Month: June 2019

Daniel Desmond Amofah, a.k.a. Etika, a popular gaming vlogger with more than 800,000 YouTube followers, has died at age 29.

The New York Police Department confirmed on Tuesday that a body found on the evening of June 24 has been positively identified as Amofah’s. He had been considered missing since June 19, when authorities found and recovered his belongings, including his cellphone and identification. His belongings were found following an alarming video titled “I’m Sorry,” which Amofah posted to his secondary YouTube channel. In the video, which has since been deleted, he spoke about his mental health while walking through …

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Trump caps off a rough weekend for US-Iran relations with more sanctions; Istanbul voters hand the opposition party another big win.

Trump ratchets up economic pressure on Iran

Sobhan Farajvan/NurPhoto/Getty Images

• President Donald Trump announced new sanctions against Iran on Monday, as tensions between the two countries heighten. [Vox / Alex Ward]
• Trump’s executive order will add further pressure on Iran,

Nothing is ever free, especially on the internet.

Internet companies collect data about you — what sites you visit, what you buy, what demographic you fit into — in exchange for “free” use of their products, like Google’s Gmail and Maps or Facebook and Instagram. They use that data in part to make your experience on those platforms better, but also to target you with ads, which pays the bills and then some.

The problem is that consumers don’t usually know the extent of the data collected about them, nor do they know how exactly that data is used, where …

Sen. Bernie Sanders’s proposal to make college free in the United States just got bigger: He wants to erase all student debt, too. All $1.6 trillion of it.

The Vermont senator will unveil the most ambitious higher education plan in the Democratic 2020 presidential primary so far on Monday. The proposal would make two- and four-year public and tribal colleges and universities tuition-free and debt-free, and erase the roughly $1.6 trillion in student loan debt currently owed in the US, paid for by a tax on Wall Street.

Currently, about 45 million Americans have student loans. This would cancel debt …

Eleven Oregon Republican lawmakers are on the run from the law, having fled the state Senate in Salem on Thursday to deny quorum for a vote on a major climate change bill. On Friday, state lawmakers announced they were shutting down the state capitol after receiving threats from militia groups who support the Republicans in hiding.

Democratic Gov. Kate Brown authorized state police to find the fleeing Republican lawmakers and bring them back. They are each being fined $500 for every day there aren’t enough senators for a vote. (So far, it’s been three days.) Oregon State Police said …

South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg took the stage at the South Carolina Democratic Party’s convention Saturday and addressed difficulties he’s faced in the aftermath of a police shooting that has both exposed racial tensions in his home town and left him the subject of intense criticism, particularly from his black constituents.

“I’ve been off the campaign trail helping my community move through a tragic shooting of resident of our community by a police officer,” Buttigieg said. “It is as if one member of our family died at the hands of another.”

A South Bend police officer shot and killed …

With near-total bans on abortion passing in state after state — and others responding by loosening restrictions on the procedure — the right to terminate a pregnancy is emerging as a major election issue in 2020.

When CNN pollsters asked Iowa Democratic voters earlier this month what issues were must-haves in a presidential candidate, support for abortion rights came out on top, with 79 percent of in-person caucus-goers listing it as crucial. And on Saturday, voters got to hear 20 of the 24 Democratic presidential candidates speak on abortion and broader issues of reproductive justice — including sex education and …

As former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort’s legal jeopardy worsened in 2017 and 2018, he found a chat partner to commiserate with: Fox host Sean Hannity.

A Washington, DC, judge unsealed 56 pages of chat logs between Manafort and Hannity on Friday, and you can read them at this link.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team submitted the messages into the record during the sentencing process, though prosecutors’ reasons for doing so aren’t yet clear.

Throughout the often-impassioned messages, Manafort protested his innocence and insisted he was being set up by corrupt prosecutors out to get President Donald Trump, a …

What Lil Nas X does best is defy categorization. The 20-year-old rapper has reigned supreme on the Billboard charts for nearly three months straight with the single that rocketed him to national prominence, the “country trap” hit “Old Town Road.” But while that song was ironically bolstered by whining country fans who decried his blend of Soundcloud rap with contemporary twang as an insult to the country music genre, Lil Nas X’s first big release since “Old Town Road” has different influences. Titled 7 EP, it dropped on June 21, and it pulls less from country pop and more …