Ahead of highly anticipated hearings this week, Facebook Vice President David Marcus, head of the company’s blockchain division, said in his prepared remarks that Facebook won’t move forward with its Libra cryptocurrency without full approval and regulation.
Libra has sparked global concern from politicians since Facebook announced its plans for the new technology in June, provoking questions about how the company will navigate government regulation and oversight, existing government-backed currencies, criminal use and privacy.
On Monday afternoon, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a White House briefing that criminal misuse of cryptocurrency is a “national security issue.”

Joe Biden panned President Donald Trump’s recent tweets about four congresswomen as a “racist attack” after Trump said they should “go back” to their countries.
Biden on Monday evening also added a suggestion for Trump.
“He should go home,” Biden said of Trump to yells and cheers. “He should go home.”
“The way he spoke about four members of Congress, no matter what you think as a politician, he talks about going back to the awful countries that they’re from — Brooklyn, Michigan,” Biden said, to laughter. “It’s a flat, racist attack.”
Read more at POLITICO.
{Matzav.com}

A military reconnaissance drone crashed in the central Gaza Strip on Tuesday morning, reportedly after it was shot down by a Palestinian terror group in the coastal enclave.
The Israel Defense Forces confirmed that the small unmanned aerial vehicle, known as a Skylark, had crashed in the Gaza Strip, but refused to comment on what caused the aircraft to go down.
Palestinian media outlets reported that the drone was shot down by a terror group.
Read more at Times of Israel.
{Matzav.com}

President Trump on Tuesday insisted he is not a racist amid sustained criticism of his attacks on four minority, progressive Democratic congresswomen.
The president’s latest defense of his tweets telling the lawmakers to “go back” to their home countries, even though they are all U.S. citizens, came hours before the House is set to vote on a resolution condemning them as racist.
“Those Tweets were NOT Racist. I don’t have a Racist bone in my body!” Trump tweeted.
Trump condemned the “so-called vote” on the resolution as a “Democrat con game,” sending a message to Republicans to vote against the measure.

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The House voted passed a resolution to condemn President Trump’s tweets in a vote today.
The measure, which formally rebuked the president’s comments as “racist”, was approved on a mostly partisan-line vote of 240 to 187.

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Rep. Al Green filed articles of impeachment against President Trump on Tuesday under a process that will force a House floor vote by the end of this week.
Green introduced his articles of impeachment after the House passed a resolution largely along party lines condemning Trump for suggesting that four progressive freshman congresswomen of color — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) — “go back” to their countries.
Green said that the House should go beyond condemning Trump and move to remove him from office.
It will be the third impeachment floor vote forced by Green in the last two years, but the first since Democrats took control of the House.

An Israeli soldier shot and seriously injured an Arab Israeli man whom he suspected of trying to ram his car into troops manning a checkpoint in the northern West Bank on Monday night, the army said.
After being shot, the Arab Israeli man drove away and was taken to Petah Tikva’s Beilinson Hospital. He is in serious condition in the intensive care unit, a hospital spokesperson said.
The Israel Defense Forces said it was investigating the incident.
Read more at Times of Israel.
{Matzav.com}

It started with a broken cable.
Sometime before 6:47 p.m. on Saturday, a 13,000-volt underground power line at New York City’s West 64th Street and West End Avenue burned, according to Consolidated Edison Inc. One spokesman for the utility said casing along the line had cracked. Another said the company hasn’t determined the cause of the failure.