Daily Archives: November 21, 2022

Elon Musk has rejected as false a bombshell report inVice Newsalleging that the billionaire Tesla CEOspoke directly to Russian President Vladimir Putinbefore Musk issued his controversial Russia-Ukraine Peace poll on Twitterlast week.

Elon Musk spoke directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin beforetweeting a proposal to end the war in Ukrainethat would have seen territory permanently ceded to Russia, it has been claimed, the TuesdayVicereport began.

The single source for the claim is Ian Bremmer, who it just so happens has repeatedly lashed out at Musk in the past.

No, it is not true, Musk responded to the story when asked by a commentator on Twitter. I have spoken to Putin only once and that was about 18 months ago. The subject matter was space, he added.

The Vice story indicated the news organization had reached out to Musk and was still awaiting a response. It dubiously relied solely on claims made by Bremmer in an emailed newsletter sent to his Eurasia Group subscribers:

In a mailout sent to Eurasia Group subscribers, Ian Bremmer wrote that Tesla CEOMusk told him that Putin was prepared to negotiate, but only if Crimea remained Russian, if Ukraine accepted a form of permanent neutrality, and Ukraine recognised Russias annexation of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

Amid thehe said, he said the purpose of the hit piece and allegations have perhaps become all too clear, as Musk can now once again be accused by blue-check narrative enforcers of somehow being a Kremlin stooge

The Vice report, and its very specific accusations, continued:

According to Bremmer, Musk said Putin told him these goals would be accomplished no matter what, including the potential of a nuclear strike if Ukraine invaded Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. Bremmer wrote that Musk told him that everything needed to be done to avoid that outcome.

Vicethenstrongly suggested that Musk is taking his talking points direct from the Russian leader himself, at a moment the Kremlin executes a bloody war on Ukraine: Last week, Musk posted essentially the same points on Twitter, although he suggested that the referendums in the annexed territories slammed as sham votes by Ukraine and the West be redone under supervision by the United Nations, the report followed with.

Meanwhile, at a moment the world looks on the Russia-Ukraine conflict with growing alarm at the ratcheting nuclear rhetoric

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GitHub: Where the world builds software GitHub

Posted: at 2:36 am

SingularityCE 3.10.2 is a patch release in the 3.10 series. It introduces release packages for EL 9 distributions (RHEL, CentOS Stream, AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux) that are built on AlmaLinux 9. It also fixes a bug in the default runscript for converted OCI containers.

The OCI runscript issue, discovered by the Apptainer project on importing 3.10 series changes from SingularityCE, impacts containers that are directly pulled or built from an OCI source without a custom %runscript. SingularityCE 3.10.0 and 3.10.1 generated a default runscript that could not always be executed by other tools. While execution of these containers with recent versions of SingularityCE is not impacted, we advise upgrading so that all containers built are compatible with other tools.

Thanks to our contributors for code, feedback and, testing efforts!

As always, please report any bugs to: https://github.com/sylabs/singularity/issues/new

If you think that you've discovered a security vulnerability please report it to: security@sylabs.io

Have fun!

Source Code

Please use the singularity-ce-3.10.2.tar.gz download below to obtain and install SingularityCE 3.10.2. The GitHub auto-generated 'Source Code' downloads do not include required dependencies etc.

Packages

RPM / DEB packages are provided for:

These packages were built with Go 1.18.4

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The right to bear arms: what does the second amendment really mean …

Posted: at 2:33 am

The second amendment has become a badge and bumper sticker, a shield for gun activists and scripture for much of the American right. But like other cherished texts, it is not as clear as many make it out to be.

The amendment reads: A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

For most of the republics lifespan, from 1791 to 2008, those commas and clauses were debated by attorneys and senators, slave owners and freedmen, judges, Black Panthers, governors and lobbyists. For some, the militia was key; for others the right that shall not be infringed; for yet others, the question of states versus the federal government. For the most part, the supreme court stayed out it.

Americans have been thinking about the second amendment as an individual right for generations, said Adam Winkler, a law professor at UCLA and author of Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America. You can find state supreme courts in the mid-1800s where judges say the second amendment protects an individual right.

But for the 70 years or so before a supreme court decision in 2008, he said, the supreme court and federal courts held that it only applied in the context of militias, the right of states to protect themselves from federal interference.

In 2008, the supreme court decided the District of Columbia v Heller, 5-4 , overturning a handgun ban in the city. The conservative justice Antonin Scalia wrote the opinion in narrow but unprecedented terms: for the first time in the countrys history, the supreme court explicitly affirmed an individuals right to keep a weapon at home for self-defense.

Justice John Paul Stevens dissented, saying the decision showed disrespect for the well-settled views of all of our predecessors on the court, and for the rule of law itself. Two years later, he dissented from another decision favoring gun rights, writing:

The reasons that motivated the framers to protect the ability of militiamen to keep muskets, or that motivated the Reconstruction Congress to extend full citizenship to freedmen in the wake of the Civil War, have only a limited bearing on the question that confronts the homeowner in a crime-infested metropolis today.

This fight over history, waged by supreme court justices and unlikely allies and foes, goes all the way back.

People look at the same record and come to wildly different conclusions about what the view was in the 18th century, in the 19th century, said Nicholas Johnson, a Fordham University law professor who argues against Winklers view of 20th-century case law.

Attempts to parse original intent go all the way back to the revolution and its aftermath, when the countrys founders bickered about what exactly they were talking about. Carl Bogus, a law professor at Roger Williams University, has argued that James Madison wrote the second amendment in part to reassure his home state of Virginia, where slave owners were terrified of revolts and wary of northerners who would undermine the system.

The militia were at that stage almost exclusively a slave-control tool in the south, he said. You gave Congress the power to arm the militia if Congress chooses not to arm our militia, well, we all know what happens.

The federalist Madisons compromise, according to Bogus, was to promise a bill of rights. After weeks of tense debate, his federalists narrowly won the vote to ratify the constitution. He writes an amendment that gives the states the right to have an armed militia, by the people arming themselves.

A year later, the federal government passed a law requiring every man eligible for his local militia to acquire a gun and register with authorities. (The law was only changed in 1903.)

After the civil war, second amendment rights were again debated by Congress, which abolished militias in the former Confederate states and passed the 1866 Civil Rights Act, explicitly protecting freed slaves right to bear arms. A century later, the founders of the Black Panthers took up guns, symbolically and literally, to press for equal civil rights in California.

The states conservative lawmakers promptly took up the cause of gun control. In 1967, Governor Ronald Reagan signed the Mulford Act, banning the public carry of loaded guns in cities. The governor said he saw no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons.

Reagan later supported the Brady Act, a gun control law named after his aide, who was shot during an assassination attempt on Reagan in Washington DC. The National Rifle Association supported the Mulford Act but opposed the Brady Act, signed into law 26 years later.

Winkler, the UCLA professor, said that during the 1970s, a revolt among the membership profoundly altered the NRA overnight. Since the 1930s, the group had supported restrictions on machine guns and public carry, but angry hardliners took control over the organization in 1977, when moderates wanted to retreat from lobbying work. The group then began a decades-long campaign to popularize its uncompromising positions.

The NRA goes far beyond what the second amendment requires people walking around with permits, on college campuses, Winkler said. Their argument is its a fundamental right and freedom. People care more about values than they care about policy.

In the late 1990s, several prominent liberal attorneys, such as Laurence Tribe and Akhil Reed Amar, also argued for an individual right while advocating gun regulation. Gun control activists say they have not changed tack since the supreme courts 2008 decision. Scalia wrote a narrow opinion and listed several exceptions, such as bans on unusual and dangerous weapons and sales to domestic abusers and people with mental illness. He also wrote that states and cities could ban firearms from places like government buildings.

Lower courts have upheld many gun laws around the country since 2008, and the supreme court has declined to hear any second amendment cases since 2010. Attorneys and activists on both sides expect a looming fight over the right to carry guns in public, which the Heller decision does not address.

The courts generally strike a balance between the need for lawmakers to protect public safety and this notion of second amendment rights, said Avery Gardiner, co-president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. The Heller decision, she said, was entirely consistent with gun laws like background checks.

Theres a mythology here that the supreme court has said something about the second amendment that it hasnt, she said. I think most Americans dont like reading the footnotes.

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Texas judge rules law preventing adults under 21 from carrying handguns …

Posted: at 2:33 am

A Texas judge ruled that a state law preventing adults under 21 from carrying a handgun was unconstitutional.

Carrying a handgun in Texas wasnt a problem for gun-owning adults who had a license to do so. However, because the state didnt hand out licenses for anyone under 21, legal handgun owners were prevented from carrying their firearms outside of their homes.

In this Jan. 26, 2015 file photo, a supporter of open carry gun laws, wears a pistol as he prepares for a rally in support of open carry gun laws at the Capitol, in Austin, Texas.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman ruled that the Second Amendment prevents restricting the rights of gun owners based on their age.

TEXANS WILL BE ABLE TO CARRY HANDGUNS IN PUBLIC WITHOUT A LICENSE ON SEPT. 1 UNDER CONSTITUTIONAL CARRY LAW

"Based on the Second Amendments text, as informed by Founding-Era history and tradition, the Court concludes that the Second Amendment protects against this prohibition." Pittman wrote. "Texass statutory scheme must therefore be enjoined to the extent that law-abiding 18-to-20-year-olds are prohibited from applying for a license to carry a handgun."

Two unnamed plaintiffs, an 18-year-old and a 20-year-old, along with the Firearms Policy Coalition, filed the lawsuit challenging Texas law in November.

A customer shops for a pistol at a sporting goods store. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Pittman noted the Second Amendment doesn't contain any mention of age as a restriction, unlike other portions of the Constitution.

"To start, the Second Amendment does not mention any sort of age restriction," he wrote. "This absence is notablewhen the Framers meant to impose age restrictions, they did so expressly."

Thursdays ruling comes on the heels of a major victory for Second Amendment advocates in June when the Supreme Court struck down a restrictive New York law on issuing concealed carry licenses.

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Pittmans ruling also builds on top of the permitless carry law in Texas that Gov. Greg Abbott signed last year. The states "constitutional carry" law allowed Texans over the age of 21 to carry handguns in public without a license.

Max Thornberry is an associate editor for Fox News Digital. You can reach him at Max.Thornberry@fox.com and on Twitter @Max_Thornberry

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Donald Trump announces 2024 presidential run – nypost.com

Posted: at 2:30 am

PALM BEACH, Fla. Former President Donald Trump ended months of speculation and launched his bid to retake the White House in 2024 Tuesday, an early attempt to clear the GOP primary field ahead of a potential rematch against Joe Biden.

Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests and my fellow citizens, Americas comeback starts right now, Trump, 76, told hundreds of cheering supporters who gathered in the ornate ballroom of his Mar-a-Lago resort for the official announcement.

In order to make America great and glorious again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States.

Moments before his remarks, the 45th president filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission confirming his candidacy.

I will ensure that Joe Biden does not receive four more years, he added later in his remarks. Our country could not take that. And I say that not in laughter, I say that in tears. Our country could not take four more years. They can only take so much.

Since Trump left office, polls have indicated his standing among Republicans has declined, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis seen as another top contender for the nomination.

The former president made a theatrical entrance after the sound system blasted the anthem Do You Hear the People Sing? from the musical Les Miserables.

Our enemies are speaking of us with scorn and laughter and derision People are going absolutely wild and crazy. They are not happy. They are very, very angry, Trump said.

Now we have a president who falls asleep at global conferences, was held in contempt by the British Parliament over Afghanistan and he is leading us to the brink of nuclear war, a concept unimaginable just two short years ago.

Trump vowed that if hes elected to a second non-consecutive term, we will be a great nation again.

The decline of America is being forced upon us by Biden and the radical-left lunatics running our government right into the ground. This decline is not a fate we must accept, he said.

Trump brushed off the unexpectedly poor showing by Republicans in last weeks midterm elections, in which Democrats retained the Senate and Republicans were on track to gain the House by a hair.Nancy Pelosi has been fired, Trump said. I said, If you win by two seats, be happy.'

In a swipe at his would-be competitors, Trump saidthat the job of taking on the most corrupt forces and entrenched interests imaginable was not a task for a politician or a conventional candidate. This is a task for a great movement.

The former president also lauded his own policies during his four years in office and said he was running on a national greatness agenda while slamming Biden for his actions as well as his frequent gaffes.

Biden says he alsoplans to run again in 2024, despite turning 80 on Nov. 20.

Trump offered a comprehensive policy platform in his 65-minute speech, though some members of his roughly 1,000-strong audience began speaking among themselves and ignoring his words toward the end.

Unlike Biden possibly getting us into World War III, which can seriously happen, I will keep America out of foolish and unnecessary foreign wars, just as I did for four straight years, Trump said.

The world was at peace, Trump went on, reflecting on when he left office in 2021. America was prospering, and our country was on track for an amazing future. Because I made big promises to the American people and unlike other presidents, I kept my promises.

On domestic policy, Trump won cheers by pledging that we will not let men participate in womens sports in reference to transgender athletes and said he would call for Congress to approve the death penalty for drug dealers.

Were going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts, Trump said, despite his record of releasing from prison many drug dealers including springing on his final day in officeseven men jailed for life for marijuana dealing, two of whom were given that penalty as a consequence of Sen. Joe Bidens 1994 crime law.

Trump also vowed to double down on protectionism and ensure low taxes, low regulations and fair trade.

He also asserted that he would bring down inflation currently at its highest sustained rate since the early 1980s to around 1%,versus 7.7% currently, and said he would work to return supply chains and manufacturing from China.

Economic security is national security, Trump said. Good luck getting a turkey for Thanksgiving. Number one, you wont get it. And if you do, youre going to pay three or four times more.

The ex-president said he also would insist that local officials accept federal intervention to quell rising violent crime because people are being shot and killed at random like youve never seen before and cities are becoming cesspools of blood.

Trump also said he would finish his long-promised US-Mexico border wall and work to deport illegal immigrant criminals and take aim at festering rot in Washington by pushing a constitutional amendment imposing congressional term limits, along with a lifetime ban on lobbying by former lawmakers and cabinet members and new rules restricting congressional stock trades.

Guests at the event includedstaffers who will work on Trumps campaign, among themSusie Wiles, a former DeSantis aide,senior adviser Chris LaCivita,senior communications adviser Steven Cheung, longtime Trump associate Boris Epshteyn and Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich.

Former Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller, the current CEO of fledgling social media network GETTR, also mingled with reporters, as did longtime Trump associate Roger Stone.

Morning Report delivers the latest news, videos, photos and more.

Trumps sons Eric and Barron and son-in-law Jared Kushner attended while Donald Trump Jr., who was on a hunting trip, was unable to make the event due to a flight issue. Kushners wife, Ivanka Trump, a former unpaid West Wing adviser, was not in attendance and later issued a statement saying she wanted no part of her fathers latest campaign.

This time around, I am choosing to prioritize my young children and the private life we are creating as a family, the elder Trump daughter said in a statement. I do not plan to be involved in politics. While I will always love and support my father, going forward I will do so outside the political arena.

At least one member of Congress, outgoing Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), was present after one of the few lawmakers expected, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), gave the event a miss due to a scheduling conflict with House GOP leadership votes.

A tranche of Trump administration alums also attended, among them former White House budget director Russ Vought, former acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker and former White Houseadvisers Seb Gorka and Stephen Miller.

If Trump wins in 2024, Vought told The Post, from day one he will know how to put his hand in the glove and wield as much power within the federal government as possible and I think he will have a staff and an administration of like-minded individuals.

I think its going to be a scrappy campaign that has a lot of the feel of the 2016 campaign, Vought added. He has got fire in the belly. Hes got unfinished business.

Whitaker told The Post that theres no reason to expect that he will be unopposed [for the Republican nomination], but at the same time Im really excited this is going to be one of those seasons to not miss.

I think the early Trump years were marked by maybe some staff that wasnt up to the challenge and he kept trying to find the right people and put them in the right spots, Whitaker said. I think he finally hit his stride as he headed from 19 to 20. I think hes going to have some great people identified and I think hes going to be in a position from day one to drive the thing forward.

The event occurred as Trump takes blame for his intervention in this months midterm elections with critics saying his primary-campaign endorsements of candidates like Dr. Mehmet Oz in the Pennsylvania Senate contest cost the GOP winnable races.

Much criticism is being placed on the fact that the Republican Party should have done better and frankly, much of this blame is correct, Trump said Tuesday night, before adding: I do want to point out that in the midterms, my endorsement success rate was 232 wins and only 22 losses. You dont hear that from the media.

However, the former president did not note that many of his victories were for endorsements of candidates in safe House seats, where his support was not necessary to ensure Republican wins.

Trump entered the race as Republicans warm to DeSantis after the Florida governor won re-election last week by a nearly 20 percentage-point margin.

The former president betrayed his own view of DeSantis at a Nov. 5 rally in Pennsylvania, where Trump dismissed his home-state governor as Ron DeSanctimonious and later took a swipe at another potential rival, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, by saying his name sounded Chinese.

After Trumps chosen candidates disappointed in last weeks midterms, he lashed out at DeSantis in a post on Truth Social Nov. 10, dismissing his would-be rival as an average REPUBLICAN Governor with great Public Relations before demanding he rule himself out of a 2024 run.

Trump, who did not mention DeSantis in his remarks, may have reason to view the Florida governor as a threat.

A series of snap post-midterm polls conducted on behalf of conservative nonprofit Club For Growth found DeSantisheld double-digit leadsover Trump among likely GOP primary voters in Florida, neighboring Georgia and the early-voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire.

However, Trump and his fervent supporters are still a force to be reckoned with in Republican politics.

A Politico/Morning Consult poll released Tuesday showed 47% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents would support the former president in a hypothetical primary, while just 33% would back DeSantis.

Although Trump lost to Biden by more than 7 million votes nationally in 2020, the race was much tighter in the swing states that determined the Electoral College victor. If Trump had gained about 43,000 votes, the Electoral College would have been tied and the House of Representatives would have decided the outcome, with Republicans holding enough state delegations to re-elect Trump.

Still, Trump is kicking off his third straight presidential campaign amid the backdrop of a potential indictment by the Justice Department on charges of mishandling classified information after the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Aug. 8 and removed dozens of sensitive documents.

Trump is also being investigated in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, during which a wild mob of his supporters disrupted certification of Bidens victory.

Meanwhile, a Georgia grand jury is holding hearings about whether the former president and his allies acted illegally in attempting to overturn Trumps 2020 election loss to Biden in the Peach State. Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Trumps onetime personal lawyer, is among almost 20 people named as targets of that investigation.

Therefore, if Trump wins the White House again in 2024, he will have pulled off one of the biggest political comebacks in US history after leaving office with the riot overshadowing his domestic and foreign policy accomplishments.

Trump was impeached just days before he left office for allegedly inciting the Capitol riot, notably with a speech to thousands of people on the Ellipse near the White House. The 45th president encouraged his audience to march on Congress because the election was being stolen despite the fact that courts had rejected his claims of widespread fraud.

The mob proceeded to battle police and break into the Capitol building. The Senate acquitted Trump by a vote of 57-43, 10 votes short of the two-thirds required for conviction, meaning he remains eligible to hold office.

Trump was initially impeached in 2019 for pressuring Ukraine to investigate Hunter Bidens reported $1 million-per-year job at Ukrainian gas firm Burisma while his vice president father led the Obama administrations Ukraine policy.

The former president is expected to run on various well-worn boasts while slamming Bidens management of the nation since taking office.

In 2017, Trump signed a major tax cut into law and in 2018 pushed through a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill that reduced harsh federal sentences, including penalties authored by then-Sen. Biden in the 1990s that jailed some drug dealers for life without parole. He nominated three conservative Supreme Court justices, allowing for the court to end federal abortion rights last month.

On foreign policy, Trumps administration brokered recognition of Israel by fourArabstates and he defused tensions with nuclear-armed North Korean tyrant Kim Jong Un with three meetings. He forced a rewrite of the NAFTA trade deal with Canada and Mexico and rechristened the pact USMCA while waging a tariffs-driven trade war with China in a bid to force another major agreement.

The COVID-19 pandemic and associated local government-ordered business closures caused an economic bust that wiped away Trumps ability to claim record national prosperity.

Trump urged a reopening of US society in mid-2020 while pouring billions into vaccine development, but restrictions dragged on and a breakthrough was announced too late to benefit his campaign.

Pfizer announced sixdaysafter Election Day that its vaccine was more than 90% effective against COVID-19 infection heralding a return toward normalcy.

Biden, who turns 80 this year, insists that he will seek re-election, but there are widespread doubts, including among fellow Democrats. Hes already the oldest-ever US president and would be 86 if he leaves office in 2029.

The presidents average job approval rating sits at 42%, according to RealClearPolitics and even lower among core Democratic-leaning groups such as young people and Hispanics as record gas prices, the worst inflation since 1981 and rising violent crime and illegal immigration drag on his popularity.

We do not have to endure what is taking place in Washington, Trump said. You see our country, the corridors of power theyre our corridors, theyre not their corridors.

These are our corridors, and we are going to take those corridors back.

Trump would be the second president elected to non-consecutive terms, after Democrat Grover Cleveland in 1884 and 1892. He would have to leave office in January 2029 because the Constitution doesnt allow a president to be elected to three terms.

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Donald Trump is at his weakest political position in years – CNN

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Musk draws fire after lifting Twitter ban on Donald Trump – POLITICO

Posted: at 2:29 am

Musk draws fire after lifting Twitter ban on Donald Trump POLITICO
Elon Musk allows Donald Trump to return to Twitter NPR
Elon Musk restores Donald Trump's Twitter account CNN
Opinion | Why Donald Trumps Return to Twitter Would Be So Dangerous The New York Times
Donald Trump's return to Twitter couldn't come at a worse time. Slate
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Daily Archives: November 21, 2022

In Huge TroubleLeak Reveals $10 Billion Earthquake Could Be About To Cause Bitcoin And Ethereum Price Chaos – Forbes

HC Wainwright Adjusts Price Target on EDAP TMS S.A to $12 From $11, Maintains Buy Rating – Marketscreener.com

Advance International Company for Communication and Information Technology’s (TADAWUL:9524) Stock Has Shown Weakness Lately But Financial Prospects…

Infowars Article

GitHub: Where the world builds software GitHub

The right to bear arms: what does the second amendment really mean …

Texas judge rules law preventing adults under 21 from carrying handguns …

Donald Trump announces 2024 presidential run – nypost.com

Donald Trump is at his weakest political position in years – CNN

Musk draws fire after lifting Twitter ban on Donald Trump – POLITICO

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