Peter Thiel's Palantir vs. the Pentagon's $600-Toilet-Seat Mindset
Fortune
A new struggle over Pentagon procurement involves some of the Trump administration's most powerful players. They are all connected to Palantir Technologies, a company of ardent, even smug, believers in the superiority of their products who are trying to crash a long-running, exclusive party involving the annual dispensing of hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars. Anti-Gorsuch Activist's 'Dark Money' Hypocrisy
Washington Free Beacon
Heather McGhee, the president of liberal think tank Demos, criticized Supreme Court nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last week because of his stance on Citizens United and public disclosures of campaign contributions. But Demos has been criticized as a dark money group that also does not disclose its donors' identities. At Site of Deaths, Reporters Find Cost of U.S.-ISIS Battle
New York Times
American-led airstrikes in Syria and Iraq have increased the number of civilian casualties as U.S.-backed forces work to push entrenched terrorist fighters out of urban areas. In western Mosul, U.S. bombing flattened almost an entire block of the city last week and killed 200 or more civilians, "potentially making it one of the worst civilian tolls ever in an American military strike in Iraq." Malaysia: Firm Suspected of Violating North Korea Sanctions
Wall Street Journal
Malaysian officials are investigating allegations that North Korea is using Malaysian businesses to violate international sanctions against the country, including one organization--Malaysia Korea Partners--that uses North Korean workers on multimillion-dollar housing projects in Africa. Human rights groups say that MKP's Korean workers must give most of their earnings to the North Korean regime as a condition of working abroad. Alabama: Manufacturing Renaissance Comes With a Heavy Price
Bloomberg
Alabama's growing auto parts industry employs 26,000 workers who earned $1.3 billion in wages last year alone. But the state's manufacturing boom, which has replaced the region's dying textile industry, has been hamstrung by safety concerns and a global economy that's forcing it to "compete for low-margin orders against suppliers in Mexico and Asia." Inside Silicon Valley's Mission to Make Death Optional
New Yorker
The quest for longevity, as seen from California: When a Nobel Prize-winning scientist takes questions at a party, Goldie Hawn, regal on a comfy sofa, purrs: âI have a question about the mitochondria. Iâve been told about a molecule called glutathione that helps the health of the cell?â The premise of the evening was that answers, and maybe even a solution, were just around the corner. Â | 
