An Illuminati-loving self-help author is now in charge of honoring the smartest high school seniors in the country.

Last week, President Trump named Colorado lawyer George Mentz to the Commission on Presidential Scholars, which chooses academically excelling high school seniors to honor with a national award. Mentz is "a prolific author of self-help Illuminati books and operator of an education company that sells more than a hundred types of certifications," reports The Denver Post.

Mentz, a longtime Trump supporter and donor, is the author of The Illuminati Secret Laws of Money, The Illuminati Handbook, 50 Laws of Power of the Illuminati, and 100 Secrets and Habits of the Illuminati for Life Success. Several of those books are co-authored with someone named "Magus Incognito," and generally share how mindfulness can lead to prosperity. Mentz cautioned The Denver Post about getting "too excited" about his word choice, essentially saying the term "Illuminati" is used as a marketing tactic.

Mentz is also the current owner of the Global Academy of Finance and Management and former CEO of the American Academy of Financial Management, both of which "award certifications, allowing applicants to add an alphabet soup of titles after their names," The Denver Post writes.

A Wall Street Journal article from 2004 found that for one certification:

Applicants who already have certain professional designations, like a CFA or CPA can simply take the test without going through the course. In some cases, they can skip the test altogether and just pay for the certification, according to George Mentz, the Academy's general counsel.

"It's not a comprehensive course," Mr. Mentz says. "That's why we call it a certification, not a designation." [The Wall Street Journal]

Another Journal article from 2010 found that AAFM listed people on its board of advisers who said they'd never advised the company.

Read more at The Denver Post and the Wall Street Journal.

Editor's note: This article has been updated to reflect changes in the The Denver Post's original reporting. Kathryn Krawczyk

A security vulnerability in Twitter for Android could have allowed attackers to access some users' direct messages, the company has disclosed.

Twitter on Wednesday said it has fixed a vulnerability in the Android app that for some users "could allow an attacker, through a malicious app installed on your device, to access private Twitter data on your device (like direct messages), by working around Android system permissions that protect against this." This was "related to an underlying Android OS security issue" on Android OS versions 8 and 9, the company said.

Twitter said it believes 96 percent of Android users have a patch protecting them from the vulnerability, and it doesn't have evidence that attackers actually exploited the flaw, but the company adds it "can't be completely sure" of that. It's sending notifications to the users who may have been affected, requiring them to update the Android app, and promising to identify "changes to our processes to better guard against issues like this."

This disclosure from Twitter comes after the company last month grappled with a massive hack, in which high-profile accounts including those belonging to former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden were taken over to promote a Bitcoin scam. The company said that 130 accounts were targeted, and the attackers accessed direct messages on "up to 36" of them, including that of an elected official in the Netherlands. Brendan Morrow

More than 100 foreign policy experts — including former White House officials in Reagan, (both) Bush, Clinton, Obama, and Trump administrations — laid out six proposals for how the United States should alter its relationship with Russia in an open letter published by Politico on Tuesday.

The letter calls for squelching Russian interference in U.S. elections, while also engaging with Moscow about the matter through negotiations "out of the public square." Another top priority, the signatories believe, is for the White House and Congress to restore "normal diplomatic contacts" with Russia after several were shuttered following the Crimea invasion in 2014. "Too often we wrongly consider diplomatic contacts as a reward for good behavior, but they are about promoting our interests and delivering tough messages," the letter reads.

The other ideas include taking on a dual leadership role with Moscow in nuclear arms control, focusing on "three-way cooperation" between Washington, Moscow, and Beijing, and emphasizing that even in areas of genuine disagreement between the countries — like Ukraine and Syria — "measured and phased steps" are key to improving the "overall relationship."

Finally, the letter argues that Washington's sanction strategy needs to change. While, the signatories agree sanctions should remain part of the U.S.'s Russia policy, they need to be more flexible so they can be "eased quickly" should Russia engage productively in negotiations. At the moment, Moscow lacks the incentive to change course even in the face of sanctions, the letter says, because it considers U.S. sanctions "permanent." Read more at Politico. Tim O'Donnell

Facebook has finally gotten around to fact-checking President Trump's claims — except those that come up in his political ads.

In recent campaign ads on Facebook, Trump has repeatedly and falsely claimed former Vice President Joe Biden wants to "defund the police." Facebook's own fact checkers have correctly flagged the ads as untrue, but because it's coming from a political figure, Facebook isn't doing anything about it, The Washington Post reports.

Facebook relies on a network of independent fact checking groups to determine whether to flag misinformation on its site, and among at least five fact checkers, there was no question Trump's ad was false. After all, Biden had explicitly said he does not support that movement. But more than 1,400 ads claiming Biden did want to defund the police, costing between $350,000 and $553,000, still went out to Facebook viewers and were seen at least 22.5 million times, the Post reports via Facebook's ad network. None of them had any indication that Trump's ad contained a false message because politicians aren't subject to Facebook's advertising rules about deception.

Facebook has always been resistant to fact checking anything on its platform, and only recently applied a misinformation warning to Trump's claims that mail-in voting will lead to fraudulent elections. It did remove one of Trump's ads in June as well, because it used a Nazi symbol and violated Facebook's "organized hate" guidelines. Read more at The Washington Post. Kathryn Krawczyk

There are a lot more emperor penguins in Antarctica than previously thought, a new study has found.

Using space technology to identify guano, or penguin poop stains on the sea ice, scientists discovered there are about 20 percent more emperor penguin colonies than were previously recorded. This represents a 5 to 10 percent increase in population, bringing the total to just above half a million.

The study, published in Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation, relied on satellite imagery from the European Space Agency's Copernicus Mission's Sentinel2 sensor.

Many of the newly discovered colonies are breeding offshore, a surprising new behavior. But these locations aren't ideal with the way Earth's climate is shifting. They are in "areas likely to be highly vulnerable under business‐as‐usual greenhouse gas emissions scenarios," the study reports.

Phil Trathan, Head of Conservation Biology at British Antarctic Survey, and one of the study's authors, notes that birds in offshore areas are likely to be "canaries in the coalmine," for climate change, and will need to be monitored carefully.

The study concludes that climate change is likely to affect the emperor penguins, and the newly discovered colonies are projected to become extinct or quasi‐extinct by the end of this century. "Our findings therefore suggest the possibility of an even greater proportion of the global population will be vulnerable to climate change, than previously considered." Taylor Watson

The FBI has reportedly executed a search warrant at YouTuber Jake Paul's house.

Paul's home in Calabasas, California, was "the scene of an early morning FBI raid" on Wednesday, TMZ reported, and the FBI confirmed to the Los Angeles Times that it conducted a search warrant at a Calabasas home.

"The FBI is executing a federal search warrant at a residence in Calabasas in connection with an ongoing investigation," the FBI said, per the Times. "The affidavit in support of the search warrant has been sealed by a judge and I am, therefore, prohibited from commenting as to the nature of the investigation."

No further information was provided, although the FBI said "no arrests are planned." TMZ writes that a "small militia left his pad in armored trucks" and that the scene outside Paul's house resembled "a mini military parade" with "at least 20 people" there executing the warrant.

Paul in June was hit with charges of criminal trespass and unlawful assembly after being spotted at a mall while it was being looted, with authorities saying he was there after "the rioters were ordered to leave the area by the police" and that he "unlawfully entered and remained inside of the mall when it was closed." Paul said "neither I nor anyone in our group was engaged in any looting or vandalism." He recently came under fire for hosting a big party at his house in July despite the coronavirus pandemic and was publicly blasted by the mayor of Calabasas.

"It's completely unacceptable to be interacting with people like that during this time," Calabasas Mayor Alicia Weintraub said. "People need to be wearing masks and people need to be keeping their distance. You can't be having parties with over 100 people." Brendan Morrow

The $600/week coronavirus pandemic-related unemployment benefits helped keep consumer spending alive during the ongoing twin health and economic crises. That figure expired at the end of July, however, and nothing has replaced it yet, as Democrats and Republicans remain divided over how much unemployed individuals should receive. If the benefits disappear for good or shrink it could have "a really dramatic effect on the macroeconomy," researchers at the University of Chicago and JP Morgan Chase Institute found, per The Wall Street Journal.

The unemployment boost's expiration has left millions of Americans without the weekly payments. If the lapse continues indefinitely or if Congress decided against renewing the boost in some form, it could cause aggregate spending to fall 4.3 percent in one month, which is greater than the decline seen during the entirety of the 2007-9 recession, the study found. Some Republicans want to bring the number down to $200/week, fearing the current benefits will discourage people from working, despite studies suggesting the contrary. Their proposal wouldn't have quite as drastic an effect on the economy, but the study still estimates a significant 2.3 one-month spending drop. Even reducing the payments to $400/week would lead to a 1.4 percent decline.

That would have ripple effect. If the $600/week payments aren't reinstated, the U.S. economy could lose 1.1 million jobs by the end of the year and reduce gross domestic product by 1.27 percent, while the $200/week plan would likely lead to 1 million job losses, Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's analytics, estimates. Read more at The Wall Street Journal. Tim O'Donnell