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washingtonpost.com – By Philip Bump – To believe Donald Trump, you must believe two largely contradictory things. You must believe that there are a slew of leakers in the executive branch who are providing damning details to the press illegally, and who must be rooted out and punished. (See tweets here, here, here, here and here.) You must also believe that the press makes up imaginary leakers simply to slowly and incrementally report false stories that are tangentially embarrassing to the president.

More… https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/05/29/the-fake-news-comes-from-within-the-white-house/?tid=pm_pop

theguardian.com – Julia Carrie Wong and Sam Levin – The Republican candidate for Montana’s congressional seat slammed a Guardian reporter to the floor on the eve of the state’s special election, breaking his glasses and shouting, “Get the hell out of here.” Ben Jacobs, a Guardian political reporter, was asking Greg Gianforte, a tech millionaire running for the seat vacated by Ryan Zinke, about the Republican healthcare plan when the candidate allegedly “body-slammed” the reporter.

“He took me to the ground,” Jacobs said by phone from the back of an ambulance. “This is the strangest thing that has ever happened to me in reporting on politics.”

More… https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/24/greg-gianforte-bodyslams-reporter-ben-jacobs-montana 

en.rocketnews.com – By Casey Baseel – Can reliving the womb experience help develop a healthy body and happy mind? I have a pretty good memory, to the extent that I can recall a trip to the emergency room that, according to my parents, took place when I was about two years old. But even still, my memory isn’t sharp enough to recall whether or not being in the womb was comfortable.

As such, my reaction to otona maki, a wellness/fitness trend in Japan that could be translated as “adult wraping” or “adult swaddling,” comes purely from how it looks to me as an adult, which is that it seems like an almost perfectly even mix of baffling and frightening.

More… http://en.rocketnews24.com/2017/05/23/japans-adult-wrapping-wellness-trend-is-so-weird-its-creeping-out-the-japanese-people/ 

latimes.com – By Alex Wigglesworth – President Trump tweeted a celebratory Mother’s Day message to First Lady Melania Trump and “all of the great mothers out there.” The tweet came as the president visited his Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Va., where he spent about four hours on Sunday.

More… http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-updates-everything-president-trump-celebrates-mother-s-day-with-a-1494799716-htmlstory.html

nytimes.com – By DAVID E. SANGER – WASHINGTON — What a day for President Trump’s first face-to-face meeting with a top Russian official. Only hours after dismissing James B. Comey as director of the F.B.I., amid an investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russian officials, the president met with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, at the White House. It is the only item on the president’s public schedule for Wednesday.

Mr. Lavrov began his day at the State Department, meeting Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, and the subject of Mr. Comey came up, briefly, in what the State Department hoped would be a controlled encounter with the news media.

After Mr. Tillerson thanked Mr. Lavrov for coming to Washington, the two men began to leave the diplomatic reception room on the seventh floor of the State Department. When a reporter shouted a question about whether Mr. Comey’s dismissal “cast a shadow” on the meeting, Mr. Lavrov, known for a puckish sense of humor, shot back:

“Was he fired? You’re kidding! You’re kidding!”

More… https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/10/world/europe/trump-russia-foreign-minister-sergey-lavrov-meeting.html 

nydailynews.com – BY Megan Cerullo – A Florida man accused of murdering his girlfriend wants to enter his penis into evidence in an oral sex death trial. Richard Henry Patterson, 65, has admitted he choked his girlfriend, Francisca Marquinez, 60, to death on Oct. 28, 2015, but claims it happened accidentally during oral sex, The Sun Sentinel reported. He’s now seeking a judge’s permission to show the jury his penis — to prove her death was a mistake.

Patterson’s attorney, Ken Padowitz, said his client’s member figures prominently in his “rough sex” defense, which hinges on the argument that Marquinez died accidentally, while engaging in consensual sexual activity.

More… http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/man-hopes-prove-girlfriend-choked-death-oral-sex-article-1.3150427 

washingtonpost.com – By Ed O’Keefe, Paige Winfield Cunningham and Amy Goldstein – House Republicans on Thursday narrowly passed a controversial bill to overhaul the nation’s health-care system, claiming a major victory even as the measure faces an uncertain fate in the closely divided U.S. Senate. Under intense pressure to show they can govern and to make good on their promise to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, Republicans pushed through the bill after adopting a last-minute change that earned it just enough votes to pass. However, the House version fell significantly short of the GOP’s long-held goals, making major dents in large portions of the current law but not outright repealing it.

More… https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/republicans-plan-health-care-vote-on-thursday-capping-weeks-of-fits-and-starts/2017/05/03/e7dd7c28-306d-11e7-9dec-764dc781686f_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_healthvote-705a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory