A pastor closely linked to Donald Trump said he’s against sex with adult film stars but isn’t holding the alleged affair with Stormy Daniels against the president. “Evangelicals still believe in the commandment: Thou shalt not have sex with a porn star,” Robert Jeffress told Fox News on Thursday. “However, whether this president violated that commandment or not is totally irrelevant to our support of him.”

It’s not just the US which has had its “Howard Beale moment.” By Marshall Auerback.

Uber bought half of the seats to the London premiere of "Brilliant Jerks," a play inspired by the car-ride startup. "Brilliant Jerks" is said to have been inspired in part by the infamous blog post by former Uber employee Susan J. Fowler, alleging a toxic and sexist culture at the company. Fowler's blog set off a chain of events ultimately leading to the resignation of Travis Kalanick as CEO.

A self-described Russian "seductress" is asking for US help to escape a Thai detention center in exchange for information on alleged links between US President Donald Trump and Russia, according to her Instagram account. Anastasia Vashukevich, who also goes by the name Nastya Rybka, says she's being held in Thailand after being arrested on February 26, along with nine other Russians, in the city of Pattaya for running so-called "sex training" sessions.

Thursday’s explosive New York Times story that President Donald Trump ordered the firing of special counsel Robert Mueller last June renewed the public’s focus on the obstruction of justice investigation against Trump, which will soon culminate in Trump’s interview by Mueller. The case against Trump has grown stronger in recent months, and it now appears likely that Mueller will conclude that Trump obstructed justice.

Swiss consumer protection organization SKS has filed a claim on behalf of some 6,000 car owners seeking damages from Volkswagen AG and Swiss car dealer AMAG related to the "Dieselgate" emissions scandal.

A 71-year-old anti-poverty activist has filed a $1-billion class-action lawsuit against several grocers after Loblaw Companies Ltd. and George Weston Ltd. revealed Tuesday that they participated in an industry-wide bread price-fixing arrangement for more than a decade. Irene Breckon, president of the Anti-Poverty Coalition in Elliot Lake, Ont., regularly bought loaves of Country Harvest bread at a No Frills grocery store. When she heard that Loblaws was offering their customers a $25 gift card as a gesture of goodwill, Breckon said she was outraged.

If hotheaded online commenters ran the Justice Department, would America's prisons be full of traders responsible for the financial crisis? It is tempting to think so—that the lack of corporate prosecutions is due to a lack of will rather than a lack of way. But convicting bankers—or any other white-collar workers whose decisions at work have ostensibly damaged the economy—is difficult because while it is easy to identify systematic wrongdoing, it's much harder to pin blame, at least in the way a court might approve of, on an individual within that system.

How a piece of fictional satire nearly ruined the career of one journalist. By Walker Bragman.

The Russia-gate prosecutors have taken the scalp of ex- National Security Adviser (and retired Lt. Gen.) Flynn for lying to the FBI. But this case shows how dangerously far afield this “scandal” has gone, reports Robert Parry.

A hot scandal broke out in Poland a few days ago unveiling the mechanisms the so-called “democratic opposition” applies in the countries that push their own agenda and do not listen to their Western “friends." By Alexander Shtorm.

In the current moment, we risk reverting to a more sexually restrictive era—one that denied agency to women. By Masha Gessen.

Japan’s Toray Industries Inc on Tuesday revealed 149 cases of quality data falsification at a materials-making subsidiary spanning eight years, in the latest quality-assurance scandal to hit a Japanese manufacturer.

Wells Fargo bankers overcharged hundreds of corporate clients in order to meet their sales goals, the Wall Street Journal reports. Those bankers, most of whom performed international transactions for corporations, allegedly inflated clients' fees, tacking on millions of dollars in extra charges. The bankers were allegedly driven by Wells Fargo's employee rewards system, which gave sizable bonuses to bankers who exceeded their sales goals.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is criticizing the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) after he said it was flooded with fake public comments on net neutrality and did nothing about it. Schneiderman said an investigation shows hundreds of thousands of fake comments that were against net neutrality were sent to the FCC. Another data scientist said the number could actually be more than a million.

The theatre apologised for not having a culture where people could "speak freely".

As stories about abuse, assault, and complicity come flooding out, how do we think about the culprits in our lives? Including, sometimes, ourselves. By Rebecca Traister.

In the name of God, go. By Jonn Elledge.

It involves fancy dinners, prostitutes, and lots of alcohol. By Alex Ward.

Never mind the obvious factual differences in the stories—the allegations of Russian collusion are far more grave—American law, politics, and journalism is far too different now to think that matters will unfold the way they did in the 1970s. As complex a story as Watergate was, it reads like a children’s book compared to what Mueller and his team are dealing with. As vicious and as partisan as the events were back then, they seem quaint in comparison to the poisonous atmosphere in which the current scandal is unfolding. That is why the comparisons to Watergate are so facile. By Andrew Cohen.