KIMBERLEY STRASSEL: A Vast Email Conspiracy.

In recent weeks, not one, but two, esteemed federal judges have granted an outside group—Judicial Watch—the right to conduct discovery into the origins and handling of her private email system. It’s a reminder that Mrs. Clinton’s biggest problem this election isn’t Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump. Her problem is a 1966 statute known as the Freedom of Information Act, and the judges who enforce it.

The judges have taken unprecedented steps to resolve this case. It is exceedingly rare—almost unheard of—for a judge to allow discovery in a FOIA proceeding. This is a testament to how grave Mrs. Clinton’s email problem is. In the usual course of things, an outside group demands documents, a judge requires a federal department to hand them over, and the public learns something.

In this case—as we all know—the problem is that the State Department doesn’t have the documents. Or rather, it can’t confirm that it has them all, because State left it to Mrs. Clinton and her aides to possess them, and then to unilaterally decide what to hand over.

Read the whole thing.

ONE PIECE AT A TIME: Fighting Zika Mosquitos With Tires.

Using the appeal of tires to mosquitoes, the Canadian and Mexican researchers found a way to beat the bugs at their own game. The tires attract the mosquitos into the ovillanta, where researchers create a pseudo “pond” inside—a perfect place to lay eggs. At the bottom of it is a strip of paper to collect the eggs. Every few days, the researchers removed the strip and destroyed the eggs.

After filtering the liquid, they reintroduced it into the ovillanta, allowing the pheromone that female mosquitos release when laying eggs to attract even more mosquitoes. This pheromone, a sort of perfume that the female releases, lets others know that it’s safe to lay eggs. In other words—the longer it’s used, the more appealing and successful it becomes.

Typical bucket traps catch about 2,700 eggs per month, but this ovillanta method could catch seven times more.

ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH: First marijuana tax funded scholarship application opens.

DE BLASIO’S NEW YORK: Characters roaming free could find a new limited range.

New York City passed legislation Thursday that would allow the city to corral the characters and street performers who are scattered throughout Times Square.

The bill calls on the Department of Transportation to regulate pedestrian plazas in an effort to coordinate “the wide variety of sometimes conflicting civic and commercial uses of these finite spaces.”

Council members agreed to allow the controlling of the entertainers who gather at the “Crossroads of the World” looking for tips — including Elmos, Cookie Monsters, topless women and mixtape artists — with plans to gather them in tighter, rectangular areas on these pedestrian plazas that allow for traffic to move around them.

It’s a long way down from broken windows policing to Cookie Monster corralling.

AWKWARD: Bill Clinton Gets Into Heated Exchange With Black Lives Matter Protester.

“Here’s what happened,” Clinton said. “Let’s just tell the whole story.”

“I had an assault weapons ban in it [the crime bill]. I had money for inner-city kids, for out of school activities. We had 110,000 police officers so we could keep people on the street, not in these military vehicles, and the police would look like the people they were policing. We did all that. And [Joe] Biden [then senator and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee] said, you can’t pass this bill, the Republicans will kill it, if you don’t put more sentencing in it.”

“I talked to a lot of African-American groups,” Clinton continued. “They thought black lives matter. They said take this bill, because our kids are being shot in the street by gangs. We have 13-year-old kids planning their own funerals.”

Throughout the spirited defense of his policy, Clinton continued to be interrupted, and he repeatedly seemed to single out one protester.

There’s no small amount of schadenfreude in watching Bill Clinton attempt defend his relatively moderate record without sabotaging Hillary’s leftwing campaign.

BJØRN LOMBORG: Don’t be fooled – Elon Musk’s electric cars aren’t about to save the planet.

While electric cars typically emit less CO₂, the savings are smaller than most imagine. Over a 150,000 km lifetime, the top-line Tesla S will emit about 13 tonnes of CO₂. But the production of its batteries alone will emit 14 tonnes, along with seven more from the rest of its production and eventual decommissioning.

Compare this with the diesel-powered, but similarly performing, Audi A7 Sportback, which uses about seven litres per 100km, so about 10,500 litres over its lifetime. This makes 26 tonnes of CO₂. The Audi will also emit slightly more than 7 tons in production and end-of-life. In total, the Tesla will emit 34 tonnes and the Audi 35. So over a decade, the Tesla will save the world 1.2 tonnes of CO₂.

Reducing 1.2 tonnes of CO₂ on the EU emissions trading system costs £5; but instead, the UK Government subsidises each car with £4,500.

It’s almost as though the whole industry were just a scam to divert tax dollars into the pockets of cronies and favored constituents.

RELIGION OF PEACE: Secular Bangladeshi writer murdered in the street.

Samad, described by Bangladesh police as a masters student at Jagannath University, is the sixth secularist writer or publisher to have been murdered in Dhaka in the last 16 months. Police called the murder a pre-planned attack.

“He was on his way back home from his evening classes when he was circled by a group of three to four people,” Senior Assistant Police Commissioner Nurul Amin of the Dhaka Police, told CNN.

“First the attackers hacked Samad with machetes, then shot him.”

Samad’s offense? Posting on Facebook about “religious fundamentalism, war crimes, minority issues, corruption and injustice against women.”

THE INTERNET OF USELESS THINGS: “Alphabet-owned Nest recently revealed that it will be disabling the Revolv smart home hub on May 15, which will make the $300 device worthless.”

More:

To be clear, Nest is not only ending support for Revolv, but rather rendering it completely unusable. This is because of the development on the Works with Nest system going well, which meant that Revolv had to go.

Early on, there was no indication that Nest will be providing a replacement for Revolv owners or at least a refund for the $300 device. However, through the Nest Support account on Twitter, the company has revealed that it will work with customers on a case-by-case basis to come up with the best resolution, which includes compensation.

Rumor is that Nest is in deep trouble, losing hundreds of millions of dollars and many of the company’s best people.

SECURITY: WhatsApp’s Encryption Embrace Is a Landmark Event.

An important factor in WhatsApp’s encryption push is the pedigree of the people behind the technology. The outfit is called Open Whisper Systems and it’s led by a very highly regarded cryptographer who uses the name “Moxie Marlinspike” and was once a key member of Twitter’s TWTR -0.23% security team (Twitter bought an earlier company of his, Whisper Systems, to beef up its own security).

Open Whisper Systems created an app called Signal that provides encrypted text messaging and voice calls (functions that were originally marketed on Android as TextSecure and RedPhone respectively). It is this technology that is now incorporated into WhatsApp, across all its mobile platforms — iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, Nokia S40, Nokia S60, Blackberry, and BB10.

The tech is state-of-the-art and uses clever tricks such as “forward secrecy” — each conversation uses a new key, so if an attacker steals the key, they cannot decrypt earlier conversations (a big problem with encrypted email). The code is open-source and has been audited. Users can even verify the security of their conversations by comparing their “security codes”. Snowden himself promotes it.

Sounds good — but you have to wonder that since Snowden is promoting it, does that mean his Russian hosts already have a skeleton key?

THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Raytheon’s New Radar Tech Could Realize the Pentagon’s Pain Ray.

RESET: Why Russia Is Rebuilding Its Nuclear Arsenal.

“Because of the vision that he’s been pursuing of emphasizing military might,” Obama told reporters at the summit, “we have not seen the type of progress that I would have hoped for with Russia.”

This was putting it lightly. Over the course of Obama’s presidency, Russia has managed to negotiate deep cuts to the U.S. arsenal while substantially strengthening of its own. It has allegedly violated the treaty that limits the deployment of nuclear weapons in Europe and, in the last few years, it has brought disarmament talks with the U.S. to a complete standstill for the first time since the 1960s. In its rhetoric, Moscow has also returned to a habit of nuclear threats, while in its military exercises, it has begun to practice for a nuclear strike, according to the NATO military alliance.

But of all these stark reversions to the posture of the Cold War, nothing expressed Russia’s position on nuclear disarmament more clearly than Putin’s decision to skip the nuclear summit in Washington last week. Apart from North Korea, which was not invited to the talks, Russia was the only nuclear power not to send a senior delegate.

Read the whole thing.

MAYBE THE SCIENCE ISN’T AS SETTLED AS YOU’D LIKE: How the Media Got a Study About Vegetarianism Really, Really Wrong.

“Our claim is that, to put it simply: you need to have a diet that is matched to your genes,” Ye explained. “For those individuals that carry the ‘vegetarian allele,’ our suggestion is to stick to the vegetarian diet because that’s what your ancestors ate and that’s what your ancestors adapted to. Too much meat or vegetable oil is not good for these people, because those foods also contain omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids.”

But somehow, this study about a gene variant that means some people might be better off eating a vegetarian diet was misinterpreted to mean that eating vegetarian will cause your genes to mutate and lead to a higher risk of colon cancer.

“There was a cascade of misinformation,” said Nathaniel Comfort, the Baruch Blumberg professor of astrobiology at the Library of Congress and NASA who blogs about hype and misconceptions in genetic research. “The way this happened is through a kind of informational entropy.”

Only 17% of those with European ancestry carry the vegetarianism allele, so I’m going to play it safe and grill a massive ribeye tonight.

UNEXPECTEDLY? U.S. factory data signals further slowdown in economic growth.

New orders for U.S. factory goods fell in February and business spending on capital goods was much weaker than initially thought, the latest indications that economic growth slowed further in the first quarter.

The Commerce Department said on Monday new orders for manufactured goods declined 1.7 percent as demand fell broadly, reversing January’s downwardly revised 1.2 percent increase. Orders have declined in 14 of the last 19 months. They were previously reported to have increased 1.6 percent in January.

The department also said orders for non-defense capital goods excluding aircraft fell by a steeper 2.5 percent in February instead of the 1.8 percent drop reported last month.

These dismal industrial numbers, plus continued weakness in consumer spending, just don’t seem to square with the official unemployment rate of 5%.

THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Blue Origin rocket flies to 339,178 feet and then lands safely.

For the third time.

[jwplayer mediaid=”230636″]

AIR FRANCE FEMALE FLIGHT CREW MEMBERS REFUSING TO COVER UP FOR FLIGHTS TO IRAN:

Union leaders and management for the flight company are meeting Monday about objections to a memo telling female attendants they must wear the pants version of their uniform, rather than the skirt option, on the flights to Tehran, as well as a “loose-fitting jacket and headscarf” before exiting their planes, the AP reports.

Now that economic sanctions on Iran are lifted, Air France will begin running three flights a week between Paris and Tehran on April 17, after eight years without service between the two countries.

Union leaders said that the headscarf mandate infringes on the attendants’ personal freedoms and qualifies as being told to wear an “ostentations religious sign,” which is illegal in France.

They want flights to and from Tehran to be optional for flight attendants, and one leader said Air France authorities had floated the possibility of consequences for staff who wouldn’t comply with the uniform specifications.

It’s sad to see Air France management take the Mullah’s side, but it’s hardly surprising.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Wave of Suicide Attacks Kill at Least 29 People Across Iraq.

YOU DON’T SAY: North Korea to pursue nuclear and missile programs.

North Korea will pursue its nuclear and ballistic missile program in defiance of the United States and its allies, a top Pyongyang envoy said on Friday, adding that a state of “semi-war” now existed on the divided Korean peninsula.

So Se Pyong, North Korea’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, denounced the huge joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises taking place which he said were aimed at “decapitation of the supreme leadership of the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea)” and conquering Pyongyang.

However, help in dealing with the Hermit Kingdom might be coming from a long-awaited place:

North Korea is now facing an unexpected financial crises as China not only enforces the new sanctions but also the older ones it ignored and adds some new sanctions. Thus North Korea was shocked when on March 1 st Chinese border guards refused to let shipments of coal or ores enter. These mineral exports are a major source of foreign currency and were not covered by sanctions. China is believed to be making a point; that it is fed up with North Korea ignoring demands to halt its ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs and turn its attention to the internal economic crises. So far North Korean leaders are ignoring this additional sanction and telling subordinates that it is only temporary. But the rumors in China are that the blocking of mineral exports will last for a long time, perhaps indefinitely until the North Korean leaderships shows more respect towards China and heeds the advice from its “big brother.”

Good.

ELON MUSK INTRODUCES THE NEW TESLA 3:

Standing before a collection of new Model 3s, Musk reminded the audience that the car represented the culmination of a long-held dream to bring affordable, zero-pollution vehicles to the world’s highways.

Musk began his pitch by pointing out that CO2 levels and global temperatures were at record highs, and said the Model 3 would be a solution to that problem.

“Zero pollution?” Where does he imagine the electricity for the batteries comes from?

LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: For the first time in history, more people are obese than underweight.

Behind the global spike is greater access to cheap food as incomes have risen. “It’s been very easy, as countries get out of poverty, to eat a lot, and to eat a lot of unhealthy calories,” said Majid Ezzati, the study’s senior author and chair of global environmental health at Imperial College London. The price of fresh fruits, vegetables, and whole grains are often “noticeably more than highly processed carbohydrates,” he said.

A person who has a body-mass index higher than 30, or weighs at least 203 pounds and is 5-foot-9-inches tall, is considered obese. The world population’s average weight has increased by about 3.3 pounds (1.5 kilograms) per decade since 1975, the researchers estimate. Excess weight raises the risk of diabetes, heart disease, and other chronic conditions.

BMI is a BS measurement — as Glenn has noted before, bodybuilders with practically zero body fat have “unhealthy” BMIs.

But most interesting is the story’s assertion that “The world may have too much food” and the implication that it’s better to be poor and starving than middle class and overweight.

While “fat and happy” might not be an ideal condition, surely it beats the historical alternative.

I THINK I’VE MADE A HUGE MISTAKE: Google ‘Mic Drop’ April Fool’s Gag Goes Horribly Wrong.

Google ended up with egg on its face this morning after this year’s April Fool’s joke caused some Gmail users to insult contacts and, some claimed, lose employment opportunities.

The “joke” was an actual feature that Google added to Gmail, called “Mic Drop.” An orange button next to the standard blue “send” button allowed people to send their email with an animated image of a Minions character dropping a microphone.

However, it wasn’t just a cute GIF — the feature literally ended the conversation, making it impossible for the sender to even see any subsequent replies.

Outraged Gmail users who use the service for professional purposes flooded Google’s product forums to complain about having accidentally clicked the button on important work mails.

A good April Fool’s gag shouldn’t have any lasting repercussions. Somebody at Google forgot that.

HOLLOW FORCE? Congressional failures just forced the Marines to raid a museum for aircraft parts.

During a recent trip to several Southern U.S. military bases, Marines told House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, that they’ve been paying for their units’ supplies like pens and paper towels, and were forced to raid decommissioned aircraft for parts.

“I have heard firsthand from service members who have looked me in the eye and told of trying to cannibalize parts from a museum aircraft … getting aircraft that were sent to the boneyard in Arizona back and ready to fly missions, pilots flying well below the minimum number of hours required for minimal proficiency,” Thornberry said.

Military proficiency is difficult to earn and easy to squander.

SMART DIPLOMACY: More foreign spies in US than ever.

The 1980s called, and they want their foreign policy back.

THE EVITABLE CANDIDATE: Clinton moves goalposts again; girds for New York battle.

When Hillary Clinton lost the New Hampshire primary to Bernie Sanders in February, Robby Mook, her campaign manager, took the long view and declared the nomination would “very likely be won in March, not February.”

The campaign is now taking an even longer view, with April now being the month they hope to put Sanders away. It’s an optimistic projection, with Sanders support far from fading and the Vermont senator vowing to compete in primaries and caucuses through June 7 in California, and possibly to the Democratic convention.

Even though Clinton aides say her lead in pledged delegates is “almost insurmountable,” they are now doing something they never expected: Investing considerable time and money to the April 19 New York primary.

Who could have foreseen Clinton having trouble beating back a challenge from a male Senator clobbering her from the left?

PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Pentagon Confirms New North Korean ICBM.

The new missile is called the KN-14 by the Pentagon and is a longer-range variant of the KN-08 road-mobile ICBM first made public in 2012.

Both the KN-08 and the new KN-14 have not been flight tested. But defense officials familiar with reports on the weapons said both systems have been tested in all other aspects of their development.

“It’s a KN-08 on steroids,” said one official of the new KN-14.

No word yet on range or payload capacity.

CHEER UP: 12 Ways Humanity Could Destroy The Entire Solar System.

Currently only three or four of them are, however unlikely, technologically possible.