Source: AJC

Stormy Daniels, the pornographic film star who has alleged she had an extramarital affair with Donald Trump before he became president, has canceled her scheduled performances for this Sunday at the Pink Pony strip club in Brookaven.

Her attorney said Daniels — her real name is Stephanie Clifford — cancelled because of a “family issue,” though he declined to elaborate, calling it a personal matter.

“She is dealing with a family issue that is requiring her to cancel, unfortunately,” Michael Avenatti told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “She feels very bad about it, but she looks forward to rescheduling and coming to Atlanta.”

...

Dennis Williams, the Pink Pony’s executive vice president and chief financial officer, said he learned from Daniels’ representatives late Friday that she had cancelled all of her public appearances for the next two months. Avenatti said it is “completely false” that Daniels is canceling her appearances for the next two months. Further, Williams called the short notice of her cancellation at his club Friday “extremely unprofessional.”

Read more: https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/stormy-daniels-cancels-sunday-performances-brookhaven-pink-pony/i8YpSsCV3whl4DkizgpU2K/

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1. I cannot believe I read this article about a porn actress.
2. Fucking Trump, getting me to read inane articles about porn actresses.

Source: The Hil

Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) had strong words for Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) efforts to unify the party against President Trump’s Supreme Court pick.

Manchin suggested to Politico that Schumer does not have any influence over whether or not he supports Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination.

“I’ll be 71 years old in August, you’re going to whip me? Kiss my you know what,” Manchin told Politico, referring to whipping votes among the party caucus.

Schumer has spoken out harshly against Kavanaugh and vowed to oppose him “with everything I’ve got.” Democrats will need at least two GOP votes, in addition to all Democrats, to block the nomination.

But Democrats up for reelection in Trump states are not guaranteed votes against the confirmation, and many have signaled that Schumer’s efforts may not be enough to convince them to vote against the nominee.

Read more: http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/397020-red-state-dem-tells-schumer-to-kiss-my-you-know-what-on-supreme-court-vote

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Wow.

Source: Huffington Post

Shera Bechard, the Playboy Playmate who had an affair with a former Republican National Committee deputy finance chairman, Elliott Broidy, and later entered into a hush-money agreement with him, has never met or spoken to President Donald Trump, two sources familiar with the matter tell HuffPost. This news comes after weeks of speculation that Bechard had in fact had an affair with Trump and that Broidy had acted as a middleman to settle Bechard’s claim.

The sources, who are unaffiliated with the president, asked not to be named in order to speak frankly about sensitive information. When asked by HuffPost about the speculation that Broidy acted as a conduit, both sources denied the rumors and said there had been no affair — or even any contact — between Bechard and Trump.

The speculation that Broidy, a major GOP donor, might have covered up for Trump’s affair escalated in April after Michael Avenatti, the attorney for adult film actress and director Stormy Daniels, suggested in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that Bechard could have had the affair with someone else (many assumed he meant Trump) and that Broidy was the fall guy.

“I think at some point we are going to find out if, in fact, the client in connection with the ($1.6 million) settlement was, in fact, Mr. Broidy. I’m going to leave it at that,” Avenatti said on the morning show.

Read more: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/shera-bechard-playmate-donald-trump-elliott-broidy_us_5b45635fe4b048036ea39bfd

So I saw this Politico interview with Jim Bridenstine, and I was intrigued. This is perhaps the first video I've seen of a Trump cabinet employee that didn't immediately repulse me.

https://www.politico.com/live-events/2018/06/27/the-new-space-age-a-conversation-with-nasa-administrator-jim-bridenstine-640331

Source: Huffington Post

An Iowa high school student who was sent back to Mexico by immigration authorities was killed three weeks after he returned to his home country, The Des Moines Register reported Thursday.

Manuel Antonio Cano Pacheco, 19, was expected to graduate from high school in Des Moines in May, but he drew the scrutiny of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents after he was convicted of a misdemeanor drug charge last year. The student, who was brought to the U.S. without a visa by his family when he was three years old, had been protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, under President Barack Obama.

After his conviction, as well as another for a separate misdemeanor charge, a judge vacated his protections.

“Based on his criminal convictions, his DACA status was terminated making him amenable to deportation,” Shawn Neudauer, an ICE spokesman, told The Hill.

Read more: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/manuel-antonio-cano-pacheco-mexico_us_5b1a1b31e4b0adfb82677d83?ncid=edlinkushpmg00000313

Source: Wired

America hasn’t possessed the world’s most powerful supercomputer since June 2013, when a Chinese machine first claimed the title. Summit is expected to end that run when the official ranking of supercomputers, from an organization called Top500, is updated later this month.

...

Summit, built by IBM, occupies floor space equivalent to two tennis courts, and slurps 4,000 gallons of water a minute around a circulatory system to cool its 37,000 processors. Oak Ridge says its new baby can deliver a peak performance of 200 quadrillion calculations per second (that’s 200 followed by 15 zeros) using a standard measure used to rate supercomputers, or 200 petaflops. That’s about a million times faster than a typical laptop, and nearly twice the peak performance of China’s top-ranking Sunway TaihuLight.

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The US, China, Japan, and European Union have all declared the first “exascale” computer—with more than 1,000 petaflops of computing power—as the next big milestone in large-scale computing. China claims it achieve that milestone by 2020, says Stephen Ezell, vice president for global innovation policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. The US may get there in 2021 if Summit’s successor, known as Aurora, is completed on schedule, but the program has previously had delays.

The Trump administration’s budget this spring asked for $376 million extra funding to help meet the 2021 target. It’s now up to the nation’s legislators to approve it. “High performance computing is absolutely essential for a country’s national security, economic competitiveness, and ability to take on scientific challenges,” says Ezell.

Read more: https://www.wired.com/story/the-us-again-has-worlds-most-powerful-supercomputer/

Source: ABC News

A police officer in Georgia who was fired after hitting a fleeing suspect with his patrol car wasn't out of work long.

News outlets report Taylor Saulters was hired as an Oglethorpe County sheriff's deputy on Monday, just one day after he was dismissed by the Athens-Clarke County Police.

Police Chief Scott Freeman fired Saulters after reviewing body-camera footage showing he used his patrol car to hit the suspect, who was trying to run from his partner.

Timmy Patmon, who was wanted on felony warrants, was hospitalized with scrapes and bruises before being jailed.

Read more: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/sheriff-hires-officer-fired-striking-suspect-car-55653950

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This is crazy. it's the county next to the one he was fired from.

Source: The Guardian

A blood test for 10 different types of cancers could one day help doctors screen for the disease before patients show symptoms, researchers at the world’s largest gathering of oncologists have said.

The test, called a liquid biopsy, screens for cancer by detecting tiny bits of DNA released by cancer cells into blood. The test had particularly good results for ovarian and pancreatic cancers, though the number of cancers detected was small.

Researchers hope the test will become part of a “universal screening” tool that doctors can use to detect cancer in patients.

“This is potentially the holy grail of cancer research, to find cancers that are currently hard to cure at an earlier stage when they are easier to cure,” said Dr Eric Klein, lead author of the research from Cleveland Clinic’s Taussig Cancer Institute. “We hope this test could save many lives.”

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jun/01/doctors-welcome-possible-holy-grail-of-cancer-research

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This is big, giant news.

Source: CNN

Samantha Bee has apologized for calling White House senior adviser and first daughter Ivanka Trump a "feckless c***" on her TBS show Thursday.

"I would like to sincerely apologize to Ivanka Trump and to my viewers for using an expletive on my show to describe her last night. It was inappropriate and inexcusable. I crossed a line, and I deeply regret it," Bee said in a statement.

...

Bee's network added in a statement of its own that the host took "the right action in apologizing for the vile and inappropriate language."

"Those words should not have been aired," TBS said. "It was our mistake too, and we regret it."

The clip of Bee making the remark has since been pulled from YouTube and Twitter.

Read more: http://money.cnn.com/2018/05/31/media/samantha-bee-apologizes-ivanka-trump/index.html

Source: Axios

Plans for the Trump administration to hit the European Union with steel and aluminum tariffs could be announced as early as Thursday, reports the Wall Street Journal citing people familiar with the matter.

Why it matters: The EU has threatened retaliatory tariffs on U.S. products such as "motorcycles, jeans and bourbon." The report follows Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross' criticism that the European Union isn't negotiating on trade thanks to the United States' steel and aluminum tariffs, citing China as a counterexample.

What to expect: If the tariffs go through, you'll see domestic and imported steel and aluminum prices spike because the EU is a top supplier.

The EU will likely retaliate almost immediately. They’ve already filed what they plan to do — their list of retaliatory measures — at the World Trade Organization (WTO.) The EU’s big public threats are tariffs on Harley Davidsons and Kentucky whiskey (targeting Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell respectively.)

The snowball effect: The U.S. imposing tariffs would likely have knock on effects. Until now, the only country that has directly retaliated against the U.S. on these steel and aluminum tariffs is China. Add in to the mix other countries who have made threats but haven’t retaliated — yet.

Read more: https://www.axios.com/us-to-slap-steel-and-aluminum-tariffs-on-eu-4de37663-93dd-4f8c-b3f8-78ddcb3990cb.html