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Thursday, June 13, 2024

Biden repeatedly watched his dog attack Secret Service as staff wished each other ‘safe shift’: docs

President Biden repeatedly watched his German shepherd Commander attack Secret Service members, who wished each other a “safe shift” as the number of incidents mounted — with one exasperated workplace safety professional urging the use of a muzzle, agency records show.

The number of dog attacks involving Commander, who the White House said in February was given away after more than two years of terrorizing professionals assigned to protect Biden; and former first dog Major, who was rehomed in 2021 after also attacking personnel; could top three dozen, the newly surfaced records suggest.

The 81-year-old president reportedly accused a Secret Service member of lying about being attacked by Major during his first year in office, but was present for at least three separate attacks involving Commander, files released to Judicial Watch under Freedom of Information Act litigation show.

A previously unreported incident on Sept. 12, 2023, featured a pair of bites in which Commander tore holes in a Secret Service member’s suit as Biden took him for a walk in the Kennedy Garden along the South Lawn of the White House.

The president “took Commander (on a leash) to the Kennedy Garden this evening for a walk,” the special agent assigned to the Presidential Protective Division wrote in a report.

“While [Biden] and Commander were in the Kennedy Garden I was standing half way from the Book-Sellers [lobby] and the Family Theater,” the agent wrote, referring to the area where the main White House connects to the East Wing.

“[Biden] opened the Book-Seller door and said [redacted]. As I started to walk toward him to see if he needed help, Commander ran through his legs and bit my left arm through the front of my jacket. I pulled my arm away and yelled no,” the victim wrote.

“[President Biden] also yelled [redacted] to Commander. [Biden] then [redacted]. I obliged and Commander let me pet him.”

“When turning to close the door,” the special agent went on, “Commander jumped again and bit my left arm for the second time. [Biden] again yelled at Commander and attached the leash to him. My suit coat has 3 holes, 1 being all the way through. No skin was broken.”

Photos included in the report show damage to the agent’s suit and dress shirt, for which they sought reimbursement.

The latest batch of internal agency records show mounting frustration over the handling of the animals.

On Sept. 25, 2023, following yet another attack involving Commander, a sergeant in the Secret Service’s uniformed division wrote an colleague: “FYI- there was a dog bite and the Officer may need to go to the hospital … Have a safe shift!” It’s unclear if Biden was present for that incident.

Two days later, an official in the agency’s Safety, Health & Environmental Division wrote: “Can we please find a way to get this dog muzzled.”

Biden’s personal presence during attacks was known in two prior instances.

On Oct. 2, 2022, Biden was there when Commander attacked an agent who was holding the door for the president as he approached the entryway near the Rose Garden that connects the West Wing to the rest of the White House.

“I was bit/grabbed on the left forearm,” the agent wrote in records made public in February.

“Commander came in first circled back and grabbed my left arm. He then stood up and back down. He is literally my height standing. [President Biden] entered shortly after since he was trailin [sic] behind him. [Biden] entered the Palm Room and said, ‘[redacted quote]’.”

Biden also was present on Dec. 11, 2022, when the president “requested to take Commander (on the leash) to the Kennedy Garden,” records show.

“Once at the KG, [Biden] took Commander off the leash to run free. I was present to observe [redacted] departing from the Kennedy Garden to move behind [redacted] toward the south ground drive via the internal garden gate when [the attack] occurred,” the victim wrote, describing a 1.5cm (half-inch) cut and bruising on his arm and a 1cm (0.4-inch) cut from a second bite on his hand and thumb.

Documents do not place President Biden on scene for the most severe attacks, including a Nov. 3, 2022, incident that sent a uniformed Secret Service officer to a DC hospital for treatment after Commander clamped down on their arm and thigh at the base of a stairwell at the White House.

At least one other Secret Service member was seen at a hospital, according to previously reported documents, when on July 29, 2023, Commander tore into a female agent’s arm at the president’s Rehoboth Beach, Del., vacation home, causing a “severe deep open wound” with loss of “a significant amount of blood,” requiring at least six stitches.

In yet another bloody attack, on June 15, 2023, Commander took an agent “to the ground” outside the East Wing, taking a “deep bite” to their arm, requiring an unspecified number of stitches.

In that case, “East Wing Tours were stopped for approximately 20 minutes due to blood from the incident being on the floors in the area of the [lobby connecting the East Wing to the White House].”

Commander’s biting spree was first reported by The Post last July, but was initially downplayed by the White House.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest documents, nor did a spokesman for the Secret Service.

https://nypost.com/2024/06/13/us-news/biden-repeatedly-watched-his-dog-attack-secret-service-as-staff-wished-each-other-safe-shift-docs/

Medicare will recalculate quality ratings of Medicare Advantage Plans

The federal government plans to redo this year's quality ratings of private Medicare plans, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The move could deliver hundreds of millions in additional bonus payments to insurers next year, benefiting Medicare insurers at a time when their business is under pressure from rising healthcare costs and lower-than-expected rates for next year, according to the report.

A decision by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services could be announced as soon as Thursday, the report added.

The ratings for a year determine bonus payments to the insurers in the following year.

Two court rulings have faulted the agency's ratings in cases filed by insurers SCAN Health Plan and Elevance Health, the report said. SCAN, a nonprofit, and Elevance, one of the biggest Medicare insurers, won their challenges of CMS' ratings calculations last week, it added.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/medicare-recalculate-quality-ratings-medicare-201620401.html

Israeli forces advance deeper into Rafah as diplomacy falters

Israeli tanks advanced deeper into the western area of Rafah, amid one of the worst nights of bombardment from air, ground, and sea, forcing many families to flee their homes and tents under darkness, residents said on Thursday.

Residents said the Israeli forces thrust towards the Al-Mawasi area of Rafah near the beach, which is designated as a humanitarian area in all announcements and maps published by the Israeli army since it began its Rafah offensive in May.

The Israeli military denied in a statement it had launched any strikes inside the Al-Mawasi humanitarian zone.

Israel said its assault aimed to wipe out Hamas' last intact combat units in Rafah, a city which had sheltered more than a million people before the latest advance began. Most of those people have now moved north towards Khan Younis and Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military said in a statement it was continuing "intelligence-based, targeted operations" on Rafah, saying forces in the past day had located weapons and killed Palestinian gunmen in close-range combat.

Over the past day, the military said it had struck 45 targets across the Gaza Strip from the air, including military structures, militant cells, rocket launchers and tunnel shafts.

Israel has ruled out peace until Hamas is eradicated, and much of Gaza lies in ruins. But Hamas has proven resilient, with militants resurfacing to fight in areas where Israeli forces had previously declared to have defeated them and pulled back.

CEASEFIRE PROPOSAL

The group welcomed a new U.S. ceasefire proposal but made some amendments, reaffirming its stance that any agreement must secure an end to the war, a demand Israel still rejects.

Israel described Hamas's response to the new U.S. peace proposal as total rejection. But the efforts to secure an agreement are still continuing, according to mediators Qatar and Egypt, backed by the United States.

Since a brief week-long truce in November, repeated attempts to arrange a ceasefire have failed, with Hamas insisting on a permanent end to the war and full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

Hamas precipitated the war when militants stormed from Israeli-blockaded Gaza into southern Israel in a lightning strike last Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 people and taking over 250 hostages back to the enclave, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel's invasion and bombardment of Gaza since then has killed at least 37,000 people, according to the territory's health ministry. Thousands more are feared buried dead under rubble, with most of the 2.3 million population displaced.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/israeli-forces-thrust-deeper-rafah-071929666.html

'China-Linked Cyber Campaign Infiltrated Dozens Of Western Governments: Dutch Intelligence'

by Andrew Thornebrooke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A China-linked cyber campaign that infiltrated a Dutch defense network last year is much larger than previously thought and has infiltrated tens of thousands of government and defense systems in Western nations, according to the Dutch government.

The campaign, dubbed COATHANGER, has been linked to communist China and it exploited a zero-day vulnerability in the FortiGate firewall system used by the Netherlands and other nations on many government networks. Zero-day vulnerabilities exist when a software update is first deployed.

Dutch intelligence’s original report, released in February, said that damage from the breach was limited because of “network segmentation,” which separates an affected system from the nation’s wider defense network.

The Netherlands’ National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) announced on June 10, however, that the Chinese cyber campaign is far larger than previously thought.

NCSC said that COATHANGER compromised 20,000 systems across dozens of Western governments, international organizations, and a large number of companies within the defense industry.

Moreover, the statement said, the attackers used the intrusion to install malware on some of those compromised targets to guarantee continued access to those systems. The malware still has not been cut off.

“This gave the state actor permanent access to the systems,” the statement reads. “Even if a victim installs FortiGate security updates, the state actor continues to have this access.”

“It is not known how many victims are actually malware installed. The Dutch intelligence services and the NCSC consider it likely that the state-owned actor could potentially expand its access to hundreds of victims worldwide and has been able to carry out additional actions such as stealing data.”

Likewise, the Dutch statement said that “it is likely that the state actor still has access to systems of a significant number of victims at the moment” and that organizations should take measures to mitigate the possible fallout from that access.

The Netherlands’ original report, jointly published by the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service and the General Intelligence and Security Service, didn’t clarify what information the hackers were trying to obtain.

The scope of the latest discovery suggests that the campaign sought to gain persistent access to the defense industries of Western nations. However, it remains unclear whether all the victims were in NATO nations or shared some other connection.

The Dutch statement said that, like many hackers, the COATHANGER campaign targeted “edge devices” like firewalls, VPN servers, routers, and email servers that connect a system to the wider network.

Because zero-day vulnerabilities are hard to anticipate, the statement said, the government encouraged the adoption of an “assume breach” principle.

This means that an initial breach should be assumed and efforts should be taken to limit the damage.

Numerous reports have found that China-backed actors associated with both Chinese intelligence and law enforcement are behind the world’s largest online influence operations.

U.S. intelligence leaders announced earlier in the year that they had dismantled Chinese malware known as Volt Typhoon, which had been planted on hundreds of devices and threatened vital U.S. infrastructure, including water, energy, oil, and air traffic control systems.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/china-linked-cyber-campaign-infiltrated-dozens-western-governments-dutch-intelligence

'FDA advises Covid vaccine makers to target KP.2 for fall shots'

The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday it had advised drugmakers to update the Covid vaccines to target the KP.2 strain, a descendant of the highly contagious JN.1 variant that began circulating widely in the U.S. this winter.

The announcement came just over a week after an FDA advisory panel voted unanimously to recommend that the Covid vaccines for the fall be updated to target the JN.1 variant or one of its descendants.

Following the vote, there was a disagreement between panel members and Dr. Peter Marks, the agency’s top vaccine regulator, about which strain the agency should choose. Most panel members expressed a preference for JN.1, while Marks preferred selecting a newer strain, such as KP.2.

"We are paying an incredibly high premium for mRNA vaccines to be able to have the freshest vaccines," Marks said, comparing the shots to buying milk from the store.

Following the committee meeting, the FDA said that on June 6 it initially advised the drugmakers to target the JN.1 variant. However, the agency has continued to monitor the circulating strains, and "based on the most current available data, along with the recent rise in Covid-19 cases in areas of the country, the agency has further determined that the preferred JN.1-lineage" for the updated vaccines is the KP.2 strain, "if feasible," the FDA said.

JN.1 has largely fallen out of circulation in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As of Saturday, KP.2 accounts for 22.5% of new Covid cases in the U.S. KP.3, a sister variant, accounts for 25% of new cases.

The FDA’s decision will allow drugmakers to begin producing and distributing the shots, which are expected to be used as part of a fall Covid vaccination campaign.

Three drugmakers are producing Covid vaccines: Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax. Pfizer's and Moderna's vaccines are mRNA-based, while Novavax's is protein-based. Because protein-based vaccines take much longer to manufacture, Novavax has indicated it won't be able to make a KP.2 vaccine in time for the fall. Instead, it is expected to distribute a JN.1 vaccine, which it had already been producing.

This is the third time the vaccines have been updated to target the circulating strains. The process of selecting the next round of vaccines is falling into a routine, similar to how the annual flu shot is updated, with vaccine experts selecting the strain in the spring for a vaccination campaign in the fall.

During the advisory committee meeting, the drugmakers presented data showing that a JN.1 vaccine should generate higher levels of antibodies against circulating strains of the virus compared to the current vaccine, which targets XBB.1.5, a subvariant that’s no longer in circulation.

The committee did not make a recommendation on who should get the updated vaccine. That will be left up to the CDC, which is holding its own advisory committee meeting later this month.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/fda-recommends-covid-vaccine-update-target-kp2-strain-rcna157089

Tempus AI prices IPO

Tempus AI, Inc. (“Tempus”) today announced the pricing of its initial public offering of 11,100,000 shares of its Class A common stock at a public offering price of $37.00 per share. All of the shares of Class A common stock are being offered by Tempus. The gross proceeds to Tempus from the offering, before deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and other offering expenses payable by Tempus, are expected to be $410.7 million. In addition, Tempus has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 1,665,000 shares of its Class A common stock at the initial public offering price, less underwriting discounts and commissions.

The shares are expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on June 14, 2024, under the ticker symbol “TEM”. The offering is expected to close on June 17, 2024, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions.

Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, and Allen & Company LLC are acting as lead book-running managers for the proposed offering. BofA Securities and TD Cowen are acting as additional book-running managers; and Stifel, William Blair, Loop Capital Markets, and Needham & Company are acting as co-managers for the proposed offering.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240613404159/en/

Federal Judge Blocks ATF Rule Expanding Definition Of Gun Dealer

by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times,

A federal judge in Texas has blocked the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) from implementing its new rule, which critics say dramatically expands the agency’s enforcement scope by redefining who is a gun dealer.

In his opinion handed down June 11, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk for the Northern District of Texas said the enforcement of the new rule relies on “highly problematic” presumptions that will “trigger civil or criminal penalties for conduct deemed lawful just yesterday.”

The rule in question was unveiled in April as part of President Joe Biden’s effort to close what he called “loopholes” in the federal gun background check system. The president said those gaps have allowed sellers to avoid becoming federally licensed gun dealers while still selling guns at gun shows or on the internet.

To close the gaps, the new ATF rule declares that a person no longer has to make a living selling guns to be considered “engaged in the business” of selling guns. Instead, someone who sells or offers to sell just one gun with the intent to “predominantly earn a profit” may be deemed an unlicensed gun dealer, and will be required to be registered with the federal regulator and conduct background checks on potential customers.

It further clarifies that a single transaction may be sufficient to require someone to become a licensed dealer, so long as there is other evidence to suggest commercial activity. For example, someone who sells one gun and then tells others about the possibility of buying more guns for resale, may be required to get a license.

Rule Details

The new rule lists certain actions that could be used by the federal government as evidence of someone selling guns to earn a profit. Those include advertising, setting up a system to accept credit card payments, renting space to sell guns, applying for a state or local business license, or hiring security.

“If you are conducting business that in a brick-and-mortar store would require you to become a licensed dealer, you have to become a licensed dealer and run background checks,” the White House explained in a readout. “It does not matter whether you are dealing firearms at a gun show, online, in your home, in the trunk of a car, at a flea market, or anywhere else—you must obtain a license and run background checks results.”

“This is going to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers and felons. And my administration is going to continue to do everything we possibly can to save lives,” President Biden said.

A coalition of state attorneys general and Second Amendment advocacy groups sued to block the ATF rule, which they say violates not only the Second Amendment right to privately buy and sell guns, but also the Fifth Amendment right to due process protections.

One of the most troubling aspects of the rule, the suing parties alleged, is that it subjects gun owners to “presumptions of criminal guilt” for all manner of activities relating to the private sale of guns.

Specifically, the plaintiffs took issue with the ATF shifting the burden of proof to the seller, who is already presumed under the rule to be “engaging in the business” of dealing firearms and as such is an unlicensed dealer.

“Previously, only those who actually engaged in regular commerce in firearms as a business had to be licensed. Now, every gun owner who innocently sells—or even just offers to sell—a few guns from his personal collection, but happens to fall within one or more of ATF’s presumptions, is threatened to obtain a Federal Firearms License or else risk the consequences,” the complaint read.

Plaintiffs Win

Judge Kacsmaryk sided with the plaintiffs. In May, he issued a temporary restraining order halting enforcement of the rule until June 2, followed by a preliminary injunction on June 11.

In defense of the rule, the ATF argued that the plaintiffs do not have standing to sue, and that even if they did, their claims fail on the merits. Judge Kacsmaryk rejected both arguments.

The lawsuit was filed by Gun Owners of America, Gun Owners Foundation, Virginia Citizens Defense League, and Tennessee Firearms Association, alongside the attorneys general of Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and Utah. The judge said each of them have a stake in the rule.

Louisiana, for example, levies a 4.45 percent sales tax on internet gun trades and could suffer from reduced taxable sales if the ATF rule is implemented.

The judge further wrote the ATF’s final rule “creates sets of presumptions” indicating when a person has the intent to “predominantly earn a profit” and whether someone is “engaged in the business” of selling firearms.”

“These presumptions are highly problematic,” he said in the opinion. “They flip the statute on its head by requiring that firearm owners prove innocence rather than the government prove guilt.”

The federal agency is expected to appeal the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which has been critical of other gun regulations.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/federal-judge-blocks-atf-rule-expanding-definition-gun-dealer

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Thursday, June 13, 2024

Rule Details

Plaintiffs Win