The Democrats Have a Big Decision to Make About Mike Bloomberg

Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren seem to be having fun clowning billionaire former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg lately. The question is whether they’ll get the chance to say it to his face.

Bloomberg’s pledge not to accept any donations for his late-entry bid for the Democratic presidential nomination means that, as the rules currently stand, he will never be on a debate stage opposite his progressive nemeses.

The Democratic National Committee requires a candidate to have a certain number of donations to qualify (200,000 unique donors for the December debate, for instance). So unless the DNC changes its debate qualification rules, the entirely self-funding Bloomberg would not make the cut.

There is also a polling threshold, which Bloomberg has yet to hit. Bloomberg registered at 3% in the latest Quinnipiac Poll, released Tuesday — matching longtime candidates like Sens. Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar, who have qualified for the December debate with previous polling marks, and surpassing candidates like Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Sen. Cory Booker and Andrew Yang, who are on the cusp.

READ: Bernie is betting on young Latinos to help him win California

Bloomberg also bested the other billionaire in the race, Tom Steyer, who spent millions of his own dollars on digital ads to make the donor threshold, but has yet to meet the December debate polling metrics. But as relatively good as Bloomberg’s marks are for a late entrant, they are not good enough to meet the polling criteria the DNC set to winnow down the debate stages.

So for now, Bloomberg, like Steyer, is exactly where he belongs: Not on the stage. Things could change dramatically if the millions of dollars he’s pumping into advertising begin to pay off in the form of poll numbers that could actually qualify him to stand on a debate stage.

John Zogby, who polled for Bloomberg in the 1990s, said the former mayor could make a serious splash in the race because, if for no other reason, his intense competitiveness.

“If he joins a fight, it's because he knows he can win it. He can't even fathom losing, and so it would be hard to see him giving up. At least that's been his past,” Zogby said.

Lose-lose situation

In that sense, Bloomberg has put the DNC in somewhat of a lose-lose situation.

On the one hand, other candidates would almost certainly decry the DNC if it decided to change its rules to accommodate the latest billionaire in the race. On the other hand, if Bloomberg's ad blitz strategy works and he starts polling well, it could be preposterous not to allow a major candidate on the stage.

READ: Deval Patrick and Biden want to gobble up all of Beto's warriors

And wouldn't progressives, in that case, actually want him on the stage to be able to debate him face to face? Warren and Sanders have already essentially painted Bloomberg as exhibit A for why they’re running: A plutocrat trying to buy American democracy.

For his part, Bloomberg doesn’t seem to be putting too much importance on the debates, just like he doesn’t seem to care too much about skipping the all-important early state caucuses and primaries. When asked Monday whether he’d talked to the DNC about qualifying for the debates, he said, “it’s up to the DNC to … set the rules and if they set the rules where I qualify, I would certainly debate. If they set the rules where I don’t qualify, then I won’t.”

“What I want to do is talk directly to the public and explain what I’ve done, and what I would do, and give them some comfort that because of what I did in the past I will deliver in the future. They’re not just empty promises,” Bloomberg continued. “And if you can say that in a debate, okay, although it’s hard to do that. I think I’d be much better off talking to the public just like I’m doing now.”

DNC Chairman Tom Perez was asked about whether they would relax the rules to accommodate Bloomberg last week and did not seem to rule it out — not necessarily because of Bloomberg, but because by early next year voters will be casting ballots and so they may revisit the thresholds.

“We haven't set the rules for after the first of the year, and that's something that we're doing right now and we always set the rules early enough so that we can give notice to the campaigns,” Perez said. “Right now, zero votes have been cast. And so the voters haven't spoken. What should the rules be once the voters have spoken and we have some actual data from states? That's the question that we are considering."

Cover: Newly announced Democratic presidential candidate, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg speaks during a press conference to discuss his presidential run on November 25, 2019 in Norfolk, Virginia. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

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Researcher Arrested for Allegedly Teaching North Korea About Ethereum

On Friday, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced criminal charges against a cryptocurrency researcher for allegedly violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act by giving a presentation on cryptocurrency in North Korea.

Virgil Griffith, 36, is a special projects researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, which helps to lead the development of Ethereum blockchain technology.

The feds allege that Griffith attended a blockchain conference in North Korea in April of this year, where he presented on how blockchain technology could benefit the country and participated in a discussion that touched on using it to evade economic sanctions. Breaking free of the U.S.-led economic system, and thus sanctions, was also a cornerstone of Venezuela’s Petro cryptocurrency project.

The complaint states that when Griffith was interviewed, he maintained that his presentation contained basic concepts that could be looked up online.

The SDNY attorney alleges that Griffith applied for State Department permission to travel to North Korea for the conference but was denied. According to the complaint, Griffith “elected to receive his visa on a separate paper instead of affixing the document to his U.S. passport...in an effort to avoid creating physical proof of his travel to the DPRK in his U.S. passport.”

On August 13, Griffith tweeted a photo of his North Korean visa, which indicates that it was issued on April 17.

A cryptocurrency conference with the same name as that allegedly attended by Griffith was held between April 18-25 in North Korea by the Korean Friendship Association. The KFA is a Spain-based group that was founded in 2000 and maintains an English-language website promoting "building international ties in the fields of culture, friendship, diplomacy and business between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and other world nations." Spokespeople for the KFA were not immediately available for comment.

It’s unclear if Griffith’s attendance at the conference in North Korea was under the auspices of the Ethereum Foundation. Spokespeople for the Foundation were not immediately available to comment.

In July, the Ethereum Foundation partnered with experts in the Persian gulf to show that Ethereum was compatible with Islamic law in a bid for Saudi investment. “My job is to keep rolling dice,” Griffith told CoinDesk at the time. “Probably nothing will happen. But there’s a hypothetical case where say, the Saudi sovereign wealth fund invests, like, a trillion dollars [in ethereum projects], which would be a real boon. That would be really great.”

Griffith was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport on Thursday and will appear in federal court on Friday afternoon.

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Mixcloud Investigating Alleged Data Breach Impacting 21 Million Users

A data reseller is advertising an alleged 21 million user accounts stolen from music streaming site Mixcloud on the dark web.

The seller, who goes by the handle "A_W_S," is currently asking for around 0.5 bitcoins, or approximately $4,000, for the data.

Motherboard informed Mixcloud of the apparent breach. Company CTO and co-founder Mat Clayton said this was the first they had heard of the incident, and started investigating the issue.

Mixcloud lets users upload their own DJ mixes and tracks for others to listen to. In July the company launched a "Premium" subscription service and limited features for free users. In 2017, the company said it had over 17 million users.

A_W_S provided Motherboard with a sample of 1,000 Mixcloud accounts. The data includes usernames, email addresses, and hashed passwords. Hashing is a way of scrambling passwords so they can be stored more securely. Mixcloud appears to have hashed its passwords with the SHA256 algorithm, making them robust to cracking from hackers. A_W_S said the data was obtained in late 2019.

To verify the data, Motherboard took a random selection of the email addresses and tried to create accounts on Mixcloud with them. In all of the cases this was not possible as the addresses were already linked to Mixcloud accounts, corroborating the data's legitimacy.

Subscribe to our cybersecurity podcast, CYBER.

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Iraq’s Prime Minister is Resigning After Nearly 400 Protesters Have Been Killed

Iraq’s prime minister announced Friday that he will resign after a brutal crackdown on protesters that has left nearly 400 people dead.

The announcement triggered wild celebrations among protesters in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square.

Adel Abdul-Mahdi’s resignation came just a day after more than 40 protesters were shot dead by security forces in Baghdad and the southern cities of Najaf and Nasiriyah on Thursday.

Hours before his announcement, Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, who is one of the country’s most powerful and influential leaders, used his weekly sermon to condemn the use of lethal force against protesters, telling parliament to reconsider its support for the prime minister.

In a statement announcing his resignation, Abdul-Mahdi said he had “listened with great concern” to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani’s call and was stepping down in order to “facilitate and hasten its fulfillment as soon as possible.”

“I will submit to parliament an official memorandum resigning from the current prime ministry so that the parliament can review its choices,” he said.

Iraq has been rocked by mass anti-government protests since Oct. 1, when thousands of young Iraqis took to the streets of the capital. The protesters have accused the government and the ruling class of using the country’s vast oil riches to line their own pockets. They are also calling for an overhaul of the political system, demanding that rulers address issues like high unemployment and broken utilities like electricity and clean water.

Abdul-Mahdi was elected just over a year ago, promising grand reforms including tackling corruption and bringing more economic investment to the country — all of which he has failed to deliver. Since protests broke out at the beginning of October, he has tried to quell dissent with calls for new elections, a cabinet reshuffle and government subsidies for job seekers.

READ: ‘Bloodbath’: Iraq is cracking down on protesters with live ammunition and military-grade tear gas grenades

But he has also empowered the security forces to viciously shut down public dissent. The brutal crackdown on protesters has been labeled a “bloodbath” by Amnesty International, which accused the security forces of recklessly using tear gas and live rounds to disperse protesters.

READ: How tuk-tuk drivers became the unlikely heroes of Iraq’s protests

Protesters in Tahrir Square cheered the news of the resignation, but it is unclear if this alone will placate the demonstrators.

“We will not stop with the prime minister, we still have more fighting to do,” Amira, a 25-year-old protester, told AP, declining to give her full name out of fear of retaliation. “We will push forward until our demands are met.”

Cover: An anti-government protester waves a national flag in Tahrir Square, Baghdad, Iraq, Friday, Nov. 29, 2019. Celebrations have erupted following an announcement by Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi, would be resigning. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

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French Activists Are Dumping Old Fridges on the Road to Stop Amazon From Making Deliveries

Activists across France tried to hamstring Amazon on Black Friday in a protest against the online retail giant and its environmental footprint.

Dozens congregated outside Amazon’s French headquarters in Clichy, while other protesters attempted to block a shopping center in Paris and a logistics center in Lyon, the BBC reported.

The French anti-Amazon protests began on Thursday, when activists reportedly formed a human chain and dumped old fridges on the road to block traffic outside a company depot. The demonstrations continued Friday, with protests popping up across the country. Activists have done their best to hamper Amazon and slow down consumerism on Black Friday in general.

READ: All these musicians — including a guy from Fugazi — are boycotting Amazon because of ICE

Attac, one of the groups that organized this year’s protests, said the goal was to "take action across France to disrupt Amazon's business."

Protesters have done their best to block the distribution centers and shopping areas. "Work, consume and shut up, that is the message given to our youth," demonstrators shouted at shoppers at a Paris shopping center, according to Reuters.

Activists have accused Amazon, which has a massive delivery system, of helping to accelerate climate change. The company does have a massive carbon footprint — it emitted 44.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide last year, which is as much as a small country — but has pledged to go net carbon neutral by 2040.

Police have tried to break up some of the demonstrations. Video that appears to be from the Lyon protests showed police handling protesters roughly, dragging them across the ground.

Amazon said it respected people’s right to speak out, but criticized the protesters.

"The demonstrators and Attac are throwing around untrue allegations based on factual errors and are pointing the finger at Amazon for political ends," the company said in a statement to Reuters.

READ: Your Amazon Alexa might have been made by overworked Chinese schoolchildren

Black Friday — the post-Thanksgiving shopping bonanza — started as a U.S. tradition but has since migrated overseas. The very existence of Black Friday is controversial in France, and it’s not just demonstrators working against the holiday — politicians have joined in as well.

France’s ecological transition minister, Elisabeth Borne, criticized the holiday on the radio for creating “traffic jams, pollution, and gas emissions.” Some activists and lawmakers want to ban the consumerist holiday altogether.

Amazon itself is attracting critical attention from French legislators, too. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo this week proposed a tax to pay for carbon emissions and traffic caused by deliveries from Amazon and others. And a French legislative committee passed an amendment this week that proposed banning Black Friday over “resource waste” and “overconsumption,” the Associated Press reported.

Cover: A woman walks past posters made by anti-Black Friday activists and reading "Amazon killed me", left, and "Amazon, 2 jobs disappear for one created" in Rennes, western France, Friday, Nov. 29, 2019 in Rennes. To French activists, Black Friday is the epitome of this shift, a purely commercial event designed to boost U.S. retailers ahead of the Christmas holidays, the symbol of capitalism run amok.(AP Photo/David Vincent)

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What We Know About the Police Shooting on London Bridge

British police have shot a man suspected of stabbing a number of people on London Bridge Friday afternoon, in what emergency services are calling a “major incident.”

Footage on social media showed a man wrestling on the pavement with the presumed attacker, before police helped pull him away, then fired at the suspect on the ground.

Police have released few details about the incident, but here’s what we know so far:

Metropolitan Police said they were called to reports of a stabbing near London Bridge, in central London, at 1:58 p.m. local time (8:58 a.m. ET). They said they had detained a man, and believed a number of people had been injured.

BBC reporter John McManus, who witnessed the incident, told the broadcaster he saw a struggle on the bridge before police arrived on the scene and opened fire.

"There appeared to be a fight going on on the other side of the bridge, with several men attacking one man,” McManus told the broadcaster.

Police sealed off the iconic London landmark and evacuated pedestrians from the bridge and surrounding areas. Passengers stuck in vehicles on the bridge captured footage of armed police pointing their weapons at a man lying on the ground.

Workers in nearby office buildings also captured footage of the incident.

Images from the scene show a truck parked across the traffic lanes.

The Met Police confirmed that it was dealing with an incident at London Bridge and advised people near the scene to follow directions from officers on the ground.

London Bridge was the scene of a 2017 terror attack that killed eight people.

Earlier this month, Britain’s national terrorism threat level was lowered from “severe” to “substantial,” the lowest its been since 2014.

This is a developing story.

Cover: Incident on London Bridge. Armed police at the scene of an incident on London Bridge in central London. Picture date: Friday November 29, 2019. See PA story POLICE LondonBridge. Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire URN:48674744 (Press Association via AP Images)

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Hong Kong Cops Found Nearly 4,000 Petrol Bombs on Besieged University Campus

Hong Kong police declared their 12-day siege of a university campus over on Friday, after a sweep of the site revealed that pro-democracy protesters inside had stockpiled nearly 4,000 petrol bombs and more than 1300 other explosive items.

Polytechnic University, known as PolyU, became the scene of the most intense standoff of Hong Kong’s nearly six-month protest movement when police blockaded the campus earlier this month, trapping inside more than 1,000 protesters who had occupied the complex.

READ: Parents are begging Hong Kong cops to release their children inside besieged campus

Violent clashes broke out between protesters, who were armed with molotov cocktails, catapults and bows and arrows, and riot police, who fired rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannons.

Scores of protesters, fearing maximum sentences of 10-years for rioting, managed to escape the campus by crawling through underground tunnels or climbing from overpasses on to waiting motorbikes. More than 800 gave themselves up to police or were arrested as they tried to flee.

About 100 police officers finally entered the campus on Thursday with the intention of collecting evidence and seizing weapons and dangerous items, after university staff reported they had found no signs of protesters still on the grounds.

READ: Hong Kong protesters escaped a besieged campus by crawling through tunnels

Police said Friday they had seized 3,989 petrol bombs, 1,339 other explosive items, 601 bottles of corrosive liquids, and 573 weapons, including a dozen bows, 200 arrows and an air rifle.

Declaring the operation over, Assistant Commissioner of Police Chow Yat-ming said police would continue their investigation into what took place at the university, where university staff estimate it could take up to six months to repair damage caused during the operation.

“The force is happy to see that the process has been conducted peacefully, and I want to reiterate that we have always followed two main principles, ‘peaceful resolution’ and ‘flexibility,'” said Chow.

“Police have zero tolerance for violence or lawbreaking, and we will continue to investigate this case.”

READ: Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement just won a landslide victory

The clashes at PolyU marked a dark chapter in the pro-democracy movement, resulting in the arrests of hundreds of protesters, but activists have since been buoyed by positive developments in their struggle. On Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump signed two new laws supporting the protest movement, prompting a “Thanksgiving” rally in the heart of the city Thursday night.

READ: Hong Kong is giving thanks for the U.S.’s new pro-democracy laws. Beijing is furious

That news came just days after pro-democracy candidates won a landslide victory over their pro-Beijing rivals in local elections last Sunday, taking control of 17 out of 18 districts.

Cover: Policemen from Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit search for dangerous materials at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University campus in Hong Kong, Thursday, Nov. 28, 2019. Police safety teams Thursday began clearing a university that was a flashpoint for clashes with protesters, and an officer said any holdouts still hiding inside would not be immediately arrested. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

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Sauce Talk: Don’t Sleep On These Drops From ComplexCon 2019

Jason “Cheech” Hall, VICE’s director of merchandise and the driving force behind the Shorty-nominated show, Sauce Talk, is always bluntly honest. That’s why we go to him first for the best recommendations.

Designers, hypebeasts, and resellers converged in Long Beach earlier this month for the winter edition of ComplexCon, the two-day streetwear and culture exhibition meets festival led by designers Pharrell Williams and Takashi Murakami.

Though the event was conspicuously absent of non-collab offerings from Nike and Adidas, VICE’s Cheech Hall scoped out the exhibition booths to find out which drops are worth your time and money—and which ones aren’t.

Murakami x Modernica Chair

Sauce ranking: Hot

ComplexCon Takashi Murakami x Modernica, $700

“I thought it was amazing,” Cheech said of the chair and accompanying folding table design. “It's like the ultimate kids’ room, man cave moment.”

Still, he gave it a “hot” sauce ranking purely for comfort reasons: “It's not really plush, plush. It's nothing that's gonna be like, Oh my god, the most comfortable thing I ever own, type of shit.”

Futura Laboratories x Pop Life Johnny art toy

Sauce ranking: Spicy

“Johnny” toy ~$340 on StockX

The alien-esque “Johnny” toy comes in all black with white accents for the figure’s face and hands, making for an excellent addition to any collection organized by color. For those who enjoy their collectibles, Cheech said this toy—exclusive to ComplexCon and capped at 500 models—is one that’s worth investing in.

“It's always good for people to not to just buy things for the hype,” he said. “A couple years down the line, this little $300 item can be worth five grand and it's like, Holy shit, this is great.”

Joe Freshgoods L.A. Dodgers hat

Sauce ranking: Elite

$154 on Grailed

“I think everyone should be following anything that that kid does because it’s just spot on,” Cheech said of Joe Freshgoods, who also released an umbrella and a pair of sweats that caught Cheech’s eye.

But it was the designer’s MLB collection L.A. Dodgers hat that sealed the deal for Cheech. “I loved it with a passion,” he said. “The hat was everything that everyone wanted, so it was pretty dope.”

HARD PASS

BBC ICECREAM x Reebok

Sauce ranking: Wack

BB4600 HI ~$250 on StockX

BBC ICECREAM, Pharrell Williams’s line, collaborated with Reebok to release four different sneakers at ComplexCon. The collection was underwhelming for Cheech, who especially took issue with the BB4600 HI’s silhouette, paired with BBC’s original Diamonds and Dollars design.

“I didn't appreciate that at all,” he said. “It was just way too much and overbearing.”

VICE Media may make a small commission on products linked in this article.

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President Trump Used His Thanksgiving Visit to the Troops to Bash the Media

President Donald Trump visited troops in Afghanistan over the Thanksgiving holiday, but still found time for one of his favorite hobbies: bashing the media.

Trump targeted Newsweek, in particular, reacting to a story about his plans for the holiday. The outlet published a story initially headlined, “How is Trump Spending Thanksgiving? Tweeting, Golfing and More.” The first version of the article didn’t include info about Trump’s trip to visit troops in Afghanistan, which was kept secret until the president arrived at Bagram Air Field. The Newsweek story was later updated with a new headline that mentioned Afghanistan, and details about the trip were added to the article itself.

But the first son, Donald Trump Jr., had already gone after Newsweek, posting images on Twitter of the non-updated headline next to pictures of the president passing out food to troops.

“Fake news gonna fake!” Trump Jr. commented.

Soon enough, his dad got in on the media-bashing action.

“I thought Newsweek was out of business?” Trump commented in response to his son’s “fake news” tweet.

Trump snuck out of his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, late on Wednesday to a military plane with just a few close advisers, CNN reported. That group eventually boarded Air Force 1 at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, where the traveling press pool was waiting. Reporters on board had their phones taken and weren’t notified of the plane’s ultimate destination until there were just two hours left on the 16-hour flight to Afghanistan, according to CNN.

"It's a dangerous area and he wants to support the troops," White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham told aboard the reporters on the flight, via CNN. "He and Mrs. Trump recognize that there's a lot of people far away from their families during the holidays and we thought it'd be a nice surprise."

Trump reportedly passed out about two dozen meals to troops and met briefly with Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani. Trump also spoke to the troops: he praised their service, bragged about defeating ISIS, and complained that he didn’t get a chance to eat any turkey.

“I sat down, I had a gorgeous piece of turkey and I was all set to go,” Trump said while speaking to the troops in Afghanistan, according to Politico. “And I had some mashed potatoes and I had a bite of mashed potatoes, and I never got to the turkey, because Gen. [Mark] Milley said come on over, sir, let’s take some pictures. I never got to my turkey. It’s the first time at Thanksgiving that I’ve never had anything called turkey.“

Trump left Afghanistan after about three hours at the base, and is now back in Florida.

Cover: President Donald Trump smiles while sitting with the troops during a surprise Thanksgiving Day visit to the troops, Thursday, Nov. 28, 2019, at Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

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This is Cheech—Believe Him When He Tells You What’s Worth the Hype

Jason “Cheech” Hall is always bluntly honest—but that’s why we go to him first for the best recommendations.

As VICE’s director of merchandise and the driving force behind the Shorty-nominated show, Sauce Talk , Hall has an exacting eye for style and quality. But it wasn’t until Hall was in college that he first developed his passion for fashion, streetwear, and design. Thanks to the help of his Hofstra University classmate Kerby Jean-Raymond, who was working at Diesel at the time and is now the founder of menswear brand Pyer Moss, Hall snagged his first job in fashion.

“I was on the wrong path doing a lot of shit that I shouldn't have been doing while in school, and [Jean-Raymond] was just like, Yo, stop doing this and just come work here [at Diesel],” Cheech says. “He literally got me a job on the spot, and I worked at Diesel, and I never stopped working in fashion since.”

After graduation, Cheech began working at Ralph Lauren—a learning experience he describes as “the best school [he’s] ever gone to”—that taught him to value quality just as much as aesthetics when it comes to designer goods. Not long after, Cheech began blending his passion for streetwear and design by starting a BMX-inspired line, and opening his own boutique, in Queens. Today, Cheech focuses on the wholesale side of merchandising at VICE’s Brooklyn headquarters, overseeing collabs with different brands and designing the goods available on VICE’s merch store.

While Cheech—who describes his style as “preppy ’90s drug dealer chic”—always has his eye on the hottest drops, the ethos behind Sauce Talk, both the show and this column, is for Cheech to give honest, expert recommendations or opinions on all things style and streetwear. He calls himself an “info junkie” with a design background that allows him to cut through the noise and determine what’s just hype, and what’s actually worth it.

Each week on Sauce Talk, he shares advice or curates his picks for the month’s best drops and collabs and rates them by his signature sauce ranking. From worst to best, that’s wack, mild, hot, spicy, and elite.

“I want people to understand, I'm not going to steer you wrong. I'm definitely not a sheeple herder,” Cheech says. “It's never about the dollar. It's always about the style in which you put it together.”

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Boris Johnson Was Replaced With an Ice Sculpture During a TV Climate Debate. Now He's Threatening the Channel's License.

U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson was due to appear at a leaders’ debate about climate change on Channel 4 on Thursday evening. When he refused to appear, to the broadcaster put an ice sculpture in his place.

Now, Johnson’s government is threatening to withdraw Channel 4's license — a move critics say is an attempt to intimidate a major broadcaster at a critical moment in U.K. politics.

The debate, entitled Emergency On Planet Earth, saw party leaders face questions about how they will tackle climate change. When Johnson didn’t appear, rather than “empty chair” him, the broadcaster replaced him with an ice sculpture with the word “Conservatives” on it.

There was a second ice sculpture on display to represent Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage, who also refused to attend. Both sculptures were seen melting throughout the debate.

Farage and Johnson did not give clear reasons for not showing up to the debate but Johnson told LBC radio on Friday morning: “I’ve done plenty of debates, I can’t do absolutely everything.”

Channel 4 said it had left the invitation open to both leaders right up until the debate began, and refused to admit cabinet minister Michael Gove in Johnson’s place as it was for leaders’ only.

The debate itself saw the five remaining party leaders debate about how quickly the U.K. could reach its net-zero carbon target, with dates ranging from 2030 to 2050. They also joining in a bidding war over who would pledge to plant the most trees.

Before the debate, Johnson’s director of communications wrote to the media regulator Ofcom claiming the broadcaster was engaging in a “provocative partisan stunt” and showing “a pattern of bias.” He suggested it should block the broadcast.

At the same time, a party source told BuzzFeed that the government could “review Channel 4’s Public Services Broadcasting obligations” if it wins next month's snap election, which would be a first for a U.K. government.

READ: Trump's attempt to boost Boris Johnson just backfired spectacularly

“Broadcasting organizations are rightly held to a higher standard — and particularly Channel 4 which has a special role enshrined in legislation,” the source said. “Any review would of course look at whether its remit should be better focused so it is serving the public in the best way possible.”

The Tories also claimed the broadcaster was conspiring with Jeremy Corbyn to disadvantage the Conservatives after it emerged he vetoed a decision to let Gove attend in Johnson’s place.

READ: Brexit is helping revive republican violence in Northern Ireland

Johnson has been accused of avoiding answering the tough questions in the lead up to the December 12 election and has yet to say whether he will agree to be interviewed by the BBC’s Andrew Neil, who has been grilling other party leaders as part of a series ahead of the vote.

Cover: An ice sculpture is put in place for Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson in the studio before the start of the Channel 4 News' General Election climate debate at ITN Studios in Holborn, central London, Thursday, Nov. 28, 2019. Johnson did not attend the debate which was for party leaders. (Kirsty O'Connor/Pool Photo via AP)

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Sweet Potato Frico Burekas Recipe

Makes: 12
Prep time: 10 minutes
Total time: 2 hour and 20 minutes

Ingredients

12 sheets phyllo dough, defrosted if frozen
2 large sweet potatoes, 2 pounds, scrubbed
1 cup (4 ounces) shredded kashkaval or sharp white cheddar cheese
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup unsalted butter or olive oil

1 cup (1 1/2 ounces) finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

Directions

1. Remove the phyllo from the freezer 2 hours before you start making the burekas (about 30 minutes before you roast the sweet potatoes, if you're doing everything at once; you can also defrost the phyllo in the refrigerator overnight). Heat the oven to 400°F. Prick the sweet potatoes, wrap each individually in foil, arrange on a rimmed baking sheet, and bake until tender, 1 hour. Cool for 30 minutes, then unwrap them and scoop the flesh out of the skins into a medium bowl. Add the kashkaval, salt, and pepper and mash until incorporated (you should have about 2 1/4 cups filling). Reduce the oven temperature to 350°F. Clear and clean a work surface.

2. Unroll the phyllo (it usually comes in a log), remove 12 sheets, then reroll the rest and return to its packaging. Cover the 12 unfurled sheets with a damp towel to keep them from drying out. Brush one sheet with butter, layer another sheet on top, butter the top, then cut the phyllo into long strips about 3 1/2 to 4 inches wide and 12 to 14 inches long; you may have to trim your phyllo a bit. You should be able to get 2 bureka-ready double-strips from each double layer. Center 2 1/2 to 3 tablespoons of the filling about 1/2 inch from the bottom of the strip, then fold the bottom right corner over the filling to meet the left edge and form a triangle. Fold the triangle upward to create another layer of phyllo over the triangle, then continue folding until you have a multilayered triangle. Tuck any edges under, arrange on a large baking sheet, and repeat with the remaining phyllo and filling until you have 12 burekas. Space them out evenly on the baking sheet, brush with butter, then scatter the Parmigiano-Reggiano all over the top and bake until golden brown and crisp, 20 to 22 minutes.

3. Remove from the oven, cool slightly on the baking sheets, and serve warm. Burekas will keep, refrigerated, for up to 3 days, or tightly wrapped and frozen for up to 3 months. Reward (defrost first, if frozen), in a 325°F oven for 8 to 10 minutes.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This recipe has been reprinted with permission of the author from Sababa: Fresh, Sunny Flavors From My Israeli Kitchen.

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SMS Replacement is Exposing Users to Text, Call Interception Thanks to Sloppy Telecos

A standard used by phone carriers around the world can leave users open to all sorts of attacks, like text message and call interception, spoofed phone numbers, and leaking their coarse location, new research reveals.

The Rich Communication Services (RCS) standard is essentially the replacement for SMS. The news shows how even as carriers move onto more modern protocols for communication, phone network security continues to be an exposed area with multiple avenues for attack in some implementations of RCS.

"I'm surprised that large companies, like Vodafone, introduce a technology that exposes literally hundreds of millions of people, without asking them, without telling them," Karsten Nohl from cybersecurity firm Security Research Labs (SRLabs) told Motherboard in a phone call.

SRLabs researchers Luca Melette and Sina Yazdanmehr will present their RCS findings at the upcoming Black Hat Europe conference in December, and discussed some of their work at security conference DeepSec on Friday.

RCS is a relatively new standard for carrier messaging and includes more features than SMS, such as photos, group chats, and file transfers. Back in 2015, Google announced it would be adopting RCS to move users away from SMS, and that it had acquired a company called Jibe Mobile to help with the transition. RCS essentially runs as an app on your phone that logs into a service with a username and password, Nohl explained.

SRLabs estimated RCS is already implemented by at least 100 mobile operators, with many of the deployments being in Europe. SRLabs said that all the major U.S. carriers—AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon—were using RCS.

Do you work for AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, or Verizon? We'd love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, Wickr on josephcox, OTR chat on jfcox@jabber.ccc.de, or email joseph.cox@vice.com.

SRLabs didn't find an issue in the RCS standard itself, but rather how it is being implemented by different telecos. Because some of the standard is undefined, there's a good chance companies may deploy it in their own way and make mistakes.

"Everybody seems to get it wrong right now, but in different ways," Nohl said. SRLabs took a sample of SIM cards from a variety of carriers and checked for RCS-related domains, and then looked into particular security issues with each. SRLabs didn't say which issues impacted which particular telecos.

Some of those issues include how devices receive RCS configuration files. In one instance, a server provides the configuration file for the right device by identifying them by their IP address. But because they also use that IP address, "Any app that you install on your phone, even if you give it no permissions whatsoever, it can request this file. So now every app can get your username and password to all your text messages and all your voice calls. That's unexpected," Nohl said.

In another instance, a teleco sends a text message with a six-digit code to verify that the RCS user is who they say they are, but "then give you an unlimited number of tries" to input the code, Nohl said. "One million attempts takes five minutes," he added, meaning that it could be possible to brute force through the authentication process.

"All of these mistakes from the 90s are being reinvented, reintroduced," Nohl said. "It is being rolled out for upwards of a billion people already who are all affected by this."

Verizon did not respond to a request for comment and T-Mobile did not provide a statement in time for publication.

Vodafone said in a statement, "We are aware of the research by SRLabs. We take security very seriously and we have a number of measures in place to protect RCS services. We will review these protections in light of the research and, if required, take any further protective measures."

AT&T and Sprint directed questions to the GSM Association (GSMA), a trade body for network operators.

Claire Cranton, a spokesperson for the GSMA, wrote in an email, "The GSMA is aware of research undertaken by SRLabs into RCS security in which some previously known, but no new, vulnerabilities are reported. The findings highlight issues with some RCS implementations but not every deployment, or the RCS specifications themselves, are impacted."

Cranton said the researchers will present their findings to an expert group at GSMA next week, and that an initial analysis of the research shows there are countermeasures to the uncovered issues.

"We are grateful to the researchers for allowing the industry the opportunity to consider their findings. The GSMA welcomes any research that enhances the security and user confidence of mobile services and encourages all researchers to submit their work to our Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure (CVD) Programme which enables them to share findings and to contribute to industry’s ongoing work to drive security improvements," Cranton wrote.

Nohl said of the move to RCS, "We find that is actually a step backwards for a lot of networks."

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Videos Show Giant Texas Chemical Plant Explosion That Forced 60,000 People to Evacuate

Some 60,000 Texans have been driven from their homes on Thanksgiving by a series of explosions at a petrochemical plant Wednesday that has created a massive ongoing fire.

Three workers were injured when a processing unit at the Texas Petroleum Chemical Group (TPC Group) plant in Port Neches in southeast Texas exploded at about 1 a.m. Wednesday, igniting a fire that has triggered a series of secondary explosions.

A huge subsequent blast at about 2 p.m. Wednesday launched a distillation tower into the air, prompting authorities to order Jefferson County residents within a four-mile radius of the plant — in Port Neches and Groves, and parts of nearby Nederland and Port Arthur — to evacuate.

The three workers injured in the fire have all been treated and released from the hospital, said Troy Monk, TPC Group’s director of health safety and security.

Jefferson County chief executive Jeff Branick said authorities are concerned the fire could ignite other chemical tanks at the 218-acre site. Fire crews were still on site Thursday working to keep surrounding storage tanks cool, so that the fire does not spread while they let it burn itself out.

But officials said there was no way to tell how long it would continue to burn.

Officials said the explosions jolted people awake in their beds more than 30 miles away, and caused widespread damage in surrounding areas. Security footage from the Avenue Coffee Café, a couple of miles from the plant, showed a huge flash of light from the initial explosion, before the force of the blast blew out its windows and blew open it doors about five seconds later.

TPC Group said in a statement it was too early to speculate as to the cause of the explosion, but that it happened in a processing unit at a tank with finished butadiene.

The colorless gas, used to produce synthetic rubber used for tires and automobile hoses, is considered hazardous to health. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the local pollution regulator, said from a nearby monitoring station showed the substance was “well below concentrations of health concern or odorous levels,” but noted the fire was releasing a plume of smoke that could that could lead to eye, nose and throat irritation, shortness of breath, and headaches.

Officials have advised residents downwind of the smoke plume to remain inside and not to touch floating debris from the blaze.

The National Shelter System reported that 84 people had spent Wednesday night in a shelter set up in the Ford Park arena in Beaumont, TX, about a 20 minute drive from the site of the fire, with others assumed to be staying with family, friends or in motels.

The commission’s executive director, Toby Baker, told Reuters there had been an “unacceptable trend of significant incidents” at chemical plants in Texas, with three previous major incidents since March.

In April, a fire at a chemical plant northeast of Houston killed one worker and injured another, and in July, 37 people were injured in a chemical plant fire in Baytown.

The Port Neches explosions came as the Trump administration rolled back a raft of chemical safety regulations Thursday that had been created in response to a massive ammonium nitrate explosion at a storage facility in West, Texas in 2013.

The new rules meant companies would not have to submit to third-party audits after accidents, or grant the public access to information on which chemicals were held in the facilities. According to the Houston Chronicle, the Environmental Protection Agency justified the changes by citing potential security risks in publicly revealing stores of chemicals held at sites, and reduced compliance costs and regulatory hurdles for companies.

Cover: Smoke rises from an explosion at the TPC Group Port Neches Operations plant on Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2019, in Port Neches, Texas. (Marie D. De Jesus/Houston Chronicle via AP)

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Disney Should Let Star Wars Games Get Weird Again

Star Wars is a franchise that has an astronomical reach. And back when that reach was still growing, there was a tremendous amount of variety in the types of video games being made under the Star Wars banner. Not all of them were stunners, but that's ok because there were plenty that were good, and they weren't all the same type of game. Nowadays, it's surprising when a Star Wars game is good at all. But now that Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order has released and created a solid Hero's Journey in the Star Wars universe, we had to ask: what's next? We discuss the possibilities of a more open Star Wars licence and take a dip into the Question Bucket on this week's Waypoint Radio. You can read an excerpt and listen to the full episode below.

Austin: The Austin Walker thesis about Star Wars is the more of it the better, the worse of it the better. Just plaster the world with Star Wars shit because that's how you end up getting the really weird interesting good little side stories. That's how you end up flavoring that world in a way that doesn't just boil down to a hero's journey story, because there's a lot of little pieces in that world that that great creators can do really cool stuff with.

Patrick: And the more that was out there the less that would be put on individual pieces. This is true of the mainline series, this is true of anything. The fact that this is you know part of why this game probably has to be Hero's Journey too right? It's because, oh what do people want? What they've wanted for like the better part of 10 years is [ Fallen Order] but a broader, like you're saying, diverse set of Star Wars stories wouldn't [have to be so narrowly focused.] Hey, we're building a Star Wars game. Alright, well, Fallen Order already exists, we don't have to do another Jedi story. Or we could do something different with that story, because you're already getting the fantasy wish fulfillment from that one. So let's go do something else.

Austin: That audience is served, right. I want to be clear, people are doing this stuff in the comic space. There been so many good Star Wars comics over the last decade, there are there are people that obviously had previously been doing it in what is now the Legends content, across novels both good and bad.

Patrick: That's what they just call the EU now right? The Extended Universe became Legends?

Austin: Yeah, which I don't love except one, it does mean that no one confuses me for talking about the European Union when I say "Legends," and two, a thing I recently heard and I have not checked the validity of this. I don't know what the, what was the shitty veracity score, whatever the fuck? Verrit? I don't know what the Verrit score is on this. But I had read on a tweet that the reason it's called Legends is that that stuff is canonically legends, legendary in the world of Star Wars now.

Rob: Nooooo. I can't.

Austin: Those stories are told, still, inside of the world of Star Wars.

Patrick: So it's like myths within a myth?

Austin: Yes, that is what I've heard.

Patrick: Mythology.

Cado: That makes sense, because then they can pull things that they want to.

Patrick: That's actually kinda clever.

Austin: That's what I'm saying.

Cado: Right? Like they can pull specific plot points and be like "the rest was exaggerated but we like that, we're gonna use that."

Rob: Years of Luke Skywalker telling people stories about his girlfriend, Maaaaara... Jaaade?

Austin: "Her name her name was Mara Jade and she was sick as shit."

Patrick: Let me tell you about big Luke.

[laughter]

Austin: He was like me but bigger.

Rob: Mara killed him.

Austin: Definitely. Hundred percent. Love it.

Cado: Luuke is still out there.

Patrick: Give me a video game called Big Luke!

Austin: It is very funny to me to think about old Luke on the island from the sequels just being like, "I'm just imagining a better life for myself. Things could have been different goddamnit. That fucking Emperor should have cloned himself sooner," or whatever the fuck is gonna happen in this movie.

---

This transcript was edited for length and readability.

Discussed: Pokemon Sword and Shield 4:47, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order 21:47, Resident Evil 2 52:38, Gloomhaven 54:16, Question Bucket part 1- 1:01:55, Half Life: Alyx 1:27:45, Question Bucket part 2- 1:42:35

You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Stitcher. If you're using something else, this RSS link should let you add the podcast to whatever platform you'd like. If you'd like to directly download the podcast, click here. Please take a moment and review the podcast, especially on Apple Podcasts. It really helps.

Interaction with you is a big part of this podcast, so make sure to send any questions you have for us to gaming@vice.com with the header "Questions." (Without the quotes!) We can't guarantee we'll answer all of your questions, but rest assured, we'll be taking a look at them.

Have thoughts? Swing by the Waypoint forums to share them!

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Millennials Have a Right To Be Pissed at Boomers. This Data Proves It.

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Just how badly are millennials being screwed out of wealth? Let’s take a look at the data.

The Federal Reserve regularly publishes data on the generational gaps in wealth. The boomers have plenty of it, and millennials don’t. That’s no surprise — the boomers are older. But what recent data also clearly shows is that when the boomers were millennials’ age, they had significantly more than millennials do today.

Back in 1989, when boomers were between 25 and 43, they already owned 20.9% of the country’s wealth, according to data from the Federal Reserve updated earlier this month. In 2019, millennials are between 23 and 38, and they currently own a whopping 3.2% of wealth. That means boomers had more than six times as much wealth in 1989 as millennials do now.

“I definitely think millennials have a bunch to be uniquely annoyed about,” said Josh Bivens, research director at the Economic Policy Institute. “Lots of them graduated into a horrible labor market, and they've probably been very stunted in their ability to get on the treadmill of earning enough to actually save anything.”

Looking at wealth over time, any given generation would start out with nothing. (Children don’t own stuff.) As time passes, they’d accumulate wealth, and, eventually, people die and tend to pass their wealth on as inheritance.

But the olds’ wealth isn’t trickling down — in 2019, the generations older than the boomers still controlled nearly a quarter of U.S. wealth.

And the inequality isn’t going unnoticed to millennials and the even younger Gen Z. There’s a fair bit of resentment in the air right now — take “ok boomer” as evidence, the dismissive retort the youngs levy against the olds, and the the olds take it personally.

Political candidates know that to effectively reach a millennial audience, they need to be speaking their language. That means tackling inequality, relieving student debt, and promising affordable healthcare — which all of the major Democratic presidential candidates have put forward plans to do.

“I definitely think millennials have a bunch to be uniquely annoyed about.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, who has stridently advocated aggressively taxing the wealthiest 1%, has more support among millennials than any other candidate. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg, who likes to point out that he’s “the youngest guy on the stage” at debates, both have big plans to relieve student debt.

Some candidates are even directly pandering to young voters, with videos like Sen. Kamala Harris’ “mood mix.”

No matter how embarrassing their youth outreach, the Democratic party has the millennial vote by a wide margin: The generaton voted Democrat by 35 points in 2018.

Still, it’s worth noting that it’s less that boomers, as a generation, had significantly more wealth than millennials do: It’s more that a tiny fraction of the boomers have always been wealthy and have only gotten richer.

Back in 1989, the bottom half of the country, regardless of age, only had about 4% of the country’s wealth. Since then, the top 1% has gotten richer, the top 10% has held onto its share of wealth, and everyone else got poorer. Now, boomers have 18 times as much wealth as millennials do, according to Fed data.

“The boomer generation had a lot more wealth at this point in their life cycle,” Bivens said. “But it wasn't the typical boomer — it was that small slice of very, very rich ones, and that's where we should aim most of our side-eye.”

All other things being equal, generations are defined somewhat arbitrarily, and not all of them are of equal size. Boomers were born during a 19-year period, between 1946 and 1964; millennials were born in a 16-year span, between 1981 and 1996. So it wouldn’t be unusual for millennials to have somewhat less wealth than the boomers.

But that boomers had so much more wealth when they were young than millennials have now means there are broader economic factors at play.

The generational wealth gap has been trending toward young people having less for the last 30 years, the Fed’s data shows. But even Gen X, that little generation between millennials and boomers that will never be president and loved Nirvana cassette tapes, was better off. In 2001, when they were between 22 and 36, Gen Xers had 5.7% of the country’s wealth, nearly twice millennials’ share in 2019, even though Gen X is markedly smaller than the millennial generation.

Young people know they’ve been screwed, and, increasingly, they’re not holding back on yelling at the olds about it. Undeterred that the olds don’t like having the phrase “ok boomer” leveled at them, they’re using it slander those politicians who aren’t taking their concerns seriously.

Cover image: Photo by Dong Wenjie via Getty Images

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Hong Kong Is Giving Thanks For the U.S.'s New Pro-Protesters Law. China Is Furious.

Hong Kong’s pro-democracy activists were thrilled by President Donald Trump’s decision to sign two bills supporting their movement, and celebrated the “timely Thanksgiving gift” by playing the Star-Spangled Banner at a celebratory rally.

On the Chinese Mainland though, the response was very different. Beijing branded the new laws “stark hegemonic acts” that were “full of prejudice and arrogance,” and vowed it would retaliate with unspecified “firm countermeasures” if Washington didn’t change course.

“The U.S. has been disregarding facts and distorting truth. It openly backed violent criminals who rampantly smashed facilities, set fire, assaulted innocent civilians, trampled on the rule of law, and jeopardized social order,” China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement Thursday.

“This Act will only further expose the malicious and hegemonic nature of U.S. intentions to the Chinese people.”

The main law at the heart of the dispute, the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, requires the U.S. government to certify at least once a year that the city retains enough autonomy from Beijing to warrant the favored trading status with the U.S. that has allowed it to become a global financial hub. It also requires that the U.S. sanction Chinese and Hong Kong officials who commit human rights violations in the city.

READ: The U.S. is finally supporting the Hong Kong protesters — and Beijing isn’t happy

Trump also signed a second bill banning the export of teargas, pepper spray, rubber bullets and stun guns to the Hong Kong police, who have been accused of using excessive force against protesters.

China’s Deputy Foreign Minister Le Yucheng summoned U.S. Ambassador Terry Branstad Thursday to lodge a “strong protest,” urging the U.S. not to put the new laws into practice, and demanding Washington stop interfering in China’s internal affairs.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang would not specify what measures Beijing was considering in retaliation, but the editor-in-chief of China’s state-run Global Times claimed on Twitter that Beijing was considering putting U.S. politicians who drafted the law on its no-fly list, banning them from the Chinese Mainland, Hong Kong and Macau.

READ: The brutality of Hong Kong police is putting pro-democracy protesters in hospital

Trump, who has been seeking a deal to end a trade war with China, had been publicly non-committal about the legislation, saying he supported Hong Kongers but that Chinese President Xi Jinping was an “incredible guy.”

But the overwhelming congressional support for the legislation — approved unanimously by the U.S. Senate and by all but one lawmaker in the House of Representatives — meant it could have easily gained the two-thirds of votes in both chambers necessary to override the president’s veto, had he chosen to object.

READ: Hong Kong protesters escaped a besieged campus by crawling through tunnels

"I signed these bills out of respect for President Xi, China, and the people of Hong Kong. They are being enacted in the hope that Leaders and Representatives of China and Hong Kong will be able to amicably settle their differences leading to long term peace and prosperity for all," Trump said in a statement.

In Hong Kong, the passing of the act was further good news for the pro-democracy movement, which enjoyed a landslide victory over pro-Beijing candidates in local elections last Sunday, taking control of 17 out of 18 districts.

READ: Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement just won a landslide victory

Activists celebrated the developments in Washington by holding a “Thanksgiving rally” in the central business district Thursday.

The Star Spangled Banner played as crowds arrived at the rally, where posters were on display thanking U.S. lawmakers who had backed the legislation, including Marco Rubio, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.

Prominent activist Nathan Law, founding chair of the pro-democracy Demosisto party, tweeted that the law was a “timely thanksgiving gift” and said the next step was for other governments to show solidarity by passing similar laws.

“We need more countries to act with us,” he said.

Cover: A protester holds a placard with a quote from former U.S. President Thomas Jefferson in Hong Kong, Thursday, Nov. 28, 2019. (AP Photo/Vincent Thian)

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Three Women Accuse Trump’s EU Envoy Gordon Sondland of Sexual Misconduct. Here’s What They Said.

Three women have accused the U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland of sexual misconduct and retaliating against them professionally because they rejected his advances.

The women, who all spoke on the record to ProPublica, claim Sondland, who has become a key witness in the impeachment inquiry, all claim Sondland tried to force himself on them, and in one case he even exposed himself.

Sondland has denied all allegations and through his lawyer has claimed the report could be an attempt to undermine his blockbuster testimony in Congress last week.

The women also claim that the result of their rejection of his sexual advances resulted in professional retaliation, which included harassment, loss of investments, and an end to help securing a new job.

The cases span a seven-year period between 2003 and 2010, during which Sondland was a prominent businessman in Portland, where he owns five hotels.

Here’s what the women told ProPublica:

• Nicole Vogel met Sondland in 2003 when she was 34 years old. She was seeking investors for an art and culture magazine she wanted to start in Portland. Sondland told her over dinner that he wanted to invest in her project. Afterward, they went to one of his hotels and in one of the rooms, he grabbed Vogel’s face and tried to kiss her. She deflected the kiss by reminding Sondland that he was married before leaving through the lobby. “There were a lot of indecent proposals when I was raising capital, but none as brazen as his,” Vogel said. Weeks later, Sondland backed out of his commitment to invest in the magazine.
• Jana Solis, a hospitality safety engineer, met Sondland in 2008, and her first meeting with him ended with him slapping her on the ass. She then visited him at his home to assess his art collection, a visit that ended with him exposing himself in the pool house. Finally, at Sondland’s penthouse suite in the Roosevelt Hotel in Seattle, he pounced on her. “He’s all over me. He’s on top of me. He’s kissing me, shoving his tongue down my throat. And I’m trying to wiggle out from under him, and the next thing you know, I’m sort of rising up to get away from him, and I fall over the back of the couch,” Solis said. Days later Sondland called Solis and screamed at her over the phone.
• Natalie Sept also met Sondland in 2010, at the same restaurant he took Vogel to in 2003. They were due to discuss a potential job for Sept, at the state film commission. They moved on to a cocktail bar down the road, but when Sept started feeling uneasy about the situation and made excuses to leave, Sondland insisted on walking her to her car. There, Sept says she gave him a brief hug but “he holds onto my shoulders and looks at me and pushes himself into me and tries to kiss me.” Sept escaped, but the job offer never materialized.

READ: Gordon Sondland's testimony is devastating for Trump

Sondland has staunchly denied all the allegations.

“In decades of my career in business and civic affairs, my conduct can be affirmed by hundreds of employees and colleagues with whom I have worked in countless circumstances,” Sondland told ProPublica. “These untrue claims of unwanted touching and kissing are concocted and, I believe, coordinated for political purposes. They have no basis in fact, and I categorically deny them.”

In a statement posted on his own website, Sondland denied all allegations, calling the report “underhanded journalism” and listing all the issues he has with the report.

Among the complaints he lists is the fact that Vogel owns Portland Monthly, which jointly published the report with ProPublica. Both publications said that Vogel was not involved in editorial decisions about the piece.

Sondland, who was confirmed as Trump’s pick as EU Ambassador in June 2018, last week confirmed a quid pro quo at the heart of Democrats’ impeachment case. Sondland said Trump and his inner circle knew about everything he was doing to encourage Ukraine to investigate Trump’s political enemies.

READ: Gordon Sondland just linked Mike Pence directly to Trump's Ukraine scandal

Sondland’s lawyer Jim McDermott has suggested that the timing of the report could lead some to “consider this to be veiled witness tampering.”

McDermott also suggested that all the women involved were simply looking to profit financially and professionally.

“Notably, what each of these three women share in common is that they pursued Ambassador Sondland for financial and personal gain — an investment, a job, and insurance brokerage work — and he declined their proposals,” McDermott said in a letter to ProPublica.

Cover: Ambassador Gordon Sondland, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, center, appears before the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2019, during a public impeachment hearing of President Donald Trump's efforts to tie U.S. aid for Ukraine to investigations of his political opponents. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

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Easy Bok Choy Salad Recipe

Servings: 4
Prep time: 15 minutes
Total time: 25 minutes

Ingredients

for the dressing:
¼ cup|65 grams shiro miso
¼ cup|60 ml white wine vinegar
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons Ginkgo vinegar (or rice wine vinegar)
1 tablespoon minced ginger
2 teaspoons honey
½ cup|125 ml sesame oil

for the salad:
2 tablespoons canola oil
1 large head bok choy (about 2 pounds|1 kg), stems thinly sliced, leaves torn into bite-sized pieces
kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 tablespoons chili oil with crunchy garlic
1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds

Directions

1. Make the dressing: In a medium bowl, whisk the miso, white wine vinegar, mustard, Gingko vinegar, ginger, and honey. Slowly whisk in the sesame oil until combined. Set aside.

2. Make the salad: Heat the canola oil over medium-high in a large skillet or wok. Add the bok choy stems and cook until tender, about 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper, remove from the pan and transfer to a large bowl with the box choy leaves. Add the dressing and toss to combine. Transfer to a platter and top with the chili oil and sesame seeds.

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Kim Jong Un Kicked Off Thanksgiving by Testing Two More Missiles

North Korea test-fired two more missiles on Thursday morning, making 2019 the busiest year on record for North Korean missile testing.

Timed to coincide with Thanksgiving, the launch on Thursday is the 13th missile launch so far in 2019. Pyongyang has fired a total of 25 missiles this year, as it continues to let its military do the talking in its stalled negotiations with Washington.

The projectiles were fired from Yeonpo in the country's eastern South Hamgyong Province into the waters off the east coast at around 4:59 p.m. local time, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said in a statement.

The missiles were fired within about 30 seconds of each other, and both flew around 240 miles, reaching a maximum altitude of 60 miles.

“Our military expresses strong regret over the acts and urges North Korea to immediately stop such moves,” Major General Jeong Dong Jin from the South Korean military told reporters.

Hours before the missile launch, a U.S. Air Force spy plane was seen conducting flights over the Korean peninsula, the third such flight in the space of just two days.

North Korea said earlier this month that the U.S.’ continued involvement in military exercises with South Korea amounted to a “betrayal,” and Pyongyang added that it no longer felt bound by its previous promises.

READ: North Korea threatens to resume nuke tests: "there's a limit to our patience"

North Korea’s missile testing in 2019 has focused on its short-range missile technology, because Kim Jong Un promised to stop long-range and nuclear testing as part of an agreement reached with U.S. President Donald Trump during their first summit in Singapore last year.

While Trump has dismissed the short-range tests as inconsequential, U.S. allies in the region are much more concerned about the ongoing tests.

“We will remain in close contact with the United States, South Korea, and the international community to monitor the situation. We will increase our vigilance to preserve the safety and assets of the Japanese people,” Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters.

U.S.-North Korea negotiations on denuclearization have been stalled since a failed summit in Hanoi in February this year, when Trump walked away from the negotiating table.

Last month the two sides attempted to restart negotiations with working-level talks in Sweden, but those broke down without any progress. Days later, a spokesman for the North Korean Foreign Ministry warned that “there is a limit to our patience, and there is no law that anything we have refrained from so far will continue indefinitely.”

READ: 5 reasons Trump should be way more concerned about North Korea's submarine missile launch

North Korea gave the U.S. until the end of the year to come up with a “new way” to overcome the current impasse or face a further escalation of military action.

“Pyongyang’s posturing vis-a-vis the U.S. over the past few months, particularly after the Stockholm talks, foreshadowed a more militaristic path forward for Pyongyang, and we are seeing that playing out,” Minyoung Lee, a senior analyst with North-Korea-focused website NK Pro, said.

Cover: A woman watches a news program reporting North Korea's firing unidentified projectiles with a file image of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, Nov. 28, 2019. North Korea on Thursday fired an unidentified projectile, South Korea's military said, three days after the North said its troops conducted artillery drills near its disputed sea boundary with South Korea. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

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Holiday Social Media Is the Escapist Hell We Can't Escape

The holiday season is basically synonymous with family time and free time which are, for most people, a mixed bag. We love our relatives, but maybe we also love not hearing the story of how our cousin met his wife (same intro Spanish class in college) for the third year in a row. And the down time can be boring as hell: The news cycle slows, restaurants cut their hours, and everyone is forced to see the new Star Wars movie or smoke weed in a park for fun, both of which get more degrading as time wears on. So what do we use to fill that pine cone–scented void? Social media. Anyone who has a hard time staying off their phone when they’re out with friends or hanging with a partner (so, like, all of us) knows it’s 10 times more difficult to resist the temptation when it doesn’t feel like there’s anything better to do.

Diving into social media feels like a viable alternative to boredom and stilted small talk as an adult who could conceivably be going online to do something important (like checking work emails) but is actually just looking for a distraction (like fighting with a Pete Buttigieg supporter on Twitter). And for people who have strained relationships with the family members they are spending the holidays with, a scroll through social media can seem like an escape route out of a painful, stressful situation—though seeing other people post about how great their holiday is could just be fuel for an even worse mood.

Because during the holidays, social media transforms from a place for looking at hot people to a wasteland flooded with saccharine content. The urge to document infects anyone who’s even marginally into Posting. Seasonally themed chaos, dare I say, reigns. And just because it happens every year doesn’t mean it gets any easier to resist the siren song: The content blows, but we’re too restless and lonely to stop consuming it. The only thing more fun than posting about the #dailygrind is posting about being removed from regular life. It’s the same urge that sends people into IG story “sicko mode” while on vacation: Look at me, doing a thing I don’t usually do!

Suburban parents dancing goofily along to Christmas music in front of their kitchen island. Baby pictures of a person you went on three dates with in 2016. “Friendly reminders” about how to educate *clap* your *clap* family *clap* members *clap* about being woke from someone who was racist in high school. A college acquaintance's hot cousin. Eyeshadow palettes, Yeti coolers, and the new Airpods, probably. This is what to expect from social media during the holidays. The predictability to this kind of content can be charming or irritating, depending on whoever posted it. The thought process goes that it’s cool when I myself post a video where I’m walking my parents’ new dog/eating fresh fruit/flipping off my high school. But if someone I don’t like does it, they’re actually so desperate for attention that I almost feel bad for them.

Holidays inflict a lot of pressure to have fun, and social media at its most toxic is all about performing fun online. Orchestrating that performance while actually feeling melancholy and lonely only makes it feel worse. Concepts like “gratitude” and “the year in review” push us toward reflection, but sometimes, reflection is hard! Sometimes it hurts! Sometimes it’s like, I don’t want to think about where I am compared to where I was last year, so I’m just going to drink a lot of white wine and post a picture from two months ago where I look hot (hypothetically speaking, of course).

Doing nothing but looking at the internet for what feels like hours on end makes it extremely easy to fall down a hole of negative comparisons and then do a little reflexive bragging to compensate. I see the new iPad Mini your stepmom got you and raise you a Google Home. Et cetera, et cetera. And these comparisons are bad enough when we’re just talking about material goods—it gets worse when the envy extends to another person’s social life, family situation, or socioeconomic status.

It should provide some measure of comfort that everyone else is kind of doing the same thing, but of course there’s always the nagging concern that they aren’t, that we are the only ones having a bad time and everyone else’s life is actually as exciting and amazing and filled with homemade baked goods as it looks online.

The most infuriating thing about how bad it feels to be on social media during the holidays is that the distress is completely self-inflicted. To paraphrase a (not great) Tyler the Creator quote: “Hahahahahahahaha… Just Walk Away From The Screen Like Close Your Eyes Haha.” I wish I could be as pure of soul as someone who can simply log off and spend time with loved ones, eat a lot of food, and enjoy not having to go to work. In a perfect world, we could all take a holiday-long break from our phones and write a New York Times column with a pen instead.

A lot of unplugging-related advice is glib as hell and ignores the fact that there’s something to be said about taking time away from a stressful situation. But it’s important, I guess, to stay wary of which scenario is more draining: the physically present family, or the virtually present wider Internet. This doesn’t have to be an either-or: It can be OK, or even healthy, to take a break from the stress of a holiday social dynamic and mess around on a phone for a while, despite what traditionalist moralizers would say about the evils of “devices.” If scrolling through social media over the holidays starts to drag, but so do the holidays, redownload 2048 (or Tinder!), catch up on articles, purge old photos, mess around on Goodreads or Letterboxd, and stay far away from Instagram. It’s also possible to literally just put the phone down, go outside, take a drive, read a book, ask your mom if she wants to hang out (she like, really does), or some other bullshit along those lines. I know which one I’ll probably do.

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This Clip from a Failed 2003 'Watchmen' Film Is Still Better Than Zack Snyder's

HBO's new Watchmen series is one of the most brilliant and electrifying uses of IP ever. Leftovers and Lost mastermind Damon Lindelof has somehow managed to extract the fundamental Watchmen-ness of the original 1986 graphic novel like it's a mutant fetus in a lake and built it into something fresh, new, and almost uncomfortably current. But not all Watchmen adaptations have been, uh, quite so successful.

The history of failed attempts at taking Watchmen to the big screen dates back to the early 1990s, when Terry Gilliam was attached to direct. Then came a decade of new scripts and new directors, including Darren Aronofsky and Paul Greengrass, none of whom could get the project off the ground, until finally, in 2009, Zack Snyder successfully got a movie made. Well, sort of successfully—Snyder's version is an overly long, overly dour slog that slavishly recreates the comic's panels without maintaining any of its original spirit, and it didn't even give us a giant squid.

But this week, we got a taste of what could've been. In honor of HBO's series, X-Men screenwriter David Hayter took to Twitter to release test footage he shot in 2003 for his own failed Watchmen adaptation—and, even as test footage, it's better than Zack Snyder's version.

The grainy, four-minute clip recreates the scene from early in the comic where Rorschach breaks into Dan Dreiberg's house to tell him that the Comedian was been killed. Game of Thrones star Iain Glen plays Dreiberg, or Nite Owl, with Ray Stevenson as Rorschach, though Hayter says the role was original meant for Daniel Craig. It's a sparse, almost play-like staging—due in no small part to the fact that this was test footage and probably shot cheaply at a soundstage somewhere—but Hayter's obvious reverence for the comic gives it a certain charm. The way the shapes on Rorschach's mask change between shots is particularly effective.

According to an old i09 report, Hayter's full script made some pretty major tweaks to the comic; he made Dr. Manhattan more superhuman and was also planning to avoid the squid ending, among other changes. But this particular scene is fairly faithful to the source material. It's not perfect, and it's just a test, but it's still a fascinating look at what a stripped down, more character-focused version of Watchmen could've been.

We'll never get to see Twelve Monkeys-era Terry Gilliam make a brain-bleedingly bonkers five-hour miniseries or whatever in the 90s, sadly, but this is almost as good. Give the clip a watch above.

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