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As outrage over President Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy continues to bubble, a group of Democratic attorneys general from 17 states, including Washington, are suing to force the Trump administration to reunite migrant families who have been separated at the US-Mexico border.

In what may be simply a coincidence, the new lawsuit was filed just hours after the Supreme Court overturned a series of lower court rulings blocking the third version of President Trump’s travel ban, which stoked opposition among the same group of attorney generals.

The group filed the lawsuit in a US District Court in Seattle on Tuesday: it’s the first legal challenge to the practice made by US states, and accuses the administration of denying the migrants the right to due process and their right to seek asylum, the Associated Press reported.

Before Trump signed his executive order ending the separations, US authorities had separated 2,300 children from their parents in recent weeks, triggering widespread condemnation as photos and audio recordings of weeping children emerged. Furthermore, the AGs argued that Trump’s executive order is riddled with caveats and, importantly, fails to require that families are reunited.

The lawsuit says the migrants have been denied due process and their right to seek asylum.

Meanwhile, in what seems to us like a bizarre request given that they’ve been detained for a reason, immigrant-rights advocates are asking a federal judge to order the release of the parents who were separated from their children at the border, as dozens of demonstrators were arrested Tuesday at a rally ahead of a Los Angeles appearance by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The court action was brought by the Los Angeles-based pro bono law firm Public Counsel on behalf of three Central American mothers whose children were detained by ICE in April, the AP reports.

“These parents are terrified for their children and want nothing more than to ensure the scarring that this experience has already caused does not continue to inflict irreparable harm,” Judy London, a Public Counsel attorney, said in a statement.

The administration has asked a federal court in Los Angeles to let authorities detain families together for an extended period during immigration proceedings. Under a 1997 court settlement, children must be released from detention as quickly as possible.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said his department still has 2,047 immigrant children who were separated from their parents at the border in custody. That is only six fewer children than the number in HHS custody as of last Wednesday. Outrage over the US’s handling of the minors in custody exploded yet again following reports that a 15-year-old Honduran boy walked off one Texas facility, allegedly to find his parents.

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Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

Social media giant Facebook continues to ramp up the creepy factor. According to a recently filed patent, Facebook wants to spy on you by hiding inaudible messages in TV ads.

Facebook has filed a patent for a system that hides audio clips in TV commercials. These sounds would be so high-pitched that they are inaudible to human beings. They would then trigger your phone to record all the background noises in your home. The patent application is called “broadcast content view analysis based on ambient audio recording.”

According to The Daily Mail, these secret messages would force your phone to record the audio of the private conversations you have without you even knowing. According to a patent application by the social media platform, clips taken of your background conversations and your movements across a room would help advertisers determine whether or not you are watching their promotions.

According to the patent, originally discovered by Metro, the system would use “a non-human hearable digital sound” to activate your phone’s microphone. This noise, which could be a sound so high-pitched that humans cannot hear it, would contain a “machine recognizable” set of Morse code-style beeps. Once your phone “hears” or recognizes the trigger, it would begin to record the “ambient noise” in the home, such as the sound of your air conditioning unit, plumbing noises from your pipes, and even your movements from one room to another. Your phone would even listen in on “distant human speech” and “creaks from thermal contraction”, according to the patent.

Facebook is currently working on the controversial software too, said a patent application published on June 14 this year. If you’re like the rest of us, you might think this sounds like an Orwellian nightmare technology which will let Big Zucker intrude upon the lives of millions of unsuspecting people in unprecedentedly terrifying ways.

The tech is going to be used to monitor what people watch on their “broadcasting device” so that the adverts they are shown on Facebook are likely to appeal to them. This would also allow companies to get an accurate sense of the size of the audience which has viewed their promotion. That’s what Facebook says in its patent, however, there is absolutely no mention of spying on our private lives, invading our privacy, recording our intimate conversations, and forcing advertising into the heart of our homes whatsoever.

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A group of around 20 chanting protesters descended on White House adviser Stephen Miller’s Washington D.C. apartment on Monday, distributing “wanted” flyers which refer to Miller, a Jew, as a “white nationalist, Trump lackey, and architect of both the Muslim Ban and Family Separation.” 

They are handing out these flyers to Stephen Miller’s neighbors at the luxe CityCenterDC pic.twitter.com/OYmllt6JEj

— Rachel Sadon (@Rachel_Sadon) June 25, 2018

“Say it loud, say it clear: immigrants are welcome here,” shouts a group of about a dozen people outside Stephen Miller’s apartment building pic.twitter.com/Z6bv5OYcOn

— Rachel Sadon (@Rachel_Sadon) June 25, 2018

Protesters are protesting outside Stephen Miller’s apartment right now pic.twitter.com/b8JS0QALOp

— Rachel Sadon (@Rachel_Sadon) June 25, 2018

Miller – largely credited with pushing President Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy of arresting and processing those entering the U.S. illegally – was also heckled at a Mexican restaurant last week. 

“Hey look guys, whoever thought we’d be in a restaurant with a real-life fascist begging [for] money for new cages?” a diner said to Mr. Miller, a witness told The New York Post.

Two days later, a group of protesters with the Democratic Socialists of America – including a DOJ paralegal – chased Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen out of a Mexican restaurant near the White House. Days later, protesters showed up at Nielsen’s Alexandria townhouse.

Protestors are outside of DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen’s Alexandria townhouse, playing audio of the detained children. She appears to be still be home. pic.twitter.com/akIcxOcM3q

— Philip Lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) June 22, 2018

Last Friday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was ejected from a Lexington, VA restaurant because the gay staff was too triggered by her presence. 

According to former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, Sanders’ father, the owner of the Red Hen followed Sanders’ family across the street to another restaurant, causing a “scene.”

Mr. Huckabee told conservative radio host Laura Ingraham on Monday that Stephanie Wilkinson, owner of the Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia, kicked Mrs. Sanders and her family out of the restaurant and then proceeded to yell at them when they tried to go to a different restaurant across the street. –Washington Times

“There’s a part of that story that hasn’t been told, you’re going to be the first to hear it,” Mr. Huckabee said, Mediaite first reported. “Once Sarah and her family left, of course Sarah was asked to please vacate, Sarah and her husband just went home. They had sort of had enough. But the rest of her family went across the street to a different restaurant.

“The owner of the Red Hen — nobody’s told this — then followed them across the street, called people, and organized a protest yelling and screaming at them from outside the other restaurant and creating this scene,” he said.

This restaurateur of The Red Hen Stephanie Wilkinson not only told @PressSec Sanders to leave–acc to @GovMikeHuckabee on my radio show today, she FOLLOWED Sanders’ family across the street to harass them at the other restaurant they went to! https://t.co/DEo2QOAcTY

— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) June 25, 2018

This is NOT a good sign. But it is the new reality of the intolerant Left.@GovMikeHuckabee pic.twitter.com/Ci8hd7XeGK

— thebradfordfile™ (@thebradfordfile) June 23, 2018

The “witch hunt” for Miller, Nielsen and Sanders was encouraged by Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), who openly called for people to form a mob and physically confront members of Donald Trump’s administration if they see them out in public after controversy over separated migrant families erupted two weeks ago. 

And on Monday, we reported that a decapitated and burned animal carcass was found on the porch of a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) staffer, the latest in a spate of threats tied to President Trump’s immigration policy, according to WTOP/ABC.

Around two dozen incidents have been reported against government employees issued in the past few days – primarily against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, which resulted in a determination by Homeland Security that there is a “heightened threat against DHS employees.” 

In short, the hunt is intensifying for anyone associated with Trump or his policies. If history is any indication of what’s to come, this may get violent. Then again, it may be the shortest civil war in history…

The Civil War is Here – me: Not worried at all! 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/cnIaOVEGrz

— SouthernChick (@hayleymorsen) March 27, 2017

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The NTSB has released new preliminary information on a Model S crash that took place in early May of this year, noting that the vehicle was traveling a stunning 116MPH at the time it wrecked.

The crash, which killed two teenagers and injured a third, happened on State Route A1A in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The following information hit the wires in the afternoon on Tuesday:

• NTSB SAYS TESLA WAS TRAVELING 116 MPH IN SECONDS BEFORE CRASH
• NTSB RELEASES PRELIMINARY REPORT ON TESLA FIRE IN FLORIDA
• TESLA MODEL S DRIVEN BY 18-YEAR-OLD HIT WALL, CAUGHT FIRE

The NTSB investigation had been ongoing since early May, according to CNBC.

The investigation was previously said to have focused on the electric battery fire that occurred after the crash, and it was also reported shortly after the crash that Autopilot was not likely to be involved or investigated. The initial police report for the crash noted that speed was likely a factor.

It’s not until the full NTSB report is released that we will have further details whether or not the battery was at fault for the fire that ultimately engulfed the vehicle. We had previously reported on details of the crash shortly after it took place.

As WPLG reported at the time, in the “horrific crash” of the Tesla Model S with three young people hit a wall and then caught on fire, while a third teen was ejected from the car.

A third man, also 18, who was in the backseat of the Tesla Model S, was thrown from the car when it crashed in the 1300 block of Seabreeze Boulevard, said Tracy Figone, a spokeswoman for the Fort Lauderdale Police Department. He was hospitalized. His condition was not known.

Neighborhood resident Wendy Mascolo told WFOR-Ch. 4 that she heard the violent crash when it happened and ran to help. “These parents, they got the worst call of their lives and their lives are never going to be the same,” she told the station.

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Ever since the start of 2018, an odd divergence has emerged in credit markets, where Investment Grade bonds have seen their spreads leak progressively wider, hitting levels not seen in 2 years, while the bid for higher yielding, and much more risky, junk bond debt has been seemingly relentless, with high yield spreads near all time lows.

To be sure, many reasons have been offered, with Bank of America suggesting that IG weakness is “due to supply pressures in an environment of reduced demand that began in March and extended through last week, plus the Italian situation, which is about systemic risks running through the global IG financial system.” Meanwhile, it believes the strength in HY is mostly due to the lack of supply of higher yielding paper.

Whatever the suggested reasons, however, the underlying causes are two: an environment of artificially low interest rates created by central banks, and unyielding, pardon the pun, investor euphoria. In other words: a multi-year credit boom.

And while the Fed’s “macroprudential regulation team” appears to have zero problems with what is going on in the world of junk bonds, the IMF has sounded the alarm on the troubling developments in junk bond land in particular, and capital markets in general.

In its The Chart of the Week, the IMF Blog shows the impact of a bad credit boom – one which the fund defines as followed by slower economic growth or even a recession – on economic growth in the years that follow. But first, it ask a basic question: what makes for a bad boom? The IMF’s answer:

it is fueled by excessive optimism among investors. When the economy is doing well and everybody seems to be making money, some investors assume that the good times will never end. They take on more risk than they can reasonably expect to handle.

Ok, but how can one tell when risk-taking is getting out of hand? After all the Fed is notoriously bad at being unable to time just when to pull the punch bowl away, and instead lurches from one bubble boom-bust cycle, to another, greater one instead.  According to the IMF, one way to make the distinction is to look at the riskiness of credit allocation, adding that firms where debt expands faster become increasingly risky in relation to those with the slowest debt expansions, posing downside risks to growth down the road. This is obviously common sense.

The second method is more directly linked to the issue at hand, namely the glut in junk bonds. Here is the IMF on how to spot euphoric risk-taking:

Another method is to look at the bond market to see how much of the money companies and governments are borrowing consists of high-yield debt, also known as junk bonds. (These are bonds that offer higher yields to make up for the greater risk of default by the borrower.) The larger the proportion of high-yield debt, the higher the level of risk in the financial system.

Next, in calculating the impact of bad booms on growth, the IMF looked at data on debt issued by governments and non-financial companies in 25 advanced economies, and defined a boom as a period of faster-than-normal growth in credit relative to GDP. Finally, it looked at how much of the credit growth consisted of high-yield debt.

And, judging by the current conditions, the IMF found that the world effectively finds itself in just such a “bad boom” phase.

So what then? 

The IMF concluded that credit booms marked by a rising share of junk bonds were followed by lower economic growth over the following three to four years.

When the high yield share of debt rises by one standard deviation—a statistical measure of how much one number differs from the average in a set of numbers—GDP growth over the next three years is lower by 2 percentage points.

This is shown in the chart below which reveals that junk bond driven credit booms are followed by sharp economic slowdowns in the following “three to four years.”

The IMF concludes that this result suggests that “when credit is growing quickly, policymakers should pay attention to how much of that growth is allocated to riskier firms, such as those that issue high-yield debt.”  Well, not only is junk debt growing quickly, it has never been greater.

The IMF’s solution on how to avoid a credit bust recession?

Steps to fix the problem may include higher capital requirements and other measures to restrain credit growth and tighten lending standards more broadly.

Needless to say, not only are no regulators actively seeking to restrain credit growth, but lending standards have never been easier, which is to be expected when none other than the ECB is actively buying corporate bonds.

Source: IMF

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Authored by Nick Cunningham via OilPrice.com,

The difference between WTI and Brent narrowed significantly over the past few days, as the forces driving the two benchmarks apart seemed to have reversed course.

For the past few weeks and months, WTI suffered a steep discount relative to Brent, a reflection of a series of factors that made North America well supplied with oil, while the rest of the world saw supplies tighten significantly. U.S. shale production has soared over the past few years, but really accelerated at a blistering pace in 2018. North America has been overflowing with oil, and much of the additional supply has been routed through Gulf Coast export terminals, if producers can get their oil out of West Texas.

Meanwhile, the OPEC cuts began to bite harder in the second half of 2017 and in the first six months of this year. The result was a sort of two-speed oil market – ample supplies in the U.S., and an increasingly tight market everywhere else.

The discount widened to nearly $10 per barrel in June, a staggering differential.

But in a surprising turn of events, the two benchmarks converged significantly in the past few days.

A week ago, the price differential topped $9 per barrel, but the gap narrowed to $6 per barrel as of Monday.

(Click to enlarge)

The reasons for this are multiple, but they largely come down to the fact that the fortunes of both benchmarks suddenly flipped. OPEC+ decided to add more oil onto the market last week – nominally 1 million barrels per day, but in reality something more akin to 600,000 bpd. That has eased fears about a supply crunch.

Meanwhile, the supply/demand balance in North America suddenly looks a bit tighter than it did earlier this month. The pipeline constraints in the Permian are starting to bite, and there are growing expectations that shale drillers will have to curb output growth because available takeaway capacity has all but vanished. The long list of aggressive forecasts regarding shale growth might have to be revised down.

Also, inventories continue to decline. Last week saw a rather significant decline of 5.9 million barrels. Stocks in Cushing are already at their lowest level in years. “The spread between WTI and Brent is shrinking as OPEC’s output increase is having a bigger impact on Brent than WTI,” Hong Sungki, a commodities trader at NH Investment & Securities Co., told Bloomberg. “Cushing stockpiles are quickly withdrawing as the U.S. summer driving season boosts refiners’ demand for crude, supporting WTI prices.”

More importantly, at least in the near run, was the unexpected outage from an oil sands project in Canada. Syncrude Canada saw an equipment malfunction that could reduce flows from Canada by 360,000 bpd for the month of July, “putting Cushing potentially on a path to an inventory stockout,” according to a note from Goldman Sachs. “With the global market pricing to pull crude out of the U.S., this loss of U.S. supplies will exacerbate the current global de?cit, making the increase in OPEC production all the more required.” The expected loss could translate into a reduction in inventories by around 14 million barrels.

The outage in Canada led to a “sharp repricing of North American crudes with sharply stronger WTI timespreads and tighter differentials,” Goldman wrote. The cash vs. front-month WTI differential went from essentially nothing to nearly $3 per barrel immediately after Syncrude Canada’s announcement. In other words, investors became worried about the immediate availability of supply.

The narrowing of WTI to Brent could eliminate the incentive to ship oil by rail from the Midwest to the Gulf Coast, as the arbitrage opportunity gets zeroed out. “Such differentials, if sustained, would help limit the magnitude of steeper draws in Cushing, albeit by reducing supply to the USGC and global market,” Goldman concluded. In essence, the shrinking price differential between WTI and Brent could lead to more oil staying within the U.S., offsetting the interruptions from Canada to the U.S. Midwest.

That means a potential slowdown in the growth of U.S. crude oil exports. U.S. oil exports surged this year, particularly to Asia, because Asian refiners could save a bundle by opting for crude oil from the U.S. Gulf Coast instead of oil from the Middle East, for instance, even after factoring in higher transportation costs. There is still plenty of room for U.S. exports at a $6-per-barrel WTI discount, but if it narrows further, the business case starts to get trickier.

The pressure on WTI could ease if the outage in Canada is not as bad as feared, or if U.S. shale continues to grow at a quick pace. But, for the first time in months, WTI and Brent have narrowed the gap.

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Five months after banning a number of ads on its social network, Facebook has updated its “prohibited products and services policy” allowing crypotcurrencies to once again be advertised (but not ICOs or binary options).

image courtesy of CoinTelegraph

Facebook’s Product Management Director, Rob Leatham explains:

In January, we announced a new policy to “prohibit ads that promote financial products and services that are frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices, such as binary options, initial coin offerings and cryptocurrency.” At the time we also made clear that “this policy is intentionally broad while we work to better detect deceptive and misleading advertising practices… We will revisit this policy and how we enforce it as our signals improve.”

In the last few months, we’ve looked at the best way to refine this policy — to allow some ads while also working to ensure that they’re safe. So starting June 26, we’ll be updating our policy to allow ads that promote cryptocurrency and related content from pre-approved advertisers. But we’ll continue to prohibit ads that promote binary options and initial coin offerings.

Advertisers wanting to run ads for cryptocurrency products and services must submit an application to help us assess their eligibility — including any licenses they have obtained, whether they are traded on a public stock exchange, and other relevant public background on their business. Given these restrictions, not everyone who wants to advertise will be able to do so. But we’ll listen to feedback, look at how well this policy works and continue to study this technology so that, if necessary, we can revise it over time.

It’s important that we continue to help prevent or remove misleading advertising for these products and services. So please continue to report content that violates our Advertising Policies by selecting “report ad” in the upper right-hand corner of any advertisement.

For now, no immediate reaction in crypto-prices…

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Days after Austria threatened to reinstate border checks, Austrian forces conducted border-security exercises on Monday in the border town of Spielfeld in preparation for a wave of 80,000 migrants expected to travel through the new “Balkan route” from Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia and Croatia to Western and Central Europe.

“A state which can’t protect its borders when needed loses its credibility,” said Interior Minister Herbert Kickl, who was in charge of the exercise along with Defence Minister Mario Kunasek. Over 500 Austrian policemen and 220 soldiers, including those in the new “Puma” unit took part in the drills, which included a display of “Black Hawk” helicopters and simulated border unrest in which cadets played unruly migrants. 

Austria simulates response to migrants in border exercise | https://t.co/N30JMuhlZP pic.twitter.com/q8ZLhUmHBC

— RTÉ News (@rtenews) June 26, 2018

Both Kickl and Kunasek are members of the conservative Freedom party (FPOe) – which has been the junior partner in a coalition government under conservative chancellor Sebastian Kurz. On Monday, Kursz said that Austria would “be ready and do everything necessary to protect our borders if Horst Seehofer, Germany’s interior minister, goes ahead with plans to protect his country’s southern boundary.”

“We must also be prepared for the case that in a sudden large migratory flow, the border protection measures in these friendly countries no longer help,” said Interior Minister Herbert Kickl in mid-June, adding “We also show that we are serious. There will be no registration and wave-taking with us, but a real defensive attitude.”

“The situation is critical,” said General Fritz Lang, director of Austria’s Federal Criminal Police Office, who says that 30 illegal border crossings are attempted every day. According to Lang, the migrants are primarily young male loners, “many of whom are considered “terrorist fighters,” which require strong border protection.

Austria constructed a reinforced fence on the Slovenian border in late 2015 after a flood of asylum seekers began pouring into the country from Slovenia. Slovenia, meanwhile, built a wall at their southern border with Croatia to stem the flow of migrants north. 

Influx of #refugees: On the #Slovenian–#Austria border. #Sentilj – #Spielfeld on 29-12-2015 15 clock. pic.twitter.com/7lTkuDShnY

— Onlinemagazin (@OnlineMagazin) December 30, 2015

Lang, commenting on the “unsightly scenes” when migrants attempt to enter the country, said “We certainly will not defuse our own situation if we simply mislead people by waving migrants through. And our policemen will be standing so close to the Slovenian border that any application for asylum there will be a case for the Slovenians.”

Kickl, meanwhile, had some harsh words for German chancellor Angela Merkel two weeks ago, saying “The whole problem started with the sentence ‘We can do it’,” in reference to accepting the influx of migrants sweeping Europe.

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