By Alan Feuer @ NYTimes.com, Jan. 15

The former president of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, took a $100 million bribe from Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the infamous crime lord known as El Chapo, according to a witness at Mr. Guzman’s trial. The stunning testimony was delivered Tuesday in a New York courtroom by Alex Cifuentes Villa, a Colombian drug lord who worked closely with Mr. Guzmán from 2007 to 2013 [....]

Interesting as "not just gossip" because: he gave her the name! Further, she chose not to use it for her main product: herself as an entertainer.

@ CNN.com, 2 hrs. ago

Violent radical Islamist terrorism so not over, this one was like allout war, with bombs (both car and suicide) followed by gunmen.

.....] Attack started with car bombs

@ Pew, new study, Jan. 3

What jumps out for me: I see a party difference as to Protestant Work Ethic vs. enjoying life:

By Ed Pilkington & Martin Pengelly @ TheGuardian.com, Jan. 15

Exclusive: ex-New Jersey governor, who had prosecuted Kushner’s father, was sacked as head of Trump’s transition team

When they did talk about Trump, candidates were advised to actively try and de-emphasize him

By Sam Stein @ DailyBeast.com, Jan. 12

In the early days of 2018, two leading Democratic groups commissioned a study on how best to engage and mobilize African-American voters. The impetus was the special Senate election in Alabama in which a groundswell of black voter turnout led to the shock election of Democrat Doug Jones.

By Niraj Chokshi @ NYTimes.com, Jan. 11

A federal jury on Thursday found a Texas couple guilty of enslaving a girl from Guinea for 16 years at their home in a Dallas-Fort Worth suburb, where she was forced to cook, clean and care for their children, investigators said.

Note poll is of "Americans", not registered voters and plenty of people said "both" even though that wasn't an offered choice.

@ Axios.com, Jan. 11

We're less than 400 days out from the Iowa Caucuses, and even a casual observer can see a ton of action on the Democratic presidential primary front.

With graph with pix arranged according to "Announced/Exploratory/Possible", cross-links and some original commentary.

‘Could you make these guys essential?’

By Lisa Rein & Jeff Stault @ WashingtonPost.com, Jan. 11

The IRS was unable to process a key form that lenders need to verify the employment and incomes of home loan applicants — a roadblock that could have brought the mortgage industry to a halt.

The extravagant splendor of the animal kingdom can’t be explained by natural selection alone — so how did it come to be?

Feature by Ferris Jabr for New York Times Magazine, published Jan. 9

By Adam Goldman, Michael S. Schmidt & Nicholas Fandos @ NYTimes.com, Jan. 11, 25 min. ago

WASHINGTON — In the days after President Trump fired James B. Comey as F.B.I. director, law enforcement officials became so concerned by the president’s behavior that they began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests, according to former law enforcement officials and others familiar with the investigation.