Although the FBI previously concluded that Hillary Clinton should not face charges over the usage of her personal email server, the Bureau apparently isn’t done looking into Clinton’s emails after all. “In previous congressional testimony, I referred to the fact that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had completed its investigation of former Secretary Clinton’s personal email server, ” FBI Director James Comey said in a letter sent out Friday . “Due to recent developments, I am writing to supplement my previous testimony.” “In connection with an unrelated case, ” Comey’s letter continues, “the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation. I am writing to inform you that the investigative team briefed me on this yesterday, and I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.” Comey concluded: “Although the FBI cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant, ” and I cannot predict how long it will take us to complete this additional work, I believe it is important to update your Committees about our efforts in light of my previous testimony.” Engadget will, of course, update as we know more. Update: The Associated Press has tweeted a clarification from an unnamed US official, stating that the newly discovered emails did not come from Clinton’s private email server. BREAKING: US official: Newly discovered emails related to Clinton investigation did not come from her private server. — AP Politics (@AP_Politics) October 28, 2016 Update: The New York Times is reporting that the new emails were discovered after the FBI seized electronic devices belonging to Clinton aide Huma Abedin and her husband Anthony Weiner. Update: John Podesta, the chairman of the Clinton campaign, has responded to Comey’s letter and has called on the FBI director to “immediately provide the American people more information than what is contained in his letter”. “The director owes it to the American people to immediately provide the full details of what he is now examining, ” Podesta continued. “We are confident this will not produce any conclusions different from the one the FBI reached in July.” Via: New York Times , CNBC
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Unearthed Clinton emails garner renewed FBI scrutiny (updated)
sciencehabit quotes a report from Science Magazine: A decade ago, a fossil hunter was combing the beach in southeastern England when he found a strange, brown pebble. The surface of it caught his eye: It was smooth and strangely undulating, and also slightly crinkly in some places. That oddly textured pebble, scientists report today, is actually an endocast — an impression preserved in the rock — that represents the first known evidence of fossilized brain tissue of a dinosaur (likely a close relative of Iguanodon, a large, herbivorous type of dinosaur that lived about 133 million years ago). Human brains and bird brains are packed tightly into the brain case, so that their convolutions leave an impression of the inside of the case. But dinosaur (and reptile) brains are more loosely fitted; they are surrounded within the brain case by membranes called meninges, tough sheaths that protect and support the brain. So an endocast of a dinosaur brain might be expected to show those structures — and it did. But beneath them, remineralized in calcium phosphate, the researchers also spied a pattern of tiny capillaries and other cortical tissues — the sort of fabric you’d expect for the cortex of a brain. That those textures were pressed up against the brain case doesn’t necessarily mean that dinosaurs were bigger-brained and smarter than we thought, however: Instead, the dinosaur had likely simply toppled over and been preserved upside down, its brain tissue preserved by surrounding acidic, low-oxygen waters that pickled and hardened the membranes and tissues, providing a template for mineralization. The structure of the brain, studied with scanning electron microscopes, reveal similarities to both birds and crocodiles. The researchers reported their findings in a Special Publication of the Geological Society of London. Read more of this story at Slashdot.