Buckle Up, Buttercup

Ex-FBI Attorney To Plead Guilty For Altering Email

Former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith is expected to plead guilty on a charge of altering a document used to seek continued surveillance of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page as part of the Mueller investigation. The DOJ’s inspector general reported last December that Clinesmith altered an email about Page to say he was “not a source” for another U.S. intelligence agency, when Page had publicly said he briefly worked for the CIA.

More: Clinesmith’s guilty plea represents the first criminal charges stemming from an inquiry into the origins of the Mueller investigation that began in May 2019.

Protests Continue In Belarus

Large-scale anti-government protests were held in Minsk, Belarus, on Sunday as President Alexander Lukashenko simultaneously gave an address to a smaller crowd of supporters. Local media suggested a crowd of 31,000 turned up to hear the president speak, while ~220,000 anti-Lukashenko demonstrators gathered elsewhere in Minsk (population: 1.98M) to protest last Sunday’s disputed election results, which show Lukashenko winning his sixth term.

More: Russian President Vladimir Putin told President Lukashenko that Moscow is ready to provide assistance to Belarus, if necessary, in accordance with a collective military pact.

Pentagon Confirms UFO Task Force

The Pentagon on Friday confirmed the existence of a Navy-led “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Task Force” in charge of monitoring ongoing encounters with strange aerial objects and determining their threat level. The task force, created Aug. 4, will also investigate past incidents of UAP, including those captured on Navy fighter videos that the Pentagon declassified in April.

COVID Roundup: The FDA granted emergency use authorization for a saliva-based diagnostic test developed by Yale. | According to a CDC survey done in late June, more than one fourth of young adults in the U.S. said they “seriously considered suicide” over the past month. | New Zealand’s government delayed the country’s upcoming general elections by four weeks due to an outbreak in Auckland.

Worth Noting: President Trump’s younger brother, Robert Trump, died at the age of 71. | Hundreds of thousands went without power in CA over the weekend due to soaring temperatures and AC use. | An independent government watchdog concluded on Friday that acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf and acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli are legally ineligible for their roles.

The Last (Byte)Dance

President Trump signed an executive order on Friday forcing Chinese tech giant ByteDance to divest itself of its U.S. TikTok business within 90 days. The order also compels ByteDance to destroy all copies of TikTok data attached to U.S. users, and to notify the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. when it has done so.

A Different App-roach

A growing number of companies - including Spotify, Sonos, & Facebook - have joined Epic Games in pushing back on Apple’s 30% cut on purchases made via apps downloaded from the App Store. Epic’s flagship game, Fortnite, was removed from Apple’s App Store last Thursday after Epic introduced a new payment option that bypassed Apple’s fee. Fortnite was similarly removed from the Google Play Store, but remains available for download directly from Epic’s website. Epic filed a prepared lawsuit against both companies shortly after the removal.

Retail Details

According to U.S. Census Bureau data, retail sales in July rose to a record high of $536B, representing a 1.2% month-over-month increase (2.7% YOY). Experts warn the industry’s recent surge may be in jeopardy after the $600 federal unemployment supplement expired July 31, and have tempered their expectations for August’s numbers.

More: The biggest U.S. mall-owner, Simon Property Group, and apparel licensing firm Authentic Brands have been chosen as the winning joint bid to acquire bankrupt denim maker Lucky Brand for $140.1M.

Bonus Reads: See how the pandemic has changed Americans’ Internet usage. | Bots kept winning T-Mobile’s promotional contests and sparked a Reddit whodunit - how it may have happened. | The state of Michigan partnered with an Alphabet subsidiary to test a 40-mile autonomous vehicle corridor between Ann Arbor and Detroit.

No Man Left Behind

Earlier this month, a group of five friends from Edmonton, Canada, set off on a 4 km hike up the Grotto Canyon trail to view a picturesque waterfall at the top. However, this wasn’t a standard hiking group - one of its members, 21-year-old Aaron Friesen, has been in a wheelchair his entire life due to cerebral palsy.

As the path got steeper, it became harder and harder to push Aaron’s chair. But, as a member of the group, Willy Peters, later told CTV News, “Aaron goes wherever we go.” Willy came up with the idea to stick logs underneath the wheelchair, and together the four friends carried Aaron up the trail, catching looks of awe and inspiration from fellow hikers passing by.

The Road Not Taken

When Elton Hood and Tracy Eckhardt of New Windsor, IL, met Dennis, an 80-year-old from Arizona, last month at their local gas station, the older man was noticeably disoriented. The octogenarian was traveling to Wisconsin to visit his estranged son, but after a week of driving – and with hundreds of miles left until his destination – he was desperately lost.

Determined to help Dennis make it to his son’s house safely, Elton and Tracy embarked on a spontaneous three-hour road trip to Madison, WI, driving ahead of the older man as he followed them in his car. After successfully reuniting Dennis with his son, whom the older man had not seen in 19 years, the couple offered to escort their new friend back to Arizona.

Bear In Mind

Christopher Vane, 58, says his mother, Ursula, was always his biggest supporter, imparting to him her love for animals and passion for caring for them. In the final years before she died, Christopher remembers Ursula talking about staying in a “barn up in heaven” with all the animals from her past.

Six months after Ursula passed away in 2016, Christopher opened Little Bear, a no-kill sanctuary in Florida named after his mother (Ursula means “little bear” in Latin). Over the past three years, Christopher’s sanctuary has rescued more than 150 animals and is currently home to 75 pigs, 29 sheep, and a handful of other species.