Candidate Trump Was in Loop on Moscow Tower Deal
Wall Street Journal
Michael Cohen, a Trump Organization attorney, said he discussed a prospective Trump Tower in Moscow with Donald Trump three times during the 2016 campaign -- a period when the candidate repeatedly denied any business ties to Russia. Now the Trump-Cohen discussions may come under scrutiny because of a January 2016 Cohen email to the Kremlin seeking "assistance" in the deal. But Cohen says he didn't tell Trump about that. Ex-Obama Lawyers in Pro-Kremlin Influence-Peddling
Daily Beast
As the examination of pro-Kremlin influence-peddling continues, Democrats are coming under scrutiny too. Paul Manafort, future Trump campaign chairman, turned to a team led by ex-Obama White House counsel Greg Craig to produce a report that whitewashed the pro-Putin Ukrainian government of Viktor Yanukovych, a Manafort client, for jailing Yanukovych's anti-Kremlin predecessor. Cheerleading Coach Fired for Forcing Splits
9 News
A Denver cheerleading coach who was caught on camera forcing girls crying in pain to do splits has been dismissed from his job. Ozell Williams, a coach at East High School in Denver, was filmed pushing students down into the splits, while other pupils held up their arms. Making matters worse for the school district: Ozell had been fired from another Colorado high school in 2016 for the same reason. Spurious Gang Ties Used in Deportations, Lawsuits Allege
Marshall Project
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, is using faulty information compiled by local police to deport supposed gang members, several lawsuits allege. Critics say that because of the loose criteria used to identify potential members, people with no gang affiliation are likely to be swept up in raids meant for serious criminals. Sale of Interior Secretary's Motor Home Raises Questions
Associated Press
The Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, raised campaign-finance red flags when his former campaign motor home was sold to a friend in the Montana legislature -- for well below market value. Critics say it amounts to a $25,000 gift to a wealthy businessman up for a job in Zinke's department. Before They Were ISIS
Ozy
Rasheed Benyahia felt like nobody was "doing anything" to stop President Bashar al-Assad's atrocities in Syria, so he joined ISIS. Benyahia was one of 700 fighters from Britain to do so since 2011. Another recruit drifted to radical Islam after his parents' divorce and a suicide attempt. Ozy, a news site funded by Laurene Powell Jobs, gives a preview of a National Geographic series about the lure of ISIS in the West. Sunken History of a Revolutionary War Prison Ship
New York Post
During the Revolutionary War, twice as many Americans died aboard the prison ship Jersey than in combat. The teeming, fetid vessel was the worst of several veritable floating concentration camps docked near what would become the Brooklyn Navy Yard. It was intended by the British as an instrument of terror to quell the American rebellion. Instead, a new book says, it became a patriot rallying cry. But unlike Pearl Harbor or the Alamo, it was allowed to fade in memory after the war, as it sank in Wallabout Bay. | 
