The New York Times: Trump Jr. and Other Aides Met With Gulf Emissary Offering Help to Win Election

Erik Prince, the private security contractor and the former head of Blackwater, arranged the meeting, which took place on Aug. 3, 2016. The emissary, George Nader, told Donald Trump Jr. that the princes who led Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were eager to help his father win election as president. The social media specialist, Joel Zamel, extolled his company’s ability to give an edge to a political campaign; by that time, the firm had already drawn up a multimillion-dollar proposal for a social media manipulation effort to help elect Mr. Trump.  [...]

It is unclear whether such a proposal was executed, and the details of who commissioned it remain in dispute. But Donald Trump Jr. responded approvingly, according to a person with knowledge of the meeting, and after those initial offers of help, Mr. Nader was quickly embraced as a close ally by Trump campaign advisers — meeting frequently with Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, and Michael T. Flynn, who became the president’s first national security adviser. At the time, Mr. Nader was also promoting a secret plan to use private contractors to destabilize Iran, the regional nemesis of Saudi Arabia and the Emirates.

After Mr. Trump was elected, Mr. Nader paid Mr. Zamel a large sum of money, described by one associate as up to $2 million. There are conflicting accounts of the reason for the payment, but among other things, a company linked to Mr. Zamel provided Mr. Nader with an elaborate presentation about the significance of social media campaigning to Mr. Trump’s victory. [...]

Mr. Nader also visited Moscow at least twice during the presidential campaign as a confidential emissary from Crown Prince Mohammed of Abu Dhabi, according to people familiar with his travels. After the election, he worked with the crown prince to arrange a meeting in the Seychelles between Mr. Prince and a financier close to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. 

read the article

Vox: How PrEP, the pill to prevent HIV, may be fueling a rise in other STDs

Though some of those fears were tinged with moral judgement, there’s now data showing the concern about the health consequences is justified. A systematic review published in March in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases found that some PrEP users are having more risky sex — and as a result, getting more sexually transmitted infections (STIs). The review, which brought together 17 studies on PrEP use and sexual behavior change, suggests that as people begin to trust PrEP, they’re having more condomless sex and worrying less about other STIs. The more recent studies in the review show the strongest trend. [...]

The HIV/AIDS epidemic has killed 37 million people since it was officially recognized in 1981, but thanks to effective antiretroviral drugs, HIV is now a treatable chronic illness. Although gay and bisexual men account for just 2 percent of the population of the United States, they accounted for 70 percent of new HIV diagnoses in 2014. Recent estimates place the number of gay and bisexual men currently living with HIV in the United States at more than 600,000. [...]

The authors found that in some studies, PrEP use was associated with a 9 percent increase in the amount of receptive anal sex without a condom with 10 or more partners, an 11 percent increase in the amount of sex without a condom with an HIV-positive person or with someone whose HIV status was unknown, and a 14 percent increase in people never using condoms during anal sex. These are all high-risk behaviors that increase the chances of getting HIV and other STIs. [...]

The rates of gonorrhea infection among men who have sex with men have been climbing from 3.9 percent in 1989 to 37.8 percent in 2016. In 2016 there were more than 2 million cases of syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia in the United States — the highest cumulative number of cases the US has ever seen. In the same year, men who had sex with men accounted for 80 percent of all primary and secondary cases of syphilis.

read the article

The Atlantic: How Iran Can Evade Sanctions This Time

Iran is no stranger to intense economic pressure. It has weathered U.S. sanctions for nearly four decades, and survived the brutal UN sanctions imposed over its nuclear program from 2010 to 2015. It learned how to avoid sanctions to sell its oil and acquire the products and raw materials it needed to sustain its economy. But the United States has also gotten more adept at cracking down.“Fifteen years ago some guy would set up a company in Dubai’s Jebel Ali port and load stuff from wherever and ship it to Iran and no one would notice,” Farhad Alavi, a sanctions-compliance attorney at the Akrivis Law Group in Washington, told me. “Now the detection systems and knowledge are leaps and bounds ahead.” [...]

To circumvent the banking measures in the past, Iran has tried to conduct transactions in gold or in local currencies, allowing foreign companies to pay for oil and gas with their own money instead of dollars. China and India, for example, set up barter deals to do business with Iran using local currencies, while Turkey conducts some business with its neighbor in lira. The problem for Iran is that businesses abroad rarely want to be paid in Iranian rials, which are plummeting in value. In addition, the United States could demand that local currency or gold transactions also be limited, potentially foiling an ongoing attempt by Iran to build a trading network with Russia and Turkey. “Because Iran had problems with the U.S. central bank, Iran cut separate deals with Russia and Turkey,” Mehmet Koç, a scholar at the Center for Iranian Studies in Ankara, told me. “But the new condition Trump has put is that Iran can’t do business in either dollars or rials.” [...]

While a few countries like the UAE, which long opposed the nuclear deal, may agree to crack down on Iranian financial networks, others will require more costly sweeteners from the United States. China may demand an easing of trade rules, undermining Trump’s other policies. Russia may press for an easing of sanctions over its invasion of eastern Ukraine and meddling in U.S. affairs. Turkey may require a return of the self-exiled scholar Fethullah Gulen, the spiritual leader now living in Pennsylvania and accused of backing a 2016 coup attempt, as well as an end to U.S. backing for Syrian Kurdish militias deemed a threat by Ankara. Iran could also turn to Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, or Syria, where it has local allies.  

read the article

Channel 4 News: A United Ireland? Some Northern Ireland Unionist figures 'ready to talk' unification

The thorny question of the Irish border after Brexit was on the agenda when the Prime Minister met the Irish Taoiseach at a summit today. Mr Varadkar warned that a possible Brexit deal could collapse if Britain doesn't say how it plans to keep the border open. And if a collapse led to a hard Brexit, could the outcome for Ireland be even more unexpected?

Channel 4 News has learned that some respected figures from the liberal wing of unionism are now ready to talk with the government in Dublin about Irish unity - and even a border poll.

SciShow Psych: Humanity's Deepest, Darkest Fear

Most of us experience specific fears at one point or another, like of death or the future, but psychologists believe there might be one underlying fear from which all others originate.