deconstruct

One of three active-duty Marines who stormed the U.S. Capitol together was sentenced on Monday to probation and 279 hours of community service — one hour for every Marine who was killed or wounded fighting in the Civil War.

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes said she can’t fathom why Dodge Hellonen violated his oath to protect the Constitution “against all enemies, foreign and domestic” — and risked his career — by joining the Jan. 6, 2021, riot that disrupted Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory.

“I really urge you to think about why it happened so you can address it and ensure it never happens again,” Reyes said.

Dodge Hellonen, now 24, was the first of the three Marines to be punished for participating in the Capitol siege. Reyes also is scheduled to sentence co-defendants Micah Coomer on Tuesday and Joshua Abate on Wednesday.

The three Marines — friends from the same unit — drove together from a military post in Virginia to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, when then-President Donald Trump spoke at his “Stop the Steal” rally near the White House. They joined the crowd that stormed the Capitol after Trump urged his supporters to “fight like hell.”

Before imposing Hellonen’s sentence, Reyes described how Marines fought and died in some of the fiercest battles in American history. She recited the number of casualties from some of the bloodiest wars.

After walking to the Rotunda, they placed a red “Make America Great Again” hat on a statute and took photos of it. They remained inside the Capitol for nearly an hour, joining other rioters in chanting “Stop the Steal!” and “Four More Years!”

None of them are accused of engaging in any violence or destruction on Jan. 6. But prosecutors said none of them have expressed sincere remorse for their crimes.

The head of the Red Crescent in Benghazi, Kais Fhakeri, has confirmed that Storm Daniel has killed at least 150 people dead in Derna, after water levels in the city rose as high as three metres (10 feet).

Two dams have also collapsed in the city, the Derna municipal council has said, and videos posted online show entire residential blocks destroyed along Wadi Derna, a river that runs down from the mountains through the city centre.

“The city of Derna is completely surrounded by mountains, and these dams collapsed,” said Al Jazeera’s Malik Traina, reporting from the capital, Tripoli, in Libya’s west. “Some experts are saying more than 30 million cubic square metres of water was dumped into the city, and we’re starting to see pictures of entire neighbourhoods destroyed.”

Footage on social media showed people stranded on the roofs of their vehicles as Storm Daniel hit the cities of Benghazi, Susa, Bayda, al-Marj and Derna on Sunday and Monday.

Note: Source updated

The Food and Drug Administration on Monday greenlighted updated Covid boosters from Pfizer and Moderna. The shots, which are formulated to target the XBB.1.5 subvariant, are expected to be available later this week, after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention signs off.

Anyone age 5 and older can get an updated booster shot from either Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna, regardless of whether they were previously vaccinated, the FDA said in a statement. People who have been vaccinated should wait at least two months before getting the updated booster.

The boosters come as Covid cases are rising in the U.S., driven by a slew of subvariants. Officials hope that the boosters can blunt a possible spike in winter illness.

For the first time since the vaccines became available, the federal government will not cover the cost of the shots.

Pfizer and Moderna have said they are pricing each vaccine dose at over $100.

Jennifer Kates, director of the Global Health & HIV Policy Program at the nonprofit KFF, said most people with private and public health insurance should continue to pay nothing out of pocket for the boosters — as long as they stick with an in-network provider.

People who don’t have insurance — an estimated 30 million in the U.S. — should be able to get a booster for free at community health centers. Additionally, the Biden administration is also rolling out a “bridge” program that will offer uninsured people access to free boosters at least through the end of 2024. Those who don’t know or don’t have access to these resources may have to pay out of pocket, she said.

A Swiss International Air Lines plane arrived at its destination without a single checked bag onboard.

The plane arrived in Bilbao, Spain, on Saturday without any of the passengers' checked bags. The bags were left behind in Zurich, Switzerland, Kavin Ampalam, a spokesperson for Swiss, told the news agency AFP.

Passengers waited in vain for more than two hours at a conveyor belt for their suitcases, according to the Swiss-German newspaper The Blick.

"There was a shortage of ground staff," Ampalam told AFP. Ampalam said the flight departed without its 111 passengers' suitcases "for operational reasons," as the plane had to fly another set of passengers from Bilbao to Zurich Airport before it closed. Swiss was operating the flight on behalf of Edelweiss Air, Ampalam said.

Ampalam said the flight crew waited for "one hour and 16 minutes" for the ground staff to load the bags onto the plane before deciding to fly to Bilbao without them.

"We understand the situation is not favourable for the people involved, and of course we regret the inconvenience," Ampalam told AFP.

Several passengers said the pilot in charge of the flight was apologetic over the delayed departure, but never mentioned leaving their bags in Zurich, according to Blick's report.

The Supreme Court’s decision in the 2010 Citizens United case transformed the world of politics. It loosened restrictions on campaign spending and unleashed a flow of anonymous donor money to nonprofit groups run by political activists.

In the months before the ruling dropped in January of that year, a group of conservative activists came together to create just such an organization. Its mission would be to, at the time, block then-President Barack Obama’s pet initiatives.

The activists included Federalist Society leader Leonard Leo and his ideological soulmate, a hard-edged activist named Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

“Ginni really wanted to build an organization and be a movement leader,” said a person familiar with her thinking at that time. “Leonard [Leo] was going to be the conduit of that.”

She also had a rich backer: Harlan Crow, the manufacturing billionaire who had helped Thomas and her husband in many ways, from funding luxury vacations to picking up tuition payments for their great-nephew.

Dr. Heather Skanes’ team at the Oasis Family Birthing Center in Birmingham, Alabama, started turning away patients this spring as state officials cracked down on alternative childbirth options.

The center had offered patients with low-risk pregnancies a place to deliver their babies outside of a hospital, where cesarean sections weren’t performed, epidurals weren’t administered and midwives took the lead. Some women labored in an inflatable aqua birthing pool, in what Skanes saw as a more supportive environment in which Black women in particular would feel more comfortable and heard.

But in March, officials with the Alabama Department of Public Health told Skanes that they considered the previously unregulated facility to be a hospital that didn’t have proper permission to be open, according to her attorneys.

The American Civil Liberties Union is suing the state Public Health Department on behalf of Skanes over what it has called a “de facto ban” on freestanding birth centers. The court battle is unfolding as the agency is weeks away from implementing licensing regulations for the facilities.

Alabama has an alarming record on keeping expectant and new mothers alive, with a higher share of residents dying in pregnancy and during or shortly after childbirth than almost any other state. More than a third of counties in Alabama lack hospitals with labor and delivery units or practicing obstetric providers, according to a report last year from the March of Dimes.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has said the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin – the Russian mercenary leader whose plane crashed weeks after he led a mutiny against Moscow’s military leadership – shows what happens when people make deals with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

As Ukraine’s counteroffensive moves into a fourth month, with only modest gains to show so far, Zelensky told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria he rejected suggestions it was time to negotiate peace with the Kremlin.

“When you want to have a compromise or a dialogue with somebody, you cannot do it with a liar,” Volodymyr Zelensky said.

Escaped prisoner Danelo Cavalcante was spotted twice Friday within the Chester County search area, Pennsylvania state police said, as officials appear to narrow in on the fugitive by reducing the search zone.

Authorities said these were "visual sightings" in the zone around Longwood Gardens, a public esplanade in the county. They did not provide further details. A new wanted poster was released Saturday.

Around 400 law enforcement officers from various agencies have assisted in the search. A perimeter of about 4 square miles was being searched Saturday, down from the roughly 10-mile perimeter they had on Friday.

Officers have used heat-sensing technology, K9 dogs and helicopters as they combed through portions of Chester County. Lt. Col. George Bivens with the Pennsylvania State Police said the search had been complicated by heat and high humidity, but officers "are up to the task."

A reward of up to $20,000 is being offered for tips that lead to Cavalcante's arrest.

Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) is calling for the Senate to change its rules amid Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s (R-Ala.) continued blockade of over 300 military promotions continues.

“I wish the Senate would change their rules so that one senator doesn’t have that kind of power, so that we actually would have a democracy where you have a fair vote,” Smith said of the upper chamber of Congress in an interview on CNN.

He added that it’s clear to him that Tuberville doesn’t believe in democracy.

“He doesn’t believe in the system of government that we’ve set up,” Smith argued. “You have a vote, you lose you move on.”

Smith, who served as a state senator in Washington in the 1990s, called the House Freedom Caucus and Tuberville’s approach to governance “incredibly destructive.”

“What he and the Freedom Caucus believe is ‘if you don’t get what you want, do as much damage as you possibly can’ to the government,” he said.

“In this case, it’s incredibly destructive to the defense of this country, to the national security of this country, to not be able to have top leaders appointed to their position nearly undermines our ability to protect this country bottom line, Smith added.

Over the past year, Mike Lindell sat for three depositions in a defamation lawsuit brought by Eric Coomer, a former Dominion Voting Systems executive who was the subject of a false conspiracy theory that he was on an "Antifa conference call" to rig the 2020 election.

None of them went well.

Throughout the depositions, the MyPillow CEO called Coomer and his lawyer "criminals," "disgusting slime," and "evil" and rambled so much that the court reporter transcribing one deposition refused to show up the next day, according to court filings and deposition video and transcripts reviewed by Insider.

During the final deposition, on August 23, Lindell left the room in the middle of questioning to call into Steve Bannon's "War Room" podcast, where he hawked his company's pillows, sandals, and dog blankets.

"Well, Steve, I'm in the middle of a deposition for a big attack on MyPillow right now, and it's disgusting," Lindell told Bannon during the episode, before telling listeners they could get a discount on pillows with the promo code "WARROOM" for the company's 20th-anniversary sale.

"We have the MyPillow beds — the best beds in history," Lindell continued. "You haven't even heard about 'em yet."

"Mike Lindell, you're a patriot and a hero," Bannon responded. "Go back into your deposition and give them hell. Give them hell from the War Room."

When Lindell returned to the deposition, he insisted on keeping his cellphone with him, according to a filing from Coomer's legal team. When he stood up to take a call in the middle of questioning, Coomer's lawyers called it a day.

"Dr. Coomer's counsel finally suspended the deposition when Mr. Lindell again stood up and walked out of the room to take a call, shouting that Dr. Coomer's counsel was a 'jerk' as he left," Coomer's lawyers wrote. "The video record of these events is provided herein and is demonstrably worse than any attempt to describe the conduct."

The details of the depositions were recounted in a motion Coomer's attorneys filed Thursday asking a judge to sanction Lindell for his conduct.

The motion asked the judge to force Lindell to pay for all the costs associated with the depositions and to force him to sit in front of a judge for seven hours to finish answering questions.

The annual summit of the Group of 20 economies is the largest gathering of world leaders ever in New Delhi, with attendees including President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and others.

They will be greeted by some of the cleanest streets New Delhi has seen, ornamented by hundreds of thousands of lush flowers potted on freshly painted pavements. What they will not see are the hundreds of thousands of people who have been displaced, or the slums that have been flattened or obscured by temporary fences bearing the G20 summit’s logo and photos of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Modi’s government hopes the beautification project will help showcase the best of what the world’s most populous country has to offer, further cementing its position on the global stage.

Anything that might disrupt that effort is unwelcome.

The race to replace Sen. Dianne Feinstein increasingly looks like it’s going to be a SoCal showdown.

The two leading Democrats in the race — Reps. Adam Schiff and Katie Porter. Schiff currently leads the way with 20 percent support, the poll found, and Porter close behind at 17 percent.

Schiff, who hails from Burbank, is a regular on the political talk show circuit and one of the most prominent politicians in the nation. He has flourished in his role as the party’s attack dog against former President Donald Trump. Around two-thirds of voters polled said they hold an opinion on Schiff, and he’s tapped into that name recognition to build a war chest of $29.8 million for the Senate race, as of figures released in July — including a staggering $8.3 million haul in the second quarter.

Porter, a rising star in the party who’s held onto a competitive Orange County district, raised $3.2 million in the second quarter, and received largely favorable reviews from the 57 percent of voters who offered an opinion on her.