| Stranded cars, rescues and deadly flooding: Waters slowly begin receding in Houston after Imelda Posted: 20 Sep 2019 11:21 AM PDT  As floodwaters began slowing receding in Houston, police worked to clear freeways of hundreds of stranded vehicles after four days of relentless rain
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| Foreign forces raise Gulf 'insecurity': Iran's Rouhani Posted: 21 Sep 2019 11:01 PM PDT  Iran's President Hassan Rouhani said on Sunday that the presence of foreign forces creates "insecurity" in the Gulf, after the US ordered the deployment of more troops to the region. "Foreign forces can cause problems and insecurity for our people and for our region," Rouhani said in a televised speech at an annual military parade, adding that Iran would present to the UN a regional cooperation plan for peace.
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| The Latest: Man suspected of shooting Chicago cop captured Posted: 21 Sep 2019 02:45 PM PDT  Chicago police say a man believed to be the suspect in the shooting and wounding of an officer has been shot and captured. Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi (goo-lee-EHL'-mee) tweeted Saturday that officers apprehended a "person of interest" believed to be 45-year-old Michael Blackman following an armed encounter with officers and a daylong manhunt. Guglielmi says the individual was shot by police and no officers were injured.
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| Stacks of cash shown at trial of Sudan's toppled leader Bashir Posted: 21 Sep 2019 12:28 PM PDT  Stacks of cash piled high were shown as evidence on Saturday against ousted Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir at his trial on charges of possessing illicit foreign currency and corruption. Millions of euros and Sudanese pounds were found at Bashir's residence in April after he was overthrown and detained by the military following months of demonstrations against his rule. The court heard four defense witnesses on Saturday, including Abubakr Awad, who was minister of state for the presidency until Bashir's fall, before it was adjourned until next Saturday.
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| Woman convicted in texting suicide case denied parole Posted: 21 Sep 2019 02:53 PM PDT  The Massachusetts woman convicted of encouraging her boyfriend to kill himself via text messages has been denied early release.
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| US military apologises for threat to blow up millennials if they stormed Area 51 Posted: 22 Sep 2019 07:31 AM PDT  The US military has apologised for threatening to deploy a stealth bomber on millennials who had been planning to "storm" the Area 51 test base in the Nevada desert. Over the weekend, an estimated 150 people descended on the highly secretive base, about two hours drive from Las Vegas, which has long been a magnet for UFO enthusiasts convinced that it housed aliens from outer space. Thousands had been expected after a student created a Facebook page in June called "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us". The page became a viral sensation with more than three million people expressing an interest in turning up to "see them aliens". On Friday, fearing a mass invasion, the Defence Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS) - the US military PR arm - posted a picture of service personnel standing by a B-2 stealth bomber alongside the caption: "The last thing Millennials will see if they attempt the area51raid today". In reality, the feared flood of alien-spotters turned out to be little more than a trickle of eccentrics in an eclectic array of costumes who were an irritant rather than a danger to national security. Last night a DVIDSHUB employee posted a Tweet that in NO WAY supports the stance of the Department of Defense. It was inappropriate and we apologize for this mistake.— DVIDSHub (@DVIDSHub) September 21, 2019 Given the festive atmosphere and small crowd, military chiefs soon realised that their stealth bomb threat was a rather excessive response to a bunch of curiosity seekers whose presence had led to a handful of arrests for such heinous offences as public urination. DVIDS sought to undo the damage by deleting the offending tweet and posting on Saturday saying that the previous day's message "in NO WAY supports the stance of the Department of Defence. It was inappropriate and we apologise for this mistake." The local police approach to the good-natured invasion had been somewhat more measured, advising those who pitched up to watch out for rattlesnakes and setting out some rudimentary ground rules. This was not the first time the US military has been obliged to say sorry for posting inappropriate tweets. On December 31, US Strategic Command, which is responsible for the country's strategic arsenal apologised for a tweet saying it was ready, if necessary, to drop something "much, much bigger" than the New Year's Eve ball in New York.
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| DHS contradicts Candace Owens on same day she testifies before Congress about white nationalism Posted: 20 Sep 2019 07:18 PM PDT  Conservative commentator Candace Owens said white nationalism is "just election rhetoric" on the same day DHS added violent white supremacist extremist to its list of priority threats.
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| How Trump could lose the popular vote again – and hold the White House Posted: 21 Sep 2019 10:00 PM PDT  Hillary Clinton won a majority but lost the presidency in the electoral college. A close election could bring a repeatDonald Trump waves to supporters as he arrives for a campaign rally in Rio Rancho, New Mexico. Photograph: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty ImagesSome defeats never lose their sting. In Washington this week, Hillary Clinton summed up her bid for the White House in 2016."You can run the best campaign. You can have the best plans. You can get the nomination. You can win the popular vote. And you can lose the electoral college and therefore the election."Clinton beat Donald Trump in the popular vote by nearly 3 million ballots yet lost the electoral college – the body of people who represent states and actually get to choose the president – by 304 votes to 227. A black swan event never to be repeated? No. In 2020, it could easily happen again.A study from the University of Texas at Austin found that the electoral college is much more likely than previously thought to elect the candidate who loses the popular vote. In close elections, researchers argues, such "inversions" are normal, not exceptional.In a race decided by less than 2% (2.6m votes), the study found, the probability of an inversion is 32%. In a race decided by less than 1% (1.3m votes), the probability is 45%."It's almost a coin flip," said Michael Geruso, an assistant economics professor.Some critics of Trump have never quite accepted him as the legitimate president, pointing out that he does not represent the will of the majority. After his uniquely divisive first term, a repeat could trigger a furious backlash.> The Republicans do a really determined job of winning power with fewer voters> > Senator Sheldon WhitehouseIn 48 presidential elections since 1824 there have been four inversions: in 1876, 1888, 2000 and 2016. All four favoured Republicans, although the researchers argue there have been periods when it was more likely a Democrat would win by inversion."We wanted to understand, were these statistically likely events or were they flukes?" Geruso said. "And in some sense it was just shocking to us that no one had asked and answered that question yet."Geruso and his colleagues found that all the most common election models used by political scientists led to a very similar result for the probability of inversion."There's lots of questions where different models would give different answers but, on the question of how likely is an electoral inversion in a close race, we don't need to agree or decide on what the perfect model of elections is. They all give the same answer."Clinton ran up huge margins in states such as California, Illinois and New York. Agonisingly, her loss of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by a combined 77,000 votes cost her the electoral college.Some analysts doubt Trump could get so lucky again. But Geruso said he has a decent chance of catching lightning in a bottle once more."It's really easy to look at the 2016 election and for people to feel like that was an extraordinary election, an extraordinary political moment, it was unusual in a lot of ways. And that may all be true but it turns out that's not why the 2016 election ended in a mismatch between the electoral college and national popular vote. It ended in an inversion because that election was close and close elections, we show, just have a relatively high probability of ending in an inversion."It is less about Trump's appeal to certain constituencies than simple geography and maths."Don't be tempted into thinking that the reason that 2020 might be an inversion is because Donald Trump is running in that race. Inversions are going to keep happening in close races for as long as we have the electoral college because they have been happening."According to Geruso, two major reasons are often cited for inversions. When Clinton won New York and California she did so by big margins, but when she lost states such as Florida or Ohio she did so narrowly. Thus there was an imbalance in the aggregate vote tallies.Secondly, since a state's number of electoral college votes is determined by how many senators and representatives it has, and every state has two senators, small states have greater representation in the college relative to population size. Each senator in California represents nearly 20 million people. Each senator in Wyoming represents 290,000. The current alignment favours Republicans, although there are exceptions such as the District of Columbia.The researchers found a 77% probability that, if an inversion occurs, it will be a Democratic popular vote majority and a Republican electoral college win. 'Second-grade soccer'Several Democratic candidates for president, including Senator Elizabeth Warren and Mayor Pete Buttigieg, have called for the college to be abolished. The party, however, is wrestling with how to exploit it as ruthlessly as Republicans do.Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, appearing on Real Time with Bill Maher, said: "The Republicans do a really determined job of winning power with fewer voters and we don't take on that infrastructure and we don't take on that strategy. We're too happy fighting the fight of the minute. It's second-grade soccer, chasing the ball, and they are planning ahead."> The electoral college actually undermines democracy> > LaTosha BrownSome observers fear the electoral college encourages voter suppression. Republican efforts to use voter ID laws to limit registration in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin will be closely scrutinised.Stanley Greenberg, a Democratic pollster and strategist and author of new book RIP GOP, said: "If there is a close national election, Republicans will resort to things they have done demonstrably well over the last decade of trying to suppress the vote."There's no doubt that the Wisconsin case in 2016 was produced not by low turnout among African Americans but pushing them off the voter rolls with new voter ID laws, and so there was a sharp drop in eligible voters and people were prevented legally from voting. So obviously the most important thing is to make sure we did not have a close election."While southern states such as Mississippi, Louisiana and Georgia have the highest proportions of African Americans in the country, those who vote for the Democrat are effectively ignored by the electoral college.Hillary Clinton delivers her concession speech, in the New Yorker hotel. Photograph: REX/ShutterstockLaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, said: "They never have any influence on picking the president because of winner takes all. It gives the impression everyone in the south is conservative."In these states it's based on a systemic history of racism. What I'm seeing is people of colour don't fundamentally believe they're living in a democracy. Why don't you have proportional representation? What possible justification is there for winner takes all? The electoral college actually undermines democracy."Few expect Trump to win the popular vote. But in a chilling warning for Democrats, the New York Times suggested he could win the electoral college again, because mostly white working class rust belt states remain at the centre of the electoral map."A strategy rooted in racial polarization could at once energize parts of the president's base and rebuild support among wavering white working-class voters," Nate Cohn wrote. "Many of these voters backed Mr Trump in the first place in part because of his views on hot-button issues, including on immigration and race."Bill Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution think tank at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, noted that George W Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 but won it in 2004 after improving in Texas and post-9/11 New York.For Trump, he said, "it's a tight squeeze. There's not much margin for error. But he could do it again, like he did in 2016, without the popular vote."So expect Trump derangement syndrome to get even worse."
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| Sheriff: 1 officer dead, 1 injured in Louisiana shooting Posted: 20 Sep 2019 05:17 PM PDT  One police officer was fatally shot and another wounded Friday after a vehicle chase north of New Orleans, authorities said. Mandeville Police Chief Gerald Sticker confirmed one officer's death and the other's injury from gunfire in his community on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, near U.S. 190 and Louisiana Highway 22. Sticker said at a news conference that the wounded officer, who's being treated at Lakeview Regional Medical Center, is expected to survive.
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| 3 people have died as Tropical Depression Imelda strikes Texas with flash floods 'worse than Harvey' Posted: 20 Sep 2019 11:27 AM PDT  Tropical Depression Imelda may drop up to 35 inches of rain onto southeastern Texas, the same region devastated by Hurricane Harvey.
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| Dozens detained in Kazakhstan at anti-China protests Posted: 21 Sep 2019 06:36 AM PDT  ALMATY/NUR-SULTAN (Reuters) - Police detained dozens in Kazakhstan's two largest cities on Saturday as they took part in the latest protest against China's influence in the Central Asian republic. Neighboring China is already one of Kazakhstan's largest investors and trade partners and a plan to relocate a number of Chinese plants and factories to the former Soviet republic has faced public opposition. The latest round of protests on Saturday was organized by supporters of Mukhtar Ablyazov, a fugitive banker living in France who has been the fiercest critic of Kazakhstan's first president, Nursultan Nazarbayev.
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| Have Archaeologists Found Where Jesus Fed the 5,000? Posted: 22 Sep 2019 02:12 AM PDT  University of HaifaArchaeologists excavating near the Sea of Galilee may have discovered the site where Jesus is said to have miraculously fed a crowd of five thousand people using only five loaves and two fish. The miracle, which is mentioned in all four of the canonical Gospels, is regarded by some historians as one of the more ancient traditions associated with Jesus.The new claim is based on discoveries made by scientists from the University of Haifa. During excavations at the Byzantine era "Burnt Church" in the Hippos National Park (the church is named because it was one of seven churches destroyed as part of the Sasanian conquest in 614 CE). Archaeologists uncovered a 1,400 year old mosaic on the floor of the church that depicts the feeding miracle.According to the Gospel of Mark, Jesus and his disciples withdrew to a "deserted place" in the Galilee region after the death of John the Baptist in order to rest (Mark 6:31). The location must have been relatively close to the shore of the Sea of Galilee because they used a boat to get there. Once the group came ashore they were swamped by a crowd of people who had followed them there. The ever-practical disciples advised Jesus to send the crowd away as it was growing late and there was nothing for people to eat.The miracle that follows is by biblical standards a rather low-key affair. Jesus had the disciples gather up the nutritional resources of the group. Then, Jesus looked up to heaven, blessed and broke the bread, and had the loaves and fishes evenly distributed among the people. "And all ate and were filled; and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. Those who had eaten the loaves numbered five thousand men." (Mark 6:42-44). The story is repeated in Matthew, Mark, and John. There's even a similar incident in Mark and Matthew known as the Feeding of the Four Thousand and even more food is left over.Traditionally, people have believed that the feeding of the five thousand miracle took place in Tabgha, Capernaum, on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee. There's even a church there, called the Church of the Multiplication, that celebrates the event. The earliest evidence of Christian worship in Tabgha dates to the mid-fourth century but the mosaics that refer to the feeding of the five thousand come from around 480 A.D.Hippos, the site of the newest discovery, is on the southeastern shore of the Sea of Galilee. The history of the city there dates back to the turn of the era and there's some evidence of occupation there as early as the third century B.C. There are several mosaics from the Burnt Church that appear to refer to the miracle story. The first depicts Jesus performing the miracle; the second shows twelve baskets filled with bread and fruit. Dr. Michael Eisenberg, who oversaw the excavation on behalf of the University of Haifa, noted that these may be a reference to the baskets of bread that were left over after the multitude had eaten.Eisenberg cautiously hypothesized that perhaps Hippos was the place that the miracle supposedly took place. He told The Jerusalem Post:"Nowadays, we tend to regard the Church of the Multiplication in Tabgha on the northwest of the Sea of Galilee as the location of the miracle, but with careful reading of the New Testament, it is evident that it might have taken place north of Hippos within the city's region." If Eisenberg's theory is correct this would mean that Christians had been, to borrow a phrase from Indiana Jones, celebrating the miracle 'in the wrong place.'Before jumping to conclusions, however, it is important to evaluate precisely what kinds of evidence we have for both the site in Hippos and that in Tabgha. Both sites contain mosaics of the miracle of the multiplication and these mosaics (and the churches that contained them) date to the fifth century.The earliest evidence for Christians visiting any site associated with the miracle comes from the Pilgrimage diary of Christianity's first female travel writer, Egeria, who visited the Holy Land ca. 381 A.D. According to her diary, the site she visited, "where the Lord fed the people with the five loaves and the two fishes" was near Capernaum. Even if the Church of the Multiplication is the same place visited by Egeria (and it is likely to be in the general vicinity), she was still traveling some 350 years after Jesus is reported to have performed this miracle. None of the archaeological or literary evidence can confirm either that the miracle took place, or where it took place.What we do have evidence for is a trend in the artistic and theological program of late fifth century Christians living in the Holy Land. Whether or not those who commissioned the mosaics intended to claim that this was where the feeding miracle was performed, they are both very interested in this story about the divine provision of food. (Interestingly the artist who produced the mosaic in Tabgha was not a local fisherman: the mosaics there show the fish with two dorsal fins while fish from the Sea of Galilee only have one dorsal fin).Both these churches were constructed during a period in which Christians made pilgrimages to religious sites looking for the alleviation of physical suffering. This suffering was usually related to sickness but people also asked for help with the hardships that resulted from crop failure, famine, taxation, and conflict. Perhaps what we have here are different religious centers that competed for and catered to the needs of pilgrims and tourists. These churches might have been equally appealing to members of the local fishing industry, who relied upon good hauls of fish in order to sustain themselves and their families. Bread and fish are evocative symbols for early Christians, but, for those who lived around the Sea of Galilee or were agrarian workers they also had a great deal of practical economic significance.Equally, the discovery of multiple churches claiming a connection to the feeding of the five thousand story might just be directing us to the importance of food in ancient religion and religion in general. We tend to define religion as about religious books and prayers, but food has often played an important role in our relationship with the cosmic and supernatural order. As Meredith Warren, a lecturer at the University of Sheffield and author of Food and Transformation in Ancient Mediterranean Literature, told the Daily Beast "Eating is one of the most fundamental ways that humans interact with the world, so it is no surprise that food and meals feature so prominently in the creation of meaning by early Christians."Have we discovered where the feeding of the 5000 actually took place (assuming that you believe that it happened)? Probably not. But archaeologists may well have unearthed another location where Christians genuinely believed Jesus had performed this miracle and remembered and commemorated that event. The discovery of these new mosaics can tell us a great deal about was important to Christians living in the region, the Bible stories that appealed to them, and the ways that various religious centers competed with each other.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. 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| 'Black bloc' protesters spoil Paris climate march amid violent clashes Posted: 21 Sep 2019 11:49 AM PDT  A climate march in Paris turned violent on Saturday when anarchist "black bloc" protesters joined and provoked clashes with police, prompting the rally's organisers to call for demonstrators to leave the event. After first marching with a separate yellow vest protest, around 1,000 of the hardcore radical demonstrators infiltrated the march against climate change where more than 150 were arrested, authorities said. The climate march organisers urged protesters to go home to avoid the clashes, which involved teargas and baton charges.
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| She Quit Her Job. He Got Night Goggles. They Searched 57 Days for Their Dog. Posted: 22 Sep 2019 08:46 AM PDT  After a late night at a stock-car race, Carole and Verne King returned to their dog-friendly hotel in Kalispell, Montana, and made a devastating discovery.Their 7-year-old border collie, Katie, was no longer in the room. She had apparently managed to unlatch the door, possibly spooked by a thunderstorm that had swept through the area. At the front desk, an attendant said she had seen an anxious dog bolt out the front door hours before.The Kings were stunned. In the town of 23,000 people that backs up to the sprawling wilderness near Glacier National Park, surrounded by forests and fields, where would they even start looking?Over the next 57 days, the couple set out on a desperate search that included night-vision goggles, animal-tracking cameras and horse manure brought in from the family's farm in Eastern Washington. Carole King, a postal carrier, quit her job."Every night going to bed, it was gut-wrenching," said Verne King. "Is she warm? Did she get to eat today? It tore us up."Day 1'Like a Crime Scene'After the initial discovery, the Kings spent the night frantically searching nearby neighborhoods, where alfalfa farms and homes and new shopping centers collide in northern Kalispell.They were out until about 4 a.m., the Kings said, but saw no sign of the dog. The front-desk attendant asked them to send some photos, and together they began making and distributing flyers around the area.Hundreds of them were posted on light poles and community mailboxes, and handed out through door-to-door canvassing and at local sports events. They posted Katie's photo on Facebook pages and lost-pet internet networks. Strangers joined them in walking the neighborhoods in search of Katie.As former law-enforcement officers from Los Angeles, the Kings knew to look through abandoned buildings. They examined the dirt in alfalfa fields, looking for tracks or dog droppings. They considered the possibility that Katie had been struck by a car on the highway, but without any evidence, they pressed on."You think of it like a crime scene," Verne King said.Day 15Traps and ScentsAfter a couple weeks of searching, the Kings decided to try some more extreme measures. They ordered two game cameras, the kind used by wildlife researchers, that could record video when an animal passed. They ordered animal traps, hoping that food -- like the cheese sticks Katie preferred -- would coax her into a cage.Carole King also began going jogging and biking around the neighborhoods, hoping that her sweat could signal the dog that her family was near. They left used T-shirts at strategic locations, as well as Katie's blanket and dog bowl."I don't think there's any street we haven't been on in that area," Carole King said.The couple later brought in hair shavings and a couple of buckets of manure from their horses back home and, with approval from local farmers, spread it near traps and other possible locations.Later, after hearing speculation that Katie might be on the move at night time, the couple acquired night-vision goggles and spent hours out in the cold, hoping to catch a glimpse of Katie traversing a field.But they saw no activity. The camera footage showed no sign of their dog. The traps? They caught a magpie, a cat and four skunks.Day 22Possible SightingsTips, however, were coming in. As people reported possible sightings, the Kings scrambled to follow up.On one occasion, they drove 15 miles to Columbia Falls on a tip, even though it seemed far-fetched. Other times they would go to check even when the description of the dog didn't sound quite right."In our heart, I would always say, 'If I didn't follow up, what if that was her and we didn't do anything?" Carole King said.Sometimes it would turn out to be a different dog. On one occasion, while they were talking to a landowner at a farm, a woman came up to them and said she had just seen their dog cross the road and run into a canola field. The Kings set off running, calling for Katie.They didn't find her.Day 37Quitting Her JobCarole King was still working as a postal carrier back in the Spokane area. For a week in August, she had to return home while her husband continued the search.She talked with her bosses about taking some time off. But that wasn't feasible during summer months. Although the money had helped supplement their pensions, she gave her notice."Katie was just more important to me," she said. "I just said, 'I'll finish this week, and that's it.'"When she returned to Kalispell, Verne King had to return to Spokane. He left a note written for Katie."I am going home to care for your brothers and sister," Verne King said, referring to their two other dogs and a cat. "Instead of saying good bye, I would rather say, 'See you soon.'"Day 53Losing HopeA month and a half into the search, the Kings still felt hopeful. There was no sign of Katie but also no evidence that she was dead.By the second week of September, though, Carole King said she was growing demoralized. She was crying and starting to wonder if the dog would never be found."I wasn't ready to go, but I was thinking, What else can I do?" she said.Missing her house and their other animals, she was planning to return home, about 250 miles away, to spend the weekend. But her husband persuaded her to stay, suggesting one more week. Some of her new friends in Kalispell also encouraged her to persist.One person had opened their home for the Kings to stay in the area. More than a dozen others committed hours to helping them search. Landowners had welcomed them onto their sprawling properties to look."We can't believe that community up there," Verne King said. Carole King added, "I got out of it sheer kindness from people -- from a stranger to a stranger."Day 57'I Got Her'On the morning of Sept. 15, Carole King got another tip, this time from someone in a subdivision near the hotel. The resident said he was looking out the window and was confident that Katie was in his backyard.She and a friend rushed over. But by the time they got there, whatever he had seen was gone. They walked through the fields nearby, searching with binoculars.They encountered a couple out for a walk, told them about their search, and the woman pointed to a dog under a nearby tree.It was a border collie. They began calling Katie's name. The dog was cautious, wary. Others in the group went silent as Carole King called out to the dog. Katie came running at full speed and leapt into her arms."All I could think about was, 'I'm done. I got her,'" Carole King said. "I was crying, I was holding onto her, wrapped her up in a bear hug. I couldn't get her in the car fast enough to close her in so I wouldn't lose her again."Katie immediately fell asleep on the front seat of the car. She was dirty, dehydrated and had lost 15 pounds. They took her to an emergency vet, who shed tears upon learning that this was Katie, the dog so much of Kalispell had worked to find.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company
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| Justin Trudeau says he'll ban assault rifles amid backlash to blackface controversy Posted: 20 Sep 2019 01:15 PM PDT  The Canadian Liberal Party's push comes at the same time the American Democratic Party is splintered over a similar proposal.
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| GM strike exposes anti-worker flaws in US labor laws. Companies have the upper hand. Posted: 21 Sep 2019 03:00 AM PDT  U.S. labor law encourages firms to compete by busting unions and lowering wages. Workers need a collective voice to even hope for fair wages.
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| Iran issues 'battlefield' warning and U.S. deploys troops Posted: 21 Sep 2019 08:10 AM PDT  Any country that attacks Iran will become the "main battlefield", the Revolutionary Guards warned Saturday after Washington ordered reinforcements to the Gulf following attacks on Saudi oil that it blames on Tehran.
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| Ethiopia says detains suspected Islamist militants planning attacks Posted: 21 Sep 2019 12:32 PM PDT ![Ethiopia says detains suspected Islamist militants planning attacks]( "Ethiopia says detains suspected Islamist militants planning attacks") Ethiopia said on Saturday it had arrested an unspecified number of Islamist militant members of the Somali group al Shabaab and Islamic State who were planning to carry out attacks in the country on various targets including hotels. Some of those arrested were carrying out intelligence work including photographing potential targets, the National Intelligence Security Services (NISS) said in a statement read out on state-affiliated broadcaster Fana. "The group was ... preparing to attack hotels, religious festivities gathering places and public areas in Addis Ababa," NISS said.
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| U.S. Navy and Marine Corps Want Small Ships to Land Troops in a War Posted: 21 Sep 2019 12:57 AM PDT  The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps are considering acquiring small transport ships in order to complement existing large amphibious vessels and give the fleet more ways of landing troops during a major war.
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| Son who threw his terminally ill 79-year-old mother to her death spared jail Posted: 20 Sep 2019 11:13 AM PDT  A teacher who threw his terminally ill 79-year-old mother to her death from a first-floor balcony spared jail as judge describes it as a "mercy killing". A "devoted, loving son" who killed his dying mother to end her suffering by dropping her from a first floor fire escape at a care home has been given a suspended jail term. Robert Knight, 53, pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of his 79-year-old mother June at an earlier hearing at Basildon Crown Court. The languages teacher had denied murder and was cleared by a jury. Judge Samantha Leigh, sentencing Knight at Basildon Crown Court on Friday, told him: "You are someone who acted out of love and desperation. "You have been punished enough and you have to live with what you have done." She went on to describe it as a "mercy killing". Knight was sentenced to 24 months in prison suspended for 24 months. The incident happened at Langley Lodge Care Home in Westcliff, Essex, where Mrs Knight was receiving end-of-life care. Credit: EAST NEWS PRESS AGENCY Knight, of The Fairway, Leigh-on-Sea, signed into the care home on the evening of December 10 and lifted his mother out of bed. He dropped her from a fire escape and there was "no planning" involved, the judge said. The judge said: "This is a very sad case - anyone listening to the details of Mrs Knight's illness and her condition couldn't fail to be moved." She added that to "watch someone you love suffer as she was suffering... is truly cruel". The court heard that Mrs Knight had dementia and Alzheimer's disease, and a post-mortem report showed she had a twisted bowel that would have caused her pain. Knight visited her regularly, brushing her hair and cutting her nails, the judge said. She added that a "do not resuscitate" notice was in place at the time and care home staff "didn't think she would survive the night" from December 9 to December 10 last year. "You were convinced that she was suffering and it was more than you could bear," the judge told Knight. "You are described as a devoted, loving son," she added. "This case, I'm sure, was a very finely balanced one as to whether it was in the interest to prosecute in the first place." Michael Levy, mitigating, said Knight had no previous convictions, was remorseful, had admitted manslaughter and had spent more than nine months in custody while criminal proceedings were under way. Knight was ordered to complete 60 days of rehabilitation as part of his sentence, before he walked free from court.
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| Tapper Corners Mnuchin: Wouldn’t You Find it Inappropriate if Obama Asked Ukraine to Investigate Trump’s Kids? Posted: 22 Sep 2019 08:01 AM PDT  Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin found himself in a rhetorical trap of his own making on Sunday when CNN's Jake Tapper cornered the treasury chief as he defended President Donald Trump's efforts to pressure the Ukrainian president to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter.During his appearance on State of the Union, Mnuchin immediately deflected when pressed by Tapper as to whether or not it was common for presidents to push foreign leaders to investigate their political rivals, pivoting instead to Biden's claim he hasn't spoken to his son about his business dealings."I haven't heard that and I think you're speculating on what the president said," the Trump official said. "I would say these are confidential discussions between two foreign leaders but I think the bigger issue is Biden came out this weekend saying he never had any discussions with his son. His son came out and said he had had business discussions with his father so I think that the real issue is not what the president said, but what, indeed, did Biden's son do."Trump Whistleblower Saga Threatens to Blow Up 2020 CampaignMnuchin went on to repeatedly dismiss the reports on the president's pressure campaign to get Ukraine to look into his political opponent as "speculation," while at the same time saying it was a "terrible precedent" for Congress to be able to look at the whistleblower complaint because "conversations between world leaders are meant to be confidential."Tapper, meanwhile, continued to grill Mnuchin on the matter despite the Trump Cabinet member's attempts to evade, eventually confronting Mnuchin with a hypothetical situation."Let me just close by asking, if for instance, President Obama had pressured a foreign leader, Putin or the president of Ukraine, anyone said 'I want you to look into Donald Trump Jr., or I want you to look into Eric Trump,' international businessmen, both of them, would you not find that inappropriate?" Tapper asked."I'm not going to speculate on that," Mnuchin replied. "What I do find inappropriate is the fact that Vice President Biden—at the time's—son did very significant business dealings in Ukraine. I, for one, find that to be concerning and to me that is the issue perhaps that should be further investigated."The CNN anchor, however, said he didn't understand Mnuchin's answer because it appeared he was saying it is "okay for Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump to do business all over the world and okay for Ivanka Trump to have copyrights approved all over the world while President Trump is president and while Joe Biden is vice president his son shouldn't be able to do business dealings."As Mnuchin insisted he didn't want to "go into more of these details," Tapper fired back: "Well, you're setting a precedent that the president is violating.""Again, I think there is a significant difference in what you're saying, okay," Mnuchin contended. "What I was saying between Biden and his son's relationship with the Ukraine oligarch and potential business dealings that the Trump Organization has had which predated his presidency."The CNN host, for his part, made sure to end the conversation on this issue by pointing out that "the Ukrainian prosecutor said there is no evidence of any wrongdoing" by either Joe Biden or his son.Elsewhere on Sunday, allies of the president defended Trump's collusion attempts to get a foreign leader to interfere in the 2020 election while also calling for more scrutiny into the Bidens' actions abroad. Appearing on Face the Nation, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo endorsed Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani's scheme to pressure Ukraine to open a probe into Biden."If there was election interference that took place by [Vice President Joe Biden], I think the American people deserve to know," he said.Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), meanwhile, told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo that while he wasn't really on board with Congress being able to look at the phone call at the center of the whistleblower complaint because it set a bad "precedent," he did feel that the Justice Department needed to investigate Biden and Ukraine."So nobody's looked at this, but somebody should, so I'm hoping that the Department of Justice will look at the Biden-Ukraine connection like we looked at the Trump-Russia connection," he declared, adding: "There's enough smoke here."And then there was Trump himself. Speaking to reporters on Sunday morning, the president insisted that he wasn't looking to "hurt" Biden and had "no problem" with Congress speaking to Giuliani about his Ukraine antics. At the same time, however, the president basically confessed that his call with Ukraine was centered on pressuring them into investigating the former vice president."It was largely [about] fact that we don't want our people like Vice President Biden and his son creating to the corruption already in the Ukraine," the president boasted.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Refugees from rising seas: no place to call home Posted: 20 Sep 2019 05:57 PM PDT  "With sea level rise, we are talking about migrations without the option for a round-trip," Francois Gemenne, an expert on the intersection between geopolitics and the environment, and director of the Hugo Observatory in Liege, Belgium, told AFP. The pace of sea level rise has also picked up, increasing nearly three-fold in the last decade compared to the previous century, a landmark UN assessment of oceans and Earth's frozen spaces to be unveiled next week will report. If humanity caps global warming at two degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels -- the cornerstone goal of the Paris climate treaty -- seas will rise by about half-a-metre, according to a draft of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report seen by AFP.
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| Surprising Facts You Didn't Know About Rhinos Posted: 22 Sep 2019 06:00 AM PDT |
| Julian Castro, other Democrats criticize Ben Carson after reported comments on transgender people Posted: 20 Sep 2019 07:16 PM PDT  The HUD secretary reportedly made the derogatory comments earlier this week while in California as part of the administration's spotlight on homelessness.
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| More Fracking, or More War? Posted: 22 Sep 2019 03:30 AM PDT  Here is a news lead that begins with a bang and ends with a whimper: "The strike on the heartland of Saudi Arabia's oil industry, including damage to the world's biggest petroleum-processing facility, has driven oil prices to their highest level in" — here, Reuters should have used some ellipses of irony — "nearly four months."Four months!If the United States declines to go to war against Iran on behalf of Saudi Arabia, our increasingly troublesome client state, one of the reasons for that happy development will be: because we do not need to. It is no longer the case that the world sneezes when the Saudis catch a cold. U.S. interests and Saudi interests remain aligned, broadly, but they are severable.The high-tech method of mining shale formations for oil and gas colloquially known as "fracking" — though hydraulic fracturing is only a part of it — has been a game-changer for more than one game. While countries such as Germany set headline-grabbing, politics-driven carbon-reduction targets only to woefully fail to achieve them (it is very difficult to greenwash 170 million tons of brown coal), the United States has been relatively successful on that front, reducing energy-related carbon emissions by 14 percent from 2005 to 2017, thanks to natural gas; put another way, fracking has helped the United States to what climate activists ought to consider one of its greatest environmental victories.When the United States intensified its attention to the Middle East in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the country was heavily dependent on petroleum imports. Today, the United States is the world's largest exporter of petroleum — thanks to fracking. The pointy-headed guys in the Washington war rooms spend a lot less time worrying about whether tankers can get through the Strait of Hormuz these days. And that means the United States has a much more free hand — and more realistic options — when dealing with Riyadh, Tehran, or any of the other pits of vipers that pass for national capitals in that part of the world."No war for oil!" they chanted when George W. Bush's administration prepared to invade Iraq. It was always a stupid slogan — if we'd wanted to get our hands on that Iraqi oil, we could simply have bought it at a discount rather than pay a horrifying blood premium for it — but now that chant can reasonably be turned back on its authors: If you want less war, then you should want a lot more fracking.And not just here in the United States, even though the people of New York State, for example, would be much better off without Governor Andrew Cuomo's idiotic and politically driven prohibition on the most effective means of petroleum production. Spain has seen its demand for natural gas climb as worldwide production drives prices down, but, thanks to its own Cuomos, the country remains largely dependent on imports from Algeria and Nigeria — even though it sits on reserves that by some estimates are equal to the better part of a century's consumption. The United Kingdom may be able to extricate itself from the European Union, but if nothing changes, it will remain vulnerable to the same Russian energy pressure as much of Europe. In much the same way that increased petroleum production has given the United States a stronger position vis-à-vis the Middle East, more British and European production means more British and European options.Set aside the fantasy of "energy independence." World energy markets are heavily integrated, and it probably is never going to be the case that what happens in Saudi Arabia or Russia or Iran has no effect on U.S., British, or European prices and supplies. And even if that happy state comes to be someday, it is not the case now and will not be the case in the near future: The spare capacity that allows the world petroleum markets to function smoothly provides, at the moment, a margin that is insufficient to cover the production that could realistically be taken offline by a broader Iranian attack on Saudi energy infrastructure. U.S. refineries remain disproportionately optimized for the relatively high-sulfur oil we've long imported rather than for the "light sweet" crude we produce. Our own energy infrastructure, and that of the rest of the world, remains far too vulnerable to terrorism and conventional military attack. There is much work to be done.It all begins with supply. The more supply there is, the more incentive to build out and improve the infrastructure, the more liquid the market, the less fragile the system. There is no substitute for abundance — and a wide choice of providers. Every barrel of oil and cubic foot of natural gas produced outside of the Middle East and Russia makes the United States and its allies better off.Beady-eyed realpolitik used to mean deferring to the world's big oil producers when it came to our relations in the Middle East. Now it means being the world's big oil producer and — once they decide they've grown tired of unnecessarily taking on risk while giving up wealth, income, and jobs — helping our British and European allies become bigger players, too. Fracking involves some real environmental challenges — American producers and regulators have developed great skill at dealing with them. The environmental challenges of fracking are manageable. The Saudis and the Iranians are manageable, too, but at a radically higher cost in blood and resources.Politics is about tradeoffs. We owe it to ourselves to take the smart one.
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| EU's Juncker says he is convinced Brexit will happen: Sky Posted: 22 Sep 2019 01:09 AM PDT  EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has said he is convinced Brexit will happen, reiterating that if Britain left the European Union without a deal there would be a new border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. "I'm convinced that Brexit will happen," he told Sky News in an interview last week, before he had seen the ideas Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government sent to Brussels to try to push Brexit talks forward.
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| Don't Forget France Has Quite A Few Nuclear Weapons Posted: 21 Sep 2019 12:45 AM PDT  Not only America is looking out for Europe.
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| 105 people injured as a pair of strong earthquakes rattle Albania Posted: 21 Sep 2019 10:13 AM PDT  Cars were crushed by bricks falling from buildings in Albania's capital Tirana, as the country was stuck by a pair of strong earthquakes on Saturday.According to the Ministry of Health, at least 68 people were injured, but some reports say there are as many as 105 people injured. The majority of injuries occurred in Durres and Tirana. There have been no reported deaths.The Saturday afternoon earthquake was followed by more than 100 aftershocks, authorities report. It also damaged about 600 homes and temporarily cut power and water facilities in Tirana and Durres.According to the United State Geological Survey (USGS), the first earthquake struck at 4:04 p.m., on Saturday near Durres, about 18 miles (29 km) to the west of Tirana.A second earthquake struck just 11 minutes later a short distance away. Shake Map of the larger 5.6 earthquake in Albania on Saturday, September 21, courtesy of the USGS. The first and larger earthquake was reported as a magnitude 5.6 on the Richter Scale, which is Albania's strongest earthquake in 30 years. The second was measured to be slightly weaker at 5.1.Buildings were damaged in the town of Durres which is close to the epicenter.> A university building in Tirana pic.twitter.com/J5UVYyrJOh> > -- Fatjona Mejdini (@FatjonaMejdini) September 21, 2019> Durres albania earthquake pic.twitter.com/BWPIWvErk1> > -- Alice Taylor (@The_Balkanista) September 21, 2019
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| President Must Tape Deposition for Trial Over 2015 Protest at Trump Tower Posted: 21 Sep 2019 07:34 AM PDT  NEW YORK -- A Bronx trial judge on Friday ordered President Donald Trump to provide videotaped testimony for an upcoming trial over a lawsuit brought by protesters who say that his private security guards assaulted them on a public sidewalk in front of Trump Tower and stole a protest sign.The ruling raises the highly unusual constitutional spectacle of a state-level judge commanding a sitting president to testify for a trial against his will. But Justice Doris Gonzalez of the Bronx Supreme Court wrote that Trump's testimony was necessary, rejecting a request by his legal team that she quash a subpoena. The trial is scheduled to start on Sept. 26."More than 200 years ago our founders sought to escape an oppressive, tyrannical governance in which absolute power vested with a monarch," Gonzalez wrote. "A fear of the recurrence of tyranny birthed our three-branch government adorned with checks and balances.""No government official, including the executive, is above the law," she added.The dispute centers on a protest in September 2015 in front of Trump Tower in Manhattan, during Trump's first presidential campaign. Five plaintiffs in the lawsuit were protesting in front of the building. Two were dressed in attire mimicking Ku Klux Klan robes. Others carried large campaign-style signs saying, "Make America Racist Again."In an ensuing confrontation, some parts of which were captured in videos, Trump's private security detail inaccurately told the protesters that the sidewalk in front of Trump Tower was private property and tried to force them to move away from it.Trump's security director at the time, Keith Schiller, who later had a stint in the White House as an aide to Trump, ripped away two of the large protest signs and tried to carry them into the building. When one of the protesters, Efrain Galicia, pursued him and grabbed one of the signs, Schiller struck him in the head, video shows.Gonzalez noted that the Supreme Court ruled in 1997 that presidents did not have temporary immunity for acts that were done before taking office and were not related to their official duties. In that matter, a federal lawsuit by Paula Jones against President Bill Clinton, Clinton ultimately submitted to a deposition, but the case never went to trial.Friday's ruling also pointed to one from a New York appeals court in March that rejected a claim by Trump's legal team that, as president, he was immune from state lawsuits under the Constitution. That ruling has permitted a defamation suit -- from a former contestant on "The Apprentice" whom Trump called a liar after she accused him of groping her -- to proceed.The legal team representing Trump and the Trump Organization in the protest case may appeal Friday's ruling, and did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But Roger Bernstein, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, praised the decision, saying it was "clearly correct" and that Trump's "testimony will be highly relevant to the trial."Walter Dellinger, who served as acting solicitor general in 1997 and unsuccessfully urged the Supreme Court to delay Jones' lawsuit until after Clinton was no longer president, said the trial judge would need to accommodate Trump's schedule. That could mean booking his testimony during a weekend when the president would otherwise be playing golf and being open to rescheduling it if there is a crisis, he said.But, Dellinger, a law professor at Duke University, said the chances were good that Trump would end up having to submit to videotaped questioning."Unless the Supreme Court were to abandon its unanimous decision in Clinton against Jones," he said, "the president's testimony should be forthcoming."While rare, there are other examples of a sitting president testifying for a trial. For example, President Gerald Ford gave a videotaped deposition in the criminal trial of Lynette Fromme, who had tried to assassinate him. But it is not clear whether there are any prior historical examples of a president testifying involuntarily for a state trial.During an earlier stage in the pretrial proceedings in the Trump Tower protest lawsuit, another judge rejected a request by the plaintiffs to depose Trump, and his legal team had asked Gonzalez to similarly quash a subpoena for the president's testimony at the trial.But she refused to do so, noting that the lawsuit does not involve Trump's official actions as president and that questions of fact are in dispute about the extent in which he exercised control over his private security detail."As the record appears before this court, President Trump's relationship with the other defendants is now central to plaintiffs prosecution of their claims," she wrote, citing a legal doctrine that can hold employers responsible for wrongdoing by their employees in the course of their jobs. "As such, his testimony is indispensable," she added.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company
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| Sri Lanka orders fresh probe into Easter suicide bombings Posted: 22 Sep 2019 01:51 AM PDT  A fresh inquiry into the Easter suicide bombings that hit Sri Lanka killing at least 258 people was ordered by president Maithripala Sirisena on Sunday, after concerns from the Catholic Church that current probes are not independent. The government has blamed a local jihadi group, the National Thowheeth Jama'ath (NTJ) for the April 21 attacks on three churches and three luxury hotels, while the Islamic State group also claimed responsibility. Sirisena said the commission has wide judicial powers to gather evidence on those responsible for the bombings, and to probe security and intelligence lapses.
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| Youth leaders at UN demand bold climate change action Posted: 21 Sep 2019 10:23 AM PDT  Fresh off the climate strike that took hundreds of thousands of young people out of classrooms and into the streets globally, youth leaders gathered at the United Nations Saturday to demand radical moves to fight climate change. "We showed that we are united and that we, young people, are unstoppable," Swedish 16-year-old activist Greta Thunberg, who started the climate strike movement with her lone protest in front of her country's parliament about a year and a half ago. More than 700 mostly young activists attended the first of its kind Youth Climate Summit, according to Luis Alfonso de Alba, the U.N. special climate summit envoy.
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| Ex-cop's murder trial for shooting neighbor set to start Posted: 22 Sep 2019 09:34 AM PDT  Last September, a white police officer shot and killed an unarmed black man in his own apartment. For some, the shooting was a tragic accident with circumstances that can only be described as "very unique." Others place it in pattern of white officers killing black men that, they say, points to systemic problems in American policing. On the eve of trial, one of the only points of agreement about her case in Dallas is that it has the potential to profoundly affect the relationship between police and residents.
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| 2 Muslim men say American Airlines canceled flight after crew 'didn’t feel comfortable' Posted: 20 Sep 2019 09:03 PM PDT  Two Muslim men say American Airlines profiled them and canceled their flight after crew members said they "didn't feel comfortable" flying with them.
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| Iranian maritime official says UK tanker Stena Impero to be released soon: Fars news Posted: 22 Sep 2019 04:56 AM PDT  Stena Impero, the British-flagged tanker detained by Iran on July 19, will be released soon, an Iranian maritime official said on Sunday, according to the semi-official Fars news agency. The Stena Impero was detained by Iran's Revolutionary Guards in the Strait of Hormuz waterway for alleged marine violations, two weeks after Britain seized an Iranian tanker off Gibraltar. "After the issuing of the ruling for the end of detention of the English tanker Stena Impero this vessel will soon, and after the passing of 65 days, begin its movement from the port of Bandar Abbas toward international waters," said Allahmorad Afifipour, the head of the Ports and Maritime Organisation of Iran in Hormozgan Province.
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| India Has Reason To Fear China's Submarines In The Indian Ocean Posted: 21 Sep 2019 12:30 AM PDT  What could happen?
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| Weather radar picks up mysterious shadow across three states ‘caused by huge dragonfly swarm’ Posted: 22 Sep 2019 03:04 AM PDT  An enormous mystery cloud has baffled US meteorologists this week who spotted the shape stretching over parts of Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania, but saw no rainfall.The National Weather Service spotted the "conundrum", and suggested it could be a swarm of "bugs", however the altitude was so high, they were initially sceptical such a massive number of creatures could be flying so high.
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| The Border Wall Now Threatens a National Monument Posted: 21 Sep 2019 01:13 PM PDT  The Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument is an important site for many. Now it's caught up in politics.
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| Egypt's hardline president el-Sissi faces calls to quit in rare protests Posted: 21 Sep 2019 04:23 AM PDT  Rare anti-government protests broke out in Egypt over the weekend calling on President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to step down - in the first major protests against his rule since he took power in 2014. In the capital, Cairo, dozens of protesters gathered on Friday night near Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the 2011 pro-democracy uprising that toppled longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak. Demonstrators chanted slogans echoing the Arab Spring uprisings that briefly defied dictatorships across the region. Police responded with teargas. The Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights said security forces reportedly rounded up at least four dozen people in Cairo and elsewhere in the country in a move that was condemned by Human Rights Watch. The protesters took to the streets following calls to mobilise by a self-exiled businessman, Muhammad Ali, who accused corruption by the military and government in a series of online posts that went viral online. Small groups of protesters gather in central Cairo shouting anti-government slogans in Cairo, Egypt September 21, 2019. Credit: Reuters Mr Ali alleged his contracting business had witnessed the large scale misuse of public funds in the building of luxurious hotels, presidential palaces and a tomb for the President's mother, who died in 2014. The allegations came as economic reforms and austerity have squeezed Egypt's lower and middle classes badly. In a rambling speech on Tuesday, Mr el-Sissi angrily dismissed the allegations as "sheer lies." He portrayed Mr Ali's videos as an attempt to weaken Egypt and undermine the public's trust in the military. Police vehicles are seen in central Cairo as protesters gather shouting anti-government slogans in Cairo Credit: Reuters Mr el-Sissi, a former army general, has overseen an unprecedented political crackdown, silencing critics and jailing thousands. He came to power after the military ousted an elected but divisive Islamist president in 2013, amid mass protests against his one-year-rule. He promised to continue building new presidential residences despite the claims. "I am building a new country," he said, warning Egyptians against protesting or repeating the 2011 uprising. Egypt's 2011 revolutionaries reflect as Sisi consolidates power On Friday night, security forces speedily dispersed the scattered protests, which came directly after a soccer game between al-Ahly, Egypt's biggest team, and its archrival Zamalek. No casualties were reported. The willingness of the protesters to defy police and laws that all but ban public protests is being regarded as a potential turning point against the President's rule, however small. "This is a very important development because this was the first such protest against the rule of el-Sissi," said political scientist Mustafa Kamel el-Sayed of Cairo University. "The small demonstrations demolished the wall of fear installed by el-Sissi and that could lead to more protests in the future."
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| Suspected drones disrupt Dubai flights Posted: 22 Sep 2019 08:03 AM PDT  Flights at Dubai's international airport, one of the world's busiest, were briefly disrupted Sunday due to "suspected drone activity," officials said. Two arriving flights had to be diverted, it said, while media reports said the planes had landed at a smaller airport in the neighbouring emirate of Sharjah. "Dubai Airports can confirm that flight arrivals were briefly disrupted at Dubai International from 12:36 (0836 GMT) to 12:51 (0851 GMT) UAE local time this afternoon due to suspected drone activity," a spokesperson said in a statement Sunday.
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| U.S. Orders 2 Universities to Recast Tone on Israel Posted: 21 Sep 2019 07:09 AM PDT  WASHINGTON -- The Education Department has ordered Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to remake the Middle East studies program run jointly by the two schools after concluding that it was offering students a biased curriculum that, among other complaints, did not present enough "positive" imagery of Judaism and Christianity in the region.In a rare instance of federal intervention in college course content, the department asserted that the universities' Middle East program violated the standards of a federal program that awards funding to international studies and foreign language programs. The inquiry was part of a far-reaching investigation into the program by the department, which under Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, has become increasingly aggressive in going after perceived anti-Israel bias in higher education.That focus appears to reflect the views of an agency leadership that includes a civil rights chief, Kenneth L. Marcus, who has made a career of pro-Israel advocacy and has waged a yearslong campaign to delegitimize and defund Middle East studies programs that he has criticized as rife with anti-Israel bias.In this case, the department homed in on what officials saw as a program that focused on the region's Muslim population at the expense of its religious minorities. In the North Carolina program's outreach to elementary and secondary school students, the department said, there was "a considerable emphasis placed on the understanding the positive aspects of Islam, while there is an absolute absence of any similar focus on the positive aspects of Christianity, Judaism or any other religion or belief system in the Middle East."Too few of the Duke-UNC programs focused on "the historic discrimination faced by, and current circumstances of, religious minorities in the Middle East, including Christians, Jews, Baha'is, Yazidis, Kurds, Druze and others," the department said.With its actions, the department entered the debate over Israel and Palestinians that has roiled campuses around the country.The department's action "should be a wake-up call," said Miriam Elman, an associate professor at Syracuse University and executive director of the Academic Engagement Network, which opposes the boycott-Israel movement that has animated campus activism across the country. She added, "What they're saying is, 'If you want to be biased and show an unbalanced view of the Middle East, you can do that, but you're not going to get federal and taxpayer money.' "Palestinian rights groups accused the Education Department of intimidation and infringing on academic freedom."They really want to send the message that if you want to criticize Israel, then the federal government is going to look very closely at your entire program and micromanage it to death," said Zoha Khalili, a staff lawyer at Palestine Legal, one such group. The department's intervention, she added, "sends a message to Middle Eastern studies programs that their continued existence depends on their willingness to toe the government line on Israel."In a letter to university officials, the assistant secretary for postsecondary education, Robert King, wrote that programs run by the Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies appeared to be misaligned with the federal grant they had received. Title VI of the Higher Education Act awards funding to colleges "establishing, strengthening and operating a diverse network of undergraduate foreign language and area or international studies centers and programs."The Education Department "believes" the Middle Eastern studies consortium "has failed to carefully distinguish between activities lawfully funded under Title VI and other activities" that are "plainly unqualified for taxpayer support," King wrote.The letter, published this week in the Federal Register, said that the consortium's records on the number of students it had enrolled in foreign language studies -- a cornerstone of the federal grant program -- were unclear and that "it seems clear foreign language instruction and area studies advancing the security and economic stability of the United States have taken 'a back seat' to other priorities."King wrote that the department believed other offerings, such as a conference focused on "love and desire in modern Iran" and another focused on Middle East film criticism, "have little or no relevance to Title VI." The department wrote the consortium's programming also "appears to lack balance."The department also criticized the consortium's teacher training programs for focusing on issues like "unconscious bias, serving LGBTIQ youth in schools, culture and the media, diverse books for the classroom and more." They said that it had a "startling lack of focus on geography, geopolitical issues, history, and language."The administration ordered the consortium to submit a revised schedule of events it planned to support and a full list of the courses it offers and the professors working in its Middle East studies program. The department also directed the consortium to demonstrate that it had "effective institutional controls" to stay compliant with the administration's interpretation of the Higher Education Act. The universities were given until Sept. 22, only days before the department is scheduled to approve funding Sept. 30.A spokesman for Duke declined to comment, referring questions to the University of North Carolina. A spokeswoman for UNC acknowledged receipt of the letter."The consortium deeply values its partnership with the Department of Education and has always been strongly committed to complying with the purposes and requirements of the Title VI program," the university said in a statement. "In keeping with the spirit of this partnership, the consortium is committed to working with the department to provide more information about its programs."To advocacy groups enmeshed in academic battles over Israel, the new investigation was not surprising.Last year, the department reopened a case into anti-Jewish bias at Rutgers University that the Obama administration had closed with no finding of wrongdoing. In reconsidering the case, Marcus said the Education Department would be using a State Department definition of anti-Semitism that, among other things, labels "denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination" anti-Jewish bigotry, suggesting that it had been adopted by his office. The Education Department has not adopted that definition.In June, DeVos said she had ordered an investigation into whether the Duke-UNC consortium had misused any of the $235,000 it received in Title VI grants, including to sponsor an event in March called "Conflict Over Gaza: People, Politics, and Possibilities." Rep. George Holding, R-N.C., had requested that DeVos investigate whether federal funding was used to host the conference, which constituents had said was rife with "radical anti-Israel bias."Holding said the conference featured active members of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel -- known as BDS -- and featured panelists who "distorted facts and misrepresented the complex situation in Gaza." He said a video shown at the conference featured a performer who sang a "brazenly anti-Semitic song."But some groups came to the defense of the Middle East studies consortium. Tallie Ben Daniel, research and education manager at Jewish Voice for Peace, a liberal group that advocates Palestinian rights, said the investigation was the latest attempt by the Trump administration "to enforce a neoconservative agenda onto spaces of academic inquiry and exploration." She called the consortium's curriculum " rich and diverse."To critics like Daniel, the targeting of the UNC-Duke program appeared to be a continuation of efforts that predated the Trump administration. A group founded by Marcus, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, has pressed Education Department and Congress for years to crack down on Middle East studies programs that the center claimed promoted an anti-Israel bias.Elman, the professor at Syracuse, said the department's scrutiny of the programs was long overdue."To get Title VI, you really have to strive for viewpoint diversity," she said. "This is what our students want. They don't want to be indoctrinated. They want both sides. It's possible to do that and still make people uncomfortable."Before joining the Education Department, Marcus had aggressively lobbied for the Higher Education Act to crack down on Middle East studies programs and criticized both the Education Department and Congress for failing to hold institutions accountable for violating the law's "diverse perspectives" requirement.In 2014, he wrote an opinion article that assailed the Title VI program for "being used to support biased and academically worthless programming on college campuses," leaving students and faculty with opposing views "ostracized and threatened.""Aside from their intellectual vapidity," Marcus wrote, "many of these programs poison the atmosphere on campus."He called on the department to establish a complaint process that would prompt extensive reviews of entire programs like the one being undertaken into UNC and Duke.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company
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