UH-OH: China leads in top 500 supercomputers with 202 versus the US with 143.

Just six months ago, the US led with 169 systems, with China coming in at 160. Despite the reversal of fortunes, the 144 systems claimed by the US gives them a solid second place finish, with Japan in third place with 35, followed by Germany with 20, France with 18, and the UK with 15.

China has also overtaken the US in aggregate performance as well. The Asian superpower now claims 35.4 percent of the TOP500 flops, with the US in second place with 29.6 percent.

The original plan was to upgrade the system with the newer Knights Landing devices. But after the US government instituted an embargo on these chips to certain Chinese supercomputing sites, including the Guangzhou center, the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) had to come up with plan B. In this case, that meant developing their own coprocessor. That turned out be the Matrix-2000, a DSP-type chip, tweaked for more general-purpose computation.

According to slides presented at the forum, each Matrix-2000 will deliver 2.4576 teraflops (peak), which more than doubles the 1.0 teraflops delivered by the original Xeon Phi chip.

China’s reputation has been a fast follower rather than an innovator, but that looks like it’s changing.

RELATED? China and the CIA Are Competing to Fund Silicon Valley’s AI Startups.

PATRICK POOLE: Hillary Clinton PERSONALLY Overturned Visa Ban for Islamist Figure Now Accused of Rape.

HMM: GOP megadonor Adelson publicly breaks with Bannon.

Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, the GOP’s most prominent megadonor, is publicly breaking with former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon over his efforts to oust Republican incumbents in 2018.

“The Adelsons will not be supporting Steve Bannon’s efforts,” said Andy Abboud, an Adelson spokesman. “They are supporting Mitch McConnell 100 percent. For anyone to infer anything otherwise is wrong.”

That’s pretty clear.

NOW? Now It’s The Democrats Who Have A ‘Russian Problem.’

Richard Pollack with a Daily Caller exclusive:

Democratic fingerprints are all over a growing number of Russia-related scandals, including payments to Fusion GPS for its Russian-sourced Trump dossier, lobbying on behalf of Russia’s largest bank to lift economic sanctions, former President Barack Obama’s administration’s approval of the sale of Uranium One to Russia, and giving twenty percent of America’s uranium reserves to Moscow.

Republican Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Chuck Grassley of Iowa have called for the appointment of a special prosecutor to look into the mounting scandals tying Democrats to Russia.

“The bottom line is very simple, says former U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova in an interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation. “The Russian connection now is owned by the Democratic Party.”

What are the Democratic ties to Russia?

Read on.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Wikileaks, RUSSIA, Hannity and Much, Much Moore.

YOU DON’T SAY: Louis C.K.’s former manager: ‘What I did was wrong.’

Dave Becky wrote a lengthy response, confirmed by EW, about his role in the stand-up comic’s actions — most specifically about an incident at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen in 2002, when Louis C.K. allegedly exposed himself to comics Dana Min Goodman and Julia Wolov in his hotel room. Goodman and Wolov said they “heard that Louis C.K.’s manager was upset that they were talking about [the misconduct] openly.” Becky originally told the Times: “I never threatened anyone.”

Here’s Becky’s new full statement:

“I profoundly regret and am deeply sorry for not listening to and not understanding what happened to Dana and Julia. If I had, I would have taken this event as seriously as it deserved to be, and I would have confronted Louis, which would have been the right thing to do.

“I knew nothing!” doesn’t come across as a very believable apology. Worse, it feeds into the (correct) perception that Hollywood is steeped in Sergeant Schultz-ism, with Becky and untold others like him enabling a culture of sexual abuse.

GOOD LORD: Green Beret killed by strangulation reportedly turned down illegal money from Navy SEALs.

GOP SENATOR CORY GARDNER: Senate Should ‘Vote to Expel’ Moore if He Wins.

AND ANOTHER ONE: George H.W. Bush apologizes after sixth woman alleges groping.

SHOCKER: Germany Is a Coal-Burning, Gas-Guzzling Climate Change Hypocrite.

I’M EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: Justice Dept. to Weigh Inquiry Into Clinton Foundation.

The department, in a letter sent to the House Judiciary Committee, said the prosecutors would examine allegations that donations to the Clinton Foundation were tied to a 2010 decision by the Obama administration to allow a Russian nuclear agency to buy Uranium One, a company that owned access to uranium in the United States, and other issues.

The letter appeared to be a direct response to Mr. Trump’s statement on Nov. 3, when he said he was disappointed with his beleaguered attorney general, Jeff Sessions, and that longstanding unproven allegations about the Clintons and the Obama administration should be investigated.

Any such investigation would raise questions about the independence of federal investigations under Mr. Trump. Since Watergate, the Justice Department has largely operated independently of political influence on cases related to the president’s opponents.

That’s rich.

JOHN KASICH: It’s time for lawmakers to get into a room and figure out some sort of solution on gun control.

I’m so old, I can still remember when Kasich presented himself as a libertarian-leaning Republican. Although to be fair, these days that does seem like an awfully long time ago.

SHOCK: More Than Half of California Pregnancies Unintended.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Clinton Corruption Update For November 12, 2017.

RECOVERY: Inside the Fight to Study Marijuana for Vets with PTSD.

Cannabis remains classified as a Schedule I substance which means, according to the federal government, it has no accepted medical use. However, the PTSD cannabis trial—the first of its kind to rigorously investigate the safety and efficacy of veterans’ claims about using cannabis for PTSD—is an FDA-approved study using cannabis given to the researchers by the federal government. These types of seemingly contradictory policies have created confusion and, some cannabis advocates argue, bureaucratic excuses which prevent progress in the arena of cannabis research.

After seven years of regulatory hurdles, the researchers finally began sending veterans through their trial in February without recruitment assistance from the VA. But now, they say they’ve exhausted all the veterans organizations near their lab and they won’t be able to find the roughly 50 more volunteers needed for the study without help from the Phoenix VA.

The leadership at the VA in Phoenix—the closest VA to the trial’s lab in Scottsdale, Arizona—still will not permit the researchers to hang flyers in their facility, talk to their clinicians, or do anything else that would inform veterans who go to their site about the study. According to Phoenix VA chief public affairs officer Paul Coupaud, that would change if Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin told them to allow it.

That’s why the American Legion, the country’s largest veterans organization with more than 2 million members, has been calling on Shulkin for more than a year to tell the Phoenix VA to help.

Let the research go forward — you never know what you’ll find.

PREVIOUSLY: FDA designates MDMA [Ecstasy] as “breakthrough therapy” for PTSD.

IGNORANCE IS BLISS? Trump’s Chief of Staff on Trump’s Tweets: “I do not follow the tweets.”

A GREAT ESCAPE: North Korean soldier shot in defection dash across DMZ.

The soldier bolted from a guard post at the northern side of Panmunjom village in the Joint Security Area to the southern side of the village, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. He was shot in the shoulder and elbow and was taken to a South Korean hospital, the South’s Defense Ministry said. It wasn’t immediately known how serious the soldier’s injuries were or why he decided to defect.

Living in a country where they shoot you for trying to leave seems like reason enough.

ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH: The Healthiest State In The Country Has Some Of The Steepest Premiums.

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: ‘We Need to Normalize the Black Family Again:’ Author Hopes to Reinforce Traditional Families with New Children’s Book.

Bourgeois values work for anyone.

SALENA ZITO, VODKAPUNDIT, AND THE HOUSE MAJORITY: For best results, legislate like there’s no tomorrow.

AND IF YOU TELL HIM HE ISN’T, YOU’RE THE CRAZY ONE: ‘Transracial’ Man Born White Feels Like He Is Filipino.

BOOM: Missouri Attorney General Launches Probe Into Google’s Business Practices.

Missouri’s attorney general has launched a broad investigation into whether Google is violating the state’s consumer-protection and antitrust laws, a new front in the internet giant’s regulatory battles.

Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley on Monday said he issued an investigative subpoena to probe Google’s collection of user data, its use of other sites’ content, and its alleged manipulation of search results to favor its own services.

Mr. Hawley said his probe was in part prompted by a record $2.7 billion fine European regulators levied against Google in June for allegedly favoring its services in its search results.

“We’re concerned they’re engaged in a similar pattern of behavior in the United States,” he told reporters.

Developing…

BUT OF COURSE: Colin Kaepernick GQ’s ‘Citizen of the Year,’ Pro-Sharia Linda Sarsour Also Makes List.

WINNING: Ukraine Turns to American Coal to Defend Itself Against Russia.

JAZZ SHAW: California Sheriffs Still Fighting New Sanctuary State Law.

Sheriff Mims has already enacted a variety of policies designed to make it easier for ICE to enforce the law. She set up office space for ICE agents inside her jail so they could have direct access to prisoners for questioning and possible detention where appropriate. She also restructured the schedule, pushing release times for prisoners to later in the day so immigration enforcement agents would have more time to arrive and take care of business. Most of these programs won’t be affected by the new law, but she’s in the process of negotiating other deals to get around the intentional impediments put in place by the state government.

The real irony here is that Mims is actually helping to avoid what most of the Democrats in Sacramento claim is part of the problem. Do you recall the massive ICE deployment dubbed Operation Safe City from a couple of months ago? Agents arrested literally hundreds of criminal illegal aliens in sanctuary cities across the country, going to people’s homes, places of employment, courthouses and other public areas. And the only reason they did it was because they had insufficient access to the criminals at the jails where they could be taken into custody in a safe environment.

California is powerless to stop ICE from doing its job. All they can do is make it more inconvenient and time consuming.

California’s sanctuary law is the legislative equivalent of a temper tantrum.