The Daily Populous

Saturday September 22nd, 2018 morning edition

image for Mueller investigating Russian payments made by Trump Tower meeting organizers: report

Kaveladze, who was also involved in planning the June 2016 meeting that Trump associates say resulted in no cooperation between Moscow and the Trump campaign, has been investigated in the past for money laundering, according to BuzzFeed News.

Four federal law enforcement officials told BuzzFeed that Mueller's office is investigating the transactions, though the special counsel's office declined to comment to BuzzFeed.

Scott Balber, an attorney for the two Russian men named in the documents, dismissed insinuations that the money was used for purposes related to the meeting.

"It’s obvious the events of June 2016 have been a focal point of the special counsel’s investigation, various congressional inquiries, tremendous media attention and the like.

We are in the lens of that reality, so it doesn’t surprise me that there’s been some flyspecking, some gross overreporting by a number of financial institutions.".

The deal signed by Manafort includes a "cooperation agreement" with the special counsel's office, according to court filings.

Manafort and other current and former Trump officials have long denied any collusion with Russia during the 2016 election. »

Female Chief Terminates 850 Child Marriages in Malawi and Sends Girls Back to School

Authored by femalista.com

A Malawian female chief has established a new law to prevent child marriage in Malawi and has terminated approximately 850 child marriages across the country to date.

According to a 2012 United Nations survey, more than half of Malawi’s girls are married before the age of 18.

Malawi has one of the highest rates of child marriage in the world, with statistics indicating that one in two girls will be married before reaching the age of 18. »

NYT sues FCC, says it hid evidence of Russia meddling in net neutrality repeal

Authored by arstechnica.com
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Release of these records will help broaden the public's understanding of the scope of Russian interference in the American democratic system.

The comment system was also overrun with bots and comments that were fraudulently submitted in people's names without their knowledge.

Further Reading 2 million people—and some dead ones—were impersonated in net neutrality comments. »

Want to convince someone that you’re human? This one word could do the trick

Authored by sciencemag.org
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Suppose you and a humanoid robot stood before a judge who planned to kill the nonhuman.

Volunteers came up with words like “love,” “mercy,” and “banana”—perhaps thinking that a machine wouldn’t have use for such verbiage.

The winningest word had, surprisingly, nothing to do with human emotion, but rather with a different ability altogether: “poop.” »

PayPal Cuts Off Alex Jones’s Infowars, Joining Other Tech Giants

Authored by nytimes.com
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More recently, PayPal stopped working with neo-Nazi and alt-right websites.

For now, Infowars is still able to sell at least some of its goods on Amazon and eBay, where its payments are not handled by PayPal.

The article said PayPal had told Infowars that the decision was made because Infowars had violated its “acceptable use policy.” »