| Trump is 'in the hospitality business,' Mulvaney says, after president reverses plan to host summit at his golf club Posted: 20 Oct 2019 09:31 AM PDT  Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney on Sunday defended President Trump's decision to host next year's G-7 summit at his hotel resort, saying the president "still considers himself to be in the hospitality business."
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| Following debate criticism, Elizabeth Warren will outline how to pay for 'Medicare for All' plan Posted: 20 Oct 2019 04:58 PM PDT  In Indianola, Iowa, on Sunday, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren pledged to release a plan on how to pay for her public health care program.
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| Hong Kong leaders apologize for water cannon use at mosque Posted: 21 Oct 2019 07:01 AM PDT  Hong Kong officials apologized to Muslim leaders Monday after riot police sprayed a mosque and bystanders with a water cannon while trying to contain turbulent weekend pro-democracy demonstrations in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory. The city's leader, Chief Executive Carrie Lam, and the police chief visited the Kowloon Mosque to apologize to the chief imam and Muslim community leaders. Muslim leaders told reporters they were satisfied with the apology.
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| Homes destroyed, thousands without power after tornado rips through Dallas Posted: 20 Oct 2019 10:37 PM PDT  There were no reports of fatalities, injuries or missing people as of Monday morning, Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson told reporters. Some 55,000 homes and businesses in Dallas County were still without power on Monday morning, emergency management officials said. The storm left a miles-long swath of destruction through Dallas, hitting near the Love Field airport in the city's north, the National Weather Service's Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland, said on Monday.
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| Chicago Police Superintendent Seeks Investigation Into Himself Posted: 20 Oct 2019 11:33 AM PDT  It was barely Thursday when someone in the Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago called 911 to report a person asleep in an SUV at a stop sign.When police officers arrived around 12:30 a.m., they found their boss, Superintendent Eddie Johnson, "slumped over" in his city-issued Chevrolet Tahoe, according to officials and news reports.Officers did not see any signs of impairment, and Johnson, who reported parking his car after feeling lightheaded, was allowed to drive himself home, the police said.Later that day, the superintendent called for an internal investigation into what happened, citing the need for transparency. Speaking to reporters Thursday night, he blamed blood pressure medication for the episode.The superintendent called for an investigation because "whether you are police officer or a superintendent, all officers ought to be held to the highest standard," a Police Department spokesman, Anthony Guglielmi, said in a statement Thursday.But the episode took a turn on Friday after Mayor Lori Lightfoot told The Chicago Sun-Times that Superintendent Johnson disclosed to her that he had "a couple of drinks with dinner" before being found asleep in his vehicle.He was not given a sobriety test after officers roused him, and Lightfoot told The Sun-Times that she was awaiting the outcome of the internal investigation to determine if the responding officers skirted rules to protect their boss, and whether Johnson should be held responsible.In a separate statement Friday, Guglielmi said the police "have no indication of impropriety at this time," adding that "this question can only be answered by the internal affairs investigation," which he said was continuing.The mayor declined to say whether the superintendent should have been driving or given a field sobriety test, The Sun-Times reported. The mayor's office did not respond to requests for comment Saturday, and the superintendent could not be reached.The police said Johnson complained of feeling exhausted Wednesday. He sent his driver home that day, but said he should have had one with him.Johnson told reporters that he did not take his blood pressure medication after his doctor changed it this week. He said he threw out his old medication, but "failed to put the new medication in."The superintendent had a blood clot this past summer, The Tribune reported, and in 2017, he underwent a kidney transplant.This episode with the superintendent was the latest to draw attention to the Police Department. In 2018, an officer was convicted of second-degree murder in the fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald and, more recently, 63 men and women were exonerated after having been convicted on drug charges in arrests by two corrupt police officers.Johnson was named to the post in 2016. His predecessor, Garry F. McCarthy, was fired days after the release of the video of McDonald's shooting.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company
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| Majority of Mexicans Say Organized Crime Stronger than Government after El Chapo’s Son Released Posted: 21 Oct 2019 07:51 AM PDT  A majority of Mexicans see organized crime as more powerful than the Mexican government after government forces capitulated to drug-cartel strongmen and released the son of the former cartel leader Joaquín Guzmán, known as "El Chapo."About 56 percent of Mexicans say they believe organized crime is stronger, while only 33 percent say the government is stronger, according to a poll by the Mexican newspaper Reforma.> NEW POLL: Who's stronger today? > (% of Mexicans)> > �� 56% Organized crime > �� 33% Government> > via @Reforma pic.twitter.com/8Dw7Re9YqD> > -- José Díaz-Briseño (@diazbriseno) October 21, 2019Mexican authorities were forced on Thursday to release Ovidio Guzmán López, El Chapo's son, shortly after capturing him, when the Sinaloa cartel laid siege to the city of Culiacán and surrounded Mexican troops, taking eight soldiers hostage. Officials said at least 14 people died during the clashes between cartel members and Mexican soldiers.49 percent of respondents in the Reforma poll disagreed with the decision to release López, while 45 percent said they supported it. Residents of Culiacán expressed relief that the government had surrendered, saying the decision prevented further violence."Decisions were made that I support, that I endorse, because the situation turned very bad and lots of citizens were at risk, lots of people, and it was decided to protect the life of the people," President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Friday. "You cannot value the life of a delinquent more than the lives of the people."
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| Chile protests: At least eight people killed during riots in Santiago Posted: 20 Oct 2019 12:31 PM PDT  At least eight people have been killed in Chile during a second day of protests and rioting in the South American nation.Three people were left dead after a looted building was set ablaze, the governor of Santiago, the country's capital, said.
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| Thousands protest against Haiti's president Posted: 20 Oct 2019 05:44 PM PDT  "Jovenel is incapable and incompetent, he must pack his bags because Haiti must live," said one of the protesters, Jean Ronald. Anger mounted in late August due to a national fuel shortage, and protests turned violent.
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| Graham says he's 'increasingly optimistic' Trump's Syria strategy will succeed Posted: 21 Oct 2019 08:54 AM PDT  After spending a week railing against President Trump's decision to pull U.S. troops out of northern Syria, Sen. Lindsey Graham said on Sunday that he supports the move.
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| Number of children of British Isil fighters trapped in Syrian camps doubles to 60 Posted: 21 Oct 2019 02:06 AM PDT  More than 60 children of British Islamic State fighters are stranded in Syria, according to Save the Children, double the number previously thought. The children, many of them under five years old, are enduring "dire conditions" in desolate camps or have been displaced following the recent escalation in fighting, the charity said. The Telegraph had counted 30 children of British parents, based on leaked UN refugee agency lists of camp residents. A third of those are British-born and two-thirds were born in Isil's "caliphate" but potentially entitled to citizenship through their parents. The British identity of three orphans in one of the camps was also discovered last week by the BBC. The development prompted Dominic Raab, Foreign Secretary, to open the door to the possible return of unaccompanied British minors, but it did not extend to children who were with their parents. Three British orphans were discovered in one of the camps last week, but have since been moved by the UN Credit: BBC Britain's main allies in the coalition: the US, France and Australia, have all managed to repatriate children from Syria, however UK officials had claimed it was too dangerous. A spokesman from Save the Children told the Telegraph it was a "positive start", but not enough. "But from our understanding the vast majority of British children are not orphans, they are with their mothers," said Sonia Kush, the charity's Syria Response Director. The children are scattered across detention camps in Kurdish-held north-east Syria, but their situation has become even more precarious after a Turkish offensive on the area. Some of their mothers have been deprived of citizenship by the British government, complicating any possible return. Two British women have already managed to escape from Ain Issa camp after it came under attack from Turkish air strikes and Kurdish guards fled. One of the women, Tooba Gondal, an Isil "matchmaker" from east London who escaped one of the detention camps last week, was banned from re-entering the UK last November by a Home Office exclusion order. A view of Roj Camp in northern Syria near the Iraqi border, where 370 women from 46 different countries are being held due to their suspected links to Isil Credit: Sam Tarling for The Telegraph Her three-year-old son Ibrahim's late father was British, however, her 18-month-old Asiya, had a Russian father. Experts have warned the longer the children remain in the camps, which have been described as "mini caliphates" due to the number of highly radicalised women, the worse their prospects will be. Some British children have been living in the camps for as long as two years, while many arrived after the fall of the village of Baghuz, the last of Isil's so-called caliphate, in March. Save the Children's team in Syria recently spoke to a British mother with two young children – a baby and an under-five – in one of the camps. She told us she knew of at least 15 other British children in the same camp. The mother said she and her family made a traumatic escape from "hell" in Baghuz. She, along with her children and sister, ended up sleeping in the open desert as they fled. Her youngest baby was close to death with bronchiolitis when they arrived at the camp earlier this year. She accepted that she would face investigation in the UK but said she felt that in Syria no-one would ever hear her case. She told us that she was scared to be in the camps and very afraid of what would happen to her children. The British government has so far refused the return of Isil fighters and their families, despite pressure from the US-led coalition and their Kurdish allies. Responding to an urgent question, Mr Raab told MPs last week that the Government does not want to see the return of British foreign fighters to the UK, but, given the "fluid situation", this may change. "Children in Syria who have fled Isis-held areas are innocent," Alison Griffin, Save the Children's Head of Conflict and Humanitarian Campaigns, said on Monday. "Their short lives have been full of violence and fear but with the right care they can bounce back, recover and amaze us. They deserve that chance, no matter what they've been dragged into by the decisions of adults. "For the British children among them we can and must give them the safety they need by bringing them to be cared for in the UK."
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| Milan seeks US apology for WWII bomb that killed children Posted: 20 Oct 2019 08:40 AM PDT  Milan's mayor appealed Sunday to U.S. authorities to apologize for a World War II bombing raid that killed 184 elementary school children. Mayor Giuseppe Sala made the request following a Mass marking the 75th anniversary of the Gorla massacre, named for the quarter in the city that was struck, the news agency ANSA reported. "I think it's necessary that the American government apologizes, knowing that we are here to forgive," Sala said, adding that he would formalize the request with the U.S. consul in Milan this week.
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| Apology accepted, Hong Kong's Muslims lament water cannon staining mosque Posted: 21 Oct 2019 03:21 AM PDT ![Apology accepted, Hong Kong's Muslims lament water cannon staining mosque]( "Apology accepted, Hong Kong's Muslims lament water cannon staining mosque") Municipal workers scrubbed away noxious blue dye from the steps of Hong Kong's biggest mosque on Monday, while Muslim worshippers expressed frustration over police firing a water cannon outside the mosque during a large anti-government march. Senior police officers visited the Kowloon mosque to explain it was hit accidentally during Sunday's clashes with demonstrators, and Hong Kong's leader Carrie Lam met with community leaders on Monday to apologise. "It was unnecessary to drag this place of worship into this conflict between the government and the people," Arabi Mohideen, 60, said after attending dawn prayers at the mosque in the bustling Tsim Sha Tsui district.
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| Trump Cheated (Shocker!) on Property Tax; But Will Anyone Go to Jail? Posted: 21 Oct 2019 04:00 AM PDT  Chip SomodevillaProPublica published a piece Wednesday that put the spotlight once again on some questionable financial practices of the Trump Organization, which showed one set of books to banks (inflating value) and another to New York City tax authorities (deflating value).Is this just the usual Trump mendacity, or can prosecutors see this as part of a pattern? And if so, could it be prosecuted? Who would be tagged as the defendant(s)? If not, what more is needed to bring the guilty parties to justice?Before we explore these questions, let's look at the facts. Both versions of them.ProPublica obtained property tax docs for four Trump properties. These docs became public when Trump appealed the tax bills, and the loan records became public when Trump's lenders sold the debt on the properties. Significant discrepancies were unearthed between the tax records and loan records for two of the properties: Trump International Hotel & Tower, on Central Park West, and 40 Wall St.Tax and loan documents for 40 Wall St. showed significant discrepancies in how certain costs such as insurance were reported. Further, Trump representatives reported different occupancy rates to lenders and tax officials: 81 percent to lenders (rising later to 95 percent), and just 59 percent to tax authorities. Rising occupancy rates are valued by lenders because they are indicative of rising income level which is material to securing refinancing, while lower rates, of course, mean lower taxes.Meanwhile, documents for the Trump International Hotel & Tower showed that city tax officials were advised that this property made about $822,000 in 2017 from renting space in the building to other businesses, while loan officials were told that the building made about $1.67 million. ProPublica further notes that Trump appeared not to report income from leasing space for television antennas on tax documents but did report the income on loan docs.Each of the above-noted discrepancies is indicative of potential fraud. But do they represent instances of a prosecutable case?The short answer is: not yet. The discrepancies do reflect a situational ethics approach toward financial obligations and responsibilities. But more evidence will be needed to prosecute anyone should criminal prosecution be considered by the authorities.Who might be prosecuted here? It is unclear just who is responsible for submitting the doctored financial statements to the lending authorities and tax officials. Were the folks who submitted the documents the same folks who prepared them? If so, what were their marching orders? Who directed the Trump Organization officials to tailor the financial statements to minimize property taxes or maximize occupancy rates to obtain loans?Investigators need to home in on the work papers prepared to support the finagled financial statements in order to determine "willful intent," or "mens rea" that James Comey so infamously referenced. Such evidence may well be found at Mazars USA—the Trump Organization accounting firm that is the subject of intensive litigation with regard to subpoenas served by both the U.S. Congress and the Manhattan DA's office.Accountant work papers have been found to be beneficial when uncovering evidence of intent to defraud in case after case of white-collar fraud, specifically tax fraud. In fact, accountant work files and testimony provided critical evidence leading to the conviction of Paul Manafort in the Mueller investigations and prosecutions. It should be noted that tax fraud, bank fraud, and the falsification of business records may result in felony charges that could be contemplated by the Manhattan DA and provide for prison sentences that could lead the convicted defendants to land in Rikers Island for a stretch with the aforementioned Manafort. Evidence of corrupt intent to defraud either a financial institution or a public tax authority is critical to a successful criminal prosecution. The use of a double or triple set of books and records by company officials for fraudulent purposes is a terrific example of overt acts of corrupt intent. But further evidence will be needed here to link all those involved in each of the instances denoted above. Email, texts, voice mail, notes to the file and other evidence of directions to finagle the financial docs are needed. Further forensic analysis of the documents, for example fingerprint analysis, ink chemistry analysis and handwriting analysis are investigative tools available to the prosecutors to tighten the vise and provide the links in the chain of potential targets.Cohen was reportedly debriefed in detail recently by the Manhattan DA's office. His testimony will be needed to outline just who in the Trump Organization was responsible for the preparation of the questionable documents referenced above. Cohen's credibility will clearly be attacked in court by the defendant(s) and will become a question for the jury to grapple with. Cohen provided the Southern District of New York with a prosecutive path for those responsible for cooking the books at the Trump Organization with regard to the reimbursement of "hush money" payments to Cohen. That path is now available to the Manhattan DA. Add Cohen's now corroborated congressional testimony outlining the transactional financial ethics referenced above, used by the Trump team in their shady business dealings and the jury will likely be sitting on the edge of their seats. All the DA needs to do now is fill in some blanks in combination with demonstrating a pattern of fraud over time—the closing argument is shaping up to be very persuasive.The allegation that the Trump Organization appeared not to report income from leasing space for television antennas to tax authorities but did report the income on loan docs revives memories of the landmark New York Times tax fraud series on Fred Trump and Donald Trump's financial shenanigans in the '90s wherein the Times detailed multiple instances of unreported income streams tailored by Fred Trump for the Donald. While the statute of limitations has long expired with regard to the multi-million dollar gift tax evasion schemes entered into by Donald Trump, prosecutors can use evidence of historical frauds to depict a pattern of fraudulent conduct on the part of a defendant no matter how long ago the fraud occurred. It goes to willfulness or corrupt intent exhibited by Individual-1.The Manhattan DA's case against the Trump Organization may appear to be on its surface just a mundane business fraud type of case. But fraudulent documents don't change stories, particularly when there are witnesses available to tie the documents and the corrupt intent together. Add the historical pattern of fraud engaged in by Individual-1 and the Manhattan DA's case appears to be silently moving along like a stealth nuclear submarine under the radar and there are no available defenses available like an Office of Legal Counsel opinion to protect the prospective defendants from a potentially lethal prosecutorial attack.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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| Betrayal, Jealousy and Cliff Edges: Johnson’s Brexit Minefield Posted: 21 Oct 2019 08:22 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Boris Johnson is giving members of Parliament only a few days to debate the most important change to Britain's constitution in almost 50 years. The outcome will decide the fate of Brexit and potentially his own future.Unlike his predecessor, Theresa May, the prime minister wants Britain to have far looser ties with the European Union after leaving, which means withdrawing in full from the bloc's customs union. That decision may have helped him to pacify the Tory right, which torpedoed May's proposals three times, but it leaves him facing opposition on multiple fronts. The opposition Labour party, for starters, wants to remain in the EU customs union.With the voting in Parliament on whether to back his deal too close to call, here are some of the key issues that Johnson has to navigate.Northern IrelandThe Democratic Unionist Party has refused to back his deal because it would see Northern Ireland being treated differently for customs purposes to the rest of the U.K. The grouping is also unhappy that it won't be able to exercise a veto on the arrangements, after Johnson diluted it in an effort to secure the EU's backing for his plans.The DUP's view matters because the opposition of the party's 10 MPs contributed to Johnson losing a key Brexit vote on Saturday. Can he win them over? Unlikely, as my colleague Dara Doyle has explained here.Johnson Has a Big Brexit Problem: His Northern Irish FriendsScotlandIf they can have it, why can't we? Voters in Scotland, who overwhelmingly wanted to remain in the EU, are unlikely to relish the idea that Johnson's deal will give Northern Ireland special treatment. The province will be closely aligned with the EU's customs rules, potentially giving companies in the region an advantage over their Scottish peers.The Scottish National Party will almost certainly ramp up pressure for a second independence referendum after Brexit. Will Johnson be able to avoid the breakup of the U.K.?2020 Cliff EdgeThe Withdrawal Agreement Bill creates a new cliff edge: If a free trade agreement hasn't been reached with the EU by the end of 2020 (or up to two years later, if both sides agree) then we are back to leaving without a deal. When Conservative MP John Baron pointed that risk out in a BBC interview, waverers took it to mean that Johnson isn't serious about leaving with a divorce agreement.The Not-So-Level Playing FieldThe prime minister moved the U.K.'s commitments to abide by EU standards on tax, labor protections and environmental standards from the Withdrawal Agreement into the Political Declaration -- which, crucially, isn't legally binding.Johnson has pledged to protect labor rights, but opposition Labour politicians are deeply skeptical he really means it. He will need to convince at least a few to believe him if he is to get his deal through Parliament.Second Referendum?Labour is backing an amendment to put Johnson's Brexit deal to hold another referendum -- something the government has so far resisted.(Updates cliff edge section.)To contact the reporter on this story: Edward Evans in London at eevans3@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Tim Ross at tross54@bloomberg.net, Stuart BiggsFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Philippine police recommend drug charges against ex-chief Posted: 21 Oct 2019 06:30 AM PDT  Philippine police recommended graft and drug charges against its former chief on Monday over a new scandal that has put President Rodrigo Duterte's anti-narcotics crackdown under the spotlight. The police face allegations some officers are involved in the illegal drugs trade and that they had the protection of former chief Oscar Albayalde. It is the latest controversy to engulf the Philippine police force, which is waging a drug war launched by President Duterte in 2016.
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| Potatoes Thrown at American Troops As They Depart Northeastern City in Syria Posted: 21 Oct 2019 05:00 AM PDT  The scene encapsulated the Kurds' feelings of betrayal
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| How Would Taiwan Slowdown a Chinese Invasion? Think Lots of Missile Boats. Posted: 19 Oct 2019 02:00 PM PDT  The Taiwanese navy needs to start building small, cheap, missile-armed attack boats, and fast. It's the only way Taipei can hope to hold off a Chinese invasion force long enough for the United States to intervene on the island country's behalf.
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| The Latest: Mayor expects ruined hotel will be demolished Posted: 20 Oct 2019 05:28 PM PDT  The mayor of New Orleans mayor says she expects a partially collapsed hotel in her city will ultimately be demolished. Mayor LaToya Cantrell said at a news conference Sunday that officials successfully detonated and toppled two dangerous cranes that had leaned for days over the ruins of the Hard Rock Hotel, which collapsed Oct. 12 while under construction. Three workers died in the partial hotel collapse but only one body was removed.
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| Rioting migrants torch cars, injure policeman at Maltese holding centre Posted: 21 Oct 2019 01:41 AM PDT ![Rioting migrants torch cars, injure policeman at Maltese holding centre]( "Rioting migrants torch cars, injure policeman at Maltese holding centre") Rioting migrants in Malta set at least five staff cars on fire and injured a policeman in their holding centre as they demanded their freedom. The violence broke out Sunday night at a former British army barrack in Hal Far, close to Malta's airport. The migrants took control of part of the compound, but a police spokesman said the situation was brought back under control in the early hours of Monday.
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| We've already seen 780 anti-Semitic incidents this year and it's 'horrifying,' group says Posted: 21 Oct 2019 08:58 AM PDT  At least 12 white supremacists have been arrested for their roles in attacks or plots against the Jewish community in the United States.
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| It’s Not Just Ronan Farrow: NBC News Killed My Rape-Allegation Story Too Posted: 21 Oct 2019 06:17 AM PDT  Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Photos GettyIn the days leading up to the publication of Catch and Kill, Ronan Farrow's blockbuster account of his dealings with NBC News, I have been struck by the company's insistence that Farrow didn't have the Harvey Weinstein story in the bag. I don't believe a word of what it says because in 2018, the network killed my MeToo story that was being reported by MSNBC host Joy-Ann Reid. Incredibly, a year after NBC botched Farrow's reporting on Harvey Weinstein, it had the audacity to do it again. In November 2017, I told Joy about my experience of being raped by Russell Simmons in 1994. I also shared that in 2006, former Extra co-host A.J. Calloway sexually assaulted me in his car and was subsequently arrested for his crime. When Joy and I first spoke, Russell had already been accused of rape by Keri Claussen Khalighi. In fact, she appeared as a guest on the now-defunct NBC show Megyn Kelly Today. However, I would be the first woman to allege being sexually assaulted by Calloway. When NBC chose to quash my story, it not only abdicated its obligation to report news; it provided cover for a man who would later be accused of serial rape and sexual assault when my story was eventually published by The Hollywood Reporter the following summer. When I approached Joy, I had no idea that NBC had a reputation for not breaking news about men accused of sexual assault. Therefore, I had no reason to believe my story would be derailed by the network. After going through a thorough vetting process, an on-camera interview with Joy was taped on Jan. 7, 2018. While she's a host on MSNBC, I was told that NBC was not taping it for the cable network but NBC itself, in order to get it a larger audience beyond Joy's weekend show; also, it was to be paired with a lengthy print piece written by Joy for New York magazine. I was told the TV portion was scheduled to air on Jan. 13, 2018, but I received an email the day before from Joy asking me to reach out to her. When we spoke a few hours later, she informed me that Russell Simmons' attorney had gone ballistic and NBC was not going to air the segment, and the New York magazine story was also on hold since they were paired. She assured me the story wasn't dead, but that NBC simply needed more vetting done in order to feel comfortable with moving forward. I was disappointed, but still hopeful. As I would come to learn, my optimism was profoundly naive.Over the next several months, NBC put me through an elaborate and bizarre vetting process. I provided legal documentation, hospital bills, and more than a dozen corroborating witnesses. Still, they stonewalled. I asked Joy repeatedly if NBC was going to do to her what it did to Ronan, and she said that she didn't think so. We both agreed that it would reflect very poorly if word got out that the network had suppressed yet another story of alleged sexual assault.To expedite the increasingly expansive vetting process, Joy's piece was assigned to an investigative unit that was supposed to help her clear the hurdles that NBC kept throwing in front of her about my story. In mid-February, she emailed me an explanation about why it was taking NBC so long to pull the trigger:"So basically the story got caught up in a couple of vices: the struggle to get comments from the principals (now mostly alleviated), threats from Russell's lawyer that spooked NBC," Joy told me via email. "So now NBC… is demanding that I do all of this additional reporting to meet a legal and standards review." Joy then said all that was left was for her to seek comment from people in Simmons' camp who were aware of the assault, and corroboration of Calloway's arrest. 'Women Are Furious': NBC Roiled by Farrow Book AccusationsNBC News Chief Noah Oppenheim's Harvard Writings on Women and Sexual Assault Horrify StaffersI responded to her email by thanking her for the update. I added, "Still not clear why NBC is demanding more corroboration regarding A.J. [arrest]... his lawyer already confirmed the case, but I know this isn't about you."Almost two weeks went by before Joy contacted me with an update. "My team and I, my PA and senior producer helping me with the story met with the standards department rep today just to figure out what the heck's going on," she told me by phone. "I just have to get my company to have the guts to do the story," she conceded. "I've never done a story that has this much evidence before. I have more evidence than the LA Times and The New York Times stories combined. So the whole thing is, if my company will trust the evidence that I've shown them, which is substantial, they will do the story." (Reid declined to comment on this story.) I then asked her if NBC was going to kill my story based upon the ongoing threats from Simmons' and Calloway's attorneys. "We have enough that we have satisfied the standards side, but this is now in the hands of lawyers who have to determine the likelihood of a lawsuit by two people now, and what is the likelihood that we will prevail." She added, "This has now gone up past the attorneys I deal with to the head of NBCUniversal's lawyers. I've never been through anything like this." Two more months of back and forth over email would occur before it became clear that NBC had no intention of airing my interview. The last time I spoke with Joy was on April 6, 2018, when she called to tell me that senior management had stopped responding to her inquiries about her piece on me. She said I should take the story elsewhere. Just like that, NBC threw Joy and me under the bus. It killed her story and—at least temporarily—silenced me. NBCUniversal declined to comment for this story. A New York magazine spokesperson said that they did not publish the written piece because Reid withdrew it. Two weeks after my final call with Joy, I was referred to Kim Masters at The Hollywood Reporter. She and I communicated for the first time on April 26, 2018. Two months later, on June 28, The Hollywood Reporter broke the news of my allegations against Russell Simmons and A.J. Calloway, along with the cover-up of my story by NBC. Masters provided the following statement: "Joy's reporting was extremely thorough. While obviously I had to review everything, she laid out an excellent roadmap. Everything checked and we published. The story was ready to go."I am one of the many survivors that NBC silenced, and bore witness to how it treated one of their top talents for trying to break a story on sexual predators. Given what has been exposed thus far by Farrow and others, it's clear that NBC thinks it can spin their way out of this—again. What it fails to recognize is that this is a much bigger issue than their cover-ups, payoffs, and excuses. The media is supposed to be a watchdog for abuses of power. Reporting on the behavior of alleged serial predators is more than news. It's an act of social good.Actions have consequences. Inaction does as well. In their response to the Hollywood Reporter piece, NBC claimed it didn't have enough on one of my assailants to air my interview. Yet at the time my account was published, at least a dozen women had already accused Simmons of attempted sexual assault or rape. Despite what the network said, they had enough on Calloway and still held the story. Once my story became public, close to a dozen women reached out to tell me their own stories of alleged sexual victimization at the hands of Calloway. In the absence of publication, these women never would have known they weren't the only ones he had assaulted. Each of these brave survivors would have gone to their graves thinking they were the only one he attacked, when in fact their assaults are part of a pattern of alleged sexual predation by Calloway that goes back decades.Misogyny and protectionism of alleged serial rapists is not simply an NBC issue. I lobbied Calloway's parent company, Warner Media, for close to a year before it took action. It took four other stories, including one by The Daily Beast, before it finally did an investigation into Calloway's behavior.NBC News President Noah OppenheimRob Kim/GettyAfter The Hollywood Reporter ran my story, Simmons sold all his U.S. properties and moved to Bali in Indonesia, a country without an extradition treaty with the U.S. Warner Media severed ties with Calloway, who is no longer employed by Extra. He is also currently under investigation for rape in two states.The media is supposed to be a watchdog for abuses of power. Yet we keep learning how NBC uses its power to protect those in power. Initially, I thought that NBC failed to act on my story because I'm a black woman, and my assailants were black as well (it is well-documented that mainstream media outlets ignore accusations of sexual assault lobbed at black men unless their victims are mainly white, as in the case of Bill Cosby). I thought maybe it decided to pass on my story because Calloway's show Extra aired on NBC affiliates and a negative story about someone whose program airs on their network could hurt NBC's bottom line. Recently, however, there has been a spate of stories about sexual misconduct in the upper echelons of the company: Noah Oppenheim's misogynistic Harvard Crimson pieces, Andy Lack's predation of underlings, MSNBC head Phil Griffin showing a photo of Maria Menounos' genitalia in a staff meeting. The issue at NBC is larger than what I'd feared about its reporting policies on assaults committed against women of color. What we have seen over and over again with NBC is its use of its power to protect those in power. This entire sordid mess is solely about power and NBC's choice to side with those in possession of it. NBC is a media conglomerate with tentacles that extend around the globe. It has the power to make or break careers and lives. It has shown that when it comes down to breaking news on the sexual abuse of women by men who also have power, it will protect assailants under the guise of "not meeting standards and practices." Oppenheim and Lack continue to make the rounds internally and externally claiming innocence and due diligence. The frat boy rape apologist. The serial sexual harasser. These are the people at NBC who are the arbiters of justice and injustice. Yet what is lost in this endless discussion about who knew what and when is a grave truth: NBC put women's lives at risk. This is one of the darkest of NBC's sins. By refusing to stand by their hard-working reporters' work, it knowingly placed members of the public in harm's way. By discrediting and minimizing the strength of allegations, NBC is complicit in maintaining structures of gender inequality and rape culture. The bottom line is this: It kept dangerous men from being held accountable.Farrow's PBS NewsHour interview last week sums up his former network's failures succinctly: "The New Yorker looked at the same reporting as NBC had… and four weeks later it was a Pulitzer Prize-winning story. So people can decide if the reporting had valid journalistic grounds. I think it's pretty clear."Me too.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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| Notorious Chicago mob boss Joseph 'Joey the Clown' Lombardo dies in prison Posted: 20 Oct 2019 08:16 PM PDT  Infamous Chicago Outfit boss Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo has died while serving a life sentence. He was 90.
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| Gun control advocate: Pushing mandatory buybacks will hand victory to the NRA, again Posted: 21 Oct 2019 02:00 AM PDT  We can pass significant gun safety laws but not if the 2020 campaign is about confiscating assault weapons. This is not timidity, it's reality.
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| Thousands protest against Bangladesh police after deadly shootings Posted: 21 Oct 2019 02:52 AM PDT  Thousands protested against police across Bangladesh on Monday, a day after at least four people died when officers fired on a crowd in one of the country's deadliest religious riots to date. Some 20,000 Muslims called for the execution of a young Hindu man on Bhola island Sunday for writing Facebook messages that allegedly defamed the Prophet Mohammed, with police saying they opened fire after rocks were thrown at officers. Mob attacks over online posts perceived to be blasphemous have emerged as a major headache for security forces in Bangladesh, where Muslims make up some 90 percent of the country's 168 million people.
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| Republican congressman announces retirement after saying he is open to Trump impeachment Posted: 19 Oct 2019 02:15 PM PDT  * Francis Rooney said he wanted 'do right thing' with his vote * A day later, he says he will step downFrancis Rooney, right, is sworn in in January. Photograph: Susan Walsh/APA day after telling reporters he would consider voting to impeach Donald Trump, the Florida Republican Francis Rooney told Fox News he had decided to retire from Congress.On Friday, Rooney was asked about the political consequences of impeachment, a process the House will probably vote to advance after an inquiry steered by Democratic-controlled committees.He said he wanted "to get the facts and do the right thing because I'll be looking at my children a lot longer than I'm looking to anybody in this building".No House Republicans have yet said they will vote to impeach the president and send the matter to the Senate for trial.Senate Republicans are not expected to defect in numbers great enough to convict Trump and ensure his removal. But it has been reported that majority leader Mitch McConnell is preparing his caucus.In the same Friday conversation, Rooney said: "Whether I run again is a totally different can of worms, OK?"On Saturday he confirmed to Fox News that he would not.Asked if other Republicans felt as he did about impeachment, he said "there are people that talk, that have concerns about a lot of things that have happened – Syria and Mulvaney's comments just the other day are probably going to drive some people to rethink this a little more. I have, I was shocked at those."The president's abrupt decision to withdraw US troops from Syria remains hugely controversial.The acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, suggested to reporters on Thursday that there had been a quid pro quo in Trump's treatment of Ukraine, from which he sought political gain, and that the media should "get over it". He later tried to walk the comments back.Rooney told Fox News he "hoped" other Republicans were becoming more likely to think as he did on impeachment.Announcing his retirement, he said: "I've done what I came to do. I want to be the model for term limits."He added: "I thought the idea was you came and did your public service and left, you accomplish what you want to accomplish and you left. And that's what I want to be an example to do."And I'm also tired of the intense partisanship that stops us from solving the big questions that America needs solved."An investor, Republican donor and former US ambassador to the Holy See under George W Bush, Rooney was elected to Congress in 2016.Republican retirement announcements have stacked up since the Democrats took the House in the 2018 midterms. Trump's tempestuous presidency has added to the party's challenges at the polls.According to ballotpedia.org, 14 Republican representatives have said they will bow out in 2020. Many are from districts where Democrats are expected to challenge.Rooney is not. Asked if Republicans were worried about Florida's 19th district, in the south-west of the state, the National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Chris Pack simply told the Washington Post: "R+13."
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| This Is the Robot Tank Russia Used in Syria Posted: 21 Oct 2019 03:15 AM PDT  (But it didn't fight well.)
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| Iran sends US list of names for its proposed prisoner swap Posted: 21 Oct 2019 04:06 AM PDT  Iran's foreign ministry said Monday it has sent the United States a list of names it is demanding in a proposed prisoner swap, opening a potential new channel with Washington amid recent growing tensions. Iran did not detail the names it relayed, but Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said he hoped to hear soon "good news" about the release of Iranian scientist Masoud Soleimani. U.S. federal authorities arrested Soleimani last year on charges that he had violated trade sanctions by trying to have biological material brought to Iran.
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| Trade pact differences with U.S. broadly resolved: Piyush Goyal Posted: 21 Oct 2019 04:25 AM PDT  India's Trade Minister Piyush Goyal said on Monday that the broad outline of a trade deal with the United States has been worked out and suggested there could be an announcement soon. The two countries have been locked in trade disputes for months, slapping higher tariffs on each other's products and the U.S. withdrawing a key concession to India. The collateral damage of the United States' trade wars is being felt around the world as President Donald Trump renegotiates relationships with many of Washington's top trading partners.
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| Boris Johnson Is Bracing for a Showdown on His Brexit Deal. Here's What to Expect Posted: 21 Oct 2019 05:00 AM PDT  Your burning Brexit questions, answered
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| Japan's Uniqlo pulls ad after South Korean fury Posted: 21 Oct 2019 03:52 AM PDT  Japanese retail giant Uniqlo has pulled a commercial featuring a 98-year-old US fashion figure from South Korean screens, it said on Monday (Oct 21) after it was accused of whitewashing colonial history. South Korea and Japan are both United States allies, democracies and market economies faced with an overbearing China and nuclear-armed North Korea, but their relationship is deeply strained by the legacy of Tokyo's 20th-century expansionism. The latest example is an advert for Uniqlo fleeces showing elderly fashion celebrity Iris Apfel chatting with designer Kheris Rogers, 85 years her junior. The last line has the white-haired Apfel, asked how she used to dress as a teenager, innocuously responding: "Oh my God. I can't remember that far back." But Uniqlo's Korean arm subtitled its version of the ad slightly differently, reading: "I can't remember things that happened more than 80 years ago." Iris Apfel Credit: Rex That would put the moment as 1939, towards the end of Japan's brutal colonial rule over the Korean peninsula, where the period is still bitterly resented, and some South Koreans reacted furiously. "A nation that forgets history has no future. We can't forget what happened 80 years ago that Uniqlo made fun of," commented one Internet user on Naver, the country's largest portal. The phrase "Uniqlo, comfort women", in reference to women forced to become sex slaves to Japanese troops during World War II, was among the most searched terms on Naver at the weekend, and demonstrators protested outside Uniqlo shops on Monday. Seoul and Tokyo are currently locked in a bitter trade and diplomatic row stemming from historical disputes, and South Korean consumers have mounted boycotts of Japanese products. South Korean protesters denounce Uniqlo Credit: AFP/YONHAP Uniqlo - which has 186 stores in South Korea - has itself been one of the highest-profile targets, while Japanese carmakers' sales dropped nearly 60 per cent year on year in September. The company denied the allegations in a statement, saying the text was altered to highlight the age gap between the individuals and show that its fleeces were for people "across generations". "The ad had no intention whatsoever to imply anything" about colonial rule, a Uniqlo representative told AFP on Monday, adding the firm had withdrawn the ad in an effort at damage control. Analysts said the controversy demonstrated the politicisation of the neighbours' complex history. The reaction was excessive, said Mr Kim Sung-han, a former foreign affairs vice-minister who teaches at Korea University, involving a "jump in logic" that "assumes everything Uniqlo does is political as a Japanese company". "I don't see how her remark could be linked to the comfort women issue," he added. "This is overly sensitive."
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| Vietnam Targets GDP Growth of 6.8% in 2020, Prime Minister Says Posted: 20 Oct 2019 08:36 PM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Terms of Trade is a daily newsletter that untangles a world embroiled in trade wars. Sign up here. Vietnam seeks to sustain economic growth next year at about 6.8% amid a projected 7% rise in exports, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said.Inflation should stay below 4% in 2020, Phuc told legislators in a speech in Hanoi aired live on television. Overseas sales are set to gain 7.9% this year while inflation will likely average 2.7%-3% in 2019, he said.Growth in the Southeast Asian economy accelerated to 7.31% in the third quarter from a year ago, surpassing expectations to reach the fastest pace since the start of 2018. Vietnam is benefiting from rising foreign investment in manufacturing as businesses shift production from China to bypass higher tariffs.Vietnam Becomes a Victim of Its Own Success in Trade WarThe prime minister also reiterated his nation's stance on the South China Sea, saying that Vietnam will continue to defend its sovereignty and pursue different ways of doing that, including using international laws.He also urged the government to accelerate the privatization of state companies and deal strictly with projects that are inefficient or losing money.\--With assistance from Nguyen Kieu Giang.To contact the reporter on this story: Nguyen Dieu Tu Uyen in Hanoi at uyen1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: John Boudreau at jboudreau3@bloomberg.net, ;Nasreen Seria at nseria@bloomberg.net, Clarissa BatinoFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Legionnaires' outbreak linked to hot tub display at North Carolina fair claims fourth fatality Posted: 19 Oct 2019 10:43 AM PDT  The epicenter of the deadly Legionnaires' outbreak was the Mountain State Fair, held at the Western North Carolina Agricultural Center in September.
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| The coming end of Christian America Posted: 20 Oct 2019 03:35 AM PDT ![The coming end of Christian America]( "The coming end of Christian America") America is still a "Christian nation," if the term simply means a majority of the population will claim the label when a pollster calls. But, as a new Pew Research report unsparingly explains, the decline of Christianity in the United States "continues at a rapid pace." A bare 65 percent of Americans now say they're Christians, down from 78 percent as recently as 2007. The deconverted are mostly moving away from religion altogether, and the ranks of the religiously unaffiliated -- the "nones" -- have swelled from 16 to 26 percent over the same period. If this rate of change continues, the U.S. will be majority non-Christian by about 2035, with the nones representing well over one third of the population.Smaller details from the study are equally striking. Protestantism lost its narrow claim to an outright majority of Americans' souls around 2012. While older generations remain at least two-thirds Christian, millennials have an even 49-49 split of Christians vs. nones (40 percent) and those of other faiths (9 percent). Religious service attendance rates haven't dramatically declined in the last decade, but they will soon if generational trends hold.As even the strictest practitioners of laicite must concede, major religious shifts like this will have equally major political effects -- but we are in somewhat uncharted territory as to what those effects may be. In broad strokes, this decline keeps the U.S. trailing Western Europe's religious and political evolution: the end of Christianity as a default faith and a move toward left/right politics that can be roughly characterized as socialism against nationalist populism. Yet Europe can hardly provide a clear window to our future, not least because many European states have both multi-party parliamentary systems and state churches.So what, then, should we expect of an increasingly post-Christian American politics? I have a few ideas.For ChristiansIn what remains of the American church, reactions to this decline will vary. Some will see it as a positive apocalypse, which is to say a revealing of what was always true. America was never really a Christian nation. Our government and society have long made choices and embraced values that are difficult, if not impossible, to square with Christianity, so an end of any association between the two is welcome. Likewise, the proportion of Americans who actually practiced Christian faith in any meaningful, life-altering sense was always substantially lower than the proportion who would identify as Christian in a poll. What we're seeing is less mass deconversion than a belated honesty which may be an opportunity for new faithfulness, repentance, or even revival.Other Christians, especially on the political right, will respond to this shift with sadness, alarm, or outright fear. And this is not mere selfishness, mere worry over loss of political or cultural power -- though certainly that is a factor for some. But if you believe, as people of faith generally do, that your religion communicates a necessary truth about God, the universe, humanity, the purpose of life and how we should live it -- well, then a precipitous decline in that religion is an inherently horrible thing with eternal implications for millions.Still other Christians (and I count myself among them) will land somewhere in between these two views. Yet all across this spectrum of responses, I suspect, we'll see an increasing concern for religious liberty as an ever-smaller portion of the broader public has a personal stake in its preservation as a special right distinct from freedoms of speech, association, and so on.Dumping fuel on this fire are proposals from the post-religious left -- Pew's data shows religion is especially on decline among white Democrats -- like Democratic candidate Beto O'Rourke's plan to revoke tax exemptions for religious institutions that don't affirm gay marriage. As O'Rourke's fellow candidate South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg commented, "I'm not sure he understood the implications of what he was saying." That includes the panic the idea induces among traditionally religious people who are already feeling isolated, caricatured, misunderstood by their country's cultural mainstream. (For more on that panic, see this helpful explainer from Vox's Jane Coaston.)For nonesFor religiously unaffiliated Americans, the political consequences of declining Christianity feel more difficult to predict, because this group is legitimately a new phenomenon. That is not to say there has never been a mass movement away from religion in a relatively modern, Western, democratic context -- see revolutionary France, for example, or, again, most of Western Europe. But there has never been anything like this in America, and you don't have to take a big swig of the American exceptionalism Kool-Aid to concede our country is in many ways unique. Moreover, there is a substantial difference between the humdrum religious apathy or vague spirituality of a none as compared to the murderous anti-Catholicism of a French revolutionary. In fact, that lack of specific opposition is key here: Many nones aren't consciously deconverting out of atheistic fervor. They're not rebelling against Christendom but growing up entirely in its aftermath. That is what makes this situation unprecedented.This caveat aside, I'd suggest the lack of a state church (which persists in nations as irreligious as Iceland, Sweden, Scotland, and the like) in America means religious efforts to obtain or keep political power will strike the unaffiliated rather differently here. No established religion means religious political action feels less like a tiresome anachronism -- outdated and unnecessary, but nice for Grandma -- and more like a threat of theocracy. In Europe, the state church already has a certain territory staked out as part of an ancient status quo. Here, every bit of territory is up for grabs, so the fight is always on.Yet as contradictory as it may seem, I'll also suggest left-wing nones may come to find they miss the religious right when grappling with its successor. The New York Times' Ross Douthat has argued the post-religious right of which President Trump has given us a glimpse will be an ugly beast indeed. Polling shows the "churchgoers who ultimately voted for Trump over Clinton still tend to hold different views than his more secular supporters," he wrote last year, including being "less authoritarian and tribal on race and identity. ...The trend was consistent: The more often a Trump voter attended church, the less white-identitarian they appeared, the more they expressed favorable views of racial minorities, and the less they agreed with populist arguments on trade and immigration." In other words, on the right, the decline of Christianity looks to mean the rise of racism, as the communal life of active faith is replaced by darker impulses.For allFinally, for Americans of any religious affiliation or none at all, the decline of Christianity will make political communication more difficult. For centuries the Christian faith has indelibly shaped the English vocabulary -- it is no exaggeration to say the King James Bible specifically is unparalleled in its cultural influence. That's especially so with politics, which beside religion is the most common context in which we discuss the world as it is and as it should be.The ways of thinking and turns of phrase that Christendom once made normative in America will become newly strange as Christianity declines. Those of us who remain religious will have to thoroughly rethink our assumptions about other Americans' frames of reference. I am regularly reminded of this by revealing expressions of religious ignorance by my fellow journalists, the archetypal example of which is an Associated Press headline which announced, after the famous cathedral burned, that "Tourist mecca Notre Dame [is] also revered as [a] place of worship." (For the AP writers, if no one else, "mecca" is a metaphor from Islam, and Notre Dame was a place of worship for centuries before the concept of tourism emerged. I read this headline to religious friends to peals of rueful laughter.)Perhaps, whether you are among the nones or not, you think moving toward a more secular shared vocabulary is a good thing. But even if you're right, the transition will be no less challenging. In an era of social fracture, loss of common language patterns can only exacerbate our disintegration. We have always talked against each other in politics; now we are talking past each other, too. As the decline of Christianity in the United States "continues at a rapid pace," it will influence every level of our fractious project of self-governance, down to our very words.Want more essential commentary and analysis like this delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for The Week's "Today's best articles" newsletter here.
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| Meet the Mythical F-52 Stealth Fighter Posted: 19 Oct 2019 05:00 PM PDT  Better than the F-35? Too bad we will never find out.
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| Why Would Russia, China—and Iran—Plan Joint Naval Exercises? Posted: 21 Oct 2019 01:59 AM PDT  Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily BeastKARACHI, Pakistan—The waters around the Arabian Peninsula have calmed for the moment, but preparations for combat continue, with joint exercises and security conferences showing just how profoundly the region's strategic balances are shifting.As confidence declines in U.S. President Donald J. Trump's ability to navigate the difficult moral and military choices in the region, new players are entering the picture in and around the Persian Gulf.Can Trump Lie His Way Out of War With Iran? Yep. That's What He's Been Doing.An Israeli delegation attended a U.S.-backed maritime-security conference that began Sunday in Manama with delegations from Saudi Arabia and Bahrain as a vast international maritime exercise, IMX 19, got under way in the Persian Gulf. Planning involved as many as 22 countries. The exercise is an annual affair that began in 2012 under the Obama administration, but took on a different coloration after the Iranian-backed attack on Saudi Arabia's main oil-processing facility on Sept. 14. When Trump and the Saudis backed away from direct military retaliation, military exercises took on heightened significance. Vice Admiral Jim Malloy, commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, declared on a visit to Riyadh on Sept. 29 that "engaging and operating closely with regional counterparts is essential to maintain deterrence." But at this moment when U.S. policy in the Middle East appears to be in growing disarray, the question emerges: Who will be the guarantor of security for the vast quantities of hydrocarbons produced and shipped from the region? And there are now ample signals that Russia wants to step into a role as part of its expanding influence in the region.One of the clearest indicators came last month when Iran—yes, Iran—announced through its official media that it would soon participate in joint naval exercises with Russia and China. Yes, China.Those reports came soon after the United States, in the aftermath of the attacks on Saudi Arabia, said it would be sending a few hundred American troops to bolster the kingdom's defenses. That augmentation has since been increased to 3,000 U.S. troops. But the Iranian announcement was not merely reactive and should not have come as a surprise, at least where the Russian-Iranian connection was concerned.Already at the end of July, according to Jane's Navy International, Rear Admiral Hossein Khanzadi, commander of the Iranian Navy, and Russian Navy chief Admiral Nikolai Anatolevich Evemenov "signed a memorandum of understanding" to "expand bilateral ties."At the beginning of this month, Moscow confirmed preparations for a joint naval exercise with China and Iran in the Indian Ocean. At the Valdai Discussion Club held from Sept. 30 until Oct. 3 in Sochi, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said flatly "We, the People's Republic of China, and Iran are preparing naval drills for fighting terrorists and pirates in this part of the Indian Ocean."The limited scope reflected China's caution. Analysts told the South China Morning Post in September, just after the Iranian announcement, that Beijing probably would not send anything more than a few ships from its anti-piracy squadron, which has been in place off the coast of Somalia for years. The last thing it wants is to get caught between Washington and Tehran.But as military analyst Song Zhongping told the Morning Post, the Chinese "escort fleet" off the African coast is looking to extend its reach into the northern Indian Ocean and the Strait of Hormuz, waterways "important to China's oil lifeline in the Middle East." So, is the planned joint exercise part of a "preemptive defense" strategy against a possible U.S attack on Iran? Although the message is carefully calibrated, even discussion of such exercises is a show of support for Tehran at a time when Iran is reeling under the U.S policy of "maximum pressure," pushing it toward economic isolation worldwide. The planned joint exercise does not guarantee Beijing and Moscow would side with Tehran if Iran is attacked by the U.S. or Israel, but at a minimum it suggests that possibility. Iran wants to show that it may be isolated economically but not politically or militarily. And China and Russia want to show their solidarity while taking, for the moment, minimum risks.The Russian foreign minister's announcement at the Valdai conference at the beginning of the month "was at the request of Iran," Andrei Fedorov, director of the Center for Political Research and Consulting in Moscow, told The Daily Beast, "but we are trying not to hurry up." For the moment, Russian President Vladimir Putin's attention is fixed on the situation in Syria, which he will discuss with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at a summit meeting Tuesday. Over the medium and long term, however, if China, Russia and Iran continue to develop their ties to protect their strategic interests in the Indian Ocean they will form a powerful trio, with Russia taking the lead.The concept of collective security in the Persian Gulf was introduced by Moscow in July this year. The concept stipulates organizing an international conference on security and cooperation in the Gulf, which will later lead to creating a security and cooperation organization in the region. China endorsed that overall concept in July. "We welcome the Russian initiative," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying, according to a report by the Russian news agency TASS. "We would also like to boost cooperation, coordination, and communication with all the corresponding parties," Chunying said.China and Russia, both of them permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, have continued business with Tehran, defying the sanctions re-imposed by the Trump administration, and both the countries are set to deepen their involvement in Iran's energy and infrastructure sectors. Despite Washington's unilateral sanctions on Iranian oil imposed in May, China imported more than 900,000 metric tons of crude oil from Iran in July, up more than 8 percent from the month before, according to China's General Administration of Customs.China also sees strategically located Iran as an important link in the One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative that could connect it to Europe. China and Iran agreed to bolster bilateral defense-military cooperation in 2016, and the two countries discussed a road map for the China-Iran comprehensive strategic partnership this August, when Iran Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif paid a visit to his Chinese counterpart Wang Li.If Trump's Rage Brings 'Civil War,' Where Will the Military Stand?China is the world's largest importer of crude oil, and Saudi Arabia, which supplies the Chinese with a million barrels a day, has now become Beijing's second largest crude oil supplier, after Russia. But Beijing would like to diversify by finding a way to expand its importation of Iranian oil. Thanks to president Trump's manufactured crisis in the Persian Gulf after his unilateral withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and the policy of economic strangulation against Tehran, China, Russia and Iran are drawing closer as strategic partners.—Christopher Dickey also contributed to this article.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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| U.S. troops cross into Iraq from Syria Posted: 20 Oct 2019 11:51 PM PDT  United States troops have crossed into Iraq from Syria through the Sahela border crossing in the northern province of Dohuk, Reuters witnesses said on Monday. Reuters video images showed armored vehicles carrying troops into Iraq, part of the U.S. withdrawal from Syria. An Iraqi Kurdish security source also told Reuters that U.S. troops had crossed into the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
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| William Barr's speech on religious freedom alarms liberal Catholics Posted: 20 Oct 2019 08:05 AM PDT  Prominent liberal Catholics have warned that the U.S. attorney general's devout Catholic faith threatens the separation of church and state, after William Barr delivered a speech on religious freedom in which he warned that "militant secularists" were behind a "campaign to destroy the traditional moral order."
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| Mark Zuckerberg Has Quietly Recommended Campaign Hires to Pete Buttigieg Posted: 21 Oct 2019 01:00 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Facebook Inc. chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg has privately recommended several potential hires to Pete Buttigieg's presidential campaign, a rare example of direct political involvement from one of tech's most powerful executives.Earlier this year, Zuckerberg sent multiple emails to Mike Schmuhl, Buttigieg's campaign manager, with names of individuals that he might consider hiring, campaign spokesman Chris Meagher confirmed. Priscilla Chan, Zuckerberg's wife, also sent multiple emails to Schmuhl with staff recommendations. Ultimately, two of the people recommended were hired.The emails between Zuckerberg and Buttigieg have come to light as Zuckerberg faces unrelenting attacks from politicians from both parties over such issues as misinformation, privacy, election meddling and bias. Zuckerberg is scheduled to testify Wednesday before the House Financial Services Committee on Facebook's impact on the financial services and housing sectors.Zuckerberg used to make political contributions more frequently, including to former and current House speakers Paul Ryan and Nancy Pelosi in 2014, but he hasn't made any political donations or endorsements to specific candidates in the 2020 election cycle. In June, he gave $5,000 to Facebook's PAC, which contributes to both Democratic and Republican candidates.'Top-Tier Organization'"Since the beginning of the campaign, we've built a top-tier operation with more than 430 staff in South Bend and around the country," Meagher said. "The staffers come from all types of background, and everyone is working hard every day to elect Pete to the White House."A spokesman for the Zuckerberg-Chan family told Bloomberg News that the employees asked the tech mogul and Chan to recommend them."Having seen Mark's visit to South Bend in 2017 and Facebook Live with Mayor Buttigieg, colleagues later asked Mark and Priscilla to connect them with the Buttigieg campaign as they were interested in joining," spokesman Ben LaBolt said in a statement. Zuckerberg visited South Bend, Indiana, in April 2017 as part of his philanthropic work and got a tour from Buttigieg, that Zuckerberg live-streamed."Mark and Priscilla have not decided who to support for President," he added.LaBolt didn't answer a follow-up question asking whether Zuckerberg has made similar connections for other candidates.Making IntroductionsIn the emails, Zuckerberg and Chan recommended numerous potential campaign hires, and two of them are now on staff: Eric Mayefsky, senior digital analytics adviser, and Nina Wornhoff, organizing data manager.Mayefsky previously worked as the director of data science at Quora, a 10-year-old question-and-answer startup founded by former Facebook employees. Mayefsky worked at Facebook for almost four years starting in 2010, according to his LinkedIn profile. Wornhoff previously worked as a machine learning engineer at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and in Democratic politics in Indiana, Buttigieg's home state.The communication was initiated by Zuckerberg and Chan, Meagher said. It was sent shortly after Buttigieg officially launched his campaign in mid-April."From the CNN Town hall in March to our launch a month later, we literally got 7,000 resumes," Meagher said. "I think that he (Zuckerberg) thought Eric would be a good staff hire with a lot of experience and same with Nina and Priscilla."Crimson ConnectionZuckerberg, 35, and Buttigieg, 37, overlapped at Harvard, and Buttigieg was friends with two of Zuckerberg's roommates. He was also one of Facebook's first 300 users. But they were only introduced years later by a mutual Harvard friend.The staff recommendations from Zuckerberg are the first evidence of the Facebook CEO actively assisting a presidential campaign. A number of other high-ranking Facebook executives, including David Marcus, the executive leading Facebook's cryptocurrency efforts, Naomi Gleit, one of Facebook's longest-tenured executives, and Chris Cox, former chief product officer who is close friends with Zuckerberg, have donated to Buttigieg.In recent weeks, Democrats have escalated their criticism of Facebook for its refusal to moderate political ads. Elizabeth Warren, in particular, has repeatedly attacked Zuckerberg and Facebook over its decision not to fact check posts or ads shared by politicians. Joe Biden wrote the company on Thursday demanding that an ad paid for by a pro-Donald Trump super-PAC be pulled down for what he said were lies about his Ukrainian-related work as vice president.Silicon ValleyHe's been more apprehensive about breaking up big tech companies than some of his Democratic counterparts, saying the issue of monopolies extends beyond tech. But he's also raised concerns about tech companies having too much power and has floated regulation, including fines and the blocking of new mergers, for Facebook and other big tech companies.Republicans have accused Zuckerberg and Facebook of bias against conservative viewpoints, claiming that Facebook and other social media platforms unfairly suppress their views. Zuckerberg reportedly started to hold private meetings last summer with conservative leaders to hear their concerns.In the past, Facebook embedded staffers with political campaigns to give them guidance on how to best use the social media platform. The 2016 Trump campaign said it greatly benefited from having Facebook staffers on hand. The company announced in 2018 that it would pull back from offering on-site support.Now Zuckerberg needs friends in Washington, where Facebook is under unprecedented attack. His company is being investigated for possible antitrust violations by two federal agencies and Congress. It's also trying to get skeptical regulators and lawmakers on board with its goal of launching a cryptocurrency.But this presidential cycle, Facebook has become one of Democrats' top punching bags. In recent weeks, Warren's campaign has bought ads on Facebook claiming Zuckerberg endorsed Trump, a deliberate falsehood that she used to draw attention to Facebook's policies exempting politicians from fact-checking ads, and corrected later in the advertisement.\--With assistance from Bill Allison.To contact the reporters on this story: Tyler Pager in Washington at tpager1@bloomberg.net;Kurt Wagner in San Francisco at kwagner71@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net, Ros KrasnyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Lost hiker rescued in Oregon snowstorm: 'I wouldn’t have survived another night' Posted: 19 Oct 2019 06:27 PM PDT  Lost in a fierce snowstorm on the Pacific Crest Trail in Oregon, hiker Robb Campbell made a desperate call for help.
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| Saudi Arabia's new 100% shisha tax sparks fury Posted: 21 Oct 2019 02:26 AM PDT  A decision to impose a 100 percent tax on bills at restaurants that serve shisha has ignited criticism on social media in Saudi Arabia, where the water pipes are a popular pastime. In the meantime, some restaurants have stopped offering shisha, while others have lowered their prices to appease customers. The government's official gazette said earlier this month that the tax will apply to all tobacco products.
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| Burmese fishermen 'faint' after mistaking $20 million of floating crystal meth for natural deodorant Posted: 20 Oct 2019 07:57 AM PDT  Sacks of crystal meth scooped from the sea by Burmese fishermen who mistook it for a deodorant substance had a street value of $20 million (£15.4m), an official said on Sunday, in a country believed to be the world's largest methamphetamine producer. The accidental drug haul off Burma's coastal Ayeyarwady region occurred when fishermen spotted a total of 23 sacks floating in the Andaman Sea on Wednesday. Each one contained plastic-wrapped bags labelled as Chinese green tea - packaging commonly used by Southeast Asian crime gangs to smuggle crystal meth to far-flung destinations including Japan, South Korea and Australia. Locals were mystified by the crystallised substance in the sacks, Zaw Win, a local official of the National League for Democracy party who assisted the fishermen and police, told AFP. At first, they assumed it was a natural deodorant chemical known as potassium alum, which is widely used in Burma. "So they burned it, and some of them almost fainted," he said. They informed the police, who on Thursday combed a beach and found an additional two sacks of the same substance - bringing the total to 691 kilogrammes (1,500 pounds) which would be worth about $20.2 million (£15.6m), Zaw Win said. "In my entire life and my parents' lifetime, we have never seen drugs floating in the ocean before," he said. The massive haul was sent on Sunday to Pyapon district police, who declined to comment on it. Burma's multi-billion-dollar drug industry is centred in eastern Shan state, whose poppy-covered hills are ideal cover for illicit production labs. Made-in-Burma crystal meth - better known as ice - is smuggled out of the country to more lucrative markets using routes carved out by narco gangs through Laos, Thailand and Cambodia. A study by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says that Southeast Asia's crime groups are netting more than $60 billion a year - a conservative estimate, according to experts - thanks to a sophisticated smuggling and money-laundering operation. In March, Burma authorities seized more than 1,700 kilogrammes of crystal meth worth nearly $29 million, which police said at the time was their biggest drug haul this year.
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| The Air Force Wants a New ‘Century Series’ Of Jet Fighters. History Says No Way. Posted: 19 Oct 2019 11:05 PM PDT  They seemed amazing at the time, but history has rendered its own judgment.
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| Mick Mulvaney Melts Down Under Brutal Grilling By Fox’s Chris Wallace Posted: 20 Oct 2019 09:58 AM PDT  Days after his disastrous White House press briefing in which he admitted President Donald Trump was seeking out a quid pro quo with Ukraine before saying never mind, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney struggled to walk back his comments under the intense and relentless grilling of Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace.Almost immediately during the Sunday morning broadcast, Wallace pressed Mulvaney on his remarks, asking why he said during the press conference that military aid to Ukraine depended on investigating the actions of Democrats during the 2016 election, prompting Mulvaney to assert that he never actually said that."Again, that's not what I said, that's what people said I said," he replied before saying there were "two reasons" why the United States would have held up aid: corruption and whether other European nations were helping with aid.Mick Mulvaney Has Conservatives Asking: WTF Are You Doing?Wallace, meanwhile, didn't let Mulvaney's spin go unchecked, telling the chief of staff that anyone listening to the briefing could "come to only one conclusion" before playing clips Mulvaney confirming that Trump withheld aid unless the Ukrainians investigated the Democrats.Mulvaney continued to insist that he had been misinterpreted and that aid was only contingent on corruption and additional European assistance, causing the Fox News anchor to fire back."I hate to go through this but you said what you said," Wallace stated. "And the fact is, after that exchange with [ABC News correspondent] Jonathan Karl, you were asked another time why the aid was held up. What was the condition for the aid? And you didn't mention two conditions, you mentioned three conditions."Wallace, once again, threw Mulvaney's own remarks back in his face, playing yet another clip from the press briefing of Mulvaney claiming military aid to Ukraine was contingent upon them cooperating with the Trump administration and investigating the Democrats.The Trump aide, however, attempted to brush off his previous remarks by saying he didn't actually use the words "quid pro quo," prompting Wallace to point out that when Karl pressed him on whether or not there was a quid pro quo, Mulvaney said that "happens all the time."Fox News Host Ed Henry: Not 'Media's Fault' Mick Mulvaney Admitted Quid Pro QuoThe two would go back and forth over this issue for a few more minutes, with Wallace repeatedly cornering Mulvaney over his previous comments and the chief of staff flailing away and struggling to present even a laughable defense.At one point, Wallace asked Mulvaney whether he had offered his resignation to Trump in the wake of the blowback and criticism he received over the press briefing. Mulvaney said the topic was "absolutely not" discussed with the president, adding that he is "very happy working there."CNN, meanwhile, reported Sunday that prior to the impeachment crisis that Trump finds himself currently embroiled in, there were internal efforts to push Mulvaney out as acting chief of staff. Those efforts subsided, however, when the push for impeachment heated up in the wake of the Ukraine scandal late last month.Besides the issues surrounding the Ukraine scandal and impeachment, Wallace also grilled Mulvaney on the president's sudden reversal on next year's G7 summit, which Mulvaney announced last week would be held at Trump's personal property. Asked by Wallace why the president "caved" to the bipartisan backlash, Mulvaney said Trump was "honestly surprised at the level of pushback," adding that the president "still considers himself to be in the hospitality business."Wallace seized on the "hospitality business" comment and pressed Mulvaney if the president understood why it "looked lousy." The acting chief of staff's retort: "I think he thinks people think it looks lousy."Sean Hannity Goes Off on Mick Mulvaney: 'I Just Think He's Dumb'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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| China's defence minister says resolving 'Taiwan question' is greatest national interest Posted: 20 Oct 2019 06:39 PM PDT ![China's defence minister says resolving 'Taiwan question' is greatest national interest]( "China's defence minister says resolving 'Taiwan question' is greatest national interest") The Chinese defence minister said on Monday that resolving the "Taiwan question" is China's greatest national interest, and that no force can prevent China's "reunification". Separatist activities are doomed to failure, Defence Minister Wei Fenghe said at the opening in Beijing of the Xiangshan Forum, which China styles as its answer to the annual Shangri-La Dialogue security forum in Singapore. Tensions between China and Taiwan have ratcheted up ahead of a presidential election on the island in January.
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| Nestor heads into Georgia after tornados damage Florida Posted: 19 Oct 2019 06:21 PM PDT  Nestor raced across Georgia as a post-tropical cyclone late Saturday, hours after the former tropical storm spawned a tornado that damaged homes and a school in central Florida while sparing areas of the Florida Panhandle devastated one year earlier by Hurricane Michael. The storm made landfall Saturday on St. Vincent Island, a nature preserve off Florida's northern Gulf Coast in a lightly populated area of the state, the National Hurricane Center said. Nestor was expected to bring 1 to 3 inches of rain to drought-stricken inland areas on its march across a swath of the U.S. Southeast.
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