WASHINGTON – A federal judge sentenced George Papadopoulos, a onetime aide to President Donald Trump’s campaign, to two weeks in prison and a $9,500 fine on Friday for lying to federal agents about conversations in which he was told that the Russian government had obtained “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.

“I made a terrible mistake for which I paid dearly and I am terribly ashamed,” Papadopoulos said at his sentencing hearing. “My entire life has been turned upside down.”

Papadopoulos is the first former Trump aide to be sentenced in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Moscow’s interference in the 2016 election. 

Papadopoulos admitted last year that he lied to the FBI about interactions in which people he thought were linked to the Russian government described Moscow having “thousands of emails” with damaging information about Clinton. The exchanges came shortly after he joined Trump’s campaign and months before U.S. authorities learned that Russian intelligence officers had stolen troves of emails from Democratic political organizations. When they came to light, they triggered the investigation that has loomed over the first two years of Trump’s presidency.

Papadopoulos’ lawyer Thomas Breen had asked for leniency for his client. He emphasized that Papadopoulos’ lies to investigators happened after Trump’s inauguration in January 2017 and after the president had called the Russia investigation a “witch hunt.”

“The president of the United States hindered this investigation more than George Papadopoulos ever could,” Breen said. “The message for all of us is to check our loyalty, to tell the truth, to help the good guys.”

Prosecutors had told Judge Randolph Moss that Papadopoulos should spend up to six months in prison. His crime, they said in a court filing last month, “was serious and caused damage to the government’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.”

The judge had been considering a 30-day prison sentence but said at Friday’s hearing that Papadopoulos had shown “genuine remorse.”

The charges centered on an interview in January 2017 in which FBI agents asked Papadopoulos about his conversations with Joseph Misfud, a professor he believed had connections to Moscow. Papadopoulos told the agents, falsely, that his conversations with Misfud happened before he joined Trump’s campaign in March 2016 and that he did not think they were important. Prosecutors said in a court filing that Papadopoulos’ “lies negatively affected the FBI’s Russia investigation, and prevented the FBI from effectively identifying and confronting witnesses in a timely fashion.”

Partly as a result, they said, agents were unable to “effectively question” Misfud when he visited the United States two weeks later. “The defendant’s lies undermined investigators’ ability to challenge the Professor or potentially detain or arrest him while he was still in the United States,” they wrote.

Papadopoulos’ lawyers had urged Moss to sentence him to probation. In a court filing last month, they described Papadopoulos as “ashamed and remorseful” but said he never derailed the Russia investigation. Instead, they said, Papadopoulos “misled investigators to save his professional aspirations and preserve a perhaps misguided loyalty to his master.”

Papadopoulos has been a central figure in the Russia investigation since it began. The FBI launched its investigation of possible links between Russia and the Trump campaign after learning that Papadopoulos had boasted to an Australian diplomat that the Russian government had political dirt on Clinton more than a month before Moscow’s hacking efforts were known publicly.

For a time, Papadopoulos also looked to be a key informant. A federal court kept his July 2017 arrest secret for more than two months after Mueller’s office argued that making it public would “significantly undermine his ability to serve as a proactive cooperator.”

But in a court filing last month, prosecutors said Papadopoulos ultimately did little to aid their work. Instead, they said, Papadopoulos gave them little valuable information and did so “only after the government confronted him with his own emails, text messages, internet search history.”  

Two other Trump aides – former deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates and former national security adviser Mike Flynn – also pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with Mueller’s investigation but haven’t been sentenced. Another, former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, was found guilty of tax and bank fraud charges last month and is awaiting another trial in Washington.

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Mac Miller has died of an apparent overdose, according to reports from TMZ and Variety. He was 26.

The rapper and former boyfriend of Ariana Grande had reportedly struggled with substance abuse.

Miller released his album “Swimming” in August, and musicians and fans were stunned by the news of his death. 

Grande spoke about their “toxic” two-year relationship, which ended in May, in a response to a Twitter user who criticized her for breaking up with him.

More: Everything we learned about Mac Miller’s breakup with Ariana Grande on new album ‘Swimming’

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“Mac Miller totaling his G wagon and getting a DUI after Ariana Grande dumped him for another dude after he poured his heart out on a ten song album to her called the divine feminine is just the most heartbreaking thing happening in Hollywood,” the user said.

 “I have cared for him and tried to support his sobriety & prayed for his balance for years (and always will of course) but shaming / blaming women for a man’s inability to keep his (expletive) together is a very major problem. let’s please stop doing that,” she wrote.

More: Celebrities react to reported overdose death of rapper Mac Miller at age 26

Miller talked about the image that people had of him as a “depressed drug user” in an interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music’s Beats 1 in July.

“I have people that care about me and fans that love my music, and it’s a beautiful relationship with them — people who have been with me through being a 19-year-old wide-eyed kid to being a self-destructive depressed drug user to making love music to all these different stages,” Miller said. “Then they see something like that and they worry.” 

Miller, born Malcolm James McCormick, rose to fame with his mixtape “Best Day Ever” in 2011, landing on the Billboard Hot 100 chart with the single “Donald Trump.”

He rapped about his struggles with addiction on his 2014 mixtape “Faces,” speaking about that time in his life to Vulture in an interview published Thursday. “I used to rap super openly about really dark (expletive), because that’s what I was experiencing at the time,”  he said. “That’s fine, that’s good, that’s life. It should be all the emotions.”

He also spoke about his drug use in a 2013 interview with Complex, opening up about his addiction to promethezine and codeine, known as “lean.” “I love lean; it’s great,” he said. “I was not happy and I was on lean very heavy. I was so (messed) up all the time it was bad. My friends couldn’t even look at me the same. I was lost.”

Story developing.

 

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Alex McLeish suffered his fourth defeat in five games in charge as Scotland were thrashed 4-0 by ruthless Belgium.

The Scots competed in the first half, albeit they trailed at the break after John McGinn was robbed at the edge of his own box and Romelu Lukaku scored.

But they collapsed after the interval. Eden Hazard lashed in before Michy Batshuayi added two more – both after the Scots gave away the ball.

It was Scotland’s biggest home defeat since England won 5-0 in February 1973.

McLeish’s side begin their Nations League campaign on Monday, with early group leaders Albania visiting Hampden after they beat Israel 1-0.

A victory in Hungary is the only success of McLeish’s second stint in charge, with the Scots failing to score in defeats by Costa Rica, Peru, Mexico, and now Belgium.

Delusional McLeish & a collective death wish

Belgium took a little while to catch Scotland with the first of the howitzer blows, but when the first one landed there was a certainty of more. Many more.

The Belgians, with Hazard lording it over all others, are good enough to unpick most defences, but when those defences have a death wish, as Scotland had, then a rout is guaranteed. As sure as a greyhound courses a hare, McLeish’s team were chased around a sparsely attended Hampden in front of 20,196 spectators.

If you were a Belgian, it was pretty and what you would have expected from your boys. If you were a Scot it was painful, an evisceration of McLeish’s notion that his team were good enough to go “toe-to-toe” with the third best team in the world. Delusional.

Just before the half-hour, Belgium got their first. Craig Gordon unwisely rolled the ball out to McGinn, who was facing his own goal and unaware of the danger he was in. His first touch was a total calamity and allowed Mousa Dembele to ransack him and feed Thorgan Hazard, who calmly rolled it across for Lukaku to score his 41st international goal.

The torture was only just beginning. Gordon took out Timothy Castagne and yet, by some miracle, Italian referee Luca Banti did not give a penalty. Then Gordon turned an Eden Hazard header on to a post.

A minute into the second half, Hazard blasted the second goal right over Gordon’s head and into his net. Soon after, Charlie Mulgrew’s aimless ball out of defence fell to Dembele, who gave it to Hazard. The attacker slipped in Batshuayi in for the third.

More soft touch stuff cost Scotland a fourth when Ryan Jack was robbed by Youri Tielemans and the Monaco man teed up by Batshuayi to blast a shot low past Gordon.

At 4-0, Belgium relaxed and the Scots carved out a few chances. They did not give up. That is about as much as you can say for them.

‘McLeish has psychological job to do’ – analysis

That Scotland got annihilated by the Belgians is not a surprise. They are not the first side to suffer at the hands of Roberto Martinez’s team and they will not be the last.

There is a very legitimate question to ask about why the Scottish Football Association offered up the national team as lambs to the slaughter against such a lethal team just a few days before their opening Nations League fixture, but the damage has been done. It is too late to bemoan that. What is relevant now is the impact all of this might have on the confidence of the team before the arrival of Albania.

The Albanians have a world ranking of 58, but even a side of fairly modest talents would surely have taken advantage of the kind of crass mistakes that Scotland made on Friday.

McLeish could have done without this match against a formidable opponent. It has done nothing but damage. The Scotland manager does not just have a tactical game plan to put together before Monday. After such a chastening experience, he has a psychological job to do, too.

The game in numbers

• Scotland have now lost three consecutive home matches – the joint-worst run in their history
• Martinez has won three-quarters of his games in charge of Belgium (21/28). Seven (33%) have been by a margin of four goals or more
• Scotland have lost each of their last four games against Belgium, failing to score on each occasion
• Lukaku has scored 18 goals in his last 16 international appearances
• Eden Hazard has been directly involved in 27 goals in his last 26 matches for Belgium (13 goals, 14 assists)
• Batshuayi has scored eight of his 10 goals for Belgium after coming on as a substitute

For the first time in South Africa’s history, thousands of white union workers have staged a strike.

They are furious their employer – one of the country’s leading energy companies – has introduced a new share scheme which is only available to black workers.

White workers say that is discriminatory and racially divisive.

But their bosses at Sasol say the move has been backed by shareholders and meets rules designed for black economic empowerment, part of a drive to reverse decades of exclusion for black people under apartheid.

In post-apartheid South Africa, what constitutes fairness?

Presenter: Hashem Ahelbarra

Guests:

Dirk Hermann – CEO of Solidarity Trade Union

Dennis George – general secretary, Federation of Unions of South Africa

Ralph Mathekga – lecturer at the University of the Western Cape and author of Ramaphosa’s Turn: Can Cyril save South Africa?

Source: Al Jazeera News

The question Friday morning wasn’t whether President Trump would tweet about the debut of Colin Kaepernick’s Nike commercial but whether it would be the first thing he would tweet about after waking up. 

And there it was, first thing on the presidential docket at 6:56 a.m.

“What was Nike thinking?” Trump tweeted rather briefly and directly. 

But if you actually watched the commercial that aired on NBC during the third quarter of season-opening games between the Falcons and Eagles, it’s pretty obvious what Nike is thinking – and it’s not whether to take a knee during the national anthem.

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All you need to know about Nike’s ultimate goal with the Kaepernick campaign is contained in the ad’s first minute. It begins with a skateboarder falling off a rail, a child with no legs on a wrestling mat, an African-American boy who couldn’t be 10 years old running down a dirt road, a young shadowboxing woman wearing hijab, a surfer, a Pop Warner football game and a blond girl playing high school football against boys. 

This isn’t about consumers Nike might lose in their anger over Kaepernick. It’s about cultivating an entire generation of consumers who are up for grabs at a moment where the lines between culture, politics and activism are blurry – a notion that might make older people uncomfortable but is now the coming-of-age reality for anyone under 18. 

Ironically, if you take Kaepernick out of the ad, there is nothing controversial about the images and words contained inside of it. “Don’t ask if your dreams are crazy; ask if they’re crazy enough” seems like it could be a tag line to practically any Nike ad campaign, a direct link to the “Just Do it” slogan the company is celebrating with a 30th anniversary push. 

Every one of those images connects to the overall theme of being different, of overcoming some type of obstacle or stereotype, which fits in well with why Kaepernick is here in the first place rather than playing quarterback in the NFL. 

But it also seems designed to appeal to teenagers, without making it necessary to align with Kaepernick’s political and social justice views.

Yes, it’s Kaepernick’s voice and his image at the end, walking down a city street wearing a black mock turtleneck underneath a tan coat. But there is nothing in the ad that connects him to football or the NFL, even though his own backstory – being adopted by white parents, getting one college scholarship offer from Nevada and ultimately quarterbacking a team to the Super Bowl – contains some of the same inspirational threads as the people he’s narrating over.

Moreover, the commercial’s only allusion to the protest he sparked is subtle. As the camera brings Kaepernick into view from behind – you recognize him by his Afro – he’s standing and looking at a waving American flag being projected onto a building. 

Then, as Kaepernick walks out of the frame, the images of the young people from earlier in the ad appear on those buildings and the words are flashed on the screen: “It’s only crazy until you do it. Just do it.” 

Casting Kaepernick in this light is interesting because he’s the only person in the ad who isn’t shown playing a sport or wearing some type of Nike gear. That seems intentional, as if to acknowledge that he’s moved beyond the sports context and into the zeitgeist of these political and cultural times. 

And when you think about what Nike’s actually trying to accomplish here, it makes perfect sense. 

Though Nike has been the country’s preeminent sneaker and sports apparel company for a generation, Adidas has steadily been making headway, particularly with younger people. In the second quarter of 2018, Adidas posted a $485 million profit, shattering Wall Street expectations. That followed nine consecutive quarters in which the company’s sales increased by at least 20%. 

Fueled by its alliance with pop culture stars such as Kanye West and Pharrell Williams, Adidas has made up significant ground and surpassed Jordan Brand (a Nike subsidiary) last year as No. 2 in the sneaker game.

Nike didn’t really have a comparable face, and many of its preeminent athletes they’ve been associated with outside the NBA (such as Tiger Woods, Roger Federer, Serena Williams) are at the back end of their careers and don’t necessarily identify with teenagers. But that’s what shoe companies have to do: Figure out not just who their customers are now, but who their customers are going to be in five years, 10 years and beyond. 

That’s who this is aimed at. We’re on the cusp of welcoming a generation of kids into adulthood who grew up with politics being injected into practically every area of their lives. Whether that’s a good thing will be for others to determine, but it’s a moment that’s happening and Nike is looking for a way to capitalize on it. 

Kaepernick probably won’t sell a lot of shoes to my contemporaries. But would the ad that played Thursday night resonate with high school kids who are growing up in a confusing, polarized, politically active era? Nike is counting on it. 

England’s Justin Rose shot a seven-under-par 63 to move into second place after the second round of the BMW Championship in Philadelphia.

Rose, 38, finished the day 11 under, two off the lead, to climb the leaderboard as Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods moved in the opposite direction.

McIlroy had a one-under 69 for a nine-under total, one shot ahead of 14-time major winner Woods, who bogeyed his final two holes in a level-par 70.

Xander Schauffele leads on 13 under.

The American shot a six-under 64 on a day when tee times were brought forward because of the threat of bad weather.

McIlroy’s 69 saw him fall six places to joint-seventh on nine under, while Woods is tied for 12th.

England’s Tommy Fleetwood sits one shot behind Woods after hitting eight birdies for an eight-under-par round of 62 to charge up the leaderboard.

Woods followed his 62 on Thursday – his lowest opening round since 1999 – with three birdies and three bogeys for a level-par 70.

The American, who was this week named as a wildcard pick for the Ryder Cup, said on pgatour.com: “I hit it just as good and putted it just as good. Nothing went in. That’s the way it goes.

“That round today was easily six, seven under par. It turned into even par which is not what I needed to do.”

Schauffele narrowly missed out on an automatic spot in Jim Furyk’s United States Ryder Cup team but could earn the fourth and final wildcard pick with a strong performance this weekend.

He said: “I feel like I’m sort of on a mission here. I have lots to prove to myself… and I just want to win and just handle my business.”

The long-awaited pickup in U.S. wage growth may have finally arrived.

Average hourly earnings rose 2.9 percent in August from a year earlier, the sharpest jump since June 2009, the Labor Department said Friday.

The rise last month means worker pay is finally increasing at a noticeably higher pace than the 2.3 percent yearly inflation measure tracked by the Federal Reserve. And that gives households a little more breathing room in their monthly budgets.

Until now, pay increases have accelerated, but gradually. They’ve averaged about 2.7 percent  in 2018, up from 2.5 percent the prior two years.

Economists have expected yearly pay increases to hit 3 percent since unemployment dipped below 5 percent in 2016 as more employers began struggling to find workers.

Workers looking for a bump in pay shouldn’t break out the champagne just yet. Experts aren’t sure whether the rise last month will continue.

Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, says “it is too early to assume a clear trend,” noting annual pay increases reached 2.8 percent in July 2016 only to fall back.

But Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist of Glassdoor, the giant job posting and employee review site, says: “I definitely don’t think it’s a blip. The signs are clear … you’re seeing a steady buildup of wage pressures.”

Though fatter paychecks are generally a positive for workers, they also could prod the Fed to raise interest rates more rapidly to head off a spike in inflation. That could make adjustable-rate mortgages and credit card debt more expensive and cool off the stock market along with workers’ 401(k) plan holdings. Higher rates make less risky bonds relatively more appealing than stocks.

More: Jobs report: Employers added 201,000 jobs in August

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One factor that has curtailed salary increases in Labor’s monthly jobs report is that highly paid baby boomers are retiring while lower-wage millennials are entering the labor market.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, which tracks the same workers over time, reported a 3.3 percent annual gain in wage growth in July, Chamberlain notes.

Now, Labor’s more closely watched report is also starting to reflect bigger advances in pay as the job market has tightened substantially in recent months. The number of job openings in June, at 6.7 million, outpaced the 6.6 million unemployed Americans, Labor Department figures show. Employers increasingly “are starting to pull talent away from the competition,” Chamberlain says.

Job switchers, in fact, are seeing the biggest benefits, with annual wage gains of 3.8 percent in July, compared to 2.9 percent for job holders, Chamberlain says, citing the Atlanta Fed figures.

Paychecks are increasing more sharply in some industries than others.

It’s no surprise that August pay was up 4.7 percent from a year ago among financial firms, 3 percent in professional and business services, and 3.4 percent in information. The latter category includes media and telecommunications companies, film studios and some tech workers. Construction, grappling with a severe worker shortage, boosted paychecks 3.3 percent.

Yet wages were also up 3.2 percent in leisure and hospitality, which includes lower paid restaurant and hotel workers, and retail. Workers in those sectors are less inclined to move for jobs, forcing employers to draw from a more limited pool and bid up to attract them, Chamberlain says. Those employees also have benefited from minimum-wage increases in 18 states this year, he says.

Yet manufacturing, which has been struggling to hire high-skilled workers, doled out yearly pay increases averaging just 1.8 percent. Baker says many manufacturers may not be adept at poaching workers from rivals after having their pick of workers for years as factories closed and jobs moved overseas.

There was other good news for workers last month. Hiring rebounded in August, the government reported Friday, as employers added 201,000 jobs and the labor market continued to defy worker shortages and U.S. trade battles.

 

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