NARRATIVE FLIP: Keith Scott Had Illegal Gun, Threatened Family with It.

New information casts serious doubt on the original story. Scott’s wife can be heard on a video she released telling the police that her husband didn’t have a gun. The police can be heard on her video recording repeatedly telling Scott to “drop the gun.” Law enforcement released video from the dash cam of the police car that showed Scott didn’t raise his hands before he was shot, and the police audio also shows that police yelled at Scott to drop the gun at least ten times. The gun and holster found at the scene had Scott’s fingerprints and DNA on it. The book Scott was allegedly reading before he was shot and killed was not recovered at the scene.

But Mrs. Scott knew her husband did have gun. According to papers filed last year by Scott’s wife, he threatened to kill her and his family with it.

Read the whole thing.

TRANSPARENCY: The White House Asked Congress To Keep Quiet On Russian Hacking.

In a statement released Friday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Adam Schiff, the vice-chairmen of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, respectively, formally accused Russia of attempting to influence the US election. It was the first official, on-record confirmation from US government officials that the Kremlin is actively working to manipulate public confidence in the country’s election system.

But sources tell BuzzFeed News that the White House — which has stayed silent despite mounting pressure to call out its Moscow adversaries — tried to delay the statement’s release. The public accusation was of such concern to the administration that White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough was personally involved in the negotiations over releasing it, according to a congressional source.

The White House convinced Feinstein and Schiff, both Democrats, to omit part of their original statement for security reasons, according to another congressional source.

It’s a testament to America’s inherent strengths that between Russia’s hacking and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s unsecured email server that we haven’t found ourselves in a major war already.

QUESTION ASKED: Is Clinton winning over Obama’s coalition?

Clinton’s path to the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House is paved with support from the millennials, women, African-American and Hispanic voters who lined up behind President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. But there have been mounting concerns among Clinton supporters that key elements of Obama’s base vote are not enthusiastic about her campaign as pre-debate national and battleground polls tightened.

So while her clash with Trump on Monday night at Hofstra University in New York was primarily about who had the temperament, experience and knowledge to serve in the Oval Office, it’s no surprise that Clinton’s debate strategy and rhetoric was laced with subtle outreach to the diverse Democratic coalition she badly needs to flock to the polls in November.

“Subtle?”

GEORGE MONBIOT: No fracking, drilling or digging: it’s the only way to save life on Earth.

You give up everything dependent on fossil fuels first, George, and then we’ll talk.

RESET: U.S. Believes Russia Steered Hacked Documents to Websites.

A fuller picture of the operation has come into focus in the past several weeks. U.S. officials believe that at least two hacking groups with ties to the Russian government, known as Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear, are involved in the escalating data-theft efforts, according to people briefed on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s probe of the cyberattacks.

Following successful breaches, the stolen data are apparently transferred to three different websites for publication, these people say. The websites—WikiLeaks, DCLeaks.com and a blog run by Guccifer 2.0—have posted batches of stolen data at least 42 times from April to last week.

WikiLeaks has published U.S. secrets for years but has recently taken an overtly adversarial tone toward Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Cybersecurity experts believe that DCLeaks.com and Guccifer 2.0 often work together and have direct ties to Russian hackers.

No biggie — “it’s ‘tradition’ in Russia to tamper with elections,” according to James Clapper, our own Director of National Intelligence.

ERDOGAN’S IRON FIST: 32,000 people arrested since failed coup in Turkey.

The Turkish justice minister says 32,000 people have been arrested since the country’s failed coup, and more may follow.

In a live interview with private broadcaster NTV on Wednesday, Bekir Bozdag said 70,000 people have been processed and 32,000 were formally arrested since the July 15 coup attempt. “There may be new arrests or releases according to the evidence and information gathered in the investigation,” Bozdag said.

He also said Turkey was building a courthouse in the outskirts of Ankara, the national capital, for the prosecution of suspected coup plotters.

The way these things go, the special courthouse will likely have “special” judges, too — the kind Erdogan can count on.

Also, “50,000 people have been expelled from the civil service” by emergency decree.

It wasn’t a failed coup; it’s a successful purge.

LET THEM DRINK WHINE: Social Justice Warriors Whine Over ‘Cultural Appropriation’ at Fiction Festival.

CUE WORLD’S SMALLEST VIOLIN: Saudi chops wage, benefit bill in delicate pursuit of austerity.

Along with reductions unveiled on Monday that will affect all public sector workers, the cuts also flag to financial markets before a debut sovereign bond issue that the oil exporter is committed to budget discipline.

The measures appear largely to formalize savings introduced ad hoc in parts of the state apparatus since last year, but their announcement on state media, which gave an official start date of Oct 1., is not without political risk.

In a country that has no elections and where political legitimacy rests partly on distribution of oil revenue, the ability of citizens to adapt to reforms aimed at reducing oil dependence and improving self-reliance is crucial for stability.

Some Saudis appeared prepared to accept austerity following the signal that ministers would share the pain.

They aren’t thanking any frackers in Saudi Arabia.

RELATED: OPEC set for no deal on oil output as Saudis, Iran at loggerheads.

UM: Human intestines found by Austrian customs in luggage.

The Austrian Press Agency reports that the organ parts were found packed tightly in plastic containers and formaldehyde in a Moroccan woman’s baggage during a recent check at the airport of the southern city of Graz.

It said Monday that the woman told police that she had brought the intestines of her dead husband to Austria to have them examined because she thought he had been poisoned.

That’s actually a relief.

YOU CAN’T KEEP A GOOD FRACKER DOWN: Two Years Into Oil Slump, U.S. Shale Firms Are Ready to Pump More.

Few predicted that in the fall of 2014, when Saudi Arabia signaled that it wouldn’t curb its output to put a floor under crude prices. Oil pundits concluded that a brutal culling would force higher-cost players known as marginal producers—a group that includes shale drillers—out of the market.

But the greatest consequence of the Saudi decision and subsequent price drop is that it has delayed costly oil megaprojects, from deep-water platforms off Angola to oil-sands mines in Canada.

“The U.S. isn’t the marginal barrel but the most flexible,” said R.T. Dukes, an analyst at Wood Mackenzie. “We’ll be the fastest to snap back.”

Free markets tend to do that.

HEADS WON’T ROLL: State Dept misses court’s deadline on Clinton docs.

An email mix-up prevented an Obama administration lawyer from sending hundreds of pages of material to the Daily Caller News Foundation, an investigative reporting arm of the conservative-leaning website.

The State Department tried to send 8.4 megabytes worth of documents at 7:58 p.m. on Monday evening, it claimed in a court filing on Tuesday morning.

“The size of the file attached to the email, however, exceeded the maximum file size allowed for the mobile device used by counsel for State, and thus transmission of the email did not complete,” the department asserted. “Counsel for State was unaware of this fact until this morning, September 27, 2016.”

“The attachment was too big” is the 21st Century version of “the dog ate my homework.”

PRIVACY: Germany orders Facebook to stop collecting data on WhatsApp users.

Hardly anything beats vanilla Facebook’s newsfeed for driving traffic, but Messenger and WhatsApp are downright creepy and I refuse to install them on any device.

THE NEW NORMAL ANEMIA: WTO cuts 2016 world trade growth forecast to 1.7 percent, cites wake-up call.

The World Trade Organization cut its forecast for global trade growth this year by more than a third on Tuesday, reflecting a slowdown in China and falling levels of imports into the United States.

The new figure of 1.7 percent, down from the WTO’s previous estimate of 2.8 percent in April, marked the first time in 15 years that international commerce was expected to lag the growth of the world economy, the trade body said.

Consumer spending hasn’t been able to drive robust growth during the current “recovery,” even with seemingly permanent low interest rates, and now the trade growth engine is faltering as well.

THAT MEANS IT’S WORKING: ObamaCare’s Death Spiral Has Begun.

In recent weeks, insurers in 43 states proposed similar hikes, with the average rate increase falling in the double digits for individual plans, according to data collected on the Rate Review tool at HealthCare.gov. For example, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, facing a massive $770 million loss for its ObamaCare exchange plans, requested a 58% premium hike for over 600,000 customers.

In New Mexico, Blue Cross Blue Shield has requested an 82% rate increase for an individual HMO plan sold on the exchange. But nothing comes close to the increase requested by insurer Phoenix Health Plans of Arizona: a whopping 122.8% average rate hike for all of its plans.

Recent analysis shows that the average rate increase requested by insurers across the country is 24%. This is a stunning increase since initial rate requests were filed this summer. At that time, the Kaiser Family Foundation found that rate hikes for the “most common plan choices” in 14 major cities averaged about 10%. But insurers have adjusted their expectations, and their rate requests, since then.

The law has also given doctors the certainty of endless red tape, while robbing exchange customers of any certainty about their costs or their providers from one year to the next.

The next Voxplainer ought to be a real laugh-until-you-cry piece.

IT WOULD BE NICE IF JUST ONCE THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT DIDN’T SIDE WITH THE COMMUNISTS: Even if voters approve the tainted bargain with narco-terrorists, it won’t bring peace.

On Oct. 2, Colombia will hold a plebiscite to ask the nation to approve or reject an Obama-backed agreement between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), designated by the State Department as a foreign terrorist organization. The deal gives the FARC amnesty for its war crimes, which include the recruitment of thousands of child soldiers, massacres of villages, political executions, bombings and kidnappings.

Under the agreement, negotiated and signed in Havana, the FARC will also get unelected seats in Congress and special welfare benefits. It will be given dozens of radio stations—so that it can disseminate its propaganda, a privilege no other political party has.

The agreement does not require the FARC to pay any financial reparations to its victims, even though the narco-terrorist kingpins have wealth estimated in the billions. Reparations will be paid by law-abiding citizens via sharp tax increases. The FARC says it will not disarm until it’s good and ready to. Meanwhile it will be given weapons and training to enforce the agreement.

What could possibly go wrong?

Barry still has the merde touch.

JAVEE: Why the Offensive against ISIS in Mosul Could Be a Disaster.

The flash appeal noted that the UN needed the $284 million at least two and a half months before the initiation of the assault to enable them to set up the [refugee] camps. Yet according to recent reports U.S. military officials believe the Iraqi government could order the beginning of the attack before the end of next month. Even if the UNOCHA got all the funds tomorrow, it is virtually assured that they won’t be ready to care for the expected hundreds of thousands of refugees when the fighting begins in earnest.

It is understandable that the Iraqi government wants to wrest control of Mosul from the Islamic State, but it is important that they not be impatient. If the operations begin before UN and local authorities are ready to receive and care for that many displaced persons, Mr. Mustafa’s worries of a humanitarian catastrophe could be realized.

Mosul was largely at peace and part of a functional Iraqi state on January 20, 2009.

CHANGE: More US babies born addicted to opiates like heroin.

The proportion of U.S. babies born suffering from withdrawal syndrome after exposure to heroin or prescription opiates in utero has more than doubled in less than a decade, a study suggests.

Researchers focused on what’s known as neonatal abstinence syndrome, a condition akin to withdrawal that develops when babies essentially become addicted to drugs their mothers use during pregnancy.

Nationally, the rate of neonatal abstinence syndrome involving mothers’ use of opiates – which includes heroin as well as prescription narcotics like codeine and Vicodin – surged from 2.8 cases for every 1,000 births in 2009 to 7.3 cases for every 1,000 births in 2013, the study found.

The story notes that people are turning to heroin because it’s become harder to get a hold of prescription drugs to abuse. I’m not sure that’s progress.

21ST CENTURY CRIME: California driver used mannequin to drive in carpool lane.

Robots will make this kind of thing easier to get away with.

QUESTION ASKED: As social media thrives, why is Twitter falling behind?

Maybe because under CEO Jack Dorsey, Twitter has gone from being social media to social justice media.

A PRACTICAL EDUCATION: Why Avoiding Student Loan Debt Was The Best Thing I Ever Did.

SIMON TISDALL: Barack Obama’s ‘Asian pivot’ failed. China is in the ascendancy.

The China dilemma extends far beyond the South China Sea. Having made nuclear disarmament a top priority in 2009, Obama has failed dismally to halt North Korea’s accelerating pursuit of nuclear weapons. The threat was underscored by Pyongyang’s biggest ever test explosion earlier this month. China, the only country with real leverage, has helped impose additional UN sanctions on North Korea. But it has consistently balked at taking game-changing measures, such as cutting off fuel oil supplies, which could force Kim Jong-un to think again. Beijing also says it will block “unilateral” measures by other countries.

Obama’s impotence has intensified questions in Japan and elsewhere about the credibility of the American security umbrella, encouraging nationalists who argue that Tokyo should re-arm in earnest – or even deploy its own nuclear weapons. But their main concern is not North Korea – it is China.

Xi is not looking for a fight. His first-choice agent of change is money, not munitions. According to Xi’s “One Belt, One Road” plan, his preferred path to 21st-century Chinese hegemony is through expanded trade, business and economic partnerships extending from Asia to the Middle East and Africa. China’s massive Silk Road investments in central and west Asian oil and gas pipelines, high-speed rail and ports, backed by new institutions such as the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, are part of this strategy, which simultaneously encourages political and economic dependencies. Deng Xiaoping once said to get rich is glorious. Xi might add it is also empowering.

Read the whole thing — and, mind you, this is coming from The Guardian.

FEELGOOD HEADLINE OF THE DAY: Nude Mike Rowe Sees Drone Outside Bedroom Window, Pulls Shotgun.

ANALYSIS: TRUE.

"Trump has all the right enemies" in the eyes of his supporters says @mikeallen

— Hugh Hewitt (@hughhewitt) September 26, 2016

BREAKING: “Bodies On The Ground” – At Least 7 Injured In Houston, Suspect Down, Bomb Squad Called.

RELIGION OF PEACE UPDATE: Writer Charged With Insulting Islam Is Killed as Extremism Boils Over in Jordan.

Some of the most extreme elements in Jordan made clear in recent weeks that Nahed Hattar should pay for a provocative cartoon he posted online depicting a bearded man in bed with two women ordering God to bring him cashews and wine.

So when Mr. Hattar, 56, a prominent writer from a Christian family, showed up at a court on Sunday to face criminal charges of insulting Islam, at least one man with a gun decided a trial was not enough. As three bullets ripped through the writer in front of the courthouse, Jordan’s simmering tensions boiled over.

The brazen daylight killing of Mr. Hattar in front of his horrified family was not only the latest example of violence tied to cartoon renderings of Muslim figures, it was also the sort of manifestation of extremism that Jordan’s government has struggled to contain in a nation that finds itself under pressure from multiple directions.

Israel is going to find itself spread awfully thin if Jordan comes apart.