By Christopher Ingraham @ WashingtonPost.com/Business, April 26

Researchers attempt to measure how often people oversell themselves in society

Nationwide, the arrival of white homeowners in places they’ve long avoided is jolting the economics of the land beneath everyone.

By Emily Badger, Quoct​rung Bui and Robert Gebeloff @ NYTimes.com, April 27

RALEIGH, N.C. — [....] Here, and in the center of cities across the United States, a kind of demographic change most often associated with gentrifying parts of New York and Washington has been accelerating. White residents are increasingly moving into nonwhite neighborhoods, largely African-American ones.

In America, racial diversity has much more often come to white neighborhoods. Between 1980 and 2000, more than 98 percent of census tracts that grew more diverse did so in that way, as Hispanic, Asian-American and African-American families settled in neighborhoods that were once predominantly white.

But since 2000, according to an analysis of demographic and housing data, the arrival of white residents is now changing nonwhite communities in cities of all sizes, affecting about one in six predominantly African-American census tracts. The pattern, though still modest in scope, is playing out with remarkable consistency across the country — in ways that jolt the mortgage market, the architecture, the value of land itself.

In city after city, a map of racial change shows predominantly minority neighborhoods near downtown growing whiter, while suburban neighborhoods that were once largely white are experiencing an increased share of black, Hispanic and Asian-American residents [....]

By Darrell Smith @ SacBee.com, April 26

Sunnyvale police say Isaiah Joel Peoples, the Army veteran with Sacramento ties plowed through a group in a busy crosswalk Tuesday because he believed some of the people were Muslim.

“Based on our investigation, new evidence shows that the defendant intentionally targeted victims based on their race and his belief that they were of the Muslim faith,” Sunnyvale police Chief Pham Ngo said, according to San Francisco television station KPIX.[....]

The victims include a critically hurt and comatose 13-year-old girl with a life-threatening brain injury, according to court document [....]

Sunnyvale police had sought to determine why Peoples, a Department of Defense auditor believed to be driving meals to his waiting Bible study group, gunned his Toyota Corolla through the busy South Bay intersection and plowed through the eight people crossing there. But witnesses said Peoples repeatedly said, “Thank you, Jesus,” after the apparent road attack.

In a Sacramento interview Thursday, Peoples’ mother described a son who struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder after he completed his tour of duty in Iraq, suffering seizures and blackouts [....]

By Richard Florida @ CityLab​.com, April 24

By Fred Barbash @ WashingtonPost.com, April 25, 9:01 pm

ALSO SEE NEWS OF KANSAS SUPREME COURT ABORTION RULING in first comment on this post.

A federal judge issued a nationwide injunction Thursday, temporarily blocking the Trump administration from imposing new antiabortion restrictions on the use of federal family planning funds designed to assist 4 million low-income women.

The rule, promulgated in March by the Department of Health and Human Services, would have barred programs receiving the money from saying or doing anything to advise or assist a patient about securing an abortion. Critics called it a “gag rule.”

Groups receiving money under the Title X program, about $286 million annually, already were prohibited from performing abortions with those funds. But under the new rule, they could no longer refer a patient for an abortion and would also have to maintain a “clear physical and financial separation” between services funded by the government and abortion services or referrals [....]

By Evan Ratliff @ Wired.com, Jan. 29

This story is excerpted from The Mastermind: Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal, by Evan Ratliff.

How a brilliant self-made software programmer from South Africa single-handedly built an online startup that became one of the largest individual contributors to America’s burgeoning painkiller epidemic. In his world, everything was for sale. Pure methamphetamine manufactured in North Korea. Yachts built to outrun coast guards. Police protection and judges’ favor. Crates of military-grade weapons. Private jets full of gold. Missile-guidance systems. Unbreakable encryption. African militias. Explosives. Kidnapping. Torture. Murder. It's a world that lurks just outside of our everyday perception, in the dark corners of the internet we never visit, the quiet ports where ships slip in by night, the back room of the clinic down the street.

Analysis by Parker Asman @ InsightCrime.org, April 25

[....] The United States government has played a bizarre role in backing President Morales’ efforts to undermine investigations carried out by the CICIG and Attorney General’s Office into the alleged criminal conduct of Morales and his political party. However, the Estrada investigation by US authorities has returned attention to Morales — even as he continues his attacks on the CICIG.

US Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) is the key supporter of Morales’ drive to quash Guatemala’s anti-graft unit. He has halted US fundsfor the CICIG — which accounts for just under half of the commission’s budget — due to its alleged role in helping prosecute a Russian family in relation to a scheme to fabricate identification documents. Those allegations, however, were shown to be unfounded and lacking any evidence. Yet Rubio alleged that the CICIG was manipulated or possibly even working with the Russian government in prosecuting the family.

While Rubio and other powerbrokers have hobbled the CICIG from abroad, Morales has waged a war against its prosecutors at home [....]

Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein had harsh words for politicians and the press in his first public comments since the release of the special counsel’s report.

By Philip Bump & Devlin Barrett @ WashingtonPost.com, April 25

NEW YORK — Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein hit back hard against politicians and the press Thursday night, and warned that hacking and social media ma­nipu­la­tion are “only the tip of the iceberg” when it comes to Russian efforts to influence American elections.

Speaking at the Public Servants Dinner of the Armenian Bar Association, Rosenstein unleashed his sharpest critique yet of those who have attacked his handling of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigative report into Russian election interference and President Trump’s conduct.

Rosenstein’s speech, probably one of his last as a senior Justice Department official, marked his first public comments since the release of the report, and he did not hold back in discussing his tumultuous two years as the No. 2 at the Justice Department [....]

A leak of classified documents from the French Directorate of Military Intelligence shows that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are extremely dependent on U.S. and European weapons for their war on Yemen.