YOKOHAMA, Japan -- Nissan Motor Co. has developed a new kind of fuel cell drivetrain for cars that taps an onboard tank of ethanol instead of pressurized hydrogen, delivering a cheaper and safer ride that it says is more user friendly.

The new technology, dubbed an e-bio fuel cell, aims to combat a common hurdle to deploying traditional hydrogen fuel cell vehicles: the lack of a hydrogen fueling infrastructure. Nissan’s system uses bio-ethanol, derived from renewable crops such as corn or sugarcane, and that refueling infrastructure already largely exists.

E-bio fuel cells should also be less costly than traditional hydrogen systems because they don’t require the expensive carbon-fiber storage tanks for pressurized hydrogen or costly precious metals such as platinum as catalysts for electricity generation.

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“By using this fuel, it can have wider application,” Executive Vice President Hideyuki Sakamoto said today while announcing the development. “We do not require a hydrogen infrastructure. That is the biggest advantage, along with better safety.”
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After releasing our seven battleground-state polls last week -- and seeing several other state surveys -- we've updated our NBC battleground map. The states in Hillary Clinton's column now add up to 288 electoral votes, which exceeds the 270 needed to win the presidency. Donald Trump, meanwhile, is at 174 electoral votes, and an additional 76 are in the Tossup category. Our last map, back in July, showed Clinton with a 255-190 advantage — so Clinton's tally has gone up since the conventions, while Trump's has declined.



•Likely Dem: CA, CT, DC, DE, HI, IL, ME (3 EVs) MD, MA, MN, NJ, NM, NY, OR, RI, VT, WA (200 electoral votes)
•Lean Dem: CO, MI, NE (1 EV), NH, NC, PA, VA, WI (88),
•Tossup: FL, GA, IA, ME (1EV), NV, OH (76)
•Lean GOP: AZ, KS, MO, SC, UT (41)
•Likely GOP: AL, AK, AR, ID, IN, KY, LA, MS, MT, NE (4 EVs), ND, OK, SD, TN, TX, WV, WY (133)

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Donald Trump’s presidential campaign woes have gotten bigger as his campaign manager Paul Manafort’s name has turned up in a ledger of illegal payments that were made by a network in Putin’s sphere of influence in Ukraine.

The New York Times reported:
Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine’s newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials.

In addition, criminal prosecutors are investigating a group of offshore shell companies that helped members of Mr. Yanukovych’s inner circle finance their lavish lifestyles, including a palatial presidential residence with a private zoo, golf course and tennis court. Among the hundreds of murky transactions these companies engaged in was an $18 million deal to sell Ukrainian cable television assets to a partnership put together by Mr. Manafort and a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin.

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Anti-corruption officials there say the payments earmarked for Mr. Manafort, previously unreported, are a focus of their investigation, though they have yet to determine if he actually received the cash. While Mr. Manafort is not a target in the separate inquiry of offshore activities, prosecutors say he must have realized the implications of his financial dealings.
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The son of assassinated Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin on Monday condemned Donald Trump for seemingly joking about gun owners taking action against Hillary Clinton.

“Donald Trump’s utterings about ‘Second Amendment people’ taking matters into their own hands to block a President Hillary Clinton’s Supreme Court picks were a new level of ugliness in an ugly campaign season,” Yuval Rabin said in a USA Today op-ed.

“In Israel, incitement such as this led to the murder of my father, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, 20 years ago. Trump’s words are not just words. They can sow the seeds for something far more sinister.” Rabin said Republicans must reject Trump’s remarks despite his status as the GOP’s presidential nominee.
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Washington (CNN) — A hacker's release of personal contact information about House Democrats triggered a series of "sick calls, voicemails and text messages," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Saturday.

The California lawmaker was responding to the latest hacking incident, into the House Democratic campaign arm, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which on Friday night published members' personal cell phone numbers and some private email addresses. The hacker going by "Guccifer 2.0" claimed credit.

"I was in the air flying from Florida to California when the news broke," Pelosi said in a message to Democratic colleagues. "Upon landing, I have received scores of mostly obscene and sick calls, voicemails and text messages. Please be careful not to allow your children or family members to answer your phone or read incoming text messages."
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Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has built up a significant lead in several crucial battleground states, according to new NBC/WSJ/Marist polling released today.

Clinton has generated double-digit margins in Virginia and Colorado with 13-point and 14-point advantages over Trump, respectively.

The poll also showed Clinton with leads over Trump in Florida and North Carolina. In the Sunshine State, Clinton has a 5-point edge among registered voters. In North Carolina, Clinton enjoys a 9-point advantage.

Losses in these states could be devastating for Trump. The Republican nominee’s clearest path to the White House requires wins in Ohio and Florida, where Hillary Clinton has a slight lead, as well as North Carolina and Pennsylvania, where he trails by a broad nine percentage points.
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Many saw Donald Trump’s latest shocking comment, about how "Second Amendment people" might be able to do something to stop Hillary Clinton from picking the Supreme Court judges she wants, as beyond the pale. Whether or not it was a joke, the implication of his comment is pretty clear: that gun owners could use their weapons to stop either Clinton herself or liberal judges from implementing gun control.

The explicit-sounding call to violence is bad enough. But even worse is that, intentionally or not, Trump has been laying the groundwork for this idea for a while. From his talk of "rigged elections" to his suggestion that we need Russia to hack Clinton’s emails if the Justice Department won’t indict her, Trump’s message is clear: Clinton is so corrupt, and the system that favors her is so broken, that our ordinary democratic and legal processes aren’t equipped to handle it. She should be thrown in jail, but she probably won’t be.

It’s a pretty short step from that idea to violent fantasies of going outside the law for real justice — even from official sources like the Republican Party of Riverside County, California, which recently tweeted a picture of a hangman captioned "Ready For Hillary."

And there’s an unsettling parallel for this kind of rhetoric and what it can lead to, as law professor David S. Cohen pointed out Wednesday in a Rolling Stone op-ed: anti-abortion terrorism.
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Washington (CNN)Fifty prominent Republican foreign policy and national security experts -- many veterans of George W. Bush's administration -- have signed a letter denouncing Donald Trump's presidential candidacy and pledging not to vote for him.

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"He is unable or unwilling to separate truth from falsehood. He does not encourage conflicting views. He lacks self-control and acts impetuously. He cannot tolerate personal criticism. He has alarmed our closest allies with his erratic behavior," the letter claims. "All of these are dangerous qualities in an individual who aspires to be President and Commander-in-Chief, with command of the U.S. nuclear arsenal."

The idea of writing such a letter had been discussed by GOP national security officials for a while, but gained momentum when Trump called on Russia to share Clinton emails it potentially hacked and when he took a position many saw as legitimizing Russia's claim to Ukraine's Crimea region.

"We thought it was important to make the point that even for longtime Clinton critics, Trump poses too big a risk to short- and long-term national security," one person involved with the letter said.
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The Democratic Party’s convention was a normal political party’s convention. The party nominated Hillary Clinton, a longtime party member with deep experience in government. Clinton was endorsed by Bernie Sanders, the runner-up in the primary. Barack Obama, the sitting president, spoke in favor of Clinton. Various Democratic luminaries gave speeches endorsing Clinton by name. The assembled speakers criticized the other party’s nominee, arguing that he would be a bad president and should be defeated at the polls.

That isn’t to say that Democrats didn’t show divisions or expose fault lines. They did. Political parties are chaotic things. The Democratic Party’s primary was unusually bitter, and listening to the loud "boos" of Sanders’s most committed supporters, there’s real reason to wonder whether Democrats will fracture in coming years. But for now, the Democrats nominated a normal candidate, held a normal convention, and remain a normal political party.

Republicans held an abnormal convention and nominated an abnormal candidate

The Republican Party’s convention was not a normal political party’s convention. The party nominated Donald Trump, a new member with literally no experience in government. Ted Cruz, the runner-up in the primary, gave a primetime speech in which he refused to endorse Trump, and instead told Americans to "vote your conscience."

The Republican Party’s two living presidents, George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush, declined to endorse Trump or attend the convention. The party’s previous two presidential nominees, Mitt Romney and John McCain, declined to endorse Trump or attend the convention. The assembled speakers — including Chris Christie, a prospective attorney general — argued that the other party’s nominee was a criminal who should be thrown in jail.
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