| Everything we know about Hunter Biden's business connections in China Posted: 07 Oct 2019 07:16 AM PDT  President Donald Trump has made multiple allegations about the global business dealings of former Vice President Joe Biden's son.
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| Germany probes motive of Syrian crash truck hijacker Posted: 07 Oct 2019 05:42 PM PDT  German authorities on Tuesday were investigating the motive of a Syrian man who hijacked an articulated lorry and smashed it into cars stopped at a traffic light in the city of Limburg, injuring several people. Unconfirmed media reports said the Syrian national arrived with the massive migrant influx to Germany in 2015 and that his residency permit had expired on October 1. Germany has been on alert following several jihadist attacks in recent years claimed by the Islamic State group.
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| The Latest: Police called to bar 2 hours before shootings Posted: 07 Oct 2019 02:23 PM PDT  The Kansas City, Kansas, police chief says officers responded to reports of a disturbance at a bar two hours before a shooting left four people dead and five wounded. Interim police Chief Michael York said Monday that officers could not find the man suspected of causing the disturbance and had no information that he planned return to the Tequila KC bar. Police said Javier Alatorre, 23, and Hugo Villanueva-Morales, 29, were each charged with four counts of first-degree murder.
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| Chicago teens stage 'die-in' to demand action on climate change; one man arrested Posted: 07 Oct 2019 07:24 PM PDT  Dozens of Chicago teens gathered across from Trump International Hotel and marched to City Hall Monday to demand action on climate change.
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| GE to freeze, pre-pay pensions to save up to $8 billion, cut debt Posted: 07 Oct 2019 03:44 AM PDT  Analysts said the move would largely offset the rise in GE's pension obligations due to lower interest rates and was in line with other steps Chief Executive Officer Larry Culp has taken over the past year to raise cash and pare down $105.8 billion in debt. Culp has slashed GE's quarterly dividend to a penny and has sold - or announced plans to sell - non-core businesses, slimming the once-sprawling company to focus just on power plants, jet engines and windmills, plus related equipment and services. GE's pension plans are among its biggest liabilities and were underfunded by about $27 billion at the end of 2018.
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| In a Conflict, Iran Would Wage a Missile War Against America Posted: 07 Oct 2019 01:00 PM PDT  So many missiles.
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| Harris Releases Plan for Six Months of Taxpayer-Funded Family Leave Posted: 07 Oct 2019 12:17 PM PDT  Senator Kamala Harris on Monday released a paid family leave proposal that is significantly more generous than those embraced by the rest of the Democratic presidential field.As she campaigns in Iowa, the California Democrat detailed her plan to give workers up to six months of taxpayer-funded paid family and medical leave, twice the length of time provided by a family leave bill currently under consideration in Congress.Americans who earn less than $75,000 annually would receive their full wages during their paid leave, while those who earn more would receive incrementally less compensation. Employees would be able to take leave for personal or family medical issues, including to care for domestic partners, parents-in-law, and "chosen family."Prerequisites for claiming the benefits include "personal serious health conditions, caring for new children or family members with serious health conditions, or addressing medical or non-medical needs," such as those arising from domestic violence or sexual assault, Harris' plan states.Self-employed workers, part-time employees, and independent contractors would all be eligible to claim the benefits.The former California attorney general also said she would put pressure on Congress to pass the Child Care for Working Families Act, which would provide child care assistance to middle and lower-class families.The program would be run by a new Office of Paid Family and Medical Leave, which would be paid for by a "combination of employer and employee payroll contributions and government expenditures paid for by tax increases on the top one percent and big corporations."
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| A former Trump Organization vice president thinks Trump will resign before getting impeached, just like Nixon did Posted: 07 Oct 2019 04:21 PM PDT  The move would mirror that of President Richard Nixon, who also resigned before he was impeached amid the Watergate scandal in the '70s.
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| Sen. Graham: Congress will call for Turkey's NATO suspension and hit it with sanctions if it attacks Kurds Posted: 07 Oct 2019 12:43 PM PDT  Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina on Monday warned Turkey a bipartisan group of lawmakers would introduce sanctions against it and "call for their suspension from NATO" if it attacks the Kurds in Syria.
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| Johnson urges US to give up diplomat's wife over fatal crash Posted: 07 Oct 2019 10:38 AM PDT  Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged the United States on Monday to reconsider granting immunity to a diplomat's wife suspected of killing a teenager in a British road crash. Johnson said he was prepared to intervene with President Donald Trump to secure the woman's return to Britain to face investigation over the death of 19-year-old Harry Dunn. "I do not think that it can be right to use the process of diplomatic immunity for this type of purpose," the prime minister told reporters on a visit to a hospital.
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| Polish politician rescues child and father from burning car Posted: 08 Oct 2019 04:45 AM PDT  A left-wing party leader in Poland has rescued a 2-year-old boy and his father from a burning car, winning praise across the political spectrum days before a national election. The car collided with a truck and began to burn Monday evening in Tabor, south of Warsaw. Robert Biedron witnessed the crash and helped the father and child until rescue officials arrived, fire officials reported.
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| Judge clears record of 21-year-old jailed 10 days for oversleeping jury duty: 'Totally rehabilitated' Posted: 08 Oct 2019 07:32 AM PDT  Deandre Somerville, 21, spent 10 days in jail after he overslept and missed jury duty. The Palm Beach County Circuit Judge since cleared his record.
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| China says it supports Pakistan in safeguarding its independent sovereignty Posted: 08 Oct 2019 03:50 AM PDT  China supports Pakistan in safeguarding its independent sovereignty and territorial integrity, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said on Tuesday during a visit by Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan. Khan is scheduled to meet both Li and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing this week to discuss the security situation in the disputed region of Kashmir as well as economic ties. Tensions over Kashmir have risen sharply since August when New Delhi revoked the autonomy of its portion of the territory, which both India and Pakistan rule in part and claim in full.
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| How America's A-10 Warthogs Will Destroy Iran's Navy in a War Posted: 07 Oct 2019 03:00 PM PDT  Small attack boats are no match.
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| Taliban commanders released as hopes rise for resumption of US peace negotiations Posted: 07 Oct 2019 11:34 AM PDT  Hopes are rising for the resumption of the abandoned Taliban and US peace talks after eleven senior Taliban members were freed from prison in an exchange with three kidnapped Indian engineers. Among those freed are two former provincial governors of the Taliban and Abdul Rashid Baluch, a notorious regional leader sentenced to 18 years imprisonment for trafficking opium. The men were being held near Bagram air base outside Kabul. It is believed American authorities must have given permission for the swap as Baluch was previously on their 'Specially Designated Global Terrorist' list. Last month, Donald Trump cancelled over a year's worth of on-going peace negotiations with the Taliban after the group claimed a Kabul bomb attack that killed 11 people, including an American soldier. However, relations appear to be thawing again after Zalmay Khalilzad, the Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation at the State Department, met senior Taliban leaders on Friday for clandestine talks in Islamabad. It is unclear whether the exchange of the Taliban leaders was discussed during the meeting. While the Afghan authorities do intermittently release prisoners early as gestures of goodwill it is rare to see such high-profile members of the Taliban freed. Abdul Rashid Baluch was a regional official for the group in the southwestern province of Nimroz when he was apprehended while personally escorting an almost one-tonne consignment of opium in 2014. Baluch's arrest was trumpeted by the U.S-Afghan authorities as proof of Taliban involvement in the international drug trade. Officials said Sheikh Abdur Rahim and Mawlawi Abdur Rashid – provincial governors in the Taliban administration when it was defeated by U.S-led forces in 2001 – were also released. The three Indians set free were working as engineers in the northern Afghan province of Baghlan when they were kidnapped in May 2018, along with four other colleagues. One man was released in March but the whereabouts of the three remaining Indians is unknown.
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| UN may run out of money by end of the month: Guterres Posted: 07 Oct 2019 06:05 PM PDT  The United Nations is running a deficit of $230 million, Secretary General Antonio Guterres said on Monday, and may run out of money by the end of October. In a letter intended for the 37,000 employees at the UN secretariat and obtained by AFP, Guterres said unspecified "additional stop-gap measures" would have to be taken to ensure salaries and entitlements are paid. "Member States have paid only 70 per cent of the total amount needed for our regular budget operations in 2019.
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| Judge who ordered Trump to turn over tax returns also seems in favor of presidential indictment Posted: 07 Oct 2019 07:48 AM PDT ![Judge who ordered Trump to turn over tax returns also seems in favor of presidential indictment]( "Judge who ordered Trump to turn over tax returns also seems in favor of presidential indictment") District Court Judge Victor Marrero had more than one opinion to share Monday morning.Marrero, a federal judge in Manhattan, on Monday rejected President Trump's argument against handing over eight years' worth of his New York state tax returns to Manhattan prosecutors. It marks the next step in Democrats' divisive attempts to get Trump's tax returns, and in his ruling, Marrero snuck an additional divisive take of his own.As it stands, the federal Office of Legal Counsel has an opinion that blocks sitting presidents from being indicted. But that perceived mandate "has a certain degree of axiomatic acceptance," Marrero said in his ruling, writing that "DOJ memos which propagate it" have made it seem as if it's "inscribed by constitutional tablets so-etched by the Supreme Court." Marerro's court sees this false legitimacy as "not warranted," he continued, and went on to dismantle the OLC ruling further.> And the judge also argues that the DOJ memos describing the horrors of a presidential indictment were conjured out of thin air rather than out of legitimate factual concerns. pic.twitter.com/9gKDV2okXY> > -- Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) October 7, 2019In plain English, that essentially means Marrero says the OLC opinion is not as legally binding as it seems. And in case it wasn't clear where Marrero was going with this, he outlined an scenario in which a president probably should be indicted: If impeachable offenses seemingly came up against the hypothetical commander in chief, but it was toward the end of their term with no time for Congress to actually impeach them. > And the judge presents a hypothetical that would *support* the indictment a sitting president: preventing criminal associates from going free or himself from escaping justice due to a statute of limitations. pic.twitter.com/wuMumT4IwZ> > -- Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) October 7, 2019
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| 10 Parking Feats on Video That Are Completely Next Level Posted: 07 Oct 2019 02:00 PM PDT |
| We Don’t Need New Laws to Fight Right-Wing Terror. We Need to Call It by Its Name. Posted: 07 Oct 2019 01:45 AM PDT  Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency/GettyLast month's massacre of 22 people in a Texas Walmart by a man aiming to battle "a Hispanic invasion" is only the latest horror story as the radical right continues to murder and terrorize. For the first time in memory, a consensus of U.S. law enforcement officials agree that white supremacist domestic terrorism has become the No. 1 terrorist threat facing the United States. The question now is, what is to be done?I recently attended a conference hosted by the National Counterterrorism Center, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security, entitled "Domestic Terrorism and Its Global Context: Exploring the USG Approach"—an invitation-only gathering of government officials, civil society activists and academics concerned with the threat. The meeting was convened specifically to make suggestions for U.S. government action.I have been studying the radical right for almost 25 years now, and it's difficult enough to come up with anything approaching a "solution" for private groups or individuals, let alone laws or police actions that must and should be carried out by a government that respects civil liberties in a free society. There is nothing approaching a silver bullet for the government, or for private citizens.The government's Countering Violent Extremism program, begun under the auspices of DHS in 2011, illustrates part of the dilemma. It directed millions of dollars toward working with community groups to prevent or reverse radicalization by engaging with at-risk youth and others. But while the program is supported by some, large numbers of Muslim and other minority groups say it stigmatizes their communities as likely terrorists, encourages neighbors spying on one another, and is largely ineffective. Many believe it has done more harm than good.Another example is the City of New York Police Department's Muslim surveillance program, started in 2002, which included listing mosques as potential terrorist organizations, sending undercover agents into Muslim neighborhoods to listen in on conversations, and undertaking a "mapping" of people believed to be vulnerable to radicalization. The program was widely criticized after it was exposed and drew lawsuits over its religious profiling and suspicionless surveillance and, in 2014, then-NYPD Commissioner William Bratton disbanded the squad. A federal lawsuit against the NYPD ended in 2018 with a major settlement for the plaintiffs.The United Kingdom's Prevent program, started in 2007, ran into similarly severe criticism for its highly disproportionate targeting of Muslim communities. Many have called for the entire counter-radicalization effort to be scrapped.Of course, there have been some useful efforts, many of them focused squarely on violence from the white supremacist movement. Exit programs, aimed at helping individuals leave the movement, have had some success though the Trump administration has largely defunded them. De-platforming of radical ideologues—convincing private companies like Google and Facebook to remove extremist content—also has had some impact, and major tech companies recently agreed to expand their Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism.But those efforts, and others like them, have had limited effect, and most likely never disrupted a violent white supremacist attack. No one yet has come up with a reliable list of indicators of radicalization. In addition, the positive benefits of some programs have been overwhelmed by President Trump and other far-right politicians seeming to endorse ideas of the white nationalist movement while painting Islamist terrorism as the only serious threat.The Texas attack capped a kind of sea change among law enforcement officials, however, as new statistics showed that right-wing domestic terror since the Sept. 11, 2001 al Qaeda attacks has been significantly deadlier than Islamist terror.At the Sept. 23 conference, held just outside Washington, D.C., the most substantive subject discussed was the idea of passing a national law outlawing "domestic terrorism." Proponents argued that right-wing terrorists in the U.S. can only be charged with such crimes as murder and weapons violations, unlike foreign terrorists who face charges like terrorism or materially aiding a terrorist group. A new terrorism statute, they suggested, might elevate the importance of the threat in the minds of criminal investigators, the courts, and the broad public.But at least 40 civil rights groups, including the most important such organizations in the country, staunchly oppose such a law. They argue, rightly in my view, that no new laws are needed to deal with extremist violence. They cite a long and sordid history of government abuse and infiltration of left-wing groups, suggesting that a domestic terrorism law might provide cover for a replay.The changes we need lie elsewhere.The real problem has been the reluctance of generations of American officials to describe racially motivated violent extremists correctly—as terrorists, just as dangerous and criminal as foreign Islamist terrorists. For years, the FBI refused to label the murders of abortion physicians by Christian extremists as terrorism. More recently, it claimed "eco-terrorists" were the main domestic terror threat in the country—an absurdity, given that not a single person has been killed by animal rights or environmental extremists. It is important to call a terrorist a terrorist, but the problem is political cowardice, not the lack of a new law.I walked away from the conference with the sense that many participants were looking for a technical fix—some law or program that would ease or even end the threat of terroristic violence from the domestic radical right.That shows a lack of basic understanding about the nature of the threat. Despite the claims of President Trump and media outlets like Fox News, it is not internet algorithms, mental illness, violent video games or even foreign plots that are driving the violence. The fact is, huge socioeconomic changes convulsing Western societies—including demographic shifts, cultural upheaval, and real economic hardship—have produced this movement.And that means, regardless of the most well-meaning of efforts to confront the threat of resurgent white nationalism, that there are no easy fixes. 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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| The Latest: Standing ovation for Nobel winner Posted: 07 Oct 2019 11:46 AM PDT  Dr. Gregg L. Semenza received a standing ovation from faculty members and students as he walked into an auditorium at Johns Hopkins University's School of Medicine in Baltimore. Semenza said he was in a "daze" when he received the news that he was one of three scientists receiving the 2019 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. Semenza and Drs. William G. Kaelin Jr. of Harvard University and Peter J. Ratcliffe at the Francis Crick Institute in Britain and Oxford University are being lauded for discovering how the body's cells sense and react to oxygen levels.
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| Teachers suspended after unsupervised toddlers escape preschool, wander into traffic Posted: 06 Oct 2019 12:08 PM PDT  A woman reported seeing a group of toddlers wandering the streets near Little Sunshine's Playhouse & Preschool in Gilbert, Arizona, on Friday morning.
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| Ex-U.S. envoy Huntsman urges rethink of Russia sanctions in WSJ op-ed Posted: 08 Oct 2019 04:51 AM PDT  Days after ending his term in Moscow, former United States ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman has urged Washington to review its sanctions-dominated approach to Russia, questioning its efficiency and calling for dialogue. The U.S. has placed multiple layers of sanctions on Russia, its senior officials and largest companies, as well as businessmen it views as connected to the Kremlin, the bulk of them linked to Moscow's role in the Ukrainian crisis which began in 2014 and has yet to be resolved. In a column https://www.wsj.com/articles/america-needs-dialogue-with-moscow-11570488054 for the Wall Street Journal published on Monday, Huntsman argued that "sanctions have become our go-to foreign policy tool to admonish misbehavior" but not all of them are having the desired effect.
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| What We Know About the Suspect in the Killing of 4 Homeless Men in New York Posted: 08 Oct 2019 05:21 AM PDT  NEW YORK -- The man accused of bludgeoning four homeless men to death Saturday had a history of violence and strange behavior leading up to the horrific attacks, which have shaken the homeless community and renewed awareness of the dangers faced by people living on the street.The accused killer, Randy Rodriguez Santos, 24, was himself homeless, bouncing from a shelter in Brooklyn to his mother's apartment in the Bronx and even to a squalid, abandoned building next door to her building.Santos was formally charged with four counts of murder Sunday but did not speak or enter a plea.The grisly murders have prompted calls for the city to do more to help an estimated 3,600 people living unsheltered and to address mental illness.Here's what we know about Santos:-- Early Saturday, Santos walked through Chinatown stalking men who lay on the ground. He swung a 3-foot, 15-pound metal pipe at their heads, killing four men, including 83-year-old Cheun Kwok, whose surname is sometimes spelled Kok. Another man was critically injured.The first attack happened at about 1:30 a.m., when a homeless man asleep in front of 17 E. Broadway was struck in the head and killed, according to a criminal complaint.Minutes later, three men were attacked with a metal bar in front of a pharmacy at 2 E. Broadway near Chatham Square, an attack filmed by a security camera. Two died.Then at about 1:50 a.m., a fifth sleeping man was clubbed a block north at Doyers Street and East Broadway; he also died. Two passersby witnessed the last attack and called the police, who arrested Santos at about 2 a.m. at Canal and Mulberry streets, still carrying a metal bar with blood and hair sticking to it.-- People who knew Santos in the Bronx neighborhood where his mother lives said he appeared to be unraveling mentally in recent weeks. He had been doing odd jobs for his mother's neighbors, Lydia and Segundo Segarra, cleaning up debris in their yard, but stopped showing up in late September."He seemed lost," Segundo Segarra said. "He would forget that he just saw you."The day before the attacks, residents of the building where Santos' mother lived saw him lying down in an empty hallway, possibly trying to get his mother's attention to let him in. Santos, generally quiet and affable toward neighbors, was withdrawn."He wasn't making eye contact," said Candy Santos, 41, who had no relation. "He was just laying there. There was something in his eyes that felt different. It's like he wasn't there."-- Santos had previously been accused in a string of violent assaults targeting random people.Much of his record is sealed, but he had most recently been arrested in May, when he was kicked out of a men's shelter in East Flatbush. He pummeled another 24-year-old shelter resident in the face. That case was dismissed.A year ago, Santos choked a 55-year-old man and bit his breast at an employment agency in the garment district in Manhattan, the police said. He had leapt across the counter to attack the man. Four days later, he was on a northbound Q train, between Canal Street and Union Square stations, when he yelled out, "We need to stop it!" and punched a 33-year-man in the eye.He was charged with both assaults.-- There were more incidents this year. On Feb. 25, police officers spotted Santos enter the Hoyt-Schermerhorn subway station in Brooklyn through an exit gate without paying and arrested him. At the precinct, he spat on the floor toward a sergeant, the police said.Less than a week later, he was arrested on a charge of groping a 19-year-old woman at the front door of her apartment building in Jamaica, Queens.-- His family in the Bronx had kicked him out. His mother, Fioraliza Rodriguez, told The Daily News she was afraid of him."I never thought he would kill someone," she said. "I was afraid of him, though, because he punched me. That's when I told him to get out of my house."The Daily News also reported that Santos broke his grandfather's nose in 2016, and sneaked into the family's home last week and stole a watch, a phone and three phone chargers.-- Denielda Jordan, a neighbor of Rodriguez, observed Rodriguez refusing to let Santos into her apartment. But the mother would give food to her son."If your mother doesn't let you in the house, there's a problem," Jordan, 58, told The New York Times.The Post reported that Santos had been living in squalor inside an abandoned house at 691 East 183rd St., near his mother's apartment.-- Santos most recently worked in construction, a job he lost because of excessive drug use, said Nelson Reyes, also a neighbor of Rodriguez."He started smoking crack," Reyes, 39, said in an interview with The Times. "Then he started losing his mind."-- The police said Santos' last known address was a shelter in Brooklyn, the same shelter that kicked him out after he attacked another young man.But he was frequently seen eating the free breakfasts and lunches served at the Bowery Mission, one of the city's oldest aid organizations, located about 10 blocks north of Saturday's murders.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company
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| Trump news – live: White House blocks ambassador from testifying to Congress as impeachment probe intensifies Posted: 08 Oct 2019 04:26 AM PDT  Donald Trump's ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland, has been blocked by the White House from testifying before Congress about his role in the Ukraine scandal, frustrating the impeachment inquiry keen to speak to him over damning text exchanges with another envoy, Kurt Volker..The president meanwhile remains under fire from senior Republicans over his announcement that the US will withdraw troops from northern Syria - leaving its allies against Isis in the Syrian Democratic Forces exposed to Turkish aggression - a move that was also branded "bats*** crazy" by ex-US national security adviser Susan Rice and that reportedly left his own senior military officials completely blindsided.
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| See This Picture? This Was the U.S. Navy's World War II Battleship 'Drone' Posted: 08 Oct 2019 02:18 AM PDT  On December 7, 1941, one of the first attacks conducted by Japanese aircraft was launched against the former battleship USS Utah, a radio-controlled target ship. Today, USS Utah remains at the bottom of Pearl Harbor, a memorial to those lost in the surprise attack.
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| Extinction Rebellion protesters pour fake blood over New York's capitalist bull Posted: 07 Oct 2019 11:26 AM PDT  Demonstrators were arrested in a wave of US protests that are part of a global week of action by the UK-based groupExtinction Rebellion climate crisis activists protest at New York City's famous Charging Bull statue. Photograph: Mike Segar/ReutersMore than 20 people were arrested by police in New York City's financial district after Extinction Rebellion climate protesters poured fake blood over the famous Charging Bull statue, a symbol of American capitalist might.The protesters launched a wave of disruptive protests in the city on Monday. A smaller number of arrests were made at a "die in" outside New York's stock exchange, with protesters subsequently blocking a nearby road to traffic.Protests are also taking place in other US cities, including Washington DC and Chicago, as part of a global week of action by the UK-founded activist group, which is seeking to make its first major mark in America.Climate crisis activists demonstrate in New York City where Extinction Rebellion organizers expect several thousand to congregate this week. Photograph: Shannon Stapleton/ReutersExtinction Rebellion organizers expect several thousand people will congregate in New York's Washington Square Park for a week of protests and speeches that are expected to involve actions that will prompt further arrests."There will be broad disruption of business as usual," said a New York-based Extinction Rebellion spokesman. "Frankly we don't have time to wait for an opportune moment. Climate breakdown is under way and we can't afford to wait."Extinction Rebellion has a philosophy of nonviolent direct action aimed at pushing governments to confront the climate crisis. A key demand is that planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions are reduced to net zero within six years.A climate crisis activist covered in fake blood is arrested in New York City during the Extinction Rebellion demonstration. Photograph: Timothy A Clary/AFP via Getty ImagesThe activist network has gained a high profile in the UK, following successful attempts to shut down parts of central London. Activists are hoping for a similar impact in the US, despite concerns over a more aggressive style of policing and an unsympathetic federal government, led by Donald Trump, that actively promotes fossil fuels and is regularly derisive of climate science."We need to account for the damage caused by fossil fuels because we have the chance of losing it all," said Jim Navarre, a protestor from New York's Long Island who help up a sign reading "You can't comb over climate change" with a picture of Trump's hair atop the globe.Climate crisis activists gather in Battery Park during Extinction Rebellion demonstrations in New York. Photograph: Timothy A Clary/AFP via Getty ImagesYana Landowne, also from New York, said she was inspired to join the protests by British friends. "I see this as a movement I need to get behind, I realized I had to bring my whole being to this movement," she said.The stock exchange protest featured a mock funeral with people strewn on the ground, covered in blood. Tombstones mentioning hurricanes and fires made worse by the climate crisis were held aloft, along with a coffin with the words "Our future" written on the side. A New Orleans-style funereal band played for the several hundred protestors."It's a powerful message," Landowne said. "But more than death I fear living amongst the terror of people killing each other for water and food."
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| Lam says Chinese military could step in if uprising gets bad Posted: 08 Oct 2019 02:46 AM PDT  Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam warned Tuesday that the Chinese military could step in if an uprising for democratic reforms that has rocked the city for months "becomes so bad" but said the government still hopes to resolve the crisis itself. The protests started in June over a now-shelved extradition bill that would have allowed some criminal suspects to be sent to mainland China for trial but have since morphed into a larger anti-government movement.
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| Passenger forcibly removed from American Airlines plane by police at Miami airport Posted: 07 Oct 2019 01:18 PM PDT  On Monday morning, a man was removed from an American Airlines plane by Miami-Dade Police using force.
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| Russian village's last teacher stays on for her one remaining pupil Posted: 07 Oct 2019 12:53 AM PDT  Uminur Kuchukova, 61, could have retired years ago, but she continues to teach at this dying Russian village's once bustling school for the sake of its last pupil, a 9-year-old boy. Like thousands of villages dotted across Russia, the remote Siberian village of Sibilyakovo emptied after the closure of its state-run collective farm following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet planned economy. Kuchukova has taught at the school for 42 years.
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| A senior border patrol agent quietly retired after he was charged with sexually assaulting a junior agent Posted: 07 Oct 2019 10:58 AM PDT  A senior Border Patrol agent retired after being arrested and indicted on sexual assault and kidnapping charges against a female colleague.
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| UAW Strike to Delay Chevy Corvette C8 Production Posted: 07 Oct 2019 06:05 PM PDT  Detroit Free Press cites inside sources saying plant retool is held up by the strike against GM.
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| Israeli PM's pre-indictment hearing concludes: lawyer Posted: 07 Oct 2019 01:04 PM PDT  A four-day hearing into allegations of corruption against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to an end on Monday, one of his lawyers said. "The hearing ended tonight," the premier's lawyer, Yossi Ashkenazy, told reporters. "We presented all our arguments which must, logically, confirm that all the indictments must be annulled," he added.
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| Pat Robertson: Trump Will Lose His ‘Mandate of Heaven’ if He Pulls Out of Syria Posted: 07 Oct 2019 01:58 PM PDT  The 700 ClubWhen you've lost Pat Robertson…Reacting to President Donald Trump's announcement that American forces will pull out of Syria and pave the way for Turkey to invade the country and attack Kurdish allies, the ultra-conservative televangelist on Monday joined the growing chorus of Republican critics of the president's decision."I am absolutely appalled that the United States is going to betray those democratic forces in northern Syria," he said during Monday's broadcast of The 700 Club, first spotted by Right Wing Watch. "That we are possibly going to allow the Turkish to come in against the Kurds."Calling Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan a "thug" and "dictator," Robertson said it was "nonsense" to call the Turkish leader an ally of America, claiming Erdogan is just "in for himself."Robertson, who has been a loyal Trump supporter, then took full aim at the president."The president, who allowed [Washington Post journalist Jamal] Khashoggi to be cut in pieces without any repercussions whatsoever, is now allowing the Christians and the Kurds to be massacred by the Turks," he exclaimed. "The President of the United States is in danger of losing the mandate of heaven if he permits this to happen."Robertson's forceful condemnation of the president comes as Trump takes heat from some of his staunchest defenders over the Syria pullout. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) called the president's move "irresponsible" and "unnerving to its core," while Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade said the decision was "disastrous" as it would leave the Kurds to fend for themselves.Amid the criticism from his supporters and fellow Republicans, Trump defended pulling out of Syria while adding that in his "great and unmatched wisdom" he would destroy Turkey's economy if they did anything he considered to be off limits. Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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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| Can Anyone Really Predict What China Will Do in the Future? Posted: 06 Oct 2019 12:09 PM PDT  Washington's many experts would like to.
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| Witness: 'El Chapo' gave $1M to Honduran president's brother Posted: 07 Oct 2019 05:04 PM PDT  A Honduran former mayor and drug trafficker testified Monday that Mexican kingpin Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán personally gave $1 million to the brother of Honduras' president in 2013 for the politician's presidential campaign. The longtime Sinaloa cartel boss made the payment to be able to smuggle cocaine through Honduras to Guatemala, Amílcar Alexander Ardón alleged in testimony on the fourth day of the Manhattan drug trial of Tony Hernández, brother of President Juan Orlando Hernández.
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| Pope Francis considers dropping celibacy requirements for some priests Posted: 07 Oct 2019 04:42 PM PDT  South American bishops gathered at the Vatican to address a severe priest shortage that could result in the church dropping celibacy requirements.
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| Fat is fabulous for bears in Alaska's Katmai National Park Posted: 07 Oct 2019 12:50 PM PDT  Alaska grizzly bears packing on pounds (kilos) for the winter are competing for more than the season's last salmon. Fat Bear Week has become a national internet sensation, pitting individual bears against each other in an online voting contest. At Katmai, a park in southwestern Alaska known for its bountiful salmon runs and the huge grizzlies - Alaskans call them "brown bears" - that feed on them, Fat Bear Week is an annual highlight.
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| 'They told me that I was going to die': The US says El Salvador is safe for migrants, but transgender women living there fear for their lives Posted: 08 Oct 2019 06:35 AM PDT  A transgender woman living in El Salvador says MS-13 killed her friends and went after her next. She's been waiting for the US to grant her asylum.
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| Thai activist charged over 'inappropriate' royal history post Posted: 08 Oct 2019 02:54 AM PDT  A Thai pro-democracy activist has been charged over an "inappropriate" social media post, police said Tuesday, as authorities use a tough cyberlaw against perceived critics of the powerful monarchy. Police arrested 25-year-old Kan Pongprapapan late Monday and charged him with violating the Computer Crimes Act after a Facebook post touching on the turbulent lives of world-famous royal families. Kan, who was later released on bail, did not mention Thailand's ultra-wealthy monarchy, which is shielded from criticism by one of the harshest royal defamation laws in the world.
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| America’s Good Intentions in Syria Have Led to This Dismal Outcome Posted: 08 Oct 2019 03:30 AM PDT  Recent U.S. policy in Syria, from the moment that former U.S. ambassador Robert Ford showed support for Syrian protesters in 2011, has been one of good intentions that were mismanaged through conflicting policies. This week it led to the decision to withdraw. A new crisis will unfold in eastern Syria, an area that, liberated from ISIS, has seen too much war and where the people are just beginning to reconstruct their lives. Many are expressing feelings that the U.S. betrayed its partners, the Syrian Democratic Forces, who are mostly Kurdish. The larger context is that the U.S. has been seen as abandoning one group after another in Syria, reducing American influence in Syria and the region.It is at least the third time that President Donald Trump has sought to leave Syria. In March 2018, he said that the U.S. was leaving "very soon." In December 2018, he wrote that the U.S. was bringing the troops home after defeating ISIS. In fact, ISIS was not defeated on the ground until March 23, 2019, in its last pocket near the Euphrates river. ISIS sleeper cells are still active, and there are thousands of ISIS detainees in eastern Syria. However, Trump now says that Turkey or other countries will need to deal with the remnants of ISIS and the detainees in Syria.How did the U.S. get here? In 2011, Americans were outraged by scenes of Bashar al-Assad's regime cracking down on protests. There was bipartisan support for backing the Syrian protesters and then the Syrian rebels. At the time, the Obama administration had a vast spectrum of options, from giving them anti-tank missiles to carrying out airstrikes against Assad and punishing him for using chemical weapons. But Obama walked back from his 2012 red line on the use of chemical weapons.Washington shifted from directly opposing Assad to training and equipping Syrian rebels, a program that cost up to $1 billion and was largely seen as a failure by 2015. By this time, the U.S. was working on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or the "Iran deal," and the overthrow of Assad, who is backed by Iran, was no longer a priority. ISIS had exploited the Syrian conflict to take over a third of Syria and Iraq, controlling the lives of 12 million people and committing genocide. The U.S. began anti-ISIS operations in Syria in September 2014 and helped the Kurdish fighters in Kobane resist ISIS. From there grew a unique partnership between the U.S. and these leftist Kurdish fighters, whom Turkey accused of being linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which the U.S. views as terrorists. The U.S. supported the creation of the Syrian Democratic Forces in 2015 in eastern Syria, as a way to rebrand the Kurdish fighters and distance them from the PKK, so that Washington could train and equip them without appearing to support the party.The Obama administration had moved from opposing Assad, to arming rebel fighters, to fighting ISIS and signing the Iran deal. At each juncture it narrowed its goals. By the time Trump was elected, the U.S. mission in eastern Syria, encapsulated in Operation Inherent Resolve, was to defeat ISIS on the ground and diplomatically oppose Assad through lip service in Geneva.Trump vowed during his campaign to defeat ISIS, but he also wanted to show that there was a red line with respect to Assad's crimes. He ordered airstrikes against the regime in April 2017 and April 2018 but was reluctant to do more. He ended support for the rebels in July 2017, and a year later Damascus took back rebel areas that had previously enjoyed some U.S. support. By this time, Russia and Iran were deeply involved in Syria, supporting Assad, and Turkey had launched an operation in northern Syria to prevent the U.S.-backed SDF from expanding its areas of control.At each juncture, the U.S. found its choices narrowed in Syria, and America was isolated from having a say in the future of Syria as Russia, Turkey, and Iran excluded Washington from peace discussions they held at Astana. Nevertheless, by 2018, the U.S. and its SDF partners controlled a huge area in eastern Syria. National-security adviser John Bolton sought to push a strategy whereby America would hold on to eastern Syria until Iran left. The goal was to roll back Iranian influence and reduce Israel's fears about Iran using Syria to attack. Bolton never got his way.Trump's decision in December 2018 to leave Syria led to the resignation of defense secretary James Mattis and anti-ISIS envoy Brett McGurk. Bolton was gone by September 2019. Jettisoning these key officials, the White House narrowed its role in Syria even more, no longer seeing a way to use it as leverage against Iran. Since Trump didn't want to do nation-building in Syria, and wanted Europe or the Gulf states to foot the bill to keep ISIS detainees locked up, he saw the area as a sunk cost. As for Iran, he said the U.S. would use Iraq to "watch" it.All that was left of U.S. policy in Syria was the question of what to do about the U.S. partners, the mostly Kurdish forces that had been trained and that had done a phenomenal job defeating ISIS. The problem was that Turkey, sensing that Trump wanted to leave, kept threatening to launch an invasion of eastern Syria to attack the SDF. Turkey says it will resettle 2 million Syrians, mostly Arabs from elsewhere in Syria, in the Kurdish areas of eastern Syria.U.S. policy in Syria has been one of shutting one door after another to close off U.S. influence, at the same time that Iran, Russia, and Turkey are opening those doors to partition Syria for their own interests. The risks of U.S. withdrawal are clear. Not only will ISIS make some inroads, but Washington will lose influence in Syria, and America's image will be tarnished for appearing to abandon friends and being bullied into leaving. Iran is already calling the US an "irrelevant occupier" and saying that it's ready to help take over eastern Syria.Unfortunately, as the U.S. seeks to narrow its footprint and get out of the nation-building-humanitarian-intervention business that was a hallmark of the 1990s and early 2000s, Washington has chosen such a narrow goal that its allies are wondering whether there is a future for the U.S. in the Middle East. The U.S. had good intentions — the road to hell is paved with them — in Syria but badly mismanaged them. The result is that Iran, Russia, and Turkey got something and that all the U.S. got was a damaged reputation. It's a far cry from 2011 when Syrian protesters all across the country, including Kurds and Arabs, looked to Washington for leadership and support.
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| The United States Almost Bombed Iran in the 1990s Posted: 07 Oct 2019 01:39 PM PDT  "The Pentagon drew up military plans which ranged from launching cruise missiles at Iranian targets to undertaking a full-blown ground invasion of Iran."
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| New deadly migrant shipwreck hardens calls to revamp rescues Posted: 07 Oct 2019 10:58 AM PDT  The deaths of at least 13 people early Monday on an overloaded migrant boat that capsized near the Italian island of Lampedusa have galvanized calls to shut down smuggler routes and revamp search-and-rescue efforts in the deadly central Mediterranean Sea. The Italian coast guard said one of its vessels was about to begin the rescue about six nautical miles Italy's southernmost island when the boat capsized. The incident brings to more than 1,000 the number of people who have died in the Mediterranean Sea this year.
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| 18-year-old 'hero' dies trying to save passengers after car crashes into Delaware canal Posted: 07 Oct 2019 07:01 AM PDT  A 16-year-old girl was found sitting near the scene of the crash on Sunday, Delaware State Police said. She told them the driver helped her to safety.
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