On Monday the Daily Telegraph claimed that the new BBC director general, Tim Davie, was preparing to axe left-leaning comedy shows, such as Radio 4’s The Now Show and Have I Got News For You because they are “unfairly biased against the Tories, Donald Trump and Brexit”, as part of a push to make the corporation’s output appeal to a broader audience. The BBC comedy insider disputed this story, telling the Guardian there had already been substantial pressure from BBC executives over the last 18 months to find pro-Tory, pro-Brexit comedians. Instead, the source said the real issue is that many of the Conservative-leaning performers considered by BBC producers “aren’t very good”.

The JEDI, or Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, deal has become one of the most hotly contested contracts for the Department of Defense.

The University of Utah will furlough every employee in its athletic department, including Athletic Director Mark Harlan and team coaches because of financial shortfalls in a global pandemic. Harlan released a statement about the furloughs Friday and said the decision was "difficult — but necessary" to mitigate the financial impact of the loss of games because of COVID-19.

Lab Zero Games’ controversial owner Mike “Mike Z” Zaimont fired the studio’s entire staff last week following a series of high-profile departures, leaving several full-time employees and contract workers scrambling for support. News of these mass layoffs became public yesterday thanks to former Lab Zero artist Jonathan “Persona” Kim, who helped promote fellow departee Marial Cartwright’s sketchbook sale to raise funds for the fired developers. As of this morning, Cartwright has sold through her stock, collecting thousands of dollars for her former co-workers. “[For your information], Mariel has to do this because last week Mike laid off everyone who didn’t quit [Lab Zero], but hasn’t agreed to a severance for them yet,” Kim explained on Twitter. Lab Zero Games, known for hit fighting game Skullgirls and the combo-heavy role-playing game Indivisible, was at one point meant to transition from being wholly owned by Zaimont to sharing equity with its employees. But after allegations of inappropriate sexual comments went public, a board comprised of studio staff asked Zaimont to step down. When a deal couldn’t be reached, however, Zaimont dissolved the board and assumed complete control of Lab Zero, prompting seven integral members of the team to publicly resign. According to former employees who asked to remain anonymous, this left Lab Zero with 11 employees, Zaimont included, but the general feeling in the studio was that the company was over. While several talented developers were left, losing style-defining artists like Kim, Cartwright, and Brian “EU03” Jun left a hole too big to fill, especially as the studio’s reputation continued to sink. Work on a new project stalled, and many of the remaining employees apparently felt it was only a matter of time until either Zaimont or their publisher pulled the plug. “Unfortunately, Lab Zero was forced into layoffs because we were no longer able to meet our payroll obligations,” Zaimont told Kotaku via email. “It is not a decision I made lightly. I personally know how hard it can be to find employment in a poorly performing economy, but we have more debt than cash, and the last thing I would ever do is not pay my hard-working colleagues or our partners for their work. We are exploring all funding options in hopes of bringing those team members back, but right now that’s the reality.” It’s still unclear what kind of severance agreement, if any, Lab Zero included in the employee contract. In the August 25 email blast that announced the layoffs, Zaimont told his former employees to be on the lookout for an additional severance email of some sort and also promised to maintain health insurance through September. Skullgirls property owner Autumn Games and Skullgirls Mobile developer Hidden Variable Studios have promised to keep the fighting game alive with the help of former Lab Zero Games staff for the foreseeable future. Annie, a long-awaited fan-favourite character, will be added to the mobile port this year before eventually heading to the main game in 2021, with more content to come later.

White supremacists present the gravest terror threat to the United States, according to a draft report from the Department of Homeland Security. Two later draft versions of the same document — all of which were reviewed by POLITICO — describe the threat from white supremacists in slightly different language. But all three drafts describe the threat from white supremacists as the deadliest domestic terror threat facing the U.S., listed above the immediate danger from foreign terrorist groups.

Italy has been the top target of election interference with 12 cases of interference since 1946 – most of them (8) by the U.S. Italy's position as a top target of such meddling is due to a combination of two factors. First, the U.S. was very afraid during the Cold War that an election victory by the Italian communist party, which was closely affiliated with the Soviet Union during much of this era, would lead Italy to exit NATO and eventually join the communist bloc, leading to a major setback for the U.S. in its struggle with the Soviets.

Researchers are developing a new battery powered by lab-grown gems made from reformed nuclear waste. If it works, it will last thousands of years.

A co-chair of the Spokane, Washington, chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America says unidentified law enforcement agents arrested him while he was walking to a Black Lives Matter protest last weekend, put him in an unmarked van and detained him for more than a day as federal agents attempted to interview him. The arrest, which two of the activist’s friends witnessed and confirmed to HuffPost, follows a disturbing trend of law enforcement snatching protesters off the street this summer, often without identifying themselves. Jeremy Logan — a 40-year-old DSA member, tenants rights organizer, and owner of a painting company ― believes the whole ordeal was either an attempt to pressure him into providing intel on his fellow anti-fascist activists, or retaliation for past statements he’s made criticizing police. The local sheriff’s office later confirmed to HuffPost that it carried out the arrest. The Spokane DSA is now calling for a “full investigation” into the incident, while the sheriff — who’s made previous statements lashing out at “antifa” — is accusing Logan of lying about what happened.

New polls show that the premature consensus about Trump’s rhetoric was wrong—for now, anyway.

Early one morning in June 2015, after Kris Jackson had been fighting loudly with his girlfriend, a police officer knocked on the door to their motel room a few blocks from California’s Lake Tahoe. Jackson, a Black 22-year-old who was on probation for a drug offense, did not stick around to deal with the cops. Wearing only a pair of shorts, he hoisted himself partway out of the bathroom window into the cool, dark air of the motel’s back alley. That’s when another officer, Joshua Klinge, rounded the corner of the building, spotted Jackson hanging out the window, and shot him from several feet away. Klinge later claimed that Jackson looked “aggressive” and had a gun. No gun was found. Jackson died at the hospital a few hours later. As in the majority of police killings, the local district attorney did not charge Klinge, who was placed on paid leave before being allowed to retire quietly. Jackson’s parents filed a federal lawsuit against the officer, several police department staff, and the city of South Lake Tahoe, arguing that not only had Klinge used excessive force against their son, but that the police department had an illegal policy allowing him to do so. That policy, written by a company called Lexipol, stated that officers could use deadly force to protect themselves or others from any “imminent” threat of serious injury or death. An “imminent” threat, the policy explained, was broader than an “immediate” threat such as someone pointing a gun. It included any situation in which a “reasonable officer” would believe a suspect had a weapon and intended to use it. Lexipol says it has provided policies, training, or services to 8,100 public safety agencies, offering customizable handbooks and instruction modules to police departments as well as fire, EMS, and corrections agencies. According to the company, its copyrighted policies, which cover everything from avoiding racial profiling to policing protests, are based on “best practices” as well as federal and state standards and recent laws and court rulings. Since Lexipol was founded nearly 20 years ago, its model has proved immensely popular with smaller police departments that may not have the resources to keep their own policy manuals updated. Yet its policies are also used by larger cities, including Oakland and Salt Lake City. As many as 95 percent of law enforcement agencies in California have purchased Lexipol policies or received them through their insurers.

In Jacksonville, a who's who of snake oil salesmen preached the gospel.

In his latest warning about the dangers of mass mail-in voting, Attorney General William P. Barr pointed to a case in Texas that he said highlighted the risk of fraud. “Elections that have been held with mail have found substantial fraud and coercion,” Barr told CNN on Wednesday. “For example, we indicted someone in Texas, 1,700 ballots collected, he — from people who could vote, he made them out and voted for the person he wanted to. Okay?” Federal prosecutors brought no such indictment. And while a Justice Department spokeswoman said Barr was referring to a local prosecution involving suspected mail-in voting fraud in a city council election, the assistant district attorney on that case said Barr’s description doesn’t match the facts. “That’s not what happened at all,” said Andy Chatham, who is now in private practice.

Now, for every short-answer question, Lazare writes two long sentences followed by a disjointed list of keywords — anything that seems relevant to the question. “The questions are things like... ‘What was the advantage of Constantinople’s location for the power of the Byzantine empire,’” Simmons says. “So you go through, okay, what are the possible keywords that are associated with this? Wealth, caravan, ship, India, China, Middle East, he just threw all of those words in.” “I wanted to game it because I felt like it was an easy way to get a good grade,” Lazare told The Verge. He usually digs the keywords out of the article or video the question is based on. Apparently, that “word salad” is enough to get a perfect grade on any short-answer question in an Edgenuity test.

How misogyny in online forums turns into real-life violence

Some cops give their friends and family union-issued "courtesy cards" to help get them out of minor infractions. The cards embody everything wrong with modern policing.

The mayor of Lafayette, Louisiana has filed a lawsuit against a 28-year-old comedian who created three fake events on Facebook that claimed “antifa” was coming to the town. Police responded to one of the fake events in late August with at least 30 squad cars and heavily armed officers, shutting down a shopping mall and deeply embarrassing the cops.

New York’s June 23 Democratic primary produced some seismic results. The 16-term chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Eliot Engel, was defeated by Jamaal Bowman, a principal from the Bronx; and the state is set to send the first two gay Black men to Congress, Ritchie Torres (who is also Latino) and Mondaire Jones. Bowman, Torres, and Jones all had convincing victories that were apparent, if unofficial, shortly after Election Day. But for weeks, results were delayed for a fascinating slate of progressive and democratic socialist candidates, which denied their victories any real role in the resulting discourse. All five state legislative races targeted by the Democratic Socialists of America—two state Assembly seats and two state Senate seats in Brooklyn (one held by an incumbent democratic socialist, Julia Salazar), and a state Assembly district in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s turf in Queens—resulted in victories. Jabari Brisport, a math teacher who had run as a Green for City Council in 2017, won the Brooklyn Senate seat. Phara Souffrant Forrest, a Haitian American nurse, won an Assembly seat that mostly overlapped with Brisport’s. Marcela Mitaynes, a Peruvian American tenants’ rights activist, won the other Brooklyn seat, while Zohran Mamdani, a foreclosure counselor, won the Queens seat. Another DSA member not endorsed by the organization, Emily Gallagher, defeated a 24-term incumbent. Several left-wing Assembly candidates backed by the Working Families Party also won: Khaleel Anderson and Jessica González-Rojas defeated machine politicians in Queens, and Anna Kelles picked up an Assembly seat in Ithaca.

Experts say company’s efforts may not be illegal since Australia’s workplace surveillance laws have not kept up with technology.

Infinite scroll through 65k Winamp skins with interactive preview

The white college professor who admitted to posing as a black woman allegedly once went on a profanity-laden tirade at a City Council hearing, in which she spoke in a street accent and ripped New Y…