THE HOTTEST JAMS: Woman’s headphones explode mid-flight after she falls sleep listening to music.

Photos show the young woman’s face covered with what appears to be soot, with her hair and hand singed from the exploding electronics.

She says she threw the headphones to the ground when they began to spark, and eventually put them in a bucket of water for the rest of the flight.

“People were coughing and choking the entire way home” as the smell of burnt metal and plastic lingered, the woman said.

The cause of the mini-blast is believed to be the batteries in the headphones — which were not identified by brand — according to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.

The authorities really need to go public with the brand.

WELL, GOOD: Mattis Withdraws Anne Patterson as Controversial Choice for Defense Position.

She was at best an incomprehensible pick.

FASTER, PLEASE: President Trump’s FDA nominee could mean better drugs sooner at lower cost.

STEALTH ANNEXATION: Moscow moves to absorb rebel Georgian region’s military.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday ordered his officials to seal an agreement which will, in effect, incorporate the armed forces of Georgia’s breakaway South Ossetia region into the Russian military’s command structure.

Georgia condemned the move, which is likely to spark accusations from its Western allies that the Kremlin is absorbing the breakaway region into Russia by stealth, even though under international law it is part of Georgia’s sovereign territory.

Moscow has de facto controlled South Ossetia, a sliver of mainly mountainous land in the northeast of Georgia, for years. But it has, on paper at least, treated South Ossetia as a separate state, not part of Russia.

According to the text of the draft agreement that Putin ordered his officials to conclude, the separatists will adopt new operating procedures for their armed forces which will be subject to approval by Moscow, and the forces’ structure and objectives will be determined in agreement with Russia.

FLASHBACK: Russia Keeps Moving Border With Georgia.

The border of Russia-controlled South Ossetia continues to encroach on the Georgian village, displacing residents who once had a home in Jariasheni but who now would be arrested for trespassing if they tried to enter it.

“Russia starts right here,” one resident told the Times. “But who knows where Russia will start tomorrow or the next day.”

The new border is sometimes noted by newly-installed barbed wire or a “state border” sign that has moved.

It’s unclear what Russia’s motive or end game is, but the Times reports the Russian seem intent on restoring borders to match a 1980s era Soviet Union map.

Since Putin is on record saying that the dissolution of the Soviet Union “was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” and has since waged war on Ukraine and Georgia, annexed Crimea, threatened the Baltics, and is now encroaching farther into Georgia, it should be perfectly clear what his end game is.

SO. MUCH. WINNING. Trump to announce review of vehicle emissions rules.

The move by Trump would be a victory for automakers after months of pushing the new administration to reconsider the rules, which they say would be too expensive, could cost jobs and are out of step with vehicles consumers want to buy.

Trump will visit an autonomous vehicle testing facility in a Detroit suburb on Wednesday and meet there with chief executives of several U.S. automakers.

His administration has decided to review the feasibility of the vehicle emissions rules, which apply to the years 2022 through 2025, sources told Reuters last week. Former President Barack Obama moved to keep them in the final days of his administration.

Reuters reported on the planned announcement on March 3. A formal notice by U.S. regulators to restart the review is expected to be made public on Wednesday.

All these high-powered, four-cylinder, CAFE-inspired engines are technological marvels, but in the end there’s still no replacement for displacement.

ORGANIZING FOR… WHAT, EXACTLY? What’s Up? Obama Meeting with Deep-Pocketed Donors, Warren Buffet, Tech Leaders…

TRANSPARENCY! Obama’s final year: US spent $36 million in records lawsuits.

The figures reflect the final struggles of the Obama administration during the 2016 election to meet President Barack Obama’s pledge that it was “the most transparent administration in history,” despite wide recognition of serious problems coping with requests under the information law. It received a record 788,769 requests for files last year and spent a record $478 million answering them and employed 4,263 full-time FOIA employees across more than 100 federal departments and agencies. That was higher by 142 such employees the previous year.

A spokesman for former President Obama did not immediately respond to an email request for comment late Monday. The White House under Obama routinely defended its efforts under the information law in recent years and said federal employees worked diligently on such requests for records.

Uh-huh.

PRIVACY: New App Lets You Find Strangers on Facebook Just by Taking Their Picture.

A new app developed by British entrepreneur Jack Kenyon called “Facezam” is seeking to become the Shazam of faces. While the latter lets you identify music you like through audio recognition, Facezam matches your photos of strangers with their Facebook accounts.

It works scanning billions of Facebook profile shots by second and can reportedly match up with the right out in just 10 seconds and with 70 percent accuracy.

It is an incredible testament to the efficacy of facial recognition technology, even if it destroys all public anonymity in the process. Likewise, the app is either totally creepy, or kind of intriguing, depending on whether you’re the one being messaged by a stranger who took your picture, or trying to break the ice with a hot stranger you randomly snapped a pic of.

“Facezam could be the end of our anonymous societies,” Kenyon told the London Telegraph. “Users will be able to identify anyone within a matter of seconds, which means privacy will no longer exist in public society.”

Big Brother never had it so easy.

CHINA SYNDROME: Why Beijing won’t solve Washington’s problem with Kim Jong Un.

North Korea is on the brink of a nuclear breakout. With its recent advances, the Kim Jong Un regime may acquire a large number of powerful nuclear warheads and the long-range missiles to deliver them, posing a direct threat to America. A burgeoning nuclear arsenal would also tempt a cash-starved North Korea to proliferate nuclear materials and missiles in exchange for foreign currency.

Such developments would force the United States and its regional allies, Japan and South Korea, to beef up their deterrence and even consider pre-emptive strikes to defang Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal. The military deployment required for such efforts, such as the recent installation of Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), an advanced anti-missile system, will raise fears in China. Beijing, as is widely reported in the Chinese press, believes that the United States wants to use the brewing crisis on the Korean peninsula as a pretext to introduce capabilities that will make the Chinese military more vulnerable. As a result, China regards the U.S. response, not North Korean provocations, as the primary threat to its security. This underlying dynamic could eventually spark a collision between China and the United States.

If Beijing’s current policy risks such a disaster, the alternatives are hardly more palatable.

North Korea has always been a bad situation. It’s about to become a bad situation with nukes and the means to deliver them.

WASHINGTON RUINS EVERYTHING: Government marijuana looks nothing like the real stuff. See for yourself.

While the real stuff is chunky and dark green, the government weed is stringy and light in color. It appears to be full of stems, which most consumers don’t smoke. “It doesn’t resemble cannabis. It doesn’t smell like cannabis,” Sisley told PBS NewsHour last week.

Jake Browne, a cannabis critic for the Denver Post’s Cannabist marijuana news site, agrees. “That is, flat out, not a usable form of cannabis,” he said. Browne should know: He’s reviewed dozens of strains professionally and is running a sophisticated marijuana growing competition called the Grow-Off.

“In two decades of smoking weed, I’ve never seen anything that looks like that,” Browne said. “People typically smoke the flower of the plant, but here you can clearly see stems and leaves in there as well, parts that should be discarded. Inhaling that would be like eating an apple, including the seeds inside it and the branch it grew on.”

It’s unclear if this is an exceptionally bad batch, but there’s reason to strongly suspect it’s typical of what most researchers are given.

That’s almost 50 years of government-approved research on pot using pot which is nothing like pot.

SKIP THE SALAD: German Scientists Grow Tomatoes in Urine in Anticipation of Future Space Expeditions.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Stop Auto-Play Videos from Annoying You in Your Browser on macOS.

TOM COTTON: ‘There is no three-step plan” to repeal ObamaCare.

Proponents of the American Health Care Act claim that full repeal of Obamacare cannot be accomplished in one bill due to limitations imposed by the budget reconciliation process. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc. made this point at length in a press conference held last week. Republican leadership in the House of Representatives insists that the best way to move forward on repeal is in a three-step process.

Step one is to use budget reconciliation to repeal Obamacare taxes, eliminate the individual and employer mandates, tweak the subsidies, and repeal some minor regulations. Step two is to let Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price take administrative action to repeal the rest of the regulations and administer free-market reforms via agency promulgation. Step three is for Congress to legislate further reforms that cannot be included in reconciliation.

To some, GOP leadership’s proposals may seem reasonable on the surface. Sen. Tom Cotton warns that these are all lies.

“There is no three-phase process. There is no three-step plan. That is just political talk,” Sen. Cotton told radio host Hewitt Tuesday morning. “It’s just politicians engaging in spin.”

Instapundit readers were warned of this early last week.

HEAT, KITCHEN: ‘Stranger Fruit’ Filmmaker Melts Down on Fox News.

SLATE: There’s nothing outrageous about stamping out bigoted speech.

There must be a “stuff I don’t like” exception in the First Amendment somewhere.

IT’S DIFFERENT WHEN THEY DO IT: From China With Love.

Clinton’s 1996 re-election campaign received millions of dollars in illegal contributions from Chinese donor that were channeled through the Democratic National Committee, according to a Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Reform.

Johnny Chung, a businessman born in Taiwan, had a partner, Liu Chaoying, a high-ranking military leader and intelligence officer in China. Liu wired hundreds of thousands of dollars, which illegally went to the DNC. The duo also sent campaign funds to U.S. Sen. John Kerry for his reelection bid to the Senate. Liu’s father was one of Mao’s fellow travelers.

Chung visited the White House nearly 50 times—most of them authorized by Hillary Clinton. In one visit, Hillary met with Chung and his visiting delegation of Chinese businessmen from state-run companies. After another visit, Chung paid the DNC $50,000. In exchange, Chung was allowed to bring some of his investoCrs to see the president deliver one of his radio addresses.

Another operative for the Clintons was John Huang, who raised millions of dollars for Dollar Bill in the Asian-American community. In 1996, Huang bundled $3.4 million for the DNC—much of which was returned after a Senate investigation found that the contributions were illegal.

Charlie Trie owned a restaurant in Little Rock that was frequented by his friend then-Governor Clinton. After Clinton won the presidency, Trie went to Washington to cash in on their friendship. He thought his association could help him develop more business contacts in Asia. One of them was Hong Kong businessman Ng Lap Seng. Seng would wire a million dollars to Trie. From 1994 to 1996, Trie directly sent $200,000 to the DNC. Trie provided the rest of the money to other people who later sent that money to the DNC. Trie also helped raised another $640,000 for Bill Clinton’s Legal Defense Fund.

According to the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, 94 people were called to testify about the illegal campaign contributions to the 1996 Clinton campaign and the DNC. Of nearly 100 people called before the committee, 57 invoked the Fifth Amendment, 18 fled the country and 19 foreign witnesses refused to testify.

But the China connection to the Clintons didn’t end there.

Read the whole thing.

The Clinton saga is largely forgotten because, hey, Clintons, and also in part because there was no way the Republicans were going to unseat a popular president presiding over a booming economy. Clinton didn’t need Chinese money to beat Bob Dole — he just reflexively took it because, hey, Clintons.

And give Bill credit where it’s due: He was an honest enough politician to stay bought.

BOMBSHELL: Fox News Sources Say Obama Used Brits To Spy On Donald Trump.

CATO: Full Repeal Would Cover More People than House GOP’s ObamaCare-Lite Bill.

It also happens to be what every Republican has promised since 2010.

THIS COULD BE YUGE: Presidential Executive Order on a Comprehensive Plan for Reorganizing the Executive Branch.

Section 1. Purpose. This order is intended to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability of the executive branch by directing the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (Director) to propose a plan to reorganize governmental functions and eliminate unnecessary agencies (as defined in section 551(1) of title 5, United States Code), components of agencies, and agency programs.

Sec. 2. Proposed Plan to Improve the Efficiency, Effectiveness, and Accountability of Federal Agencies, Including, as Appropriate, to Eliminate or Reorganize Unnecessary or Redundant Federal Agencies. (a) Within 180 days of the date of this order, the head of each agency shall submit to the Director a proposed plan to reorganize the agency, if appropriate, in order to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability of that agency.

(b) The Director shall publish a notice in the Federal Register inviting the public to suggest improvements in the organization and functioning of the executive branch and shall consider the suggestions when formulating the proposed plan described in subsection (c) of this section.

(c) Within 180 days after the closing date for the submission of suggestions pursuant to subsection (b) of this section, the Director shall submit to the President a proposed plan to reorganize the executive branch in order to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability of agencies. The proposed plan shall include, as appropriate, recommendations to eliminate unnecessary agencies, components of agencies, and agency programs, and to merge functions. The proposed plan shall include recommendations for any legislation or administrative measures necessary to achieve the proposed reorganization.

I’m pretty sure I’ve never said this before about an executive order, but read the whole thing.

WHERE TO BEGIN? Soros Fellow Flees Country While Wife Arrested For Welfare Scam.

Fidelis Agbapuruonwu, a Nigerian immigrant, “fled the country and is somewhere in Africa,” according to officials at the Arlington General Court, NBC News 4 reports.

Agbapuruonwu’s wife Helen was arraigned March 8 and charged with felony welfare fraud after she allegedly “fraudulently obtained public assistance in excess of $100,000 under false pretenses” for about six years between 2010 and 2016, according to a police report. The defense attorney for Mrs. Agbapuruonwu declined to comment when contacted by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

According to Fidelis Agbapuruonwu’s LinkedIn page, he worked most recently as an associate at the Washington, D.C., offices of Mayer Brown LLP, a top-tier, international law firm, NBC 4 reports. While there, he earned $1.5 million a year — a high salary for an associate-level attorney.

Agbapuruonwu worked for the firm for about five years and left in 2011, explained an attorney at Mayer Brown, who spoke with The Daily Caller News Foundation on a condition of anonymity. Associates at the firm do not make $1.5 million in salary, the attorney added.

Agbapuruonwu immigrated to the U.S. from Nigeria in the 1990s, and later received a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans in 2001 and 2002, which he used to pay for law school at Ohio State University.

That’s probably enough chaos sown for Soros to decide he got his money’s worth.

OH SHUT UP: Iowa High School Kids Attacked for ‘BLATANT Racism’ of Wearing Red, White, and Blue.

THAT’S NOT FUNNY! Amy Schumer’s Netflix Special Gets Trashed With One-Star Reviews.

The reviews are brutal, but at least this time nobody accused Schumer of stealing other comics’ material.

CARTEL BLUES: Kingdom reverses one-third of cuts made at outset of OPEC deal.

If it weren’t for backing out of deals with their partners, cartels would have almost nothing to do.

A FAR CRY FROM JIZYA: EU Bans Islamic Headscarf, Sparking Angry Protest From Soros-Funded Group.

DON’T BE STUPID: Using Insurance for Ordinary Health Care is Dumb.