000 firefighters are battling major blazes throughout California.The size of the Mendocino Complex fire has surpassed that of last year’s Thomas fire, which burned 1,141 sq km (440 sq miles) in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties and destroyed more than 1,000 structures.The Mendocino Complex has burnt 75 homes and forced the evacuation of thousands of people. Fire officials had hoped to extinguish the fire by mid-August, but pushed that date to early September on Tuesday.Temperatures could reach 43C (110F) in northern California over the next few days, with winds fanning the flames of the complex, a National Weather Service meteorologist said.The 3,900 personnel battling the Mendocino Complex on Monday were focusing on keeping flames from breaking through fire lines on a ridge above the foothill communities of Nice, Lucerne, Glen Haven, and Clearlake Oaks, said Tricia Austin, a spokeswoman for Cal Fire.Elsewhere in California, evacuations were ordered for cabins in Cleveland national forest’s canyons in Orange County on Monday afternoon, after a blaze broke out to quickly engulf 2.8 sq km (1 sq mile).The Carr fire, which has torched 676 sq km (261 sq miles) in the scenic Shasta-Trinity region north of Sacramento since breaking out on 23 July, was 47% contained.The Carr fire has been blamed for seven deaths, including that of a 21-year-old Pacific Gas and Electric Company lineman Jay Ayeta. The company said on Sunday he was killed in a vehicle crash as he worked with crews in dangerous terrain.“California wildfires are being magnified and made so much worse by the bad environmental laws which aren’t allowing massive amount of readily available water to be properly utilized,” Trump wrote on Twitter, without providing supporting evidence.A Cal Fire spokesman declined to comment on Trump’s claims but said crews did not lack water to fight the flames.Environmental activists and some politicians say the intensity of the state’s wildfire season could be linked in part to climate change. Topics Wildfires California Natural disasters and extreme weather news

The special counsel Robert Mueller will reportedly accept some written answers from Donald Trump about collusion with Russia.The New York Times reported Tuesday that Mueller made the concession in a letter to Trump’s private lawyers. The letter did not address questioning over whether Trump obstructed justice in an attempt to thwart the investigation.Trump’s willingness to sit down with Mueller has long been a subject of contention. In an Oval Office interview with Reuters in August, Trump worried that such an interview would be a “perjury trap”. However, he has said in previous interviews that he is “looking forward” to an interview with Mueller and that he “would love to do it”.In his forthcoming book Fear, the author Bob Woodward reports Trump’s then personal attorney John Dowd was convinced that the president would perjure himself in an interview with Mueller.According to Woodward, Dowd later explained his reluctance to let Trump testify to the special counsel, saying: “I’m not going to sit there and let him look like an idiot.” Dowd went on to express his concerns that foreign leaders would see the transcript of the interview and say: “I told you he was an idiot. I told you he was a goddamn dumbbell. What are we dealing with this idiot for?’ ”So far in his investigation, Mueller has obtained six guilty pleas as well as the conviction of former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort. Topics Robert Mueller Donald Trump US politics news

By Aug. 21, 2019 8:41 pm ET The Trump administration has been secretly talking with top aides of Nicolás Maduro in an effort to push Venezuela’s authoritarian president from power and clear the way for free elections in the economically devastated country, according to officials in Caracas and Washington familiar with the discussions. The talks have involved powerful Maduro lieutenant Diosdado Cabello, who heads the country’s National Constituent Assembly and has been put under sanctions by Washington for alleged involvement in drug trafficking, and... To Read the Full Story Subscribe Sign In

NEW YORK (AP) — When much of Venezuela was plunged into darkness after a massive blackout this week, President Nicolás Maduro blamed the power outage on an “electromagnetic attack” carried out by the U.S.The claim was met with skepticism. Blackouts are a regrettably frequent part of life in Venezuela, where the electric grid has fallen into serious disrepair. And Maduro’s administration provided no evidence of an electromagnetic attack.“In Venezuela, it’s a lot easier for him to say we did something to him than he did it to himself,” said Sharon Burke, senior adviser at New America, a nonpartisan think tank, and former assistant secretary of defense for operational energy at the Department of Defense. “Their grid, it’s decrepit. It’s been in very poor shape. They’ve been starving their infrastructure for years.”Nevertheless, Maduro’s claim has raised questions over what exactly is an electromagnetic attack, how likely is it to occur and what impact could it have.WHAT IS AN ELECTROMAGNETIC ATTACK?The phrase “electromagnetic attack” can refer to different things, but in this context most likely refers to a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse generated when a nuclear weapon is detonated in space, about 30 kilometers above the Earth’s surface. Once the weapon is detonated, an electromagnetic pulse can travel to the Earth’s surface and disrupt a wide variety of technology systems from appliances to a nation’s electric grid. Some characteristics of an electromagnetic pulse are similar to disturbances caused by solar flares.There are also smaller electromagnetic pulse weapons that are being developed, but they would be unlikely to cause a power outage as large as the one Venezuela experienced, experts said.The term electromagnetic attack also can refer cryptography, or an attack where the perpetrator is seeking secret keys or passwords, but that’s more likely to be directed at portable electronic devices, not electric grids, said Shucheng Yu, an associate professor of electrical & computer engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology.HAS ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE TECHONLOGY EVER BEEN USED?In the 1962, during the Cold War, the U.S. detonated a nuclear weapon above the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean, and the experiment — known as Starfish Prime — knocked out power to traffic lights and telecommunications in parts of Honolulu, illuminating the sky and even leading hotels to host viewing parties, according to news reports.Russia conducted a series of “high-altitude nuclear bursts” in 1961 and 1962 to test electromagnetic pulse impacts over Kazakhstan and destroyed that country’s electrical grid, according to testimony to Congress from the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack.COULD VENEZUELA HAVE SUFFERED FROM AN ELECTROMAGNETIC ATTACK?While several countries have capabilities to detonate a nuclear weapon and cause an electromagnetic pulse, it’s unlikely that such a maneuver would escape the world’s attention.“If he’s suggesting that the U.S. detonated a nuclear weapon above the atmosphere, you think that would happen without anyone noticing? I don’t think so,” Burke said of Maduro’s claim. “You can’t secretly detonate a nuclear weapon.”A senior U.S. administration official said Maduro is to blame for the latest blackout because his government has mismanaged the economy and is responsible for the destruction of his country’s infrastructure. The official was not authorized to respond to questions about the blackout and spoke only on condition of anonymity.Unlike a cyberattack, which can be carried out by a hacker in a basement, generating an electromagnetic pulse requires a state-sponsored weapon.“It’s hard to imagine that actor being incentivized to pull off and conduct such an attack. It would be pretty aggressive to do that,” said David Weinstein, chief security officer at Claroty, a security company that specializes in protecting infrastructure. “Also, the power fails easily in Venezuela anyway, so it’s almost like a waste of the capability.”HOW MUCH OF A THREAT DOES AN ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE ATTACK POSE?It depends on who you ask. While the technology to launch an electromagnetic attack exists, and the impacts could cause widespread damage to electronics, some security experts believe the likelihood of such an attack is low and the threat is overstated.“If they want to knock out the grid, I was trying to think of 12 ways to do it, this wouldn’t be high on the list,” said Bill Hogan, professor of global energy policy at Harvard University. “The (U.S.) system is run very conservatively, there’s a lot of redundancy, and you’d have to be pretty sophisticated to knock out a lot of it.”Others are convinced that an electromagnetic attack could wipe out vast swaths of the U.S. power grid for prolonged periods, potentially killing most Americans.The Electric Power Research Institute, a think tank funded primarily by utilities, found in an April study that an electromagnetic pulse could trigger regional service interruptions but would not likely trigger a nationwide grid failure in the U.S.But the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack, which has been sounding the alarm on the possibility of this type of attack for years, said in 2017 Congressional testimony that a nuclear electromagnetic pulse attack would inflict massive widespread damage to the electric grid. An attack on the U.S., it warned, would inevitably lead to a widespread protracted blackout and thousands of electronic systems could be destroyed, risking millions of lives.President Donald Trump called on the Secretary of Defense to conduct research to understand the effects of EMPs in an executive order in March, and called on the Secretary of State to work with allies to boost resilience to potential impacts to EMPs.“I think it’s a good thing that awareness has grown, and the potential risks and consequences have captured people’s attention, but at the same time, the much more practical and frankly the threat that we’re facing on a day-to-day basis is the cyber threat,” Weinstein said.___Deb Riechmann in Washington contributed to this report.

The firing of John Bolton — President Donald Trump’s third national security adviser in just two and a half years — on Tuesday once again highlighted the unprecedented amount of turmoil and turnover we’ve seen in the Trump White House, particularly in the national security team.But there’s one person who has seemingly cracked the code of how to survive under Trump: Mike Pompeo.Appointed CIA director in the earliest days of the Trump administration and later tapped to be secretary of state, the former Congress member from Kansas has outlasted everyone from the inaugural class of Trump foreign policy advisers — Rex Tillerson, James Mattis, Michael Flynn, and Nikki Haley — as well as several of their replacements, including H.R. McMaster and now Bolton.In the process, Pompeo has become one of the most powerful and influential staffers of this administration. And with Bolton gone, Pompeo may be able to amass even more clout in Trump’s orbit. “He has an opportunity to be ascendant,” a State Department official told me. So what’s his secret? How has he managed to avoid drawing the ire of a notoriously combative and mercurial president and remain in his good graces for so long? That’s the question I put to a half-dozen current and former US officials, as well as several foreign policy experts. Together, they painted a picture of a savvy political operator who has followed a simple playbook for how to thrive in the Trump White House: Never disagree with the president in public, keep friends and push out adversaries, and don’t be afraid to pursue a nakedly partisan foreign policy. These three simple rules have enabled Pompeo to take the lead on major issues from North Korea to Iran to Afghanistan to Venezuela. He’s done so in lockstep with Trump at every turn, illustrating that the result of America’s actions in the world are as much a result of his doing as the president’s.Here are the three main ingredients to Pompeo’s secret sauce for remaining in good stead with Trump, which have been tried and tested in his nearly three years of tenure.Nearly every person I spoke to told me that the secretary and the president are simpatico on all things. “Pompeo and Trump have a good personal relationship,” says a State Department official, who like others spoke to me on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to press. “I don’t really see much daylight between them.”Even the president agrees. “I argue with everyone,” Trump told New York Magazine in a 2018 interview. “Except Pompeo. I don’t think I’ve had an argument with Pompeo.”That’s by design. Pompeo makes a point to bring up any policy disagreements directly and privately with the president. Pompeo is known as a staunch Iran hawk who has expressed desires for regime change. Trump, however, doesn’t want war with Tehran. It’s very likely that they’ve tussled on that issue behind closed doors. But once Trump chooses a course of action, it appears the secretary backs off. “Pompeo will let Trump know what his views are but if he gets any indication that Trump is headed in a different direction he will get on board with him,” Thomas Wright, a US foreign policy expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, told me. “He won’t make a stand. That’s the key to his success.”It makes sense for Pompeo to be deferential. Trump despises anyone who disagrees with him openly, and it’s the secretary of state’s job to clearly articulate US foreign policy to a domestic and global audience. Pompeo defends his behavior in this way, saying it’s his duty to both inform but also defend Trump’s actions.“I work hard for the president of the United States, who was constitutionally elected. He is my leader. My task is to share with him the best information,” Pompeo said during an August interview on CBS’s This Morning.But some believe Pompeo’s coziness with the president stems mostly from his desire to stay in Trump’s good graces. “He’s like a heat-seeking missile for Trump’s ass,” a former US ambassador told the New Yorker last month. Here are just two examples: As the CIA boss, Pompeo publicly distorted the findings of intelligence on Russia in order to hide the fact that Moscow preferred Trump to Hillary Clinton. He told a crowd that Russia’s efforts didn’t affect the outcome of the election, when the US intelligence community clearly stated that it didn’t make any judgment on that precise issue.And as secretary of state, he rebuffed the CIA’s assessment that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, was behind the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Trump has consistently refused to acknowledge MBS’s culpability in the killing in order to preserve his administration’s friendly relationship with the crown prince. And Pompeo has consistently followed Trump’s lead on that. There’s more, but the point is that whenever Pompeo gets a chance to do Trump’s bidding, he does it.They say to keep your friends close and your enemies closer, but Pompeo doesn’t fully follow that advice. Nothing illustrates that better than his months-long feud with Bolton.Initially working in tandem, they began to split over two key issues: Iran and Afghanistan.Trump reimposed sanctions on Tehran after leaving the nuclear deal as a way to get Iranian officials to renegotiate a stronger agreement. Pompeo knew that was Trump’s approach and continues to work to get the president in a room with his Iranian counterpart. Bolton, however, didn’t think Trump should engage so closely with a US adversary. Instead, he pushed for the US to keep the economic pressure on and crush the regime.Those divergent views pitted Pompeo and Bolton against one another for months.But the biggest fight came as both advisers squabbled over how or if to end the Afghanistan war. Trump aims to strike a peace deal with the Taliban as a way to end America’s involvement in the 18-year war there. Bolton bristled at that and refused to defend the president’s policy on television.What’s more, Trump worked to bring the Taliban and Afghan government officials for a secret negotiation last week. The State Department purposefully kept Bolton out of the loop and even out of crucial meetings leading up to the event. That was extraordinary: the national security adviser is the person who coordinates big, well, national security issues for the government. Keeping the president’s key aide out of proceedings, then, was a sign of how far he’d fallen and much Pompeo worked to sideline him.Both men barely spoke to each other in the weeks before Bolton’s departure, and they even stopped meeting privately to coordinate. It’s unclear if Pompeo told Trump that he’d work better with Bolton gone. But when asked by a reporter on Tuesday what he thought of Bolton leaving the administration — less than two hours after it happened — Pompeo simply replied: “I’m never surprised.”With his chief rival out of the way, Pompeo now has the space to gain even more authority. It’ll help that he has allies on Trump’s team now, especially Esper — a former classmate of his at West Point — and his former deputy at the CIA, Gina Haspel, now leading the spy agency. He’d be further strengthened if Brian Hook, the leading Iran official at the State Department, makes a rumored move to replace Bolton.Put together, Pompeo has found a way to outlast and push out adversaries while bringing in more of his likeminded allies. Not bad for a first-time Cabinet official.During his eight years in Congress, Pompeo was known as a conservative firebrand who unapologetically bashed liberals and stood up for red-meat Republican causes. He supported keeping open the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, defended the CIA’s use of torture during the Bush administration, and sees Iran and “radical Islamic terrorism” as top national security threats — all positions closely aligned with those of Trump. He was also one of the main driving forces behind pinning the blame for the 2011 Benghazi attacks on then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.It’s no surprise, then, that he wouldn’t blink at helping Trump implement an unabashed partisan foreign policy under Trump.“The key reason Pompeo survives is that he understands the essential truth about Trump’s foreign policy agenda: it’s about promoting Trump’s interests at home,” Frances Brown, who served in the Obama and Trump National Security Councils, told me. “Pompeo seems to recognize that the most important geographic region of focus for the Trump foreign policy agenda is in the US heartland — which coincidentally is right where he could potentially make a Senate run next year.”Two issues stand out in particular: Iran and Venezuela. Trump withdrew the US from the Iran nuclear deal last year, partly because he wanted to undo Obama’s work but also because he felt the US could’ve gotten more out of Tehran. But both he and Pompeo knew that the agreement was extremely unpopular with Republicans, who spent much of Obama’s tenure railing against the decision to strike the accord. Tearing the deal apart, then, was done surely with an eye toward keeping the GOP base happy.As for Venezuela — where Trump aims to dethrone President Nicolás Maduro — Trump is exploiting that situation to label his 2020 Democratic challengers as socialists. During a February speech in the bruising battleground state of Florida, the president used a speech about his Venezuela policy to decry the ills Maduro-style socialism brought to his nation.“Socialism has so completely ravaged this great country that even the world’s largest reserves of oil are no longer enough to keep the lights on,” Trump said at Florida International University. “The socialists have done in Venezuela all of the same things that socialists, communists, totalitarians have done everywhere that they’ve had a chance to rule. The results have been catastrophic.”He’s since tried to connect Maduro’s rule with the ideas gestating in the Democratic primary, all while aiming them at one specific target.“Bernie Sanders has already won the debate in the Democrat primary, because every candidate is embracing his brand of socialism,” Kayleigh McEnany, the Trump campaign’s national press secretary, said in an emailed statement after the Vermont senator announced his candidacy. “But the American people will reject an agenda of sky-high tax rates, government-run health care, and coddling dictators like those in Venezuela.”As secretary of state, Pompeo has his fingerprints all over these policies that so far have proven catastrophic. Iran is reeling under the weight of renewed economic sanctions, but has lashed out violently against US allies and tanked the little goodwill between Washington and Tehran. And Maduro still clings to power in Caracas despite US-led efforts to depose him — including a failed coup attempt.None of this seems to bother Pompeo, though, who doesn’t mind overseeing a foreign policy that, at least ideologically, the GOP seems to love. It’s also possible that he firmly believes in many of the policies Trump does and feels all will turn out well in the end. That could mean Pompeo is less a Trump enabler and more of a cheerleader.What remains unclear is if Trump’s foreign policy will change now that Bolton is gone and Pompeo operates as first-among-equals in the administration. But what’s likely to happen is that no matter what the president decides, his top diplomat will stand firmly behind him.After all, that’s how he’s survived this long.

The White House is bracing for the likely electoral defeat of Argentina’s conservative, pro-U.S. government, the latest example of how shifting Latin American politics are complicating President Trump’s agenda in the region, including ousting Venezuela’s leftist President Nicolas Maduro and stemming the flood of refugees to the U.S.The diminution of partners for Trump stems from his preference for and reliance on right-wing leaders in Latin America just as they are increasingly falling out of favor with voters amid corruption investigations and resurging guerrilla violence.The most immediate looming crisis is here in Argentina. President Mauricio Macri, who has had business ties with the Trumps for decades, faces an uphill reelection battle in voting next month. He already finished 14 points behind his chief challenger, Alberto Fernandez, a pro-left populist, in primaries on Aug. 11.Macri has overseen a conservative, market-friendly government that marked a departure from his predecessor, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who had an antagonistic relationship with Washington. She is now the vice presidential candidate on Alberto Fernandez’s ticket. (The two Fernandezes are not related.) Advertisement During Macri’s term, he became a darling of the Trump administration and of global investors. Argentina was awarded the largest International Monetary Fund loan in history; hosted last year’s Group of 20 summit and other high-level international conferences, and was a front-line partner in the Trump administration’s regional alliance to replace the Maduro government with Venezuelan opposition forces.Publicly, administration officials said the likelihood of a Macri loss remains a matter of speculation. Privately, several said there was little chance he would pull out a victory and are resting their hopes on Fernandez choosing pragmatism over ideology.On the expectation of Macri’s defeat, the Argentina peso has collapsed, capital is fleeing, inflation is climbing and the economy is in free-fall, with annual growth below 1%.In a hint of tensions to come, at the same moment presidential advisor Ivanka Trump and Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan arrived here in northern Argentina last week, offering millions of dollars in new loans, Fernandez was elsewhere, complaining about U.S. heavy-handedness in Latin America and the hold that Washington has on Argentina. Advertisement “It is not that I want a bad relationship with the United States, but a more mature one,” he said. U.S. demands and conditions, he said, were stunting Argentina’s growth and recovery.Administration officials are particularly concerned that a Fernandez government will reduce its role in the Lima Group, a coalition of 14 Western Hemisphere countries working to peacefully end the crisis in Venezuela.Already, the influence of the group was substantially weakened when Mexico, following the inauguration in December of leftist President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, abdicated its leadership role and took a more passive position. Lopez Obrador, contrary to his predecessor, opposes Mexican intervention in other countries’ domestic affairs.“Though [Fernandez] might turn out to be relatively moderate on economic issues, he will no doubt take his foot off the gas on Venezuela policy,” said Benjamin Gedan, who heads the Argentina project at the Wilson Center, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington. “Should the Argentine opposition win, the White House would lose a critical ally, as the authorities in Buenos Aires would prioritize dialogue with Maduro over diplomatic isolation and sanctions”Losing both Mexico and Argentina would be a huge blow to the White House, Gedan said. At its height, the Lima Group represented rare unity in the region against Maduro, but that has waned.U.S. policy toward Latin America through various administrations has frequently been seen as one of negligence or selective support, especially as the region’s democracies that emerged from years of military dictatorship shifted to the left, then to the right and back again.Trump’s approach has added flourishes: a transactional relationship when there is something to gain for his administration, and outright bullying to drive home his demands, such as the threat to impose tariffs on Mexican exports to the U.S. or cut off foreign aid to Central American countries.The problem for Trump is that so many of those governments who, for whatever reason, have been most enthusiastically supportive, now find themselves in political jeopardy. Advertisement “Many of these [rightist] leaders have not sufficiently focused their energies on building coalitions and public support for a conservative political agenda,” Andres Martinez-Fernandez, a senior research associate in Latin America, said in an analysis for the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington.Another complication for these leaders is the fact that Trump is wholly unpopular among those countries’ citizens.Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro, a bombastic, pro-military, right-wing former legislator, has been a vocal supporter of Trump, who has in turn embraced the leader sometimes called the Trump of the Tropics. Bolsonaro pledged help with Venezuela and to build a close relationship with Washington after years of leftist leadership.But barely nine months into his term, Bolsonaro has angered much of the rest of the world for his handling of fierce fires cutting through vast Amazon rainforests. He has declined foreign assistance, citing national “sovereignty,” and ended environmental protections for the land, leading to unbridled devastation, Brazilian experts say.Ivan Duque, the president of Colombia, is another leader whose relationship with the Trump administration has warmed since he came to office. Duque is also a point man on the fight against Maduro. Sullivan and Ivanka Trump, who were on a three-nation South America trip, also stopped in Bogota, where Duque hosted them to a lavish dinner at the presidential palace. Both Americans bestowed admiring praise on Duque.At the same time, he was receiving sharp criticism from the United Nations and others for what they said is his sabotage of the landmark 2016 peace deal that ended decades of war with leftist guerrillas. Duque, who opposes parts of the accord, has underfunded many of its provisions that would incorporate the former rebels back into society, critics say, pushing some to announce a return to armed conflict. Duque last week said he would meet such rebellion with “full force.”The U.N. said Duque’s “iron-fisted” response to the resurgent rebels would have “very negative consequences” in the still-traumatized nation.Trump’s policies toward Central America have been especially thorny, shaped as they are in large part by his desire to stop migration from the troubled region into the United States. Advertisement His most loyal presidents are Jimmy Morales of Guatemala and Juan Orlando Hernandez of Honduras. The two were among a handful of world leaders who voted with the United States in the U.N. in favor of recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Both have said they will follow Trump’s lead and move their embassies from Tel Aviv to the disputed holy city.In return, the administration stayed silent while Morales effectively dismantled a highly regarded anti-corruption agency — praised the world over including by earlier U.S. governments — before it could investigate Morales.Hernandez has been warmly welcomed in the White House, among Republicans in Congress and in other conservative circles. He was named earlier this year in a federal court case as a co-conspirator in a vast, violent drug-trafficking operation allegedly run by his brother, and accused of using $1.5 million in cocaine proceeds to finance his presidential campaign. Hernandez has denied the charges.

Boris Johnson has quit as foreign secretary, claiming in his resignation letter that the UK was headed “for the status of a colony” if Theresa May’s soft Brexit plans were adopted.The leading Brexiter said that he tried to support the line agreed at Chequers on Friday but while the “government now has a song to sing” he could not manage to support the plan agreed.“The trouble is that I have practised the words over the weekend and find that they stick in the throat,” Johnson wrote. “Since I cannot in all conscience champion these proposals, I have sadly concluded that I must go.” Johnson was the third minister to quit in 24 hours following the Chequers deal, although his resignation was announced by Downing Street at 3pm before he had a chance to complete his letter.He then chose to release his own resignation letter before Downing Street had a chance to reply, breaking the usual convention that a minister’s resignation letter is released at the same time as the prime minister’s response.May hammered out a compromise with her deeply divided cabinet in an all-day meeting at Chequers on Friday but Johnson decided he could not promote the deal after consulting friends and allies.Johnson wrote that he believed May’s new plan amounted to “a semi-Brexit” with large parts of the economy “locked in the EU system, but with no UK control over that system”.May’s negotiating pitch to the European Union would see the UK agree to adopt a “common rule book” on standards for food and goods in return for achieving greater divergence on services and digital regulation, a proposal that has worried hardline Brexiters since it was leaked last week.Pressure on the foreign secretary had been mounting since fellow pro-Brexiter David Davis resigned as Brexit secretary on Sunday night, swiftly followed by his No 2 at the Department for Exiting the EU, Steve Baker.A Downing Street spokesman said: “This afternoon, the prime minister accepted the resignation of Boris Johnson as foreign secretary. His replacement will be announced shortly. The prime minister thanks Boris for his work.”After the Chequers summit, it emerged that Johnson had referred to attempts to sell May’s Brexit plan as being akin to “polishing a turd”.As the flamboyant public face of the Vote Leave campaign, his departure will deepen the sense of crisis around May and increase the chances that she could face a vote of no confidence.One senior Brexiter suggested more resignations could follow if May sticks to her plan: “They’ll keep going, one by one, until she either junks Chequers or goes.”Johnson’s resignation was announced on Monday afternoon as Labour MPs were being briefed about the government’s soft Brexit plan by May’s de facto deputy, David Lidington.Lidington, a potential candidate to succeed Johnson, emerged from the meeting in Westminster apparently unaware of the latest resignation.Johnson was due to host a summit about the western Balkans on Monday afternoon but was instead holed up in his official residence with close advisers, considering his position.He was ridiculed last month when he avoided a vote on a third runway at Heathrow, a proposal to which he had long-held objections. The trade minister, Greg Hands, resigned rather than obey the Conservative whip and vote for the airport’s expansion.May appeared before a packed House of Commons minutes after news emerged of Johnson’s resignation, cheered loudly by Tory MPs as she arrived. She acknowledged the resignations of Davis and Johnson at the beginning of her statement on Friday’s Chequers agreement, briefly thanking Davis for steering through the “most important legislation for generations” and Johnson for showing passion in promoting “global Britain to the world”.She did not elaborate on the turmoil engulfing her government, saying only that “robust views had been exchanged around the cabinet table, as they have been around the breakfast table”. She said she expected cabinet members to conform to collective responsibility now that a soft Brexit policy had been agreed.Other ministers supporting hard Brexit took up their places on the frontbench, including Andrea Leadsom, Liam Fox and Penny Mordaunt. Michael Gove arrived late, unable to get a seat on the frontbench initially, before sitting on the benches reserved for cabinet members after Jeremy Corbyn had spoken. But there was no sign of either Johnson or Davis in the chamber.Speaking after May, the Labour leader said there was a crisis in the government, accusing her of presiding over “two years of soundbites, indecision and cabinet infighting”, adding that “more and more people [are] losing faith that this government is capable of delivering a good Brexit deal and that is just within her own cabinet”.Brussels reacted coolly to news of the cabinet departures. Donald Tusk, the president of the European council, said the departure of Johnson and Davis did nothing to “solve the mess caused by Brexit”.He added in a tweet: His comment reprised his previously stated hope that the UK might change its mind on leaving the EU.Another EU diplomat said: “The question is can [May] pull it through. The stability of the government is called in[to] question and now we will see what happens. But even if the government were to fall … we have no other option to deal with this or the next government.”May was due to address her backbench MPs in Westminster after her Commons statement.If 48 MPs write letters of no confidence to the chair of the backbench 1922 committee, Graham Brady, May will face a vote of no confidence.Many of the prime minister’s supporters believe she would win such a contest and cement her authority, but if she lost, May would face a leadership challenge, with Johnson among the potential candidates.Asked whether May would contest a no confidence vote, a Downing Street source said simply: “Yes.” He added that the prime minister believed she had secured the backing of the cabinet at Chequers.“The Chequers agreement was the product and the subject of a formal meeting of the cabinet, and assent was recorded as part of that, in the way that cabinets do record these decisions.” He refused to give further details. Asked whether May was confident that the rest of her cabinet backed the Chequers position, he added: “There is no reason to think otherwise.”In Davis’s resignation letter, he said he believed May’s proposal for a UK-EU free trade area governed by a “common rulebook”, “hands control of large swathes of our economy to the EU and is certainly not returning control of our laws in any real sense”.Later on Monday, Davis expressed regret about Johnson’s decision. He said he had resigned because he could not agree with the government’s Brexit negotiating position, but added that Johnson did not need to do so. “I’d have to be the champion of the policy which I didn’t believe in, so that doesn’t work. Somebody else can do a better job than me under those circumstances. I don’t think it’s central to the foreign secretary. It’s a pity, but there we are,” Davis told LBC radio.Johnson and his allies are concerned about the risk that Britain’s ability to strike trade deals with non-EU countries will be severely limited under the Chequers approach. Brexiters have also been angered by what Baker told the BBC was “childish” briefing from No 10 over the treatment of pro-Brexit ministers at Chequers. Topics Boris Johnson Brexit Foreign policy Conservatives European Union David Davis Theresa May news

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate rejected a series of bills to protect “Dreamer” immigrants on Thursday, leaving in limbo the future of 1.8 million young adults brought to the United States illegally as children. The Senate failed to get the 60 votes needed to move forward on four separate proposals, including one backed by President Donald Trump and a separate bipartisan bill that had been the most likely to win approval in the deeply divided Senate. Trump helped defeat the bipartisan bill, which went down in a 54-45 vote, by labeling it just hours earlier as “a total catastrophe.” He instead backed a Republican plan that would offer Dreamers a path to citizenship but also commit funding to build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico and impose much tougher restrictions on legal immigration In a blow to the Republican president, 14 senators from his own party opposed that bill, which failed by an emphatic 60-39 vote. The Senate votes were the latest in a series of failures in Congress in recent years to pass a comprehensive immigration plan, and left lawmakers and immigration advocates searching for a way forward for the young Dreamers. Democrats complained Trump’s uncompromising approach was sinking efforts to find a deal in Congress. Related CoverageTrump escalates attack on bipartisan immigration planU.S. court says Trump travel ban unlawfully discriminates against Muslims“This vote is proof that President Trump’s plan will never become law. If he would stop torpedoing bipartisan efforts, a good bill would pass,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said. The White House in a statement late on Thursday blamed Democrats for the failure to pass legislation, saying that “they are not serious about immigration reform, and they are not serious about homeland security.” Although the protections under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program are due to start expiring on March 5, federal judges have blocked that from taking effect amid litigation. Republican Senator Bob Corker, who has worked with Democrats in trying to find an immigration deal, told reporters there could now be debate on attaching a short-term extension of protections from deportation for Dreamers on a government funding bill that Congress must pass by March 23. “This does not have to be the end of our efforts to resolve these matters,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said after the vote, although he blamed Democrats for the deadlock. “I would encourage members to put away the talking points to get serious about finding a solution that can actually become law.” While Trump has offered a deal for Dreamers, he has also insisted on building a border wall, ending a visa lottery program and imposing curbs on visas for the families of legal immigrants. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) walks to the Senate floor before a series of votes on immigration reform on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., February 15, 2018. REUTERS/Joshua RobertsThe White House pushed Trump’s preferred bill, introduced by Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, but the 14 Republicans who voted against it included John Thune and John Barrasso, members of the Senate Republican leadership, and conservatives such as Ted Cruz and Rand Paul. The leading bipartisan measure, crafted by a group led by Republican Senator Susan Collins, would have protected the Dreamers and included a $25 billion fund to strengthen border security and possibly even build segments of Trump’s long-promised border wall with Mexico. But the White House threatened a veto, saying the proposal would weaken enforcement of current law and produce a flood of illegal immigration. The Department of Homeland Security and Attorney General Jeff Sessions also blasted it. A narrow bill focusing just on Dreamers and border security, put forward by Republican John McCain and Democrat Chris Coons, failed on a 52-47 vote. A fourth measure, focused on punishing “sanctuary cities” that do not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement efforts, also fell short of 60 votes. “It looks like demagogues on the left and the right win again on immigration,” said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who backed all four proposals. McConnell had set a deadline for the Senate to pass an immigration measure by the end of Thursday. But Senator Mike Rounds, a leading Republican sponsor of the failed bipartisan proposal, said senators would keep trying. Slideshow (4 Images)“We’ll have a chance to regroup, and take a look at what we can do to take a bipartisan approach, modify some of those things where there are questions,” he said. “The issues are not going to go away. We’ve still got DACA kids that are going to have to be addressed. We’ve still got a border security system that the president says is a priority. We want to give him an opportunity to make that a success.”. Frank Sharry, executive director of the immigration advocacy group America’s Voice, noted an overwhelming majority of Americans supported protections for Dreamers. “It is noteworthy that the only vote to reach a supermajority of 60 votes was the resounding defeat of Trump’s racist and radical immigration plan,” he said. Additional reporting by Susan Heavey, Katanga Johnson and Makini Brice; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Peter CooneyOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

European Council President Donald Tusk addresses a news conference during an European Union leaders summit in Brussels, Belgium, June 29, 2018. REUTERS/Francois Walschaerts/File PhotoBRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Council President Donald Tusk raised the idea that Brexit might be called off in a tweet on Monday after Boris Johnson, a campaigner for Britain to leave the EU, resigned as foreign secretary. Echoing a comment he made to reporters after the earlier resignation of Brexit Secretary David Davis, Tusk tweeted: “Politicians come and go but the problems they have created for people remain. I can only regret that the idea of Brexit has not left with Davis and Johnson. But...who knows?” Tusk, a former Polish prime minister, is overseeing the negotiations with London on its departure and has been highly critical of Brexit. He has said in the past that Britons would be welcome to change their minds and stay in the European Union. Reporting by Alastair Macdonald; editing by Robert-Jan BartunekOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Some of Epstein’s donations have been much more recent and seemed to have hardly raised any eyebrows. In 2013, he was described by Forbes as the “financial guru” behind an effort by OpenCog, an ambitious open-source software project, to develop “emotional software” for the gaming industry. Describing the effort as a virtual platform to test the project’s hypothesis about the mind, Epstein told Forbes: “It’s somewhat like building a car, with no instructions, but our impression of what a car can do.” (His EpsteinScience.com website highlighting his investments has been taken offline, but there are some archived pages out there.)OpenCog’s founder, Ben Goertzel, who has thanked Epstein for his “visionary funding of my AGI research,” teamed up with roboticist David Hanson to create the world’s smartest robot. As Goertzel put it, they were pursuing robots “with basic common sense understanding of the everyday human world.” Sophia, a robot parodied on Silicon Valley a few years ago, is powered by OpenCog’s code, which “lets her respond and react to users’ emotional states.” In an episode of the HBO comedy, an actor with a strong resemblance to Goertzel played Sophia’s creepy creator. Goertzel did not return a request for comment from Fast Company. But Hanson, in a statement, asserted that none of Epstein’s funds “were used towards Sophia or to the benefit of Hanson Robotics,” adding “Dr. Goertzel confirms that none of Epstein’s funds contributed directly or indirectly towards Hanson robots or software.”Hanson added: “We value the rights and lives of children, and we find the reported allegations disturbing. We hope our robots and research can help make the world a better, safer and more inspiring place for children and all people, opening numerous opportunities for creativity, education, and innovation that enables AI to bring good to all people.”Other scientists funded by Epstein have vigorously defended him, even as the shocking details of his crimes came to light. When Lawrence Krauss, a famed physicist and the author of The Physics of Star Trek, was asked about Epstein in 2011 by The Daily Beast, these words came out of his brilliant mouth:Jeffrey has surrounded himself with beautiful women and young women but they’re not as young as the ones that were claimed. As a scientist I always judge things on empirical evidence and he always has women ages 19 to 23 around him, but I’ve never seen anything else, so as a scientist, my presumption is that whatever the problems were I would believe him over other people. . . . I don’t feel tarnished in any way by my relationship with Jeffrey; I feel raised by it.Krauss, who himself faced allegations of sexual misconduct (which he strongly denies) outlined in a BuzzFeed story last year, returned a request for comment but did not address his statements on Epstein.Evolutionary psychologist Robert Trivers defended Epstein—who donated $40,000 to the Rutgers scientist to study the link between knee symmetry and sprinting ability—by telling Reuters in 2015: “By the time [girls are] 14 or 15, they’re like grown women were 60 years ago, so I don’t see these acts as so heinous.”

By Updated Aug. 2, 2018 4:29 pm ET Apple Inc. on Thursday became the first U.S. company to surpass $1 trillion in market value, underscoring the iPhone maker’s explosive growth and its role in the technology industry’s ascent to the forefront of the global economy and markets. Shares of the world’s most valuable public company rose $5.89, or 2.9%, to $207.39, making it worth slightly more than $1 trillion. Apple reached the milestone when it climbed above $207.04 in midday trading. The stock has risen 23% so far this year, its latest rally coming after it... To Read the Full Story Subscribe Sign In

The agency’s authority is limited to civil regulatory actions, although it can refer possible criminal conduct to the office of a local district attorney or the State Attorney General.However, under the New York State insurance law, the department, headed by Acting Superintendent Linda A. Lacewell, can take action against the companies and individuals it regulates, including brokers and underwriters. It can issue fines or a range of other penalties, including revoking their licenses to do business in New York.This is not the first time that the agency has examined the business practices involving the Trump Organization. In 2017, the agency scrutinized the company’s long relationship with Deutsche Bank, which the agency regulates and which is one of the president’s few lenders on Wall Street. The examination concluded without the agency taking any action against the bank.Mr. Cohen’s testimony, however, provides additional fuel to advance the insurance inquiry.At a hearing in front of the House Oversight Committee last week, when asked by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, whether the president ever inflated his assets to an insurance company, Mr. Cohen simply replied, “Yes.”The New York regulators are requesting copies of the insurance policies ultimately issued to Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization, as well as applications and financial statements used to secure the policies, the person said.The subpoena requests that the materials — undoubtedly a vast swath of documents, data, emails, policies and other records — be turned over by March 19. The regulators will likely then issue additional subpoenas or requests to the underwriters and possibly other companies and individuals identified in response to this subpoena.It could take the agency’s investigators months to analyze all the information they collect.

Donald Trump’s inaugural committee, which managed the $107m celebrations in Washington to mark the start of his presidency in 2017, has become the latest focus of federal prosecutors who, according to the Wall Street Journal, are now investigating whether the money was properly spent.The Journal reports that Manhattan-based prosecutors are in the “early stages” of a criminal investigation into how the record sum for such a presidential inauguration was used, as well as whether huge donations were made in return for easy access to the Trump administration as it entered power. The newspaper says that were evidence found of improper spending or quid pro quo, it could amount to a criminal violation of US anti-corruption laws.The scrutiny of Trump’s campaign finances will intensify after reports that prosecutors are investigating whether Trump’s inaugural committee and a pro-Trump super PAC received illegal donations from foreigners hoping for influence over US policy.Citing people familiar with the inquiry, the New York Times reported on Thursday night that the inquiry was focusing on individuals from Middle Eastern nations using straw donors to hide their own gifts to the Trump funds.The new focus on Trump’s inauguration is the latest trouble to beset the president as a result of the dramatic downfall of his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen who was sentenced to three years in prison this week. Cohen had pleaded guilty to federal crimes that included paying hush money to two women alleging sexual affairs with Trump in order to silence them during the 2016 election.According to the Wall Street Journal, the FBI raid on Cohen’s home and office in April resulted in the disclosure of a recorded conversation between the lawyer and Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former adviser to Melania Trump. In the conversation Wolkoff, one of the main producers of the 20 January 2017 inauguration celebrations, is alleged to have “expressed concern” about how the inaugural committee was spending the money it had raised.The Journal also reports that in their new inauguration inquiry, prosecutors are drawing on the help of Rick Gates, the former deputy chairman of the Trump inaugural committee. Gates pleaded guilty in February to a number of charges brought against him by the special counsel in the Russia investigation, Robert Mueller, and as part of his plea deal agreed to cooperate with the US justice department.Many of the top donors to Republican causes in general, and to the 2016 Trump presidential campaign in particular, were represented among those who gave large sums to the inaugural fund. They include the Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, whose wife, Miriam, was last month bestowed by Trump with the highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.The inaugural committee was headed by another major conservative donor, the real estate developer Thomas Barrack. There is no suggestion that either Adelson or Barrack are subject of the federal investigation.The legal peril for Trump is now piling up as a result of the Cohen fallout. Cohen himself, as well as federal prosecutors and the judge in his case, are agreed that the lawyer paid the hush money to the two women alleging affairs, Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, at the direction of Trump personally – an allegation that Trump has denied.Further legal misery has landed on Trump after the publisher of the National Enquirer admitted in an agreement with federal authorities that it had also coordinated with the Trump presidential campaign to pay $150,000 hush money to kill off a story of Trump’s alleged adultery. American Media Inc, which owns the Enquirer, said the magazine’s publisher, David Pecker, had offered to buy the story and then suppress its publication, in a so-called “catch and kill” deal.Deepening the hole for the president, NBC reported on Thursday that Trump himself was present in the room in August 2015 when Pecker and Cohen discussed how the supermarket tabloid could play a part in quashing stories about Trump’s alleged affairs as the presidential election got under way. NBC said it had confirmed that Trump was at the meeting when a $150,000 payment to be made “in concert with the campaign” was discussed.The mounting evidence places him increasingly at the center of campaign finance violations that have already led to prison time for Cohen. While criminal charges are unlikely to be brought against the president while in office, it does raise the risk that he could face charges when he leaves the White House. Topics Donald Trump US politics US elections 2016 Trump administration news

“I have no desire to talk about Epstein right now,” Mr. Goertzel said in an email to The New York Times. “The stuff I’m reading about him in the papers is pretty disturbing and goes way beyond what I thought his misdoings and kinks were. Yecch.”Alan M. Dershowitz, a professor emeritus of law at Harvard, recalled that at a lunch Mr. Epstein hosted in Cambridge, Mass., he steered the conversation toward the question of how humans could be improved genetically. Mr. Dershowitz said he was appalled, given the Nazis’ use of eugenics to justify their genocidal effort to purify the Aryan race.Yet the lunches persisted.“Everyone speculated about whether these scientists were more interested in his views or more interested in his money,” said Mr. Dershowitz, who was one of Mr. Epstein’s defense lawyers in the 2008 case.Luminaries at Mr. Epstein’s St. Thomas conference in 2006 included Mr. Hawking and the Caltech theoretical physicist Kip S. Thorne. One participant at that conference, which was ostensibly on the subject of gravity, recalled that Mr. Epstein wanted to talk about perfecting the human genome. Mr. Epstein said he was fascinated with how certain traits were passed on, and how that could result in superior humans.Mr. Epstein appears to have gained entree into the scientific community through John Brockman, a literary agent whose best-selling science writers include Richard Dawkins, Daniel Goleman and Jared Diamond. Mr. Brockman did not respond to requests for comment.For two decades, Mr. Brockman presided over a series of salons that matched his scientist-authors with potential benefactors. (The so-called “billionaires’ dinners” apparently became a model for the gatherings at Mr. Epstein’s East 71st Street townhouse, which included some of the same guests.)