Report: North Korea Test-Fires Ballistic Missile:

North Korea’s military test-fired a ballistic missile, according toSouth Korean media reported on Friday. “North Korea fired an unidentified missile from a site in the vicinity of Bukchang in Pyeongannam-do (South Pyeongan Province) early this morning,” South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff said in a statement. Later reports indicated the test had failed. “U.S. Pacific Command detected what we assess was a North Korean missile launch at 10:33 a.m. Hawaii time,” Commander Dave Benham of the U.S. Pacific Command told The Daily Beast. “The missile did not leave North Korean territory. The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) determined the missile launch from North Korea did not pose a threat to North America.”

Trump Revives ‘Pocahontas’ Rant for NRA Speech:

Milo Yiannopoulos Gets $12M to Build Alt-Right Media Company:

Report: Trump Considering Sheriff Clarke for DHS Role:

‘Roseanne’ Reboot to Reunite Roseanne Barr, John Goodman, and More:

Trump Picks Anti-Abortion Leader for HHS Spot:

If push comes to shove with North Korea, Gov. John Kasichbelieves the Trump administration should move to assassinate the top leadership of the rogue state’s military. “I believe the best way to solve this problem is to eradicate the leadership… those that are closest to making the decisions that North Korea is following now,” Kasich told reporters at the Christian Science Monitor breakfast in Washington, D.C. “The North Korean top leadership has to go, and there are ways in which that can be achieved.” Tensions have been rising with North Korea in recent weeks, and the Trump administration has repeatedly signaled that it would be willing to use military force to confront the Hermit Kingdom’s regime. But Kasich thinks that the view of a large-scale war with North Korea would be far too costly in terms of human life. “Moving big warships in and having a war, I don’t think that’s going to work,” and could lead to a million deaths through a conventional war, Kasich argued. “Too much loss of life.” The alternative would be to have a series of raids and targeted actions against the members of the regime’s top echelons, replacing them with a more “benign leadership.” It’s an option that Kasich, as a 18 year veteran of the House Armed Services Committee, believes is within America’s power to do. “Now you have to have very good intelligence, you have to have the ability to do things very quickly, and I think that is not beyond our capability,” he said.

President Trump has admitted that running the country is not quite as easy as he thought it would be. In an interview with Reuters published Thursday, Trump opened up about his impressions from his first 100 days in the White House, saying he feels like he’s in his “own little cocoon” and misses driving. “I loved my previous life. I had so many things going,” he told Reuters. “This is more work than in my previous life. I thought it would be easier.” One of the things he misses most about his former life, he said, is having the freedom to drive. “I like to drive. I can’t drive anymore,” he said, describing a lonely existence in which “you have such massive protection that you really can’t go anywhere.”

America’s gross domestic product expanded at the slowest pace in three years during 2017’s first quarter, the U.S. Department of Commerce reported early Friday. The measure of goods and services produced from January to March registered at 0.7 percent; analysts had expected it to be 1 percent. Sluggish consumer spending, particularly on big-ticket items, was the biggest factor in the pullback: The Wall Street Journal reports household outlays hit the lowest point since late 2009 during the period, with rising inflation and less money spent on home heating during the mild winter cited as driving factors. Economists said the GDP tends to be slow during the early part of the year, and many expect a rebound to a rate of 3 to 4 percent in the coming months.

Wells Fargo employees at branches across the U.S. routinely rounded up undocumented immigrants to set them up with unauthorized checking and savings accounts in order to meet aggressive sales goals and generate commissions, according to court documents filed in a shareholder lawsuit in California. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Spanish-speaking workers would deliberately target places like construction sites, factories, and convenience stores to find undocumented day laborers, and take them to a branch to set up accounts, with some paid $10 apiece as a reward. One Pennsylvania branch created “Hit the Streets Thursday,” in which managers told Latino staffers to patrol streets and a local Social Security office to get immigrants into branches to open accounts, according to a filing by Julia Miller, a former Wells branch manager. The claims stem from sworn declarations from employees given to plaintiff’s attorney Joseph Cotchett, who filed the suit in San Francisco Superior Court. Wells Fargo has acknowledged that its employees set up as many as two million fraudulent accounts in customers’ names without their consent because they were under pressure to match the bank’s steep sales demands, and has paid nearly $200 million in fines.

WHO READS LBN? Lifestyle publicist Nicole Dunn

LBN-SPOTLIGHT: Coming Soon – Episode #2 of “Without Notes” —- 

Why People Are Smuggling Illicit, Delicious Butter Into Wisconsin

Jean Smith is kind of modern day bootlegger, but she doesn’t smuggle liquor—she moves butter. Routinely crammed in her car is a stockpile of butter imported from Ireland. Whenever Smith leaves her home in Waukesha, Wisconsin, to visit relatives out of state, she’ll stop in Nebraska to load up on blocks of Kerrygold butter, which is banned in the state that calls itself, “America’s Dairyland.” It may be specially crafted but the product is what’s called “ungraded butter,” which doesn’t carry the familiar USDA stamp of approval or in this case a Wisconsin grade. The state is the only one in the U.S. to declare it “unlawful to sell, offer or expose for sale, or have in possession with intent to sell, any butter at retail unless it has been graded.” “Ms. Smith brings back as much Kerrygold butter with her when she visits family in Nebraska,” said a civil lawsuit she and three other butter-lovers filed against Wisconsin in a state court last month. “She keeps large amounts of the butter in her home refrigerator in the hopes that she will have enough to last her until her next out-state trip.” Kerrygold says the “winds, rain and warming influence of the Gulf Stream all contribute to the lush grass” where the Ireland-based company’s happy cows graze before they’re milked to create butter that’s “silky and creamy and glow a healthy, golden yellow.

THINK FREELY – READ LBN:

House Passes Stopgap Bill to Avoid Shutdown

The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday overwhelmingly passed a stopgap measure to avert a government shutdown tonight at midnight. The temporary spending package passed by a 382-30 vote and will head to the Senate where it is expected to easily pass on to the president’s desk. The bill provides spending for one week while lawmakers have vowed to work on a broader, full-year spending package next week to fund the government through September.

LBN – SPOTLIGHT:  Tiananmen West: Why Nixon Ordered the Kent State Massacre is now available on Amazon in both e-book and paperback formats. It is a non-fiction study of the Nixon era.   Author, Jenny Deason Copeland, pitched the screenplay for 20 years only to hear Hollywood execs suggest it be a book first. The heroine and villain parts were written withSarandon and Nicholson in mind. Nixon confesses to ordering the massacre in his autobiography RN. After three decades of research using FOIA procedures, the book uncovers the possible motive behind the massacre. The FOIA results are available free at 

WHO READS LBN? Prominent LA Banker Steve Shapiro

LBN-SITE OF THE DAY:

FlightAware.com: Flight Tracker
“FlightAware provides live flight data, airport delays, fuel prices, airline operational tools, weather maps, flight planning, flight routes, oceanic tracks, and navigation charts, as well as aviation news and photos to over ten million users a month via the FlightAware.com web site and mobile apps.”

Two U.S. Special Ops Soldiers Killed in Afghanistan

Two US service members were killed and another was wounded Thursday while conducting a joint US-Afghan raid in the Achin District of Nangarhar Province, Pentagon spokesman US Navy Capt. Jeff Davis told CNN. The operation was targeting ISIS-K, the terror group’s Afghanistan affiliate. A US official told CNN the service members were Special Operations Forces soldiers, adding that the wounded soldier’s injuries are not considered life-threatening. “The fight against ISIS-K is important for the world, but sadly, it is not without sacrifice,” said Gen. John W. Nicholson, commander of US Forces-Afghanistan. “On behalf of all US forces and our coalition partners, I offer our deepest sympathies to the families, friends and fellow service members of our fallen comrades.” Achin District is the primary base of operations for ISIS in Afghanistan and has been the site of multiple joint US-Afghan counterterrorism missions. A US Army Special Forces soldier was killed fighting the terror group there earlier this month. It is also where the US dropped one of its most powerful bombs earlier this month, killing close to 100 ISIS fighters, according to Afghan officials. Nicholson has pledged to eliminate ISIS-K from Afghanistan this year.

A spacecraft hovering between Saturn and its signature rings has successfully sent information back to Earth. The Cassini spacecraft was diving in Wednesday when NASA lost its connection. But the signal came back early Thursday, allowing Cassini to send back pictures of the rings. “No spacecraft has ever been this close to Saturn before,” said Earl Maize, the Cassini program director at NASA. “We could only rely on prediction, based on our experience with Saturn’s other things, of what we thought this gap between the rings and Saturn would be like. I am delighted to report that Cassini shot through the gap just as we planned and has come out the other side in excellent shape.”

Syrian state media claimed Thursday that an Israeli missile strike caused an explosion and fire at a military site near Damascus’s airport. However, Syrian rebel sources told the BBC that the target was an arms depot controlled by Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement—an ally of the Assad regime that Israel has consistently targeted in its attempt to prevent Iranian weapons smuggling to the anti-Israel organization. The Israeli government, however, did not confirm it was responsible for the strike.

President Donald Trump has announced that he will not pull the U.S. out of the North American Free Trade Agreement, despite numerous promises to do so. Trump informed the leaders of Mexico and Canada of his decision Wednesday, and the White House later confirmed that the president had “agreed not to terminate NAFTA at this time.” The surprise move comes after Trump railed against the trade agreement throughout his campaign and into his presidency, repeatedly vowing to pull the U.S. out of the deal, which he called a “disaster” for American workers. Trump was widely expected to sign an executive order withdrawing the U.S. from NAFTA on Wednesday. Instead, he has reportedly agreed with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to renegotiate the trade deal to “the benefit of all three countries.” Trump expressed optimism about the plans, saying he thinks a renegotiated deal will “make all three countries stronger and better,” the Associated Press reported.

United Airlines will raise the limit on its payment to customers who are asked to give up their seats on oversold flights to $10,000, the carrier announced Thursday. The rule change came as part of a company report into to a video of a passenger being violently dragged from his seat on an overbooked flight from Chicago. The airline has also vowed to increase training for its gate agents and flight attendants and to no longer call on police officials to deal with similar situations. Prior to raising its compensation limit, United’s ceiling on compensation for an overbooked flight was $1,350. Additionally, United said it will send displaced passengers or crew members to nearby airports, book them on a different airline, or arrange for any additional car transportation to help get them to their destination.

“A period life table is based on the mortality experience of a population during a relatively short period of time. Here we present the 2011 period life table for the Social Security area population. For this table, the period life expectancy at a given age is the average remaining number of years expected prior to death for a person at that exact age, born on January 1, using the mortality rates for 2011 over the course of his or her remaining life.”

LBN-R.I.P.:   ***Acclaimed director Jonathan Demme died on Wednesday morning in New York after suffering from esophageal cancer. He was 73. In a career that spanned more than four decades, Demme directed The Silence of the Lambs, for which he won an Academy Award in 1992, as well as dramas like Something Wild, Philadelphia and Beloved. In later years, he directed Anne Hathaway to an Oscar nomination for 2008’s Rachel Getting Married and just two years ago helmed Ricki and the Flash starring Meryl Streep. Demme was also well-known for his dynamic music documentaries, most famously 1984’s Stop Making Sense starring The Talking Heads, but also Neil Young: Heart of Gold in 2006 and most recently Justin Timberlake + the Tennessee Kids.

LBN-VIDEO LINK:  “I grew up in the Westboro Baptist Church. Here’s why I left | Megan Phelps-Roper” —- https://youtu.be/bVV2Zk88beY

LBN-SPOTLIGHT: “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. —– 

LBN-INVESTIGATES: How Long Does it Take Certain Materials to Decompose?

Cigarette butts and filters take 12 years to biodegrade. An aluminum can takes between 200 to 500 years to biodegrade. Plastic diapers and sanitary pads take between 500-800 years. Styrofoam takes more than 5,000 years. And it would take a glass bottle 1 million years to biodegrade

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY:  1865 – Steamboat “SS Sultana” explodes in the Mississippi River, killing up to 1,800 of the 2,427 passengers in the greatest maritime disaster in United States history. Most were paroled Union POWs on their way home.

LBN-A DIFFERENT VIEW

LBN-MUSIC+FILM COLLISION:  Admidst filming a new movie with Daniel Day Lewis this year, acclaimed filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson found time to make a brand new music video. Indeed, the wildly talented band HAIM released the first single from their new album today, “Right Now,” as well as the music video, and it’s directed by none other than Anderson. The video isn’t some crazy theatrical or high-concept idea—instead, it highlights the talent of HAIM by showing them tracking the song in a single take, and it’s fantastic. We knew these girls were tremendous musicians, but seeing them perform the song live in the studio is really, really cool, and Anderson captures it beautifully. —-