Trump urges end to probe ‘right now,’ setting off new storm
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump bluntly declared on Wednesday his attorney general should terminate “right now” the federal probe into the campaign that took him to the White House, a newly fervent attack on the special counsel investigation that could imperil his presidency. Trump also assailed the trial, just underway, of his former campaign chairman by the special counsel’s team.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders scrambled to explain that Trump’s tweet was “not an order” and the president was not directing his attorney general to do anything.
“It’s the president’s opinion,” she said.
But Trump’s early morning tweetstorm again raised the specter that he could try to more directly bring special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia-Trump election-collusion probe to a premature end. And it revived the idea that the president’s tweets themselves might be used as evidence that he is attempting to obstruct justice.
Army using drug waivers, bonuses to fill ranks
WASHINGTON — Under the gun to increase the size of the force, the Army is issuing more waivers for past drug use or bad conduct by recruits, and pouring an extra $200 million into bonuses this year to attract and retain soldiers.
According to data obtained by The Associated Press, nearly one-third of all the waivers granted by the Army in the first six months of this fiscal year were for conduct and drug problems, mainly involving marijuana use. That number is significantly higher than the other three military services, and represents a steady increase over the past three years.
At the same time, the Army increased bonuses by more than 30 percent this year, with enlistment money going to recruits for high-tech jobs such as satellite communications and cryptologists. Recruits in those jobs can get up to an additional $30,000 for a five-year enlistment.
Tesla burns $739.5 million in cash on way to record 2Q loss
Electric car maker Tesla Inc. burned through $739.5 million in cash last quarter, paving the way to a company record $717.5 million net loss as it cranked out more electric cars.
But CEO Elon Musk pledged to post net profits in future quarters, and on a conference call, he apologized to two analysts he cut off on the company’s first-quarter call. Telsa’s shares jumped 9.3 percent to $328.85 in after-hours trading.
The net loss more than doubled from the same quarter a year ago, and was slightly larger than the first quarter. But Tesla’s cash burn in the second quarter slowed from about $1.1 billion.
From wire sources
On the call, Musk also said he expects the company to avoid returning to the markets for capital and to be “essentially self-funding on a go-forward basis.” Tesla would use money generated from sales to fund big projects such as an estimated $2 billion new factory in China and another plant in Europe, he said.
The company also said that Model 3 gross profit margins turned slightly positive during the quarter as it worked out expensive kinks in its manufacturing system.
Hemingway story from 1956 published for first time
NEW YORK — The themes and trappings are familiar for an Ernest Hemingway narrative: Paris, wartime, talk of books and wine and the scars of battle.
But the story itself has been little known beyond the scholarly community for decades: “A Room on the Garden Side,” written in 1956, is being published for the first time. The brief, World War II-era fiction appears this week in the summer edition of The Strand Magazine, a literary quarterly which has released obscure works by Raymond Chandler, John Steinbeck and others.
“Hemingway’s deep love for his favorite city as it is just emerging from Nazi occupation is on full display, as are the hallmarks of his prose,” Strand Managing Editor Andrew F. Gulli wrote in an editorial note.
Kirk Curnutt, a board member of The Hemingway Society, contributed an afterword for the Strand, saying that “the story contains all the trademark elements readers love in Hemingway.”
“Steeped in talk of Marcel Proust, Victor Hugo, and Alexandre Dumas, and featuring a long excerpt in French from Charles Baudelaire’s ‘Les Fleurs du Mal,’ the story implicitly wonders whether the heritage of Parisian culture can recover from the dark taint of fascism,” Curnutt wrote.