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While I still love Java as a programming language, it seems to be more troublesome than it is worth to keep the Java applets on here. It's almost as if the browser folks have declared war on Java. Firefox disables the java plugin if it's too far out of date. A lot of times you have to go through a lot of confirmations just to run a java applet, and even after doing all that, the browser still might not let you run it. My graph of picked lottery numbers is a good example.
So, it's time to make a change and convert the couple Java applets I had on here to javascript. I'll start with the ticker that shows the current winning numbers for SuperLottoPlus and Mega Millions. Then I'll work on the graph applet.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has given the crew of the USS Abraham Lincoln a high-level award during a visit to the aircraft carrier Wednesday, a day before the ship returns home to San Diego after a record-long deployment in support of the Iran war.
The Presidential Unit Citation, the highest honor a unit can receive that is typically reserved for significant achievement in combat, was bestowed upon the Lincoln and accompanying ships for "40 days of combat operations and an ironclad maritime blockade against Iran in support of Operation Epic Fury," Hegseth said, referring to the Trump administration's code name for the Iran war.
The carrier endured a record 265 uninterrupted days at sea, and its extended deployment drew national attention following reports of crew stress and poor mental health, as well as supply shortages, including food and hygiene products. After more than 10 months deployed, the Lincoln's crew got a stop in Thailand early last month on the way back from the Middle East.
Pentagon chief visits the crew and acknowledges long time at sea
Hegseth, who flew out to the ship before its arrival Thursday in San Diego, acknowledged to the crew that "I'm the only thing standing between you and home" and that his intention was "once they pull up to the dock, we're getting out of the way."
Long deployments can tax service members who are away from their families for extended periods while facing threats, and can add wear to the aircraft carriers, which have been used for President Donald Trump's military operations in the Middle East and South America.
The Lincoln is the second carrier that has endured an unusually long and arduous deployment to support the war against Iran and the second to receive the top unit award afterward.
Hegseth in May met the crew of the USS Gerald R. Ford during its return from a 326-day deployment — the longest for an aircraft carrier in the past 50 years and a record in the post-Vietnam War era.
As for the Lincoln, it departed San Diego in late November, arrived in the Middle East in January and now will be back in its home port.
Hegseth said Wednesday that Trump "tracked your activities from day one and couldn't be more proud of what you executed."
Issues had been reported aboard the USS Lincoln
The Navy initially played down early reports of supply problems on Lincoln and Trump said its lengthy deployment was "not nearly long enough," Navy leaders, however, eventually acknowledged there were some issues aboard.
In August, acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao said the Lincoln maintained adequate food supplies, but because combat operations limited resupply opportunities, meal options were reduced from two to one for a short time. He said in a letter to a Democratic lawmaker seeking information that four nutritionally balanced meals were served daily.
Navy officials also said that while combat operations led to delays in scheduled resupply shipments, they prioritized the delivery of hygiene products and established a rotation to streamline distribution to different squadrons.
More recently, the service told lawmakers that eight sailors attempted suicide while on the long deployment. Experts say that number is low in a strike group of 6,000 sailors over 10 months.
Hegseth pushed back against what he said were efforts to turn the "Lincoln into some sort of a symbol, a symbol of dysfunction or a symbol of low morale or a symbol of a failed mission."
He said that "what makes the U.S. military and the U.S. Navy and all these sailors different is that you adapt and that you're resilient and you overcome — you finish the mission nonetheless."
Aircraft carriers have been key to Iran war operations
According to the award that Hegseth read to the crew, the Lincoln and the strike group executed 3,693 combat missions, delivered 1.37 million pounds of ordnance, launched 450 Tomahawk cruise missiles, shot down 77 one-way attack drones, sank 64 Iranian warships, destroyed 21 anti-ship cruise missiles and defended against four fast attack craft and explosive-carrying ships.
There are now two aircraft carriers assigned to the Middle East. The USS George Washington, though usually based in Asia, relieved the Lincoln in August.
The other aircraft carrier, the USS George H.W. Bush, has been deployed for about six months, but it pulled into Phuket, Thailand, for a port visit several days ago.
U.S. officials have said a third aircraft carrier, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, and thousands of troops aboard it and accompanying ships could join the Washington and the Bush as early as the end of October.
This article originally appeared on Associated Press at https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/hegseth-visits-long-deployed-uss-201924924.htmlIn July, Reps. Mike Lawler, a New York Republican, and Josh Gottheimer, a New Jersey Democrat, had a request for the Federal Election Commission: help make sure artificial intelligence chatbots do not feed voters false information about the 2026 midterm elections.
The lawmakers, writing to the FEC as well as the Justice and Homeland Security departments, urged the agencies to coordinate on "AI-driven threats to election integrity" and to press AI companies on their safeguards. Their concerns come as a quarter of likely voters use AI tools daily and at least 38% have gotten information about candidates or voting from AI search summaries, according to a September survey released by the American Association of Political Consultants Foundation.
But later that month, FEC Commissioner Shana Broussard, a Democrat, wrote back with a blunt answer: the agency couldn't help. With only two of its six commissioner seats filled, the FEC "cannot proceed," she wrote, according to documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
Broussard signed the letter as an individual commissioner. Without a quorum — the four members needed out of a total of six — she could not under federal law even speak for the agency.
With Election Day just four weeks away, the exchange offers a window into how little the FEC can do as campaigns enter their final stretch. Without a quorum, agency staffers are limited to collecting and publishing campaign finance reports, answering questions from candidates about the law and fielding new complaints.
But the agency charged with policing how campaigns raise and spend money can't open investigations, issue fines, write rules or give candidates formal legal guidance. It hasn't been able to fulfill any of these duties since May 2025.
Since then, the FEC has not voted to resolve a single enforcement case or approved a dollar in new civil penalties, both of which require four commissioners. In the 12 months before that, it closed 180 cases and imposed about $1 million in civil penalties, according to agency records.
Meanwhile, the FEC's backlog of enforcement cases has doubled in a year, from 154 to 307, agency data show. (The FEC declined to comment for this story.)
Lawler and Gottheimer were not alone: the FEC's two remaining commissioners gave similar answers to a number of other lawmakers who asked it to investigate or issue guidance this year, the documents show.
One was Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Florida Republican, who asked the FEC in April whether she could use campaign funds to pay for childcare while she voted and attended committee hearings. The Capitol's daycare center only allows parents to pay for full-time care, she said.
"Please advise on what I can do," she wrote in an email. An FEC official replied the next day that the commission could not issue advisory opinions until a quorum is restored.
Luna said in an interview that she reached out to the White House to convey the importance of the FEC regaining a quorum, so questions like hers can be answered.
"Until the FEC meets, we're going to be operating in a gray area, which is why we need them to get a quorum to get a yes or no," Luna told CBS News. "Obviously, we don't want to get in trouble."
For those less worried about getting in trouble, the standstill has had the opposite effect, said Adav Noti, a former top lawyer for the FEC. The agency rarely acts quickly on complaints even with a full commission, he said, but the perception that anything goes has led to "more boundary-pushing than we would otherwise see."
Noti is now executive director of the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit group that seeks to strengthen campaign finance enforcement. Last month, it filed a complaint alleging President Trump illegally controls MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC that supports Republican candidates.
The complaint cited Mr. Trump's remarks in September from the Oval Office that MAGA Inc.'s war chest is "my money that I control." And, this week, the president said MAGA Inc. funds would begin to pay for Trump-focused TV ads that his administration has been running, after public scrutiny over them being funded by taxpayers.
Unlike candidates, super PACs like MAGA Inc. can raise unlimited sums from donors, but federal law bars officeholders from controlling them or directing how that money is spent.
"Since there is just absolutely no enforcement mechanism right now, there's sort of blanket impunity for lawbreaking," Noti said. (A spokesperson for MAGA Inc. denied any impropriety and said in a statement that it complies with the law.)
Conservatives are frustrated, too. "It is very disconcerting that the FEC is incapable of carrying out any enforcement actions," said Paul Kamenar, a lawyer at the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative nonprofit. Earlier this year, the group accused Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, of illegally using campaign money to pay a psychiatrist. That complaint is also stalled. (Ocasio-Cortez's office and campaign did not respond to requests for comment.)
"We are hobbled"
The Federal Election Commission began to unravel as Mr. Trump returned to the White House. Sean Cooksey, a Republican commissioner, resigned in January 2025 to join the White House as a top lawyer for Vice President JD Vance.
Weeks later, Mr. Trump removed Democratic FEC Chairwoman Ellen Weintraub, who had served on the commission since 2002 and claimed the firing was illegal. Mr. Trump has asserted sweeping power to remove officials at independent agencies like the FEC, which Congress set up to operate at arm's length from the White House.
By the end of April, Republican Commissioner Allen Dickerson had resigned, leaving the FEC one member short of a quorum. And in October of last year, Republican Trey Trainor stepped down too, leaving only two commissioners, both Democrats. For the first time since it was created in 1974 after the Watergate scandal, the FEC had no members from one of the two major parties.
"Other people report that we're hobbled, and I hate to agree with it, but we are hobbled," Broussard said at the time. Mr. Trump nominated two Republicans to the commission in February. But nearly eight months later, the Senate has not held a hearing on either nominee.
The paralysis has left lawmakers in both parties without answers.
Rep. Mike Levin, a California Democrat, asked the FEC earlier this year to investigate allegations that Hungary's government funneled money to the Conservative Political Action Conference. Without four commissioners, Broussard replied, complaints "cannot proceed through the enforcement process." In June, Broussard and Democratic Commissioner Dara Lindenbaum gave Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Colorado Republican, the same answer on a separate request.
Requests for guidance fared no better. When Rep. Mike Thompson, a California Democrat, wrote to the FEC this year to see if it would consider guidance on whether trading on prediction markets like Kalshi by candidates and PACs could count as a contribution or expenditure that must be reported under campaign finance law, Broussard replied that the FEC "is currently unable to commence rulemakings or to issue advisory opinions."
Thompson said in a statement to CBS News that such markets "can be easily manipulated by wealthy special interests" and that Congress and the FEC "should be tackling this emerging issue now."
Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat, was sent a similar answer.
Last year, her chief counsel asked the FEC whether campaign money could be used for defense lawyers "if the senator is sued for something that happens in the course of her official employment," emails show.
A spokesperson for Slotkin said the inquiry was a question about how campaign funds could interact with Senate-sanctioned liability insurance, and that no lawsuit was anticipated.
Record spending
The lack of a quorum is colliding with the most expensive election on record.
Political ad spending is projected to reach $11.6 billion this cycle, up by $400 million from 2024 even though that cycle included an expensive presidential contest, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact.
Much of it is hard to trace. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been routed through political groups that do not disclose their donors, including pop-up super PACs that form and spend late in races, CBS News has reported.
Candidates and their allies are still filing FEC complaints against each other, even though the agency cannot act on them. In Texas, Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico's campaign accused Republican Ken Paxton of illegally spending dark money; the groups involved say they follow the law. Conservative critics have accused independent Senate candidate Dan Osborn in Nebraska of misusing PAC and campaign money, which his campaign called politically motivated.
With no commission to issue guidance, campaigns and spenders are left to decide for themselves what the law allows, said Craig Holman, Public Citizen's lobbyist on ethics and campaign finance rules.
"We've got no one that can judge the merits of what's going on, enforce the law and provide guidance to candidates and political committees that seriously want it," Holman said. "So everyone knows you can do whatever you want this time around."
This article originally appeared on CBS News at https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fec-midterm-elections-quorum-campaign-finance-rules/London — The involvement of a small American firm linked to associates of President Trump in an energy project in Bosnia and Herzegovina worth more than $1.5 billion has raised questions about how the White House could be using its leverage in the fragile Balkan state.
U.S. lawmakers accuse the Trump administration of lifting sanctions on Bosnian Serb separatist leader Milorad Dodik in an effort to enrich and empower allies of Mr. Trump, and of undermining longstanding U.S. foreign policy interests in the region in the process.
On Sunday, Mr. Trump was hailed by Dodik after his Serb nationalist party won one of Bosnia and Herzegovina's three presidency seats, which are split between Bosnia's Muslim minority, known as Bosniaks, as well as Serb and Croat ethnic groups under the country's complex power-sharing electoral system.
"If it had not been for Donald Trump's magnificent victory … we would probably be political corpses today," Dodik told supporters in a speech, in which he also thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin for his support.
Company with links to Trump poised to build gas pipeline
AAFS Infrastructure & Energy, a company incorporated in the U.S. last year and headed by President Trump's former personal attorney Jesse Binnall and Joseph Flynn, the brother of Trump ally General Michael Flynn, is close to securing a contract to develop the Southern Interconnection Gas Pipeline.
The pipeline project has been discussed by Bosnian officials for years, but long opposed by Dodik, who has close ties with the Kremlin. But Dodik, whose party has veto power in Bosnia's parliament, said he would not stand in the way of the proposal following the announcement of AAFS' involvement last April. Six months earlier, the Trump administration lifted sanctions against Dodik that were imposed by the U.S. Treasury almost a decade ago.
The pipeline would connect Bosnia and Herzegovina to Croatia's gas network, allowing Bosnia to import liquefied natural gas (LNG) from its neighbors. The project, which is valued at around $1.7 billion according to the Croatian government, would help make Bosnia and Herzegovina less reliant on Russian gas imports.
On its website, AAFS describes itself as a company focused on "energy security, project structuring, capital alignment, and long-term regional infrastructure development."
The company does not appear to have demonstrable experience in any similar energy projects.
The secessionist leader Dodik, who until recently served as the president of Bosnia's self-governing, Serb-run territory called Republika Srpska, has long been accused of undermining the U.S. brokered Dayton Accords, which ended the bloody sectarian violence between Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia in the 1990s.
The sanctions, which included asset freezes and visa bans, were imposed by the Obama administration in 2017. The Biden administration then imposed further sanctions in 2022, accusing Dodik of corruption, including the charge that he had handed government contracts to close business associates in Republika Srpska.
A congressional report published last month by House Democrats, titled "Pay for Play in the Balkans," alleges that those two decisions — the removal of sanctions on Dodik and his decision to not oppose the pipeline — are directly linked.
"The Trump administration has used its diplomatic influence and connections with shady characters like Michael Flynn … to facilitate the concession contract for the SIC [Southern Interconnection Gas pipeline] to AAFS Infrastructure and Energy LLC, a company owned and operated by Michael Flynn's brother Joseph Flynn and Trump-affiliated lawyer and political activist Jesse Binnall," the report alleges.
AAFS Infrastructure and Energy LLC did not respond to a CBS News request for comment.
Foreign agent registration filings (FARA) cited in the report and reviewed by CBS News show that Michael Flynn, President Trump's former national security adviser, last worked as a paid lobbyist for Republika Srpska in October 2025, the month during which the sanctions against Dodik were lifted.
Those same filings show that Flynn was paid $100,000 for that work by RRB Strategies, a lobbying firm run by Rod Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor who was convicted in 2011 of 18 counts of corruption and spent nearly eight years in a federal prison before being pardoned by President Trump last year.
Flynn provided strategic advice and counsel, analysis and information research, and introductions to the Republika Srpska government, according to the FARA filings.
Blagoyevich's firm originally signed a contract to "provide communications and public affairs support on behalf of the Republic of Srpska" in March 2025, separate FARA filings reviewed by CBS News show.
CBS News sought comment from email aliases associated with Flynn and Blagojevich, but did not receive any response by the time of publication.
On Nov. 13, 2025, the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo said in a social media post that Chargé d'Affaires John Ginkel had met Bosnian Prime Minister Nermin Niksic to discuss the gas pipeline project and "to support the importation of U.S. gas through Croatia to consumers in Bosnia and Herzegovina."
One week later, the embassy announced a preliminary agreement for an "American company to develop, build, and manage the pipeline."
Four days after that, on Nov. 24, AAFS Infrastructure & Energy was incorporated in the state of Wyoming.
In January, the U.S Embassy in Sarajevo posted again confirming that a meeting had taken place between AAFS leadership, including Joseph Flynn and Binnall, and top Bosnian officials.
AAFS was then granted the status of lead investor and operator on the proposed natural gas pipeline in legislation passed by Bosnia's parliament in April.
Later that month, the Croatian and Bosnian governments signed a contract to construct the pipeline with U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright in attendance for the signing ceremony. At a news conference with Bosnia's energy minister on April 2, Binnall hailed the pipeline project as a "priority" for the Trump administration.
The White House declined to comment on the pipeline project last week, but an administration official said the sanctions against Dodik were lifted to prevent instability in the Balkans.
"This is yet another example of President Trump's pragmatic, farseeing foreign policy that has prevented disasters on perennial issues that his predecessors so often stumbled into," a White House official told CBS News on Friday, without elaborating on the type of disasters the Trump administration was preventing.
A State Department letter published as part of the House Democrat-authored congressional report said the decision to delist Dodik had helped ensure peace and stability in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The official who wrote the letter, Paul Guaglianone, said lifting sanctions against Dodik had led to Bosnian Serb separatists rolling back policies that would have destabilized Bosnia's government.
The lifting of sanctions "advanced U.S. interests in [Bosnia and Herzegovina] and the Western Balkans. On October 18, the Republika Srpska National Assembly (RSNA) withdrew most of the anti-Dayton legislation it had passed in recent years," the letter read. That legislation had included laws that would have blocked Bosnia's national police and judiciary from having any authority in Republika Srpska.
Political scientist and Balkans foreign policy expert Jasmin Mujanović told CBS News the legislation in question had already been struck down prior to the lifting of the sanctions against Dodik, and he was skeptical of the Trump administration's justifications for the move.
"This package of omnibus secessionist laws that the Serb nationalist authorities and the RS [Republika Srpska] entity in Bosnia had unlawfully voted through in the local assembly had already been struck down by the Constitutional Court of Bosnia Herzegovina," he said.
"If the argument is that the Trump administration nevertheless managed to get Dodik and his people to withdraw the laws, it's still unclear what the significance of that is, or for that matter, why, given that the laws are moot," he said, adding that it would "result in sanctions relief for an entire regime."
This article originally appeared on CBS News at https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-us-bosnia-herzegovina-sanctions-dodik-maga-firm-gas-pipeline/- Newsfeed provided by Yahoo! News
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