| Key House Dem Raskin urges Pelosi to stand her ground against a 'farce' Senate trial Posted: 21 Dec 2019 10:53 AM PST  Rep. Jamie Raskin, a key member of the House Judiciary Committee, defends and explains Nancy Pelosi's decision to delay sending the impeachment articles to the Senate, on Yahoo News' "Skullduggery" podcast.
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| 16 inmates killed in latest prison outburst in Honduras Posted: 22 Dec 2019 07:24 PM PST  At least 16 prisoners died during fighting inside a juvenile detention center in Honduras on Sunday, two days after rioting at another prison killed 18 inmates, authorities said. The rioting was confirmed to The Associated Press by José Coello, spokesman for the National Interagency Security Force, an entity formed from the military and the National Police to deal with the recent unrest in Honduras' prisons.
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| Undoing ‘Obamacare’ Could Harm More Than the Health of Americans Posted: 21 Dec 2019 06:15 PM PST  Open enrollment for health care in the ACA marketplaces ended at 3 a.m., Dec. 18, 2019, the same day a panel ruled that the individual mandate is unconstitutional.
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| Jeff Van Drew reveals the moment he decided it was time to switch parties Posted: 22 Dec 2019 10:43 AM PST  Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) reached the point of no return when a local New Jersey county party chair told him he would face political consequences if he didn't vote in favor of impeachment.Van Drew, in an appearance on Fox News' Sunday Morning Futures on Sunday, told host Maria Bartiromo that when he heard that warning he decided it was time to switch parties. "It made me think for all the years that I've worked so hard and tried to give so much not only to the party but to everybody," the former Democratic congressman said. "It all boils down to that I have my own individual opinion on one vote and that's not going to be allowed, and I'm going to be punished for that, and that's when I knew."> Welcome to the GOP, @CongressmanJVD! pic.twitter.com/DBQLS67zJu> > — GOP (@GOP) December 22, 2019Van Drew, who went against the Democratic line and opposed impeachment from the beginning, officially announced he was crossing the aisle Thursday. He said he feels that he did "the honorable thing" and is sticking by his decision so far, even though there are questions about how he'll actually fit in with the GOP when it comes to non-impeachment voting. Read more at The Hill.More stories from theweek.com You will ultimately be Trump's impeachment juror Popular messaging app is reportedly a United Arab Emirates spying tool Pelosi's impeachment endgame
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| Jailed king of Mandela's ethnic clan granted parole Posted: 23 Dec 2019 01:50 AM PST  The jailed king of Nelson Mandela's ethnic group was released on parole on Monday alongside more than 14,600 other prisoners granted "special remission of sentence" by President Cyril Ramaphosa, the justice ministry said. Buyelekhaya Dalindyebo, 55, is king of the AbaThembu, a Xhosa ethnic group that boasted Mandela as its most prominent clan member. Incarcerated since 2015, Dalindyebo was serving a 12-year term at the East London Correctional Centre in the southwest of the country for arson, kidnap and assault.
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| Saudis Put Jamal Khashoggi’s Murder Behind Them With Death Sentences and a Three-Day Rave Posted: 23 Dec 2019 07:48 AM PST  PARIS—It looks like heads will roll in Saudi Arabia, literally, for the murder last year of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. But they'll be detached from people that few Saudis and fewer Americans have ever heard of, and certainly not Crown Prince Mohammed Salman (MBS), the mercurial and malign monarch-in-waiting beloved of the Trump clan.Never mind the CIA's belief that the elaborately choreographed and gruesomely executed murder of The Washington Post columnist could not have been carried out unless MBS authorized it. Conveniently, the two top aides who would have connected the crown prince to the crime reportedly were cleared.The court statement Monday announcing the sentence named none of the five condemned to death. But Saudi Deputy General Prosecutor Shalaan Al-Shalaan told a press conference "We found that Khashoggi's murder was not premeditated." This travesty is in fact much bigger news outside the kingdom of Saudi Arabia than inside. There, it's party time (or hangover time) in the wake of a high-tech three-day rave meant to titillate the kingdom's young people with hitherto banned music, dancing, and even a few far-from-veiled semi-celebrities from the United States and Britain. As the Associated Press described it, "More than 70 world-renowned DJs were invited to perform across five stages to the backdrop of surrealist performances—including one with a woman in a skintight sky blue leotard writhing from a hot-air balloon over a crowd of young Saudi men."MBS, better than any of his forebears, understands the power of what Roman tyrants used to call "bread and circuses," a phrase attributed to Juvenal and satisfactorily defined on Wikipedia as "the creation of public approval, not through exemplary or excellent public service or public policy, but through diversion; distraction; or the mere satisfaction of the immediate, shallow requirements of a populace."Trump Bet the Whole Middle East on Khashoggi's Alleged Murderer. Now He's Doubling Down.As MBS' decrepit father, King Salman, fades from the scene, the crown prince has made colossal mistakes, including the Yemen war that's become Riyadh's quagmire. But he has managed to crush and intimidate virtually all challenges to his power. Rival princes have been imprisoned and stripped of fortunes. Liberal critics have been jailed, flogged, and in some cases sentenced to death while the once-powerful religious police have been threatened or bribed into submission.(As I write this, I cannot help but think how envious an American president from Queens must be when he looks at this man who will be king—a prince rich beyond even Donald Trump's dreams of avarice, with power as absolute as any tyrant's in the Middle Ages.)But let us return for a moment to the matter of Jamal Khashoggi—the murder that Trump and MBS would like us to forget, and an inconvenient atrocity that most young Saudis already are tossing in the circular file of their well-distracted memories.In Saudi Arabia as elsewhere, as long as people feel prosperous and are allowed to indulge their appetites, the abuse of authority by their rulers is treated as political theater beyond their control, and they respond with a willing suspension of disbelief.Thus it hardly matters that the Saudi prosecutor's claim defies credulity when he says the butchering of Khashoggi—for such it was—"was not premeditated."But permit me to go over a few of the grisly details again as revealed last summer by the United Nations' special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and reported in The Daily Beast. Turkish authorities had bugged the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and various investigators, including the CIA, subsequently were allowed to listen to the recordings. Members of the U.N. team took meticulous notes on the dialogue and the other sounds monitored as Khashoggi was killed and then chopped up for disposal on Oct. 2, 2018.They heard Dr. Salah Mohammed Tubaigy, from the Saudi interior ministry, explaining to the head of the hit team before Khashoggi's arrived how they'd get dispose of the portly journalist, referred to as "the sacrificial animal.""Joints will be separated. It is not a problem," says Tubaigy. "If we take plastic bags and cut it into pieces, it will be finished. We will wrap each of them."A man more or less of Khashoggi's build then dressed in Khashoggi's clothes and walked out the back of the consulate to be seen by closed-circuit cameras, while plastic garbage bags were carried out the front.We don't know at this juncture whether Tubaigy or the man in Khashoggi's clothes were among those sentenced to death, or given lesser penalties, or cleared somehow of the crime. In any case, Khashoggi's remains have never been found, and MBS must have known all along how this would play at home. Out of sight, out of mind. Party on.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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| Kremlin calls Moscow shooting incident 'a manifestation of madness' Posted: 23 Dec 2019 01:28 AM PST  The Kremlin on Monday called a Moscow shooting incident last week in which two officers of Russia's FSB security service were killed by a gunman "a manifestation of madness" of the kind faced by all countries from time to time. Russian investigators on Friday named the man who opened fire on the headquarters of the FSB security service in Moscow as Yevgeny Manyurov, a 39-year-old former security guard from just outside the capital.
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| ‘It is beyond cruel’: Ice refuses to reunite girl with the only family she has left Posted: 22 Dec 2019 08:08 AM PST  María has been waiting to be paroled so she can be with her niece, who was sent to foster care 2,400 miles awayFor more than nine months, María, 23, has been waiting in an immigration detention center in Arizona hoping to reunite with the six-year-old niece she raised as a daughter. When the two asked for asylum at the border last March because they feared for their lives in Guatemala, border officials detained María in the Eloy detention center and sent the girl to foster care in New York, 2400 miles away.The Guardian first reported on the ongoing separation of this family in October. As the story spread, lawmakers and more than 200 clergy asked US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) to grant María parole so she can leave detention and reunite with the girl. A woman in New York volunteered to house them both while María awaits a decision on her appeal for asylum.But despite that public support, Ice denied María's application for parole in mid-December.Parole was once the norm for arriving asylum seekers, but in recent years approvals have become increasingly rare. On a standardized form, Ice officers indicated María failed to prove she was "not a flight risk" or that her "continued detention was not in the public interest".María said the denial was "depressing" because it prolongs her separation from the child. She has regular phone calls with her niece, who says she doesn't want to be apart any more. "But I tell her she has to be patient, wait a little bit longer. Just like I'm doing it myself from here," María said in Spanish during a phone call from detention on Thursday."Why does Ice get to say what the public interest is?" said Suzannah Maclay, one of María's pro bono attorneys. "It's very clear what the public is interested in here. It's helping these people and getting them back together."An Ice spokeswoman emailed a statement reciting the facts of María's case but did not answer why the agency denied parole.Six years ago, a gang in rural Guatemala murdered María's last living relatives except her niece, who was a baby. María raised the child and is the only mother the girl has known. They fled toward the United States last Christmas after the gang murdered María's partner and tried to shoot her.María's case stands out because of the dozens of people who have tried to help.The support began when María and her niece first arrived at a shelter on the Mexican border and met American volunteers. They helped obtain copies of official birth and death certificates that prove her relatives were violently murdered and her relationship to the girl.At that time, a federal judge had halted the Trump administration's policy of separating most families at the border nearly nine months earlier. Yet a US law aimed at protecting child migrants from traffickers requires border officials to separate arriving children from adults who cannot prove they are the child's parents or legal guardians. Officials did not accept the documents María showed as proof of legal guardianship.Once María was detained, some of those volunteers from the shelter found her pro bono attorneys and located her niece in New York."She would have totally lost track of her niece," said Maclay. "But it was because the public stepped up and kept track of where the little girl went that they're even in contact right now."María's supporters are calling on Ice to reverse course and grant her parole. A small crowd of state legislators, clergy and activists gathered on the state capitol on Thursday holding signs that read "Uncage & Reunite" and "Call ICE" with the agency's local phone number.The Rev James Pennington of First Congregational United Church of Christ in Phoenix said by keeping the family apart, Ice is "causing further pain, trauma, mental, physical, spiritual health issues that will extend far beyond just this moment in time".He added, "It is beyond cruel especially at this time of Christmas."Anita, the New York woman who has volunteered to house María and her niece, said she has already sent them photos of the family. "I told her we're all waiting for her," said Anita, who asked for her last name to be withheld to protect María's safety if she is released."We're so anxious to have a good resolution for this case, but at the same time painfully aware that there are so many other people that don't have this kind of support," she said.When the Guardian first wrote about María, she asked to be called Alexa for fear of reprisal. But she has since chosen to use her real first name in the press as a growing number of supporters are calling on Ice to release her.After a federal judge in 2018 ordered most family separations to end, attorneys have been scrambling to reunite families. There are currently about 5,500 known cases of children separated from parents during the Trump administration. But no one has tracked how many children have been split from non-parent relatives, nor is there a formal mechanism for those families to reunify.The logistics of how and when María will see her niece again if she is not paroled are unclear. María's asylum appeal could take up to two years. Sean Wellock, another pro bono attorney representing her, said if María were to lose her appeal, the government would be under no obligation to coordinate a reunion in Guatemala with her niece if they are deported separately.The girl could lag behind María by days, weeks or months.Christie Turner-Herbas, an attorney specializing in reunifying migrant families at Kids in Need of Defense, said when a child is deported alone, US government agencies do not always communicate clearly about the child's travel."There have been complications like a child is leaving and we never get any notice," Turner-Herbas said. "And then we find out, you know, get a panicked call from the family saying that they heard the child is coming in, but they're not able to get [to the airport] in time."María says her days in detention are monotonous until someone visits or she receives a letter. While she says the government has denied all her requests, she still doesn't "feel abandoned"."I have the support of lots of people," she said. "I'm not alone".
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| Boeing Starliner has picture-perfect landing after shortened mission Posted: 23 Dec 2019 01:58 AM PST  The successful landing was a relief after problems that blocked a planned rendezvous with the International Space Station.
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| Can Amy Klobuchar become a contender? Posted: 23 Dec 2019 09:10 AM PST  Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar has remained in the presidential race as more high-profile candidates have fallen off. Can she mount a charge for the nomination?
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| Smash and grab: Crime gangs prey on Hong Kong protests Posted: 22 Dec 2019 09:36 PM PST  The Hong Kong seller of luxury watches looked on in horror as masked men wielding the biggest sledgehammer he'd ever seen smashed through the door of a neighboring watch store, held a machete to the owner's throat, scooped up hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of timepieces, and then scattered into the city's maze of streets. This time, the watch merchants of Kowloon fought back.
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| How to Throw a Legit New Year’s Eve Party on the Cheap Posted: 23 Dec 2019 07:00 AM PST |
| 'Nothing Has Changed.' 7 Years After a Gang Rape That Shocked a Nation, Brutal Attacks Against Women Continue Posted: 23 Dec 2019 05:03 AM PST  Seven years after a brutal gang rape on a New Delhi bus, sexual violence remains an epidemic in India.
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| In the 1860s, France And America Almost Went To War Over Mexico Posted: 22 Dec 2019 06:00 AM PST  A close call.
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| Trump rants about wind energy, says he 'never understood' it Posted: 23 Dec 2019 07:31 AM PST  President Trump ranted about wind energy in a speech to a conservative youth group, saying he had "studied it better than anybody."
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| Romanians pay tribute to victims of 1989 revolution Posted: 22 Dec 2019 04:35 PM PST  Thousands of people marched in the Romanian capital Bucharest on Sunday to remember those who lost their lives in the revolution 30 years ago that ended the communist dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu. President Klaus Iohannis and several ministers from his centre-right administration laid commemorative wreaths and lit candles in front of a monument to the victims. "We want to know the truth about December 1989," Iohannis said a few hours earlier, as he opened an exhibition on the revolution.
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| 6 more horses found shot and killed in Kentucky after gruesome discovery last week Posted: 23 Dec 2019 08:58 AM PST  A Kentucky animal rescue group said the horses were killed during the same shooting that killed at least 15 other horses along U.S. 23.
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| How a Poisoning in Bulgaria Exposed Russian Assassins in Europe Posted: 23 Dec 2019 05:31 AM PST  SOFIA, Bulgaria -- The Russian assassin used an alias, Sergei Fedotov, and slipped into Bulgaria unnoticed, checking into a hotel in Sofia near the office of a local arms manufacturer who had been selling ammunition to Ukraine.He led a team of three men.Within days, one man sneaked into a locked parking garage, smeared poison on the handle of the arms manufacturer's car, then left, undetected, except for blurry images captured by surveillance video.Shortly after, the arms manufacturer, Emilian Gebrev, was meeting with business partners at a rooftop restaurant when he began to hallucinate and vomit.The poisoning left Gebrev, now 65, hospitalized for a month. His son was poisoned, and so was another top executive at his company. When Gebrev was discharged, the assassins poisoned him and his son again, at their summer home on the Black Sea. They all survived, though Gebrev's business has yet to recover fully.Western security and intelligence officials said the Bulgaria poisonings were a critical clue that helped expose a campaign by the Kremlin and its sprawling web of intelligence operatives to eliminate Russia's enemies abroad and destabilize the West.Entering his third decade in power, President Vladimir Putin of Russia is pushing hard to reestablish Russia as a world power. Russia cannot compete economically or militarily with the United States and China, so Putin is waging an asymmetric shadow war.In October, The New York Times revealed that a specialized group of Russian intelligence operatives -- Unit 29155 -- had for years been assigned to carry out killings and political disruption campaigns in Europe.Based on interviews with officials in Europe and the United States, it is also now clear that the assassination attempts against Gebrev served as a kind of Rosetta Stone that helped Western intelligence agencies to discover Unit 29155 -- and to decipher the kind of threat it presented.Security and intelligence officials are still working to understand how and why the unit is assigned certain targets. Even now, investigators have not determined the precise motive in the Gebrev case. Most likely, intelligence officials said, Gebrev was a target because of the way his business rankled the Kremlin: his arms sales, his company's intrusion into markets long dominated by Russia, and his efforts to purchase a weapons factory coveted by a Russian oligarch.The poison took effect slowly.Gebrev first realized something was wrong on the evening of April 27, 2015, when his right eye suddenly turned "as red as the red on the Russian flag."The next evening, Gebrev went to his favorite restaurant on the 19th floor of the Hotel Marinela. At dinner, Gebrev began to vomit violently and was rushed to a military hospital. There, he began to see explosions of vivid colors. Then, his field of vision suddenly turned to black and white.As his hallucinations intensified, he imagined angry, fantastical creatures that threatened to drag him away.A day later, the company's production manager, Valentin Tahchiev, was hospitalized, too. Days after that, Gebrev's son, Hristo Gebrev, who was being groomed to lead his father's company, Emco, was also rushed to intensive care."When they get rid of me and my son, the company will be destroyed," Gebrev said later. "Who would sign contracts? Who has the rights?"For the next month, as the elder Gebrev recuperated in the hospital, Bulgarian authorities made little progress on the case. In a former Soviet satellite country with a long history of contract killings, Bulgarian news media barely paid attention. The prosecutor general suggested that Gebrev had been sickened by tainted arugula. Eventually, though, officials concluded that all three men had been poisoned.In late May, Gebrev was released from the hospital and joined his son at the family vacation home on the Black Sea. There, the two men were poisoned again. This time, the symptoms were less dramatic, and they drove themselves back to Sofia and checked into the same hospital for about two weeks.Despite two poisonings, Bulgarian prosecutors failed to unearth any leads or evidence.When the hospital failed to determine the substance used in the poisoning, Gebrev enlisted a Finnish laboratory, Verifin, which detected two chemicals in his urine, including diethyl phosphonate, which is found in pesticides. The other chemical could not be identified.By the following summer, Bulgarian authorities had dropped the case. They apparently had no idea that Unit 29155 even existed. Neither did intelligence and security officials in the rest of Europe.Yet as Gebrev's case remained colder than cold, members of Unit 29155 were very busy, according to partial travel records reviewed by the Times. From 2016 to 2018, operatives made at least two dozen trips from Moscow to different European countries.Their operation in Bulgaria most likely would never have been detected.Then there was another poisoning.In March 2018, a former Russian spy named Sergei Skripal was poisoned by a lethal nerve agent in the English town of Salisbury.British prosecutors blamed the attack on assassins working for Russia's military intelligence agency, known widely as the GRU. Working with European allies, British authorities analyzed travel records of known Russian operatives. One stood out: a man using a Russian passport with the name of Sergei Fedotov.For five years, he had traveled extensively in Europe, visiting Serbia, Spain and Switzerland. He was in London a few days before Skripal was poisoned, leaving shortly after that attack, and British authorities have now identified him as the commander of the team that poisoned Skripal.It also turned out that he had been in Bulgaria in 2015, making three visits: in February; in April, when Gebrev was first poisoned; and again in late May, coinciding with the second poisoning.Investigators from the Britain-based open-source news outlet Bellingcat have identified the man using the Fedotov alias as Denis Sergeev, a high-ranking GRU officer and a veteran of Russia's wars in the North Caucasus. British authorities confirmed the accuracy of the report.The revelation that he was connected to the poisonings in both England and Bulgaria was critical in helping Western officials conclude that these were not one-off Russian attacks but rather part of a coordinated campaign run by Unit 29155.Armed with new evidence provided by the British, the Bulgarian prosecutor general, Sotir Tsatsarov, reopened the case in October 2018. Almost immediately, investigators discovered fresh clues. Before the initial poisoning, Fedotov and two other operatives from Unit 29155 had checked into the Hill Hotel, in the same complex where Gebrev has his office. They insisted, prosecutors now indicated, on rooms with views of the entrance to an underground parking garage where Emco executives kept their cars.In the garage, prosecutors discovered grainy surveillance video that showed a well-dressed figure approaching Gebrev's gray Nissan as well as the cars owned by Gebrev's son and the production manager. The figure appears to smear something on the handles of all three cars. Western intelligence officials have surmised that the substance was a poison.There is little doubt that Gebrev's profession -- the manufacture and sale of munitions and light weapons -- places him in a risky field, especially in Bulgaria.In recent years, the Kremlin has grown increasingly alarmed as smaller countries have nibbled away at Russia's dominance in the arms industry. At a meeting in June with high-ranking security officials, Putin warned that Russia's position in the industry was threatened.Bulgaria now sells more than 1.2 billion euros, about $1.3 billion, in weapons annually, a relatively modest figure for the sector, but a sum that has not gone unnoticed by Moscow.Gebrev was also entangled with another project that might have displeased Moscow. Shortly before he was poisoned, Gebrev tried to purchase Dunarit, a large arms production plant in Bulgaria coveted by a Kremlin-backed oligarch, Konstantin Malofeev.The United States and the European Union have imposed sanctions on Malofeev for funding Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.Today, Gebrev has recovered physically, though his business is still ailing. In August 2017, the Bulgarian Economic Ministry temporarily revoked his export license. The ministry is headed by Emil Karanikolov, who was nominated to his post by the far-right Ataka party, which has long faced scrutiny over its close ties with Moscow.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company
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| U.S. to Withdraw Ambassador to Zambia After Gay Rights Dispute Posted: 23 Dec 2019 06:57 AM PST ![U.S. to Withdraw Ambassador to Zambia After Gay Rights Dispute]( "U.S. to Withdraw Ambassador to Zambia After Gay Rights Dispute") (Bloomberg) -- Sign up to our Next Africa newsletter and follow Bloomberg Africa on TwitterThe U.S. has decided to withdraw its ambassador to Zambia, after the president of the southern African nation said he didn't want him there for criticizing the jailing of two men for having a consensual relationship, according to two people familiar with the matter.The U.S. has no immediate plans to replace Ambassador Daniel Foote, one person said, asking not to be identified as the information isn't public.The State Department is "dismayed" with Zambia for having effectively declared Foote a persona non grata, it said in an emailed statement. The U.S. government strongly opposes abuses against sexual minorities, it said, without confirming Foote's withdrawal.The dispute started after Foote said he was "horrified" after a Zambian court last month sentenced two men to 15 years imprisonment for having consensual sex while corrupt officials steal millions in public funds and walk free. Zambian President Edgar Lungu responded by saying he wanted Foote to leave the country.The U.S. provides Zambia with about $500 million in annual aid.To contact the reporters on this story: Taonga Clifford Mitimingi in Lusaka at tmitimingi@bloomberg.net;Matthew Hill in Maputo at mhill58@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Gordon Bell at gbell16@bloomberg.net, Alastair ReedFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Reports say 7 people shot early Sunday in downtown Baltimore Posted: 22 Dec 2019 08:31 AM PST  Seven people were found suffering from gunshot wounds when officers responded Sunday to a report of a shooting, the Baltimore Police Department and news reports said. The department said on its Facebook page that police responded to a report of a shooting at 2:10 a.m. When officers arrived, they located four victims who had been shot: a 20-year-old male with wounds to the shoulder and hip; an 18-year-old male with wounds to both legs; a 27-year-old male with a wound to the arm; and a 17-year-old male with wounds to the back and leg. Baltimore is experiencing one of its most violent years on record, with more than 330 homicides so far.
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| Turkish aid group says 120,000 fleeing attacks in Syria's Idlib Posted: 23 Dec 2019 03:31 AM PST  The number of Syrians fleeing attacks in the country's northwestern Idlib province and heading toward Turkey has reached 120,000, a Turkish aid group said on Monday, adding it was setting up a camp for some of those uprooted. Syrian and Russian forces have recently intensified their bombardment of targets in Idlib, which Syria's President Bashar al-Assad has vowed to recapture, prompting a wave of refugees toward Turkey. President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday Turkey cannot handle a fresh wave of migrants, warning that European countries will feel the impact of such an influx if violence in Syria's northwest is not stopped.
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| Death toll from New Zealand volcano eruption rises to 17 as authorities continue harrowing mission to retrieve remaining two bodies from the island Posted: 22 Dec 2019 05:28 PM PST  New Zealand police said that two people remain missing and are presumed dead after one of New Zealand's most active volcanoes erupted earlier this month.
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| Man accidentally shoots himself while trying to steal puppy Posted: 22 Dec 2019 11:23 AM PST  An armed robber accidentally shot himself in the leg while trying to steal a puppy from its owner.The owner had arranged to sell the nine-week-old American bulldog, named Tarzan, to a man through who made contact through a buying-and-selling website.
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| You're Going to Die: Meet the Army's New Air-To-Ground Missile Posted: 21 Dec 2019 04:00 PM PST  A deadly addition.
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| Beijing attacks US for 'weaponisation' of outer space Posted: 23 Dec 2019 03:58 AM PST  Beijing warned Monday that the US was turning the cosmos into a "battlefield", after Washington announced a new military arm called the Space Force. Following concerns that China and Russia are challenging its position in space, US President Donald Trump signed the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act on Friday -- which created a new branch of the US military. Beijing responded by accusing the US of "pursuing the weaponisation of outer space".
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| Michigan chemical firm fined $1.45M, owner sent to prison Posted: 23 Dec 2019 01:25 AM PST ![Michigan chemical firm fined $1.45M, owner sent to prison]( "Michigan chemical firm fined $1.45M, owner sent to prison") Electro-Plating Services was shut down after regulators found numerous deteriorating drums and tanks brimming with toxic chemicals stored inside.
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| John Bolton: Trump not serious about North Korea nuclear threat Posted: 23 Dec 2019 05:32 AM PST  Former White House national security adviser John Bolton said that he doesn't believe that President Trump "really means it" when he says that he is determined to stop North Korea from developing nuclear missiles that could be used to target the U.S.
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| A 2-hour domestic flight in Canada turned into a 36-hour ordeal with a 2,700-mile detour, an unscheduled stop in the US, and a return to where it started Posted: 23 Dec 2019 05:07 AM PST  Air Canada's flight from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Whitehorse, Yukon, couldn't land because of the weather and had to fly to Alaska.
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| Going west, migrants wander through Bosnia in Balkan winter Posted: 23 Dec 2019 01:34 AM PST  BIHAC, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Bosnia's notorious Vucjak camp may have closed down after an international outcry, but the plight of migrants stranded in the country while trying to reach Western Europe is far from over. The tent camp near the northwestern town of Bihac stood on a former landfill and near a mine field, becoming a symbol of migrant suffering as they travel through the Balkans. The camp was flattened earlier this month, its residents transferred to other parts of Bosnia.
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| Australian man describes how he survived bushfire in makeshift shelter as inferno roared around him Posted: 22 Dec 2019 08:48 PM PST  An Australian man who became trapped by a bushfire has described how he survived the inferno as it tore through his property at the weekend. Steve Harrison decided to stay for as long as possible to defend his home in the New South Wales village of Balmoral, which was all but wiped out by the out-of-control fires on Saturday. "When it came, it came in like three or four minutes, just a big plume of black smoke and then ember fallout," recalled Mr Harrison. In an interview with ABC, the 67-year-old artist described how he frantically tried to turn on the sprinklers on buildings in his property but within minutes he found himself trapped, unable to escape. "My garden was already on fire here. And the driveway was on fire, and the road was on fire. So I realised I couldn't evacuate," Mr Harrison said. Steve Harrison is lucky to be alive. The potter hid in his 'makeshift kiln' for 20 mins as the Green Wattle Creek fire engulfed his property. He watched his beloved potting shed burn to the ground but thankfully his house is still standing. @abcsydney@abcnewspic.twitter.com/mG6o73MBLF— Lydia Feng (@LydiaLFeng) December 22, 2019 He said he had to turn to his plan B: Hiding in a small kiln, just the size of a coffin, that he had built the day before. It was just big enough for him to crawl inside, he said. "I hid in there for half an hour while the firestorm went over," he said. "It was huge, just glowing orange-red everywhere. Just scary. I was terrified." Mr Harrison said all his neighbours' homes had been destroyed, but his efforts to protect his home meant it was still standing. "I put a lot of money and effort and time into putting dedicated firefighting pumps just to run the sprinklers on the walls and roof," he told ABC News. "My wife and I spent the day wrapping [the house] up in aluminium foil to reflect the heat." Bushfires rage as Australian heatwave leads to hottest ever day, in pictures The village of Balmoral, southwest of Sydney, was devastated by the Green Wattle Creek firestorm that roared through the area twice in three days. Dozens of homes have been lost since Thursday in massive wildfires, including the Gospers Mountain blaze, which covered more than 460,000 hectares (1.1 million acres). Scorching heat baking the country eased on Monday bringing relief from the bushfires, which destroyed around 180 houses and killed one person over the weekend, allowing firefighters to prepare for worsening conditions post-Christmas. Six people have now died in bushfires which have destroyed more than 3.7 million hectares (9.1 million acres) across five states. A statue of Buddha damaged by Saturday's catastrophic bushfires in the Southern Highlands village of Balmoral, Australia Credit: Reuters Nearly 100 fires are burning across New South Wales state. "Conditions have begun to ease," the New South Wales (state) Rural Fire Service said on Monday. "Crews will continue their work today to identify and strengthen (fire) containment lines, with favourable conditions over coming days." Temperatures are forecast to spike again in many states by the weekend, with the South Australian capital city of Adelaide forecast to reach 39 Celsius (102.2 Fahrenheit), according to the Bureau of Meteorology. Similar temperatures are expected in the Victorian city of Melbourne. Under-fire Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison rejected calls for "reckless" and "job-destroying" cuts to the country's vast coal industry in the face of the deadly climate-fuelled bushfire crisis. A view of a house damaged by recent catastrophic bushfires in the Southern Highlands village of Balmoral Credit: Rex Mr Morrison's conservative government has fiercely defended the lucrative coal industry in Australia, which produces a third of global coal exports and provides work in key swing electoral districts. "I am not going to write off the jobs of thousands of Australians by walking away from traditional industries," Morrison told the Seven Network, in one of several morning interviews rejecting calls for further action. "What we won't do is engage in reckless and job-destroying and economy-crunching targets which are being sought," he told Channel 9, responding to calls for more climate-friendly policies. Mr Morrison's media blitz came as he sought to limit the political fallout from a much-criticised Hawaiian holiday - taken as bushfires destroyed an area the size of Belgium and unleashed toxic smoke into Australia's major cities.
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| Eleven dead, 300 treated after drinking coconut wine in Philippines Posted: 22 Dec 2019 06:25 PM PST  At least 11 people have been killed and more than 300 treated in hospital after drinking coconut wine in the Philippines, including some who were celebrating at a Christmas party, health and local authorities said on Monday. Many were admitted to hospitals on the urging of mayor Vener Munoz in Rizal, Laguna, where the deaths occurred between Thursday and Sunday. The coconut wine that was consumed had been made in his town, he added.
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| A provocative new book argues we must 'unlearn' race. We absolutely should Posted: 23 Dec 2019 03:15 AM PST  While many on the left now reject gender categories, they seem determined to enshrine racial categories. Let's do better In 2012, writer Thomas Chatterton Williams – a biracial African American expatriate living in Paris – took to the New York Times op-ed page to declare that not only do "mixed-race blacks have an ethical obligation to identify as black", but that interracial couples "share a similar moral imperative to inculcate certain ideas of black heritage and racial identity in their mixed-race children, regardless of how they look".Williams argued that embracing a black identity served as a form of solidarity between biracial African Americans such as himself and those with darker skin. "And so I will teach my children that they, too, are black – regardless of what anyone else may say – so long as they remember and wish to be," he concluded.Then everything changed: he and his wife, a white French woman, had their daughter Marlow. As Williams held Marlow, he took in her blonde hair and blue eyes and his conception of America's strict racial dichotomy between black and white started to collapse before him. He began to see racial categories as an obstacle to social progress.Eventually, he came to see himself as an "ex-black man". What's more, he suggests that the rest of us may be better off if we shed our racial labels as well.> Must our empowerment be tied to skin or blood?Williams chronicled this journey in his recent book Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race, which challenges us to think beyond America's racial binaries.The reaction to the book from many of the author's critics has been unfortunate but predictable. While the left has in recent years sought to unsettle gender categories – noting that gender is a spectrum and that the binary does not fit all people – they have circled the wagons even tighter around the sanctity of exclusionary racial categories.While Williams believes it's a "mistake for any of us to reify something that is as demonstrably harmful as it is fictitious," Ismail Muhammad, writing in The Nation, argues that "no matter how socially constructed racial identities are, our lived experiences of those identities – the cultures, communities, values, prejudices, policies, and socioeconomic obstacles that follow from inhabiting social constructs – is anything but fictitious and cannot simply be willed out of existence." Furthermore, Muhammad argues, Chatterton Williams "fails to see how racial identification … can also be an empowering act."But must our empowerment be tied to skin or blood? As Williams argued at an event I attended in October, when we Americans talk about race, we're often confusing it for another category, such as culture or social class.Discarding race doesn't mean discarding the rich cultural achievements or shared values of human beings we have spent centuries labeling "black" or "white". Culture and values are things that humans create and celebrate together, and there is no reason for these qualities to be defined by the amount of melanin in our skin.> Unlearning race doesn't mean ignoring racismIn my college years I befriended a professor who was a tall white man with a thick beard who had converted to Islam years ago during a decade-long stay in South Asia. Despite his white skin and European name, he knew more about the religion I practiced (Islam) and the country my parents emigrated from (Pakistan) than just about anyone else I had ever met. The culture we shared, and the experiences we reveled in, were not defined by our race, which became as trivial a quality in our interactions as our differing heights.Unlearning race doesn't mean ignoring racism. Too many Americans continue to discriminate against each other on the basis of skin color, and persistent inequality is a feature of American life. In response, we can and must adopt social policy approaches aimed at spreading opportunity far and wide to every corner of society, without adopting the fiction that people are defined by their race.Some would argue that while Chatterton Williams is right on the merits, his proposal to discard race is hopelessly naive.But Pew polling shows 85% of whites, 26% of blacks, and around 40% of Asians and Hispanics say their race is not extremely or very important to them. Many of us are already moving in the direction Williams advises.To those who continue to be skeptical we can shed our racial skins, I would just ask them if they could name my tribe, caste, or sect. In India and Pakistan, these categories trapped my ancestors for centuries, defining every aspect of their lives, from the jobs they held to the people they married.But here in the United States, I live freely outside these boxes, something my ancestors would have seen as unimaginable.In a way, I'm living the future Williams describes. And nothing could be more empowering. * Zaid Jilani writes about olarization for UC Berkeley Greater Good Science Center. He is the co-host of the Extremely Offline podcast
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| Why Confederate Christmas Ornaments Send the Same Racist Message as Confederate Statues Posted: 22 Dec 2019 10:00 AM PST  Decorated with ornaments purchased, created and inherited for years, even generations, Christmas trees are a reflection of a family's history and tastes.
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| Taliban claim attack that killed US soldier in Afghanistan Posted: 23 Dec 2019 01:33 AM PST  The Taliban claimed responsibility for an attack Monday on American troops that killed one US soldier and, according to the insurgents, wounded several more. The killing is likely to have consequences for ongoing talks between the US and the Taliban. President Donald Trump in September declared negotiations "dead" after the Taliban killed a US soldier in a Kabul bombing.
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| Democrats urged to fix process 'shutting out' candidates of colour from presidential race Posted: 21 Dec 2019 11:11 AM PST  The Democratic Party has been urged to reform the way it selects its presidential candidates, amid claims it is shutting out people of colour.This week at the party's sixth debate in Los Angeles, entrepreneur Andrew Yang was the only person of colour on the stage. Other candidates of colour, including Cory Booker, Julian Castro and Deval Patrick, are still contesting, but did not qualify for the debate stage.
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| A luxury cruise liner will embark on a 140-day journey to all 7 continents in January. Take a look inside the ship, where the '1% of the 1%' will stay in suites that cost up to $240,000. Posted: 23 Dec 2019 06:43 AM PST  In January 2020, cruise company Silversea is set to kick off a journey to all seven continents. The catch? It costs up to $240,000 per person.
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| Mexico ambassador resigns after book theft allegation Posted: 23 Dec 2019 08:33 AM PST ![Mexico ambassador resigns after book theft allegation]( "Mexico ambassador resigns after book theft allegation") A Mexican ambassador who was called home after allegedly attempting to steal a book from a shop in Argentina has resigned, officials said, and relatives reported he may have suffered behavioral changes due to a brain tumor. On Monday, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador called the case "painful"and "sad". Officials said late Sunday that Ambassador Óscar Ricardo Valero had resigned for health health reasons, and Mexico's Foreign Relations Secretary, Marcelo Ebrard, wrote in his Twitter account that Valero "is undergoing neurological treatment".
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| China denies allegations of forced labour at Shanghai prison Posted: 23 Dec 2019 12:45 AM PST  China Monday denied allegations that prisoners were being used for forced labour, after a British newspaper reported that a London schoolgirl found a message in a Christmas card claiming to be from inmates at Shanghai's Qingpu Prison. Supermarket giant Tesco said at the weekend it had stopped production at a factory in China after one of its charity cards was found to contain a cry for help from a prisoner who made it, according to the Sunday Times newspaper. "I can tell you responsibly that, after seeking clarification from relevant departments, Shanghai Qingpu prison does not at all have ... forced labour by foreign convicts," said foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang at a regular press briefing in Beijing.
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| Hundreds rally against Myanmar police over child rape case Posted: 23 Dec 2019 04:30 AM PST  Hundreds of people joined a protest on Monday against Myanmar's police after the force broke the law by revealing the name of the child victim of a high profile rape case following the acquittal of a suspect. The case of the three-year-old girl - known to the public by the nickname 'Victoria' - has become a focus for accusations of police misconduct in Myanmar, where the force remains under the control of the army under a transition to democracy. The child was allegedly raped at a nursery school in Myanmar's capital, Naypyidaw, in May.
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| Angela Merkel becomes second-longest serving German chancellor as she faces challenge to beat Helmut Kohl Posted: 22 Dec 2019 10:00 PM PST  Angela Merkel today became the second longest serving Chancellor in modern Germany, overtaking one of the greatest figures in post-war European history. Mrs Merkel's 5,144th day in the Chancellery pulled her in front of Konrad Adenauer, the founder of her Christian Democrat party (CDU) and the man who rebuilt West Germany's international reputation after the war in his tenure that stretched from 1949 to 1963. Now Mrs Merkel, who was sworn in on November 22 2005, only trails another giant of the CDU, Helmut Kohl. But her chances of overtaking the man who groomed her for power seem slim. She would have to stay in office for a further 726 days to beat his 5,869-day rule - a feat which would see her still calling the shots on December 17th 2021, some three months after the next scheduled election. The 65-year-old confirmed last year that she will retire from politics at the next election, saying "this fourth term is my last as Chancellor of Germany. I will not run again as CDU candidate for Chancellor in the 2021 elections, nor as an MP." Profile | Angela Merkel The only scenario under which she would overtake Mr Kohl were if she had to stay on in a caretaker capacity while the parties in Germany's fragmented political system hammer out a coalition deal over several months. Stability is key in German politics - Mrs Merkel is just the eighth Chancellor of the post-war period. Few would have predicted 15 years ago that the East German pastor's daughter would become one of Germany's strongest leaders. She has benefited from the hard work her predecessor Gerhard Schroeder put in modernising the welfare system, and her own talent for building big-tent coalitions combining Left-wing social reforms with conservative economic policies. When she does finally leave office, Mrs Merkel's time in power will likely be remembered as a time of unprecedented economic stability, as well as the era in which a far-Right party - the Alternative for Germany - became a serious force in German politics for the first time since the war.
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| Russia Has a Christmas Gift for the U.S. Navy: Its Deadliest Submarine Ever Posted: 22 Dec 2019 11:35 PM PST  The Yasen-M could do some real damage in a war.
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| Fox News Contributor: Rudy Giuliani Is ‘Transparently Corrupt’ Posted: 22 Dec 2019 09:49 AM PST  Liberal Fox News contributor Jessica Tarlov didn't hold back on Sunday when discussing Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, describing the former New York City mayor as "transparently corrupt" in response to his confession that he led the effort to oust for U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.Earlier this month, in an interview with The New Yorker, Giuliani—who is a key figure at the heart of President Donald Trump's impeachment—said he saw Yovanovitch as an obstacle to his dirt-digging operation on former Vice President Joe Biden. "I believed that I needed Yovanovitch out of the way," Giuliani boasted. "She was going to make the investigations difficult for everybody."During a later appearance on Fox News' The Ingraham Angle, Giuliani doubled down on his claim. Having just returned from another Ukrainian trip to gather more info on Biden, Giuliani told Fox host Laura Ingraham that he "forced" Yovanovitch out "because she's corrupt."On Sunday's broadcast of Fox News' MediaBuzz, host Howard Kurtz asked Fox News contributor and loyal Trump defender Mollie Hemingway if Giuliani's admission shows that the media was right that the Trump attorney was instrumental if forcing Yovanovitch out."I feel like he said stuff like this before. It definitely matches some of the testimony that we heard about his opposition to this ambassador," she said. "But really it just gets back to the main issue, does the president have the right to handle foreign policy, to have people in positions as he wants them or not."Tarlov, meanwhile, noted that Giuliani regularly goes on TV and "confesses to the things he's been accused of," prompting Kurtz to assert that this shows Giuliani is just being "transparent.""He's transparently corrupt, yes," Tarlov retorted. "And the president's personal lawyer has no business doing this.""It is important that it was a central plank of the Intel Committee hearings where Adam Schiff was overseeing and the conversations we're having about Marie Yovanovitch about there being a formal foreign policy channel and then a backchannel that Rudy Giuliani was running, which is wholly inappropriate," she added. "He's not a government employee, he is a personal fixer for the president."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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| 'A terrible time to be poor': Cuts to SNAP benefits will hit 700,000 food-insecure Americans Posted: 22 Dec 2019 08:43 AM PST  A new Trump administration policy would leave many Americans without food stamps. Food banks are worried they won't be able to make up the difference.
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| India bids to bust citizenship law 'myths' with cartoon Muslims Posted: 22 Dec 2019 04:01 PM PST  India's ruling party launched a video with animated Muslim characters on social media Monday in a publicity blitz to try to bust "myths" around a new citizenship law that has sparked deadly protests. The law has stoked concerns that Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government wants to marginalise India's Muslim minority. Twenty-five people have died in protests so far, but demonstrations took place Monday in Chennai, Bangalore and Delhi with no violence reported.
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| This $10 million 'Star Trek' themed Silicon Valley home looks like a spaceship and has a two-story airplane hangar door Posted: 22 Dec 2019 06:08 AM PST  The $10 million, six-bedroom home in Los Altos Hills, California is modern design meets spaceship chic.
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| Most US workers still pay price of no paid parental leave Posted: 22 Dec 2019 07:24 AM PST |
| Suspects in Multi-State Crime Spree Captured in St. Louis, Possible Connection to Illinois Deaths Posted: 23 Dec 2019 12:00 AM PST  According to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, the manhunt for two fugitives accused in a violent crime spree in Alabama and Tennessee has ended.
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| The man who kidnapped Jayme Closs told police he'd been thinking of kidnapping a girl for 2 years and that 'if it wasn't Jayme, it would probably be someone else' Posted: 21 Dec 2019 08:09 PM PST  Jake Patterson told detectives that he would have tried to abduct a different girl if he hadn't seen Jayme first, according to new documents.
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| Pro-government group attacks rally demanding release of 'illegally' held Nigerians Posted: 23 Dec 2019 06:19 AM PST  Pro-government activists in Nigeria on Monday attacked civil society protesters who were demanding the release of people they say are illegally detained, a Reuters witness said. The protesters were planning to deliver a list of demands to the Commission, including the release of prisoners such as activist Omoyele Sowore, founder of the Sahara Reporters online news organization. The attackers targeted a protest leader, Deji Adeyanju, chasing him before beating him.
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