Idaho State University loses weapons-grade plutonium capable of making a dirty bomb

FILE 2015: Nuclear waste is stored in underground containers at the Idaho Nation. A small amount of radioactive, weapons-grade plutonium about the size of a U.S. quarter is missing from an Idaho university that was using it for research, leading federal officials on Friday to propose an $8,500 fine. 

Idaho State University was fined last week for losing a small amount of radioactive, weapons-grade plutonium that is too small to make a nuclear bomb, but could be used in a dirty bomb, according to a regulatory commission.

Dr. Cornelis Van der Schyf, vice president for research at the university, blamed partially completed paperwork from 15 years ago as the school tried to dispose of the plutonium.

"Unfortunately, because there was a lack of sufficient historical records to demonstrate the disposal pathway employed in 2003, the source in question had to be listed as missing," he said in a statement to The Associated Press. "The radioactive source in question poses no direct health issue or risk to public safety."
The school, which reported the material missing on Oct. 13, was hit with an $8,500 fine and has 30 days to dispute the measure.
Victor Dricks, a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman, said the agency “has very rigorous controls for the use and storage of radioactive materials as evidenced by this enforcement action," he said of the proposed fine for failing to keep track of the material.
The agency said a school employee doing a routine inventory discovered the university could only account for 13 of its 14 plutonium sources, each weighing about the same small amount.
Idaho State University has a nuclear engineering program and works with the U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory, considered the nation's primary nuclear research lab and located about 65 miles northwest of the school.
The plutonium was being used to develop ways to ensure nuclear waste containers weren't leaking and to find ways to detect radioactive material being illegally brought into the U.S. following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the school said in an email to the AP.
The school searched documents and found records from 2003 and 2004 saying the material was on campus and awaiting disposal. However, there were no documents saying the plutonium had been properly disposed.
The last document mentioning the plutonium is dated Nov. 23, 2003. It said the Idaho National Laboratory didn't want the plutonium and the school's technical safety office had it "pending disposal of the next waste shipment."
The school also reviewed documents on waste barrels there and others transferred off campus since 2003, and opened and examined some of them. Finally, officials searched the campus but didn't find the plutonium.
The nuclear commission said senior university officials planned to return the school's remaining plutonium to the Energy Department. It's not clear if that has happened.
Energy Department officials didn't return calls seeking comment Friday.
Dricks, the commission spokesman, said returning the plutonium was part of the school's plan to reduce its inventory of radioactive material.
He said overall it has "a good record with the NRC."

Eric Schneiderman, powerful NY Democrat accused of violence against women and drug abuse, resigns as state attorney general

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced his resignation Monday night, hours after The New Yorker magazine published allegations of physical abuse and controlling behavior by four women who had romantic relationships or encounters with him.
"It’s been my great honor and privilege to serve as Attorney General for the people of the State of New York," Schneiderman said in a statement. "In the last several hours, serious allegations, which I strongly contest, have been made against me. While these allegations are unrelated to my professional conduct or the operations of the office, they will effectively prevent me from leading the office’s work at this critical time. I therefore resign my office, effective at the close of business on [Tuesday]."
It was not immediately clear who would succeed Schneiderman, a Democrat who was seeking a third term as attorney general this November and had been tipped as a possible successor to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Schneiderman was accused in the wide-ranging report -- co-written by Ronan Farrow -- of hitting and choking women without their consent, asking to use "about half" of a woman's prescription of the anti-anxiety drug Xanax, and mocking anti-gun demonstrators including parents from Sandy Hook Elementary School, the site of the 2012 shooting massacre, as "losers."
Schneiderman, long a pillar of New York's Democratic establishment and a critic of President Trump, has cast himself as a supporter of the #MeToo movement after Farrow uncovered a long list of rape and sexual harassment accusations against the now-disgraced Hollywood titan Harvey Weinstein.
WARNING: GRAPHIC DETAILS BELOW
Two of Schneiderman's accusers, Michelle Manning Barish and Tanya Selvaratnam, spoke to The New Yorker on the record to document claims that Schneiderman nonconsensually hit and choked them. A third woman who also was involved with Schneiderman told her story to the other two women, but said she was too frightened to come forward. A fourth woman said Schneiderman slapped her when she rebuffed him, but also asked to remain unidentified. The New Yorker said it vetted the third woman's allegations, and saw a photo of what the fourth woman said was her injury.
Manning Barish told the magazine that she dated Schneiderman, now 63, between the summer of 2013 and New Year's Day 2015. According to her account, Schneiderman started abusing her weeks after their relationship became physical. Though she reconciled with him after an initial incident, Manning Barish said that Schneiderman often would slap her during sex without her consent and made critical comments about her appearance.
He "would almost always drink two bottles of wine in a night, then bring a bottle of Scotch into the bedroom. He would get absolutely plastered five nights out of seven," Manning Barish said.
In one instance, she said Schneiderman told her to get a small tattoo removed from her wrist. According to her, he said the body art was inappropriate for her if she was to be a politician's wife.
According to the article, Manning Barish said Schneiderman "would be 'shaking me and grabbing my face' while demanding that she repeat such things as 'I'm a little wh---.'" On another occasion, Manning Barish says that Schneiderman told her "If you ever left me, I'd kill you."
Manning Barish said Schneiderman often asked to to refill her Xanax prescription so that he could take "about half" the pills for himself. She also said he frequently mocked her activism on behalf of progressive causes, in once instance referring to anti-gun demonstrators as "losers."
"Taking a strong woman and tearing her to pieces is [Schneiderman's] jam," she told the magazine.
The acclaimed author Salman Rushdie, who reportedly dated Manning Barish before Schneiderman did, said she told the novelist about the alleged abuse. "She called me and told me he had hit her... She was obviously very upset. I was horrified."
Selvaratnam told the New Yorker she was involved with Schneiderman between the summer of 2016 and the fall of 2017. She said that he started physically abusing her in bed and asking her to find another woman for a threesome. Schneiderman also asked her to "call him Master, and he’d slap me until I did."
"[H]e started calling me his 'brown slave' and demanding that I repeat that I was 'his property,'" Selvaratnam told the magazine.
Selvaratnam also told The New Yorker that she met with another former girlfriend of Schneiderman in February of this year. The unidentified woman told Selvaratnam that Schneiderman had slapped, choked and spat at her and also belittled her appearance.
The woman told Selvaratnam that she had told "several friends" about Schneiderman's behavior. According to The New Yorker: "A number of them advised her to keep the story to herself, arguing that Schneiderman was too valuable a politician for the Democrats to lose."
Schneiderman, a former New York state senator who was elected state attorney general in 2010, issued a statement to the magazine saying: "In the privacy of intimate relationships, I have engaged in role-playing and other consensual sexual activity. I have not assaulted anyone. I have never engaged in nonconsensual sex, which is a line I would not cross."
After the story was published, Schneiderman posted the same statement on his official Twitter account and a representative emailed the same statement when contacted for comment by Fox News.
Schneiderman's ex-wife, Jennifer Cunningham, said in a statement that "I've known Eric for nearly 35 years as a husband, father and friend. These allegations are completely inconsistent with the man I know, who has always been someone of the highest character, outstanding values and a loving father. I find it impossible to believe these allegations are true."
New York politicians from both parties, led by Cuomo, had called on Schneiderman to resign.
"No one is above the law, including New York's top legal officer," said Cuomo, who added that he would ask for an "immediate investigation" and would "proceed as the facts merit."
Actress Cynthia Nixon, who is challenging Cuomo in the Democratic primary, tweeted that Schneiderman had made "the right decision" to resign.
"The women who came forward so courageously to tell their stories and spared others from suffering are heroines," Nixon wrote. "The investigation should continue. We need to get to the bottom of the enormous culture of silence that protects those in power. We must continue to work to end this national epidemic."
Manny Alicandro, a Republican candidate for attorney general who had entered the race hours earlier, told the Associated Press that Schneiderman was "a disgrace and wholly unfit for the role of New York State's chief legal officer. I believe the accusers. He needs to resign his office effective immediately and the New York City Police Department needs to get to work."
An NYPD spokesman said the department had "no complaints on file" related to Schneiderman.
"If the NYPD receives complaints of a crime, it will investigate them thoroughly," the spokesman said.
After the story was published Monday night, Manning Barish tweeted: "After the most difficult month of my life-I spoke up. For my daughter and for all women. I could not remain silent and encourage other women to be brave for me."
In February, Schneiderman filed a civil rights lawsuit against the board of The Weinstein Company and brothers Harvey and Bob Weinstein. Schneiderman alleged that top executives at the film company were aware of Harvey Weinstein’s years of alleged sexual harassment and abuse, but did nothing.
Last month, Schneiderman praised the reporting of the New Yorker and The New York Times in the Weinstein matter, which gave rise to a worldwide conversation about sexual misconduct and accusations against powerful men in media and entertainment.
"Without the reporting of the @nytimes and the @newyorker—and the brave women and men who spoke up about the sexual harassment they endured at the hands of powerful men—there would not be the critical national reckoning underway," Schneiderman tweeted on April 16. "A well-deserved honor."
Schneiderman also has been part of several efforts to push back against some of Trump's actions in the White House, like the rescinding of protection for immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children.
Last month, he urged state lawmakers to close a loophole that he said could be used to fight state charges by anyone who has received a federal pardon for similar federal charges.

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GOP outsider Blankenship emerges as factor in West Virginia Senate race, ahead of 4 state primaries Tuesday

Candidates in West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana and North Carolina made closing arguments this weekend ahead of key primaries Tuesday -- showing in many ways how Republican hopefuls are aligning behind President Trump while Democrats move to the left in more divided paths that threaten to undermine the party.
Ahead of West Virginia’s GOP primary Tuesday to unseat Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, each of the top three candidates has claimed to be the closest in ideology to Trump. Meanwhile, Don Blankenship has taken direct aim at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell -- calling him “Cocaine Mitch.” Blankenship apparently has tried to link McConnell to a 2014 news report about drugs purportedly found on a ship owned by his in-laws.
Blankenship also has accused McConnell of creating jobs for "Chinapeople" and said his "China family" has given him millions of dollars. McConnell's wife is Trump's transportation secretary, Elaine Chao, who was born in Taiwan. Her father, entrepreneur and philanthropist James S.C. Chao, was born in China.
The leading GOP candidates are state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey and Rep. Evan Jenkins. They have until recently largely ignored Blankenship -- a former coal industry executive who served a year in prison in connection with the Upper Big Branch Mine explosion in West Virginia in 2010 that killed 29 workers.

Dennis Kucinich, left, and Richard Cordray are top candidates in the Ohio Democratic primary for governor.

But this weekend, Morrisey started using “robo-calls” to potential voters saying: “Convicted criminal Don Blankenship didn’t vote for President Trump and is a resident of Nevada, where he must report to his parole officer.”
On Sunday, Morrisey moved to have Blankenship disqualified from the primary for failing to submit a financial disclosure, in violation of election law and perhaps of his probation.
Blankenship’s campaign said the candidate has already spoken to his probation officer, who wasn’t concerned about the financial disclosure.
Washington Republicans have said they thought the Manchin seat was very winnable, based in part on Trump having won the state in 2016 over Democrat Hillary Clinton by 42 percentage points.
The GOP candidates in Ohio have been pushing for change. “I’m tired of the career politicians we have in Washington. That’s why I’m running,” Mike Gibbons, a Republican businessman and first-time candidate trying to unseat Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, told Fox News’ “America’s News HQ” on Saturday.
Such talk likely sounds familiar, considering Trump, a Republican, won the 2016 White House race as a successful businessman and first-time candidate vowing to “drain the swamp” of career politicians in Washington.
Trump has, however, endorsed Ohio Rep. Jim Renacci. And the president on Saturday included the four-term congressman in a public event in Cleveland.
"He’ll be fantastic,” Trump said of Renacci. "We need his vote very badly."

Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a champion of her party's "progressive" wing, is backing Richard Cordray for Ohio governor.

Gibbons, a fundraising co-chairman in Ohio for the 2016 Trump presidential campaign, also told Fox News that the largest personal donation he ever gave to a candidate went to Trump.
Trump won each of the four states holding primaries Tuesday.
In Indiana, Republicans are set to pick from three candidates who have spent much of the race praising Trump and bashing each other, in a bid to unseat Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly.
In attempts to appeal to Trump voters, they’ve adopted the president's harsh immigration rhetoric and penchant for personal insults. The candidates have even channeled Trump by assigning derisive nicknames to one another: “Lyin’ ”Todd Rokita, Luke “Missing” Messer and “Tax Hike” Mike Braun.
Ohio also has a Democratic and Republican primary to replace term-limited GOP Gov. John Kasich.
In the GOP primary, state Attorney General Mike DeWine has a double-digit lead over Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor. Both are Trump-agenda supporters.
The top Democrats in the Ohio governor’s race are former Rep. Dennis Kucinich and Richard Cordray, a former state attorney general and onetime Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director.
Kucinich is backed by Our Revolution, the self-described “next step in the Bernie Sanders' movement.” Cordray is being endorsed by Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who helped start the federal protection bureau.
Warren is a potential 2020 presidential candidate whose efforts to regulate Wall Street have made her a champion of the party’s “progressive” wing.
Sanders, an Independent Vermont senator, ran for president in 2016 as a Democrat. The self-described Democratic socialist is weighing a potential 2020 bid and would very likely compete with Warren for the Democratic Party’s most liberal wing.
Cordray on Saturday downplayed the Warren-Sanders narrative and suggested he was more concerned about connecting with voters, citing his “kitchen table” platform aiming to address concerns such as jobs and health care.
“I don’t think it represents any big split,” he told Fox News. “We’re presenting a case to voters in Ohio.”
Polls have shown the race essentially tied or Cordray having a slight lead. Race handicappers, including the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, have rated the general election contest “lean Republican,” which means the GOP has a slight edge.
Trump won Ohio in 2016 by 8 percentage points, and the state has had a Republican governor for roughly 23 of the past 27 years.
"The far left and the far right always think they are going to dominate these elections," said John Weaver, a Trump critic and top strategist to Kasich. "You may think it's wise in a primary to handuff yourself to the president. But when the ship goes down, you may not be able to get the cuffs off."
Still, primary candidates historically must appeal strongly to their bases to win, before they often try presenting more moderate platforms to win over general election voters.
In North Carolina, GOP Rep. Robert Pittenger faces a primary challenger who almost upset him two years ago. Pittenger features Trump prominently in his campaign. Challenger Mark Harris, a prominent Charlotte pastor, has tried to turn the table, saying Pittenger is a creature of Washington who refuses to help Trump "drain that swamp."
The leading Democrat for the seat is Marine veteran Dan McCready, who has raised almost $2 million, slightly more than Harris and Pittenger combined, in a district Trump won by about 12 percentage points.
Democrats must flip about two dozen Republican-held seats to reclaim a House majority, and they must do it with Republican-run legislatures having drawn many districts to the GOP's advantage.

Michelle Obama still questioning why women voted for Trump in 2016

Former first lady Michelle Obama said Saturday that she was "concerned about us as women and how we think" in the wake of Donald Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.

Obama was the keynote speaker at the United State of Women Summit in Los Angeles, where she was joined on stage by "Black-ish" star Tracee Ellis Ross.

"When the most qualified person running was a woman, and look what we did instead, I mean that says something about where we are," said Obama in reference to the election, in which 41 percent of all women -- and 52 percent of white women -- pulled the lever for Trump.
"If we as women are still suspicious of one another, if we still have this crazy, crazy bar for each other that we don't have for men," Obama added, "if we're not comfortable with the notion that a woman could be our president ... then we have to have those conversations with ourselves as women."
Since leaving the White House last year, Obama has emphatically denied that she will run for elected office and did so again on Saturday.
"Change starts close to home. So looking for the next person to run ... that's been our distraction," she said. "We're just going to wait for the next person to save us."
"All of us here in the room are the answer to our own problems," Obama added. "It is not finding the one right person that we think can save us from ourselves. It's us."

Illinois counties form 'sanctuaries' for gun owners to thwart state's push for gun control

Multiple rural Illinois counties have passed resolutions establishing a so-called “sanctuary” for gun owners in a bid to thwart the state legislature’s efforts to enact stricter gun control.
At least five counties declared themselves sanctuary counties for gun rights, co-opting a word that most conservatives associate with the liberal policy of ignoring federal immigration laws.
The resolutions aim to send a message to the Democratic-controlled Legislature in the state that if it passes the proposed gun bills, such as increasing the minimum age for owning a gun or a bump stock ban, the counties will instruct their employees to ignore the new laws.
“It’s a buzzword, a word that really gets attention. With all these sanctuary cities, we just decided to turn it around to protect our Second Amendment rights,” said David Campbell, vice chairman of the Effingham County Board.

“It’s a buzzword, a word that really gets attention. With all these sanctuary cities, we just decided to turn it around to protect our Second Amendment rights."

He added that around 20 other counties in Illinois have asked for copies of his county’s resolution. He also said officials in Oregon and Washington, have also asked for copies.
County officials say it’s unlikely their symbolic move will be enough to stop the state legislators from passing new gun control measures as the legislature is dominated by lawmakers from in and around Chicago, a city with rampant gun crime.
But it might be enough to make some lawmakers worried.
“I don’t think you can say, ‘I don’t agree with the law so I won’t enforce it,’” said Kathleen Willis, a Democratic state representative from suburban Chicago who sponsored some of the gun legislation. “I think it sends the wrong message.”
Bryan Kibler, the Effingham County’s top prosecutor, claims the resolutions passed by counties aren’t much different from cities such as Chicago which refused to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.
By using the language of sanctuary states, the counties also draw attention to the rural-urban political divide in the state. The “downstate” areas of Illinois voted for Donald Trump while Chicago backed Hillary Clinton.
“We’re just stealing the language that sanctuary cities use,” said Kibler. “We wanted to … get across that our Second Amendment rights are slowly being stripped away.”

WH says Gina Haspel CIA nomination ‘won’t be derailed by partisan critics’ after reports she offered to withdraw

The White House is standing behind President Trump's nomination of Gina Haspel to run the CIA, saying Sunday that “partisan critics” would not torpedo the president's pick.
The administration's response came after multiple reports said Haspel offered to withdraw her nomination Friday. Fox News could not independently verify those reports.
Raj Shah, a White House spokesman, called Haspel a highly qualified nominee. “Her nomination will not be derailed by partisan critics who side with the ACLU over the CIA on how to keep the American people safe,” he said.
A senior White House official also said Sunday that Haspel will not withdraw her nomination. Meantime, a former senior intelligence official said there had been a lack of visible support from the White House until this weekend. Her confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee is set for Wednesday.
Haspel, who would be the first woman to lead the CIA, is the first career operations officer to be nominated to lead the agency in decades. She served almost entirely undercover and much of her record is classified. Many Democrats have said she should be disqualified because she was the chief of base at a covert detention site in Thailand where two terrorism suspects were subjected to waterboarding, a technique that simulates drowning.
“There has been a fascinating phenomenon over the last few weeks. Those who know the true Gina Haspel — who worked with her, who served with her, who helped her confront terrorism, Russia and countless other threats to our nation — they almost uniformly support her. That is true for people who disagree about nearly everything else. There is a reason for that,” CIA spokesman Dean Boyd told Fox News on Sunday. “When the American people finally have a chance to see the true Gina Haspel on Wednesday, they will understand why she is so admired and why she is and will be a great leader for this Agency.”
Also backing Haspel’s nomination recently was former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, during an appearance last week on “Fox and Friends.”
“If you were not in a position of authority on September 11th, you have no idea the pressures that we faced to try and make sure that this country wasn’t attacked again,” Rice said.
On the opposing side are groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, which says she should have stood up against the interrogation practices then.
Chris Anders of the American Civil Liberties Union lamented last week: “If confirmed, Gina Haspel would be the first and only person confirmed by the Senate — we believe in its entire history — with a known operational role in using torture.”
Haspel’s vow to fight any attempt to resurrect the previous CIA program puts her in the same camp as Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who has advised Trump that he doesn’t think torture is an effective interrogation tactic. But it’s at odds with Trump, who spoke in the campaign about toughening the U.S. approach to fighting extremists and vowed to authorize waterboarding and a “hell of a lot worse.”

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