| Iran crisis: How a British oil tanker was seized by Iran's balaclava-clad Revolutionary Guards Posted: 20 Jul 2019 12:14 PM PDT  "Allahu akbar", or God is great, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard marine was heard shouting off camera as the group took control of the British-flagged Stena Impero. Scaling down ropes onto its bow, the balaclava-wearing hijackers made a daring - and seemingly well-rehearsed - raid of the oil tanker, as seen in alleged footage released by Fars news agency last night. The wind was choppy, the skies overcast. With no navy escort, the Stena stood little chance. Minutes later, at 4.19pm on Friday afternoon, the Stena Impero would "go dark" - not something normally done by commercial oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. The first clue as it what happened was its abrupt change of course, which was picked up by marine tracking services. Its destination was a port in Saudi Arabia, but it had taken a sharp turn and was heading into Iranian waters. Minutes earlier it had been boarded by Iranian Revolutionary Guards, who had hijacked the vessel using speedboats and a helicopter and turned off its communication systems. Approximately 40 minutes later, a British-owned, Liberian-flagged ship Mesdar also went dark. The trackers picked it up following the same route as the Stena Impero. The crew onboard was questioned for an hour before the vessel was released, unlike the Stena which was escorted on to the coast of Bander Abbas in southern Iran. British authorities were alerted back home and quickly called a meeting of Cobra to figure out their response. This image grab taken from a video provided by Iran's Revolutionary Guard official website via SEPAH News The capture of one of their ships was something they had been dreading,though not something that had come entirely as a surprise. Tensions have been heating up in recent weeks in the Strait of Hormuz, the world's most important oil chokepoint. At the start of the month, Gibraltar authorities - aided by a detachment of Royal Marines - detained a tanker which was suspected to be carrying Iranian oil destined for a refinery in Syria in breach of European Union sanctions. "If Britain does not release the Iranian oil tanker, it is the authorities' duty to seize a British oil tanker," an Iranian official tweeted on July 5, the following next day, in response to the news. Revolutionary Guards issued similarly direct threats. Fearing they would make good on them, the Navy sent Type-23 frigate HMS Montrose to shadow its tankers through the strait and dispatched another, HMS Duncan, for support. The Montrose sped to help Stena from Omani waters on Friday, but was an hour too late. Jeremy Hunt, Foreign Secretary, had tried to defuse the situation last weekend by suggesting the UK was willing to release the supertanker, but a court in Gibraltar on Friday ruled to hold it for another 30 days. The decision would have further angered Tehran, which has denied the oil was bound for Syria and accused the UK of acting in bad faith. Rising tensions between UK, US and Iran The legality of Britain's impounding of the Grace 1 has been questioned, however sanctions lawyers say that as it had been travelling through British overseas territory it was subject to EU laws. Revolutionary Guards yesterday tried to justify their seizure of the Stena with alternating claims, including that it had "violated maritime law", had been driving on the wrong side of the water, risking an accident, and had in fact collided with an Iranian fishing boat whose distress call it ignored. No such distress call was picked up by any other ship in the area. Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, spokesman of Iran's Guardian Council, which rarely comments on state matters, said they did not need an excuse to take the Stena and spelled out that it had been a tit-for-tat response. "The rule of reciprocal action is well-known in international law and Iran's moves to confront the illegitimate economic war and seizure of oil tankers is an instance of this rule and is based on international rights," he said. There is now something of a Mexican stand-off in the Gulf, with both countries seemingly unwilling to hand over the other's ship. "Iran has responded in a way that presents the UK with a problem," Michael Stephens, Research Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute think-tank in London, told the Sunday Telegraph. "The ball is now in our court. "The UK could choose to detain more Iranian ships, or look to gather a group of states around the table, such as France, Germany and the US, to see how, and in what ways, more pressure can be placed on Iran both economically and strategically," he said. However, he believed no major decision would be agreed on until Prime Minister Theresa May's handover to Boris Johnson later this week. The Foreign Office has stressed it is keeping separate the issues of Iranian threats in Gulf waters, EU sanctions policy on Syria, and the nuclear deal. But inevitably they have all become intertwined. The latest Iranian aggressions can be tracked back to last year, when President Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear accord and reimposed sanctions. The Islamic Republic has legitimate frustrations over the American withdrawal to the deal - which it had been adhering to - that was supposed to swap limiting its nuclear programme for an end to sanctions crippling its economy. At the same time as ratcheting up tensions, however, Mr Trump has made it clear he wants to avoid all-out war with Iran, as has the UK. Iran tensions | Read more Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran's foreign minister, on Thursday offered an olive branch to Mr Trump - a deal which would see Tehran accept enhanced inspections of its nuclear programme in return for the permanent lifting of sanctions. Mr Trump has sent Senator Rand Paul, rather than John Bolton, his hawkish anti-Iran national security adviser, for meetings with Mr Zarif, who is in New York on United Nations business. Neither has publicly responded to Mr Zarif's proposal. However, hardliners and the Revolutionary Guard back home want out of the deal, saying the US's pullout only proved what they always knew - that it cannot be trusted. "I suspect Stena is a bargaining chip," Charles Hollis, a former British diplomat in Iran, told the Telegraph. "It came only days after Zarif showed some willingness to open negotiations, which may have led some hardliners to want to disrupt things a little. "I still don't think any side is looking for a conflict," said Mr Hollis, who is now managing director of risk management company Falanx Assynt. "The fact that there are some people on both sides were seeking a deescalation means there may be a deal to be found." He warned however, that Friday's incident showed the margins for manoeuvre are "shrinking" and "the risks of unintended consequences growing."
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| Meet the woman who ties Jeffrey Epstein to Trump and the Clintons Posted: 21 Jul 2019 04:00 AM PDT  Heiress Ghislaine Maxwell paved the way to presidents.
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| Vatican college space holds bones of dozens, expert says Posted: 20 Jul 2019 11:38 AM PDT  The expert, Giorgio Portera, said the "enormous" size of the collection under the Teutonic College was revealed when Vatican-appointed experts began cataloguing the remains, which were discovered last week . "We didn't expect such an enormous number" of bones and other remains which "had been thrown into a cavity," Portera said. "We want to know why and how" the bones ended up there.
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| Universal Orlando reopens after police respond to report of a gunman in parking garage Posted: 21 Jul 2019 07:51 AM PDT  Universal Orlando went under temporary lockdown Saturday night after police received a report of a gunman spotted in a parking garage.
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| Animal shelter uses Area 51 meme in textbook display of chaotic good Posted: 20 Jul 2019 12:12 PM PDT  The internet's collective plan to storm Area 51 in September may or may not pan out -- but the viral moment has already done some good, helping 22 dogs find their forever homes at an animal shelter in Oklahoma.On Friday, Oklahoma City Animal Welfare events coordinator Natalie Winfree dressed up three of the shelter's most photogenic (and cooperative) pups in tinfoil hats in hopes of raising awareness for the organization's cause. "Come storm our shelter," read Winfree's now-viral post on the shelter's Facebook page. "We have great animals ready to protect you from the Area 51 aliens. Adoption isn't that far out of this world! Stormtheshelter"The adorable photos were soon shared over 8,400 times on Facebook, before crossing over to Reddit and Twitter where they gained even more positive support. Now, news outlets across the country, including CNN and CBS News, are sharing the local story. Winfree, who spoke with Mashable on the phone from a weekend adoption event on Saturday, says she always tries to latch onto viral moments to help out her furry friends, but has never had a post do this well. "I feel really humble, and I feel like I've actually done some good," says Winfree. "We had 22 adoptions yesterday, which is fairly high for a week day. Adoptions start everyday at noon, so I haven't seen today's results yet, but it does seem to have helped a little bit." Of the animals featured in the Stormtheshelter photos, Winfree says only two have been adopted thus far: Sam, the tin foil-hatted puppy, and an unnamed kitten, who sported a tinfoil collar for the shoot. The other two extraterrestrial enthusiasts, Piper (a three-year-old Pointer and Boxer mix) and Lady (a three-year-old Lab and Shepherd mix), are still up for adoption at Oklahoma City Animal Welfare. Image: courtesy of oklahoma city animal welfareWinfree says folks in the area can help out her cause by stopping by the shelter, but hopes internet dwellers all over will be newly inspired by her post to support their local shelters. "I had no idea it was going to be this popular," notes Winfree. "This has got to be my best one. Now, I'm just hoping I can keep up with what's trending." WATCH: Tony Stark's 'Avengers Endgame' cabin is available for $800 a night on Airbnb
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| Iraq Kurds arrest two suspects in killing of Turkish vice consul Posted: 20 Jul 2019 09:19 AM PDT  Iraqi Kurdish authorities announced Saturday they had arrested two suspects involved in the murder of three people, including a Turkish diplomat, in the regional capital Arbil this week. The autonomous region's security council first said its counterterrorism unit had arrested "the main perpetrator" Mazloum Dag, a 27-year-old from Turkey's Diyarbakir region. The council had put out a wanted notice for Dag a day earlier in connection to Wednesday's killing of Turkish Vice Consul Osman Kose and two Iraqi nationals.
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| Japan undecided on response to U.S. plan for Mideast maritime coalition -PM Abe Posted: 21 Jul 2019 07:17 AM PDT ![Japan undecided on response to U.S. plan for Mideast maritime coalition -PM Abe]( "Japan undecided on response to U.S. plan for Mideast maritime coalition -PM Abe") Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Sunday he had not yet decided on how to respond to an expected U.S. request to send its navy to join a military coalition to safeguard strategic waters off Iran and Yemen. "We've started to hear the United States' thinking on this and we want to keep listening carefully," he said on national television as votes were being counted for the upper house election. "At the same time, Japan also has friendly ties with Iran," Abe added.
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| 2020 Democrats Are Starting to Turn Obama’s Legacy Against Biden Posted: 21 Jul 2019 02:09 AM PDT  Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/GettyFormer Vice President Joe Biden has used Barack Obama's beloved status among Democratic voters to insulate him from criticism from the massive field of candidates jockeying to be the next president. But in recent weeks, the Democratic frontrunner has had that legacy used against him, with his competitors pointing the to shortcomings of the last Democratic administration as evidence that Biden's not up to the task of leading the next one. "Barack Obama, personally, is incredibly popular among Democratic primary voters," Karthik Ganapathy, a progressive consultant now running his own firm, told The Daily Beast. "And also at the same time, there's a growing recognition that income and wealth inequality got worse under his eight years, the climate crisis got worse during his eight years, deportations went up during his time in office, and so on."Can the Obama Coalition Outlast Obama?The idea that the Obama legacy would be anything other than a massive positive for Biden as he navigates the 2020 Democratic party has been treated as indisputable within Democratic circles. And for good reason. A CNN poll taken in early 2018 found that he had a 97 percent favorable rating among Democrats. For a while, fellow Democrats running for the White House seemed content to simply avoid challenging the former VP as he repeatedly referenced his time in the Obama administration when touting his work on health care and beating back attacks over his record on race relations. But that hesitancy has softened in recent weeks. On issues stemming from immigration to health care and foreign policy, the 2020 candidates have been increasingly critical in their public assessments of the Obama administration. And they've used opportunities from the debate stage to candidate forums to try and turn Biden's ties to the former president from an overwhelming asset into something more complicated.Senator Bernie Sanders' (I-VT) campaign has used Obama's own words to challenge Biden's notion that Obamacare simply needs to be built upon. Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) challenged Biden over the Obama administration's deportation policies. Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.) backed off support for the Obama administration's 2015 Iran nuclear deal as originally written. And Governor Jay Inslee (D-WA) has attacked Biden for a naivete about dealing with Republicans—in what has been interpreted as an implicit rebuke of Obama's own failure to fully grasp GOP recalcitrance. The subtle targeting of Biden has come as Democratic activists and progressives have continued to grapple with the Obama legacy as well. In particular, the Trump administration's family separation policy and inhumane conditions in detention facilities has sparked a broader conversation among Democratic voters about whether the Obama administration's own deportation policies laid the groundwork for the current controversies. Biden to Get Rematch With Harris in Detroit Democratic DebateAt least two times in the last month, protesters have faced down Biden to demand an apology for the three million deportations that occurred during the Obama administration. Activists with Movimiento Cosecha, an immigrants rights organization, held a protest at Biden's Philadelphia campaign headquarters over a week ago and subsequently confronted him at a New Hampshire campaign stop. Through their "Dignity 2020" plan, they called on Biden and his other competitors in the field to pledge to end detention and deportation, immediately legalize the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States and reunite families separated during the current and past administration. "We wanted the general public to understand that just defeating Trump in 2020 is only part of the solution," Carlos Rojas Rodriguez, an organizer with the group, told The Daily Beast. "And there's a lot of people that think that if Trump was no longer in the White House that the immigration crisis would go away and that's just not true." Rodriguez, who is now a citizen but lived undocumented for 10 years, said they're closely tracking how other candidates have been responding to questions about Obama's immigration record and are tentatively planning to have a presence in Detroit leading up to the next Democratic presidential debate. Already, they've seen some candidates take a harder look at the legacy. During the first Democratic debate in Miami in late June, Sen. Harris made a point of voicing dissent with President Obama's use of the Secure Communities program, which allowed for local authorities to share fingerprints of those in jail with federal authorities. Obama ended the practice in 2014 but Trump restored it in 2017. "On this issue, I disagreed with my president, because the policy was to allow deportation of people who by ICE's own definition were non-criminals," Harris said, though the degree to which she did is somewhat questionable. More recently, Julián Castro who served as the secretary of housing and urban development under Obama, said that he believed the administration had been too harsh when it came to immigration, a shift from prior stances. "I have learned the lessons of the past. It seems like Vice President Biden hasn't," he was quoted as saying at the League of United Latin American Citizens convention last week. Warren, Biden Campaigns Appear to Find Loophole Around Paid InternshipsBut the criticism has extended beyond the issue of immigration. In the first debate, Booker said that the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, a landmark foreign policy achievement in Obama's second term, could have been better. Many, including Biden, have also introduced sweeping climate change plans with hallmarks of the Green New Deal and taken a No Fossil Fuel Money pledge, which activists have seen as a necessary corrective to the Obama administration's lack of action on the drastic threat of climate change. "We would love to see candidates pressure Biden on that legacy, specifically looking at the increase in oil and gas drilling on public lands, in the U.S. in general," Garrett Blad, a spokesperson for the climate action group Sunrise Movement, said, noting that a climate-only debate could foster these kinds of discussions. "And question him on those things. We're glad to see that Biden has taken the No Fossil Fuel money pledge and has done what Obama didn't do in denying that influence of the oil and gas executives and lobbyists on his campaign." And this past week, as Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have offered differing plans for the nation's health-care system, the latter has pointed to Obama's own language about Medicare for All being a "good new idea" and hit the former vice president for being too timid in his desire to build off of Obamacare. Biden's campaign declined to respond on the record. But some Obama veterans have not been surprised that the legacy they build is now being more directly challenged. But while they encouraged candidates to have a conversation about improving on the Obama administration, they also cautioned that it needed to be done carefully. "It's imperative for all candidates to offer an agenda that builds on what Barack Obama accomplished and there is room for good faith criticism of the things we didn't do or could have done better," Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to the president said. "However, Obama has a 96-percent approval rating among Democrats so a strategy to beat Biden by going after the Obama legacy seems unlikely to succeed."But the demands of the moment, from inequality to mounting student loan debt and a global climate crisis, have led a majority of the field to aim even higher than the lofty ambitions of Obama's first presidential campaign."If in 2008, we needed change, in 2020 we need results," Rebecca Katz, a longtime progressive Democratic consultant, said. "That's the difference." 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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| 10 Surprising Moon Facts! (That Were Totally Wrong) Posted: 21 Jul 2019 06:00 AM PDT |
| O'Rourke and de Blasio spar over 'Medicare for All' Posted: 20 Jul 2019 04:22 PM PDT ![O'Rourke and de Blasio spar over 'Medicare for All']( "O'Rourke and de Blasio spar over 'Medicare for All'") Health care policy has become a primary focus among the Democratic candidates ahead of the second set of debates July 30-31.
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| 9-year-old girl dies after bounce house blown into power lines Posted: 20 Jul 2019 02:27 AM PDT ![9-year-old girl dies after bounce house blown into power lines]( "9-year-old girl dies after bounce house blown into power lines") A 9-year-old Reno girl has died from injuries she suffered when strong winds blew an inflatable bounce house with three children inside into power lines last weekend.
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| Good News for Trump and GOP: RNC Stomped DNC In June Fundraising Posted: 21 Jul 2019 01:39 AM PDT  The Democratic National Committee raised $8.5 million in June and has $9.3 million in the bank, according to campaign finance records released late Friday.Both figures are far behind what the Republican National Committee said it has raised. The GOP said it raised $20.8 million in June, and has $43.5 million cash on hand, Fox News reported Wednesday. Republicans also said the party has no debt, while the DNC has $5.7 million in debt, according to FEC records. (RELATED: Bad News For DNC: The Democrats' And GOP's Money, By The Numbers)June doesn't appear to be an anomaly. Republicans say they've raked in $51 million in the past three months. The RNC has been posting record fundraising numbers so far in 2019. In February, the party raised $14.6 million, a record high for that month in a non-election year.The RNC, which has yet to file its official campaign finance documents, shared its strong showing in an email blast Saturday.
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| Compton boy loses arm after neighbor hands him firework on 10th birthday Posted: 20 Jul 2019 07:07 PM PDT  A man is in custody after handing his young neighbor a firework that blew up, causing the boy to lose his arm on his 10th birthday.
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| Trump Says ‘NASA’s Back’ Thanks to ‘Rich Guys’ Paying U.S. Rent Posted: 20 Jul 2019 09:11 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump pledged to re-establish U.S. dominance in space, a day after he welcomed the surviving Apollo 11 astronauts to the White House to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing."Sustained exploration that extends from our Earth to the Moon and on to the Martian surface will usher in a new era of American ingenuity," Trump said in a message on Saturday, which he declared Space Exploration Day.Trump on Friday invited retired astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, and the family of Neil Armstrong -- the first man to walk on the moon -- to the White House to mark the space milestone. "NASA's back," Trump said. "We're having rich guys use it and pay us rent."The U.S. lost its domestic capability to put humans in orbit after the shuttle program was shut down in 2011 without a replacement, and relied on Russia to send astronauts to work in the International Space Station. Trump has waffled on NASA's priorities. In December 2017, he directed the space agency to return astronauts to the moon by 2025, then in a June tweet made Mars the priority.On Saturday, he said few moments "spark more pride" than the Apollo 11 mission, which helped inspire generations of scientists and engineers and was the catalyst for a technological revolution."My administration is committed to reestablishing our Nation's dominance and leadership in space," he said, adding that NASA was directed to "send the next man and first woman to the Moon and to take the next giant leap -- sending Americans to Mars."The space agency recently announced it would allow "private astronauts" to pay to visit the International Space Station.At the White House on Friday, the president said: "We are going to the moon and then we're going to Mars.""We don't know what we're going to find on Mars but it's certainly a trip that's going to be very interesting," he said.NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told Trump they'll eventually get to Mars from a space station orbiting the moon.Vice President Mike Pence said that "within the next year" American astronauts will return to space on rockets launched from U.S. soil.Trump in February signed an order to clear the way for creation of a new branch of the military called Space Force. He said the administration is "very close to getting that completed and operating."To contact the reporters on this story: Margaret Talev in Washington at mtalev@bloomberg.net;Josh Wingrove in Washington at jwingrove4@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Steve Geimann, Andrew DavisFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Iran's Zarif calls for 'prudence and foresight' as tensions mount Posted: 21 Jul 2019 04:32 AM PDT ![Iran's Zarif calls for 'prudence and foresight' as tensions mount]( "Iran's Zarif calls for 'prudence and foresight' as tensions mount") Iran's top diplomat said on Sunday that only "prudence and foresight" could alleviate tensions between his country and Britain after Tehran's seizure of a British-flagged oil tanker. "Having failed to lure @realDonaldTrump into War of the Century, and fearing collapse of his #B_Team, @AmbJohnBolton is turning his venom against the UK in hopes of dragging it into a quagmire," Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Twitter.
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| North Korea slams Japan over its trade spat with Seoul Posted: 19 Jul 2019 10:04 PM PDT  North Korea's state media has slammed Japan for its recent trade restrictions against Seoul over wartime slavery disputes, accusing Tokyo of "destroying the trend of peace" on the Korean peninsula. After South Korea's high court ordered Japanese firms that used forced labour to compensate Korean victims, Tokyo earlier this month restricted the export of several chemicals to South Korea that are crucial to its world-leading chip and smartphone companies. South Korea's left-leaning President Moon Jae-in, who favours engagement with Pyongyang, has said Tokyo's actions are "politically motivated" and have caused an "unprecedented emergency" for Seoul's export-driven economy.
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| The Return of the Godfather: The Old Mafia Is New Again Posted: 20 Jul 2019 02:47 AM PDT  Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/GettyROME–Five fleshy, bare-chested men in tight swimsuits on a dinghy doesn't normally garner much attention in the bay of Palermo, Sicily. But it did last August when American mobster Thomas Gambino, 47, and Italian mafioso Tomasso Inzerillo, 72, were among those on board. They were overheard discussing how to divvy up the profits from the suspicious sale of Caribbean property that New York-based Gambino crime family boss Francesco "Franky Boy" Cali had recently unloaded. Hitman Handed License Plate to Mob Boss Before Shooting Him to DeathItalian investigators working with the FBI had planted bugs to catch anything they might say. Now, finally, the joint operation had a solid lead to a connection between the once omnipotent American crime family and the power-hungry Sicilian clan.Central command for the joint operation sent officers to the Dominican Republic and redoubled their surveillance in New York and Sicily, launching the investigation dubbed "New Connection" that netted 19 men in raids of both crime syndicates this week in Palermo, Brooklyn, Staten Island and New Jersey. Among those arrested in Italy was Thomas Gambino who happened to be back in Sicily for a "family vacation."The police used WhatsApp, the encrypted international messaging service, to launch the raids. "In Palermo, it's 3am, and muggy. In New York, it's 9pm and looks like it might rain," the Palermo anti-mafia police said at a press conference about the arrests. "A WhatsApp message is sent to the joint squad. It's the sign the Italian police and their FBI colleagues have been waiting for because from Sicily to the U.S., the old Mafia has returned."What the cops uncovered during the investigation that led to this week's arrests was a growing link between the Sicilian and New York mobs that centered on money laundering, drugs and extortion. At one point in phone taps over the last year Gambino can be heard telling his Sicilian counterparts, "We can definitely do business here," according to police transcripts seen by The Daily Beast. But the criminal collaboration—and the joint Italian-FBI investigation—was nearly thrown into chaos when Cali was gunned down in front of his Staten Island, New York, home last March. In the hours after the hit, investigators on both sides of the Atlantic were concerned that it could have been a Sicilian mobster warning the American clan to stay away. But as it turned out Cali was gunned down by a Donald Trump-supporting MAGA flunky, Anthony Comello, who allegedly just wanted to date his daughter."It was a huge relief that it was so random," an Italian anti-Mafia investigator told The Daily Beast.The Boss of Bosses Dies. Will Sicily's Mafia Turn to the U.S. for Leadership?Cali, who was born in Sicily and married into the Inzerillo family at a young age, was known as the "Ambassador" between clans in New York and Palermo. He was the tie that bound the Gambino crime family and the Cosa Nostra's once powerful Inzerillo clan, and police waited to find out what his death ultimately would mean. With Cali's support from America, the Inzerillo family was on a trajectory back to power after the boss of bosses Salvatore 'Toto' Riina died in prison in late 2017. In the 1980s, before his arrest, Riina launched what is known as the Second Mafia War, ordering deadly hits on the heads of the strongest Palermo crime families who threatened his dictatorial power. Among those he killed was the then-powerful Palermo crime boss Salvatore Inzerillo, whose family then fled in self-imposed exile to New York. While in the States, investigators say, the Inzerillo mobsters worked covertly with the Gambino crime family to line their pockets and help fund their return to power in Sicily one day—all the while allegedly promising the Gambino crime family its due reward for the help. Riina was serving out several life sentences in solitary confinement when he died, but he still held sway among the Cosa Nostra's fractious clans, and he still wanted all the Inzerillos dead. Riina's death finally provided the opening the Inzerillos had been waiting for to make a grab for power. Several Gambino crime family members had already moved to Palermo permanently after Riina's death to reap the benefits of the close ties that were sure to come with the Inzerillo clan's return to power. It was all going to plan until "Franky Boy" Cali was killed. "It could have gone either way, they could have severed ties or made them stronger in his memory," the anti-Mafia police source said. "In the end they worked harder 'for Franky'."The merged clans soon strengthened their hold on companies dealing with wholesale food supplies, gambling outlets and online betting through which they engaged in extortion, loan sharking and money laundering. More than a dozen businesses, from casinos to car dealerships in Sicily and New York state, were sequestered as part of the "New Connection" joint operation. "The investigation has registered the strong bond established between Cosa Nostra of Palermo and U.S. organized crime, with particular reference to the powerful Gambino crime family of New York," Italian investigating prosecutor Roberto Tartaglia said in a statement after this week's arrests. "Those Riina wanted dead were creating a special link between Palermo and New York."Even with the 19 arrests, no one assumes the battle against organized crime is over. "They were the losers who ran away so they wouldn't be killed by Riina," Palermo police commissioner Renato Cortese said when he announced the arrests. "They continue to be losers." 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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| France braces for second heatwave amid fears of pollution spike Posted: 21 Jul 2019 11:11 AM PDT  As France braces for its second heatwave this summer, with air pollution expected to spike again, Marseille has imposed speed limits on ships entering its port in an effort to curb emissions. Cruise liners cause more nitrogen dioxide pollution in the Mediterranean city than cars, according to a recent survey by a government-approved air quality monitoring organisation. Marseille has lowered the speed limit for ships entering its port from 10 to 8 knots. Jean-Marc Fornieri, the head of the port authority, claimed: "A reduction of two knots is equivalent to one third less pollution." However, he acknowledged that in practice it would be difficult to measure the impact of the lower speed limit. France's second-largest city is also investing €20 million (nearly £18m) on a plan to offer all ships electrical connections from the quayside, so they do not keep their engines running to supply onboard power while docked. Hundreds of cruise liners visit Marseille each year, carrying 1.7 million passengers, compared to only 19,000 in 1996. It is an increasingly popular destination for cruise passengers on Mediterranean tours. Tourists visit its spectacular calanques, or narrow inlets along the coast, and travel on to historic towns elsewhere in Provence such as Avignon and Arles. Heatwaves exacerbate air pollution because intense sunshine produces higher levels of ozone, a pollutant. Scientists say there is a direct correlation between extremely high temperatures and respiratory problems. Last month a record temperature of 46 degrees Celsius was recorded in Vérargues, a southern village. This week most of France will again swelter in temperatures of at least 40 degrees Celsius. Brittany alone will be spared, with relatively balmy temperatures in the high 20s.
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| Lawmaker describes 'unacceptable' border detention conditions, meets with US citizen in Border Patrol custody Posted: 20 Jul 2019 12:46 PM PDT  A U.S. lawmaker described 'unacceptable' border detention facilities while meeting with a U.S. citizen in Border Patrol custody.
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| The Air Force Has Sent Stealth F-22 Raptors to Qatar to Deter Iran Posted: 20 Jul 2019 09:00 AM PDT  Since becoming operational in 2005, the F-22 has achieved roughly a 50-percent readiness rate, on average -- one of the lowest rates of all U.S. fighter types. The Raptor's complex systems and delicate, radar-absorbing coating require intensive maintenance.The U.S. Air Force on June 27, 2019 deployed F-22 Raptor stealth fighters for the first time to Qatar as part of a build-up of forces ahead of a possible clash with Iran.The Air Force did not specify how many F-22s traveled to Qatar. Photographers spotted 12 of the radar-evading jets with "FF" tailcodes indicating they belong to the 1st Fighter Wing at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia.The F-22s could fly alongside stealthy F-35s that the Air Force deployed to the United Arab Emirates in April 2019.(This first appeared in June 2019.)Raptors previously flew from the UAE for missions over the Persian Gulf, Syria and Iraq. But a readiness crisis in March 2019 compelled the Air Force to return the F-22s to the United States.Since becoming operational in 2005, the F-22 has achieved roughly a 50-percent readiness rate, on average -- one of the lowest rates of all U.S. fighter types. The Raptor's complex systems and delicate, radar-absorbing coating require intensive maintenance.Hurricane Michael didn't help. The October 2018 storm devastated Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida's panhandle region. Tyndall at the time housed two squadrons together flying 55 F-22s. the 43rd Fighter Squadron is a training unit. The 95th Fighter Squadron is a combat unit.
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| Funeral service held for 86 Muslims killed by Serbs Posted: 20 Jul 2019 10:10 AM PDT  PRIJEDOR, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Several thousand people attended a funeral service in Bosnia on Saturday for 86 Muslims who were slain by Serbs in one of the worst atrocities of the country's 1992-95 war. Relatives of the victims, religious leaders and others gathered at a soccer stadium near the eastern town of Prijedor, standing solemnly behind lines of coffins draped with green cloths. The Serbs later threw bombs onto the bodies, which made identifying the victims difficult.
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| Bernie Sanders' campaign staff demanding a 'living wage' and health care Posted: 20 Jul 2019 05:07 AM PDT  Bernie Sanders pushes for a $15 minimum wage during his campaign; reaction from 2016 Sanders campaign staffer Tezlyn Figaro.
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| No One Really Wants to ‘Send Her Back’ Posted: 20 Jul 2019 03:30 AM PDT  The president can be very entertaining, but I don't pay much attention to political rallies, including his famously raucous ones.For the faithful, the rallies are fun spectacles, like rock concerts or ball games. I don't think they can be taken too seriously, except perhaps as a gauge of the president's support. Not in lieu of polls, but in conjunction. And with healthy skepticism: The polls have a history of undercounting Trump supporters, but the ardor of the Trump base on display at the rallies should not be confounded with national enthusiasm for the Trump presidency -- though it may signal more openness to it, especially in light of the increasingly radical alternative.Which brings us to Wednesday night's Trump rally in Greenville, N.C., and the ginned-up crowd of Trump fans chanting "Send her back!" That was in reference to Ilhan Omar, who is a naturalized American from Somalia, a radical at the crowded junction between Islamists and leftists, and a member of Congress from Minnesota's fifth district -- the deep-blue Twin Cities area that teems with Millennials and Somali immigrants.All good populist demagoguery needs a villain. President Trump hardly has the market cornered on this. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton studied Alinskyite community organizing. The organizer, a self-styled renegade against The Establishment, is instructed to avoid abstractions when picking an opposition target. You've got to make it personal, to polarize the adversary in stark terms. Trump's persona is to hit back harder than he is hit. No surprise, then, that he is a practitioner of this demagogic art, since he is also the Left's No. 1 target.Most Republican villains the Left selects (the Bushes, Mitt Romney . . .) respond by trying to prove they're not really villains. This is a futile strategy. The demagogues making the accusation already know it's not true. They do it because it always works. Or at least it used to. It's different with the president, who is from the Leo Durocher School: "I come to play. I come to beat you. I come to kill you!" Trump vexes the Left because he revels in the mud wrestle. Sure, he craves admiration, but he wants to win more, and he doesn't in the slightest mind winning ugly. In that the Left must see a lot of itself, but that doesn't mean it has figured out an effective response.At the 2016 rallies it was "Lock her up!" because Mrs. Clinton was the obvious target. To be sure, there is no shortage of Clinton antagonists who would like to see her in the dock. But that wasn't what the chant was about. The point was the political narrative: Hit the villain where she is most vulnerable -- on corruption, where the Left cannot defend her.Now, for the moment (i.e., while Trump's 2020 opponent has yet to be chosen), the villain is the "Squad," comprising Representative Omar and three other backbench Democratic congresswomen.It is a different dynamic from 2016. Clinton, a Washington overlord, was withered by Trump's onslaught. For the Squad, the combat is symbiotic. There is as much personal political advantage for the radical upstarts in being perceived as the president's chief antagonists as for the president in branding them as such. The loser in the triangulized equation is the Democratic party of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. That, for what it's worth, is why I can't see Biden, another relic, emerging as the nominee.Of the Squad members, Omar is the most vulnerable. She'd like you to believe the resentment of her is racist, misogynist, nativist, and Islamophobic: She's a black African woman, an immigrant, and a Muslim. Interestingly, though, my friend Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a black African woman, an immigrant, and a former Muslim (who nonetheless advocates Islamic reform), is one of the most revered figures on the political right. (Incidentally, Ayaan had some excellent advice for Representative Omar this week, would that she'd take it.)Race and womanhood have nothing to do with Omar's problems. Women are a majority of the population and, for years, they have been voting at higher rates than men. African-American women, such as Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey, are among the most popular figures not only on the political left but in the nation.As for Islam, this issue is not that Omar is merely a Muslim. It is that she is an Islamist fellow traveler. Despite Washington's best efforts, Americans grasp the difference between (a) Islam as a personal religious affiliation and (b) sharia supremacism as an anti-Western political ideology. They don't see Omar as simply a Muslim. They see someone who is hard-wired to blame the United States for jihadist terrorism. They see someone who is steeped in anti-Semitism, and indistinguishable from her Muslim Brotherhood friends in hostility to Israel's existence.Finally, unlike her Squad mates, Omar has potential legal problems. There are grounds to believe she may have committed marriage fraud with her brother from 2009 through 2017. And this is no gut-wrenching story about a family struggling to shield children from the horrors of war in their native land: At the time of the marriage, Omar was a 26-year-old American citizen who had been in the U.S. for 17 years; the man alleged to be her brother was a young adult living in London, not Mogadishu.In 2002, Omar married Ahmed Hirsi, her true and current husband. It was a Muslim wedding ceremony, not a formal legal marriage; but it was quite real: They have three children, and there are indications that they continued to live together even after 2008, when Omar says she and Hirsi divorced in accordance with Islamic law. In 2009, Omar formally married a man named Ahmed Nur Said Elmi -- "formally" in the sense that a state marriage license was issued. There is considerable evidence that Elmi is Omar's brother. For example, the Ahmed Nur Said Elmi whom Omar married shares a birthday with a man by the same name who attended a Minnesota high school in 2003. At the time, he lived with a man named Nur Said Elmi Mohamed, whom both Elmi and Omar have identified as their father. There are also indications that Omar, Hirsi, and Elmi all lived together for a time.Omar has summarily dismissed the claim that she married her brother as "absurd and offensive," but she otherwise refuses to address it and has frantically purged old social-media posts and other documentation. Meanwhile, she filed joint tax returns with Hirsi while she was formally married to Elmi. In 2017, she formally divorced Elmi; subsequently, she formally married Hirsi.At this point, nothing has been proved. If there was a sham marriage for immigration purposes, however, that would be just one of many issues. Potentially, there would also be tax fraud, commercial fraud, and various state and federal false statements to sort out.Until recently, Omar was merely a Minnesota sensation. The media-Democrat complex has helped her stonewall the investigative diligence of journalists David Steinberg, Preya Samsundar, and Scott Johnson. (See Scott's Power Line post and the links it includes.) Now, however, the Squad is a national hit -- so much so that Omar figures she's ready to go toe-to-toe with Trump. The president, in his inimitable way, responded by going right for the jugular: Gee, there's "a lot of talk about the fact that she was married to her brother. I know nothing about it. I hear she was married to her brother . . ."Welcome to the show, Congresswoman.The president thrives on this stuff. His supporters may chant send her back! He's happy to have her front and center in Washington.Of course, there has been no shortage of outrage about the chanting, which was so deplorable, as it were, that Trump himself disavowed it the next day -- even if he didn't seem too upset while it was happening. Sorry to say, I can't get too whipped up about it. Yes, Representative Omar is a naturalized American. As a matter of law, she's just as much an American citizen as any one of us born in this country. The suggestion that the government should send her back to her native Somalia -- because she is "the Other," because she has the temerity to criticize the president -- is obscene. I get all that.But . . . are we really taking this seriously?In a column earlier this week, I observed that the president's tweets suggesting that Squad members should go back home to their native countries were not racist; but they were factually ignorant, politically dumb, and all in all beneath the presidency. After all, three of the Squad are native Americans; the fourth, Omar, is a naturalized American who left Somalia when she was six years old and has been here since she was ten. America is the only home the four congresswomen have even known. Yet, because they habitually run America down, the president could not resist the urge to rail that, if they really believed it was so bad, they should leave of their own volition. Offensive outburst? Yes . . . but he never suggested that the government could or should send them away. No one believes that."If it were up to me, I would put in jail every sandal-wearing, scruffy-beard weirdo who burns the American flag." I don't know if you could quite fit that into a rally chant, but it is a memorable bit of reactionary sentiment from Justice Antonin Scalia. Shortly before he died, the great jurist was explaining why he voted against the criminalization of flag-burning (in the Supreme Court's controversial 1989 ruling in Texas v. Johnson). With characteristic pith, he was illustrating something that ought to be patent: We often express passionately our most visceral feelings; but we do not act on these outbursts in actually lived life.When we get down to brass tacks, principles, laws, and norms are honored. We have those guardrails precisely because we're human, prone to error and excess, prone to let our id out for a night at the rally hall. We cannot help what we think in a gut sense, and liberty means being free to voice those thoughts, even when good judgment would counsel against it. But when we get back to reality, common sense and law take over.We might say "Kill the umpire," but we don't actually want the umpire killed. We shouldn't need to explain that because everyone understands it. The exercise of our right to scream "Kill the umpire" does not create a clear and present danger to umpires. For 60 years I've heard crowds say nutty things at carnival-type venues; on the other hand, I've also prosecuted people for inciting terrorist attacks against the United States. There is a palpable difference between provocative expression and incitement to violence, one that is not hard for sensible people to discern, even if great legal minds have struggled to articulate it precisely.You want to condemn rambunctious chants? Knock yourself out. But let's not exaggerate their significance. No one is going to make Ilhan Omar stop spouting her bile as long as she refrains from urging violence. We can probably also survive a little "send her back!" without the Republic's crumbling.
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| Iran probes seized UK-flagged tanker, Britain to hold emergency meeting Posted: 21 Jul 2019 04:36 PM PDT  Iran warned Sunday that the fate of a UK-flagged tanker it seized in the Gulf depends on an investigation, as Britain prepared for an emergency security meeting on Tehran's action. Iranian authorities impounded the Stena Impero with 23 crew members aboard off the port of Bandar Abbas after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps seized it Friday in the highly sensitive Strait of Hormuz. Video footage released by Iran showed the Stena Impero tanker being surrounded by speedboats before troops in balaclavas descend a rope from a helicopter onto the vessel.
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| Booker Says He Could Confront Biden on Race at Detroit Debate Posted: 21 Jul 2019 09:41 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Presidential Democratic candidate Cory Booker on Sunday suggested he could confront former Vice President Joe Biden on racial issues during the second round of debates next week.Booker, a New Jersey senator, said it would be "fair" to bring up the 1994 crime bill, which Biden supported in the Senate and has called the "Biden crime bill." Booker said the measure put "mass incarceration on steroids" for African Americans."Yeah, it is fair," Booker said on CBS News's "Face the Nation," when asked by host Margaret Brennan whether he would be more aggressive on race at the forums in Detroit on July 30-31. "I want people like Joe Biden, which he finally did, thank God, to stand up and say, 'I was wrong, that bill did a lot of harm.'"Booker was among Biden's most vocal critics last month when the former vice president spoke about the "civility" in the Senate that allowed him to work with segregationist lawmakers in the 1970s. Another Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Kamala Harris, seized the spotlight at the first set of debates last month in Miami by confronting Biden on his opposition to busing as a senator.Biden will face off against Harris, Booker and seven other Democratic candidates on July 31, the second night of the debates in Detroit.To contact the reporter on this story: Max Berley in Washington at mberley@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net, Max Berley, Mark NiquetteFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Electric Cars 101: The Answers to All Your EV Questions Posted: 21 Jul 2019 03:00 AM PDT  Electric vehicles (EVs) are becoming increasingly common, with many manufacturers currently offering models that plug in. There are dozens more models expected to hit the market over the next few...
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| US hotels caught in fight over housing detained migrants Posted: 21 Jul 2019 01:52 PM PDT  Advocacy groups and unions are pressuring Marriott, MGM and others not to house migrants who have been arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. For decades, the U.S. government has occasionally detained migrants in hotels, and Acting ICE Director Matthew Albence says it might have to split up families if hotels don't help. American and United Airlines said last year they didn't want to fly migrant children separated from their parents.
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| Vigilante Armies Are Fighting Mexican Drug Cartels, but Whose Side Are They Really on? Posted: 21 Jul 2019 02:27 AM PDT  Jorge Lopez/ReutersFILO DE CABALLOS, Mexico—The assault force rolls through this small mountain town not long after dark. Traveling in a fleet of pick-ups with about 15 men in each truck, they are dressed in pixelated camouflage uniforms and ballistic vests and at first glance they look like official army units, but their weapons give them away. Many of these commandos carry AK-47 model assault rifles, which aren't used by the Mexican armed forces.The logo stamped on the doors of the trucks shows a figure from the Mexican Revolution wearing a sombrero and brandishing a rifle astride a charging horse. Below that are the words Policia Comunitaria, or community police, and a phrase which, roughly translated from Spanish, reads: "Death before surrender or humiliation."The men in the trucks are members of the United Front of Community Police of Guerrero State, better known by its Spanish acronym of FUPCEG. Tonight FUPCEG's shock troops are on their way to assault the nearby town of El Naranjo, which is currently held by the forces of an organized crime group called the Cartel del Sur."We fight to free communities that have been isolated by the criminals," says a squad leader who asks to be identified only as "El Burro" in an interview with The Daily Beast. "Everyone has a right to security. And to economic freedom. Campesinos [small farmers] and their children shouldn't suffer under the rule of bandits," Burro says. "The people of this town have asked us for help, and so that's what we're going to do."El Burro says he got his nickname, which means "the donkey," because he can bear heavy loads a great distance despite his slight stature. In his backpack he carries several cans of tuna and crackers and canteens of water. His battle harness holds some 300 rounds of ammunition for his AK-47. Later tonight he'll lead his squad on foot through the dense pine forests that surround El Naranjo, until they reach the pre-assigned rendezvous point. From there the coordinated strike force will crawl on their bellies until they're in sight of the cartel stronghold, then wait for dawn to attack.Burro is a veteran of a dozen such engagements with the comunitarios and says he's personally registered 20 confirmed kills of sicarios, the cartels' contract killers. A former farmer, he joined the movement "because I was tired of hearing the people's cries for help go unanswered."The Cartel del Sur is known for its brutal tactics, including torturing prisoners, and for that reason Burro says he prefers death on the battlefield to being captured by los contras, as he calls members of the Cartel del Sur."Will I come back from where I go tonight?" he asks rhetorically. "And if I don't," he says, "will my family understand what I died for?" * * *'We Have To Protect Ourselves'* * *FUPCEG is an alliance of civilian autodefensas, or self-defense groups, that boasts about 11,700 fighters across 39 municipalities in Guerrero, meaning they're now present in about half the state. Similar communitario movements have sprung up across Mexico over the last decade, but FUPCEG is by far the largest of its kind.The spike in vigilante militias has polarized public opinion. Some observers see them as noble freedom fighters who succeed where traditional law enforcement has failed. Critics claim the autodefensas and comunitarios (the words are often used interchangeably in Mexico) are at best undisciplined mobs and at worst cartel patsies who do the criminals' grunt work for them. Either way, their power is growing. A new study by Mexico's National Human Rights Commission suggests vigilante activity is up by more than 300 percent since the start of 2018, and blames the increase on "insecurity, violence, and impunity."Mexico's Game of BonesIn fact, violence in Mexico has reached historic levels this year, with the country averaging an all-time high of 94 killings a day through the first half of 2019. Both 2017 and 2018 also broke previous murder records. As one autodefensa fighter put it, repeating what has become a kind of mantra, "If the government can't protect us, then we have no choice left but to protect ourselves."FUPCEG's founder and leader is 40-year-old Salvador Alanis. A Guerrero native, Alanis is something of a polymath. An economist by training, he's also worked as an electrical engineer in North Carolina, and at one time owned several successful fruit and cattle ranches in his home state. Those ranches are gone now. Some were sold off to help fund Alanis's crime-fighting endeavors, while others have been seized by the mafia groups he opposes."I spent 12 years working in the U.S.," Alanis says during an interview in the FUPCEG base in the strategically vital town of Filo de Caballos, high in the sierra of central Guerrero. "In the States I came to know a better life, a better world. I came to take safety for granted," he says, "but there's no security like that in Mexico."The lack of security is even more pronounced in Guerrero, which is Mexico's leading exporter of opium and heroin, and perennially listed as one of the country's most dangerous and politically corrupt regions. It doesn't help that government law enforcement here is undermanned."We have an insufficient number of police officers to go around," says Roberto Álvarez Heredia, the state's security spokesperson. "We need about three times as many cops and public prosecutors as we have," he says, "and the ones we do have need better salaries."Recently elected President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known as AMLO, has touted his newly created Guardia Nacional as a solution to peacekeeping efforts in places like Guerrero, but Alanis remains unimpressed:"So they just sent 3,500 Guardias to Guerrero," he says, when asked about the new policing initiative. "The last president sent 5,000 soldiers and they couldn't do anything against the cartels, because the criminals just paid them off. Everyone has a price," he adds.Still, Alanis is willing to give the Guardia a chance."We're going to let them in [to our territory] and see if they behave themselves. See if they're corrupt, or if they abuse their power. In the past the soldiers used to enter and search any house they pleased, and that's why we had to run them out. We're glad to be friends [with the Guardia], but we won't be their slaves."* * *A Question of War* * *As protection against a cartel counter thrust, FUPCEG troops man fortified checkpoints at regular intervals all along State Road 196. Here in Filo, Alanis and his command crew are headquartered in what used to be the largest hotel in town. The long, two-story building was abandoned when FUPCEG occupied Filo after a prolonged firefight back in November of 2018. Pocked by bullet holes inside and out, the building no longer has running water, and electricity is intermittent, but the community kitchen in the lobby is always full of gossip and the smell of spicy cooking. During this interview, Alanis sits in what was once the hotel's main office. He's stockily built, dressed in a sky-blue Oxford shirt left open at the throat and wearing square-rimmed photochromic glasses. Clear mountain sunshine drifts in through the shot-up windows. In one corner of the room stands a derelict arcade game titled, coincidentally enough, Streetfighter II.When he came back in 2010, Alanis says he found his home town of Ocotito overrun by organized crime."Murder, kidnapping, extortion, theft. The cartels ruled the state and they'd packed the government and police forces with corrupt officials, so there was no one to challenge them," he says. After surviving two kidnapping attempts, Alanis decided to take matters into his own hands to "restore justice" to Guerrero.At first it was just himself and a handful of other ranchers, but slowly the movement gathered support. By 2015 their forces numbered several hundred comunitarios operating out of a string of liberated communities around the state capital of Chilpancingo. But he'd made a number of powerful enemies in the process, including capos from the Rojos, Tequileros, and Guerreros Unidos cartels. When those crime groups launched a series of counter-attacks aimed at taking back the newly freed townships, Alanis' civilian militias were quickly overwhelmed. "We had an army of shop owners and farm workers," he says in the office of the ramshackle hotel. He unholsters a chrome-plated 10 mm pistol to make himself more comfortable and sets it on the desk before him. "Many of our men didn't really know how to use their weapons. Meanwhile, we were facing off against experienced and well-armed sicarios, and we couldn't beat them in battle. It was a question of war, and we weren't up to the task. We were weak and lacking strategy."Those factors—along with the defection of some of his most trusted officers, one of whom ran off with his wife—combined to spell defeat for Alanis. His forces scattered and, still hunted by the cartels, he fled to the mountains and went into hiding."They took everything from him," says Jackie Pérez, an independent journalist based in Chilpancingo, and an expert on the state's autodefensa groups. "Salvador lost his livestock, his farmland, even his wife," she says. "But he's very intelligent and very patient. He was able to persevere, and come back stronger than ever."Pérez goes on to compare Alanis to Mexican freedom fighters of the past like Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa, at least in terms of tactics. "He doesn't want to overthrow the government," she says. "But he is willing to go outside the system to fight for the people's right to freedom from certain forms of oppression."In order to continue that fight after being drubbed by the contras, Alanis knew he'd have to change his game plan."We'd been outnumbered and defeated," he says. "Now it was time to change strategies." Part of that strategic shift involved developing a broad network of spies and informants, many of them women, to keep him informed of his enemies' movements and activities."Know your enemy as you know yourself," he quotes Sun Tzu from memory, "and in a hundred battles you will never be defeated."* * *Controlling The Sierra* * *Alanis isn't the first comunitario leader forced to revamp his approach after an initial setback. Many other grassroots vigilante groups have cropped up in Mexico to oppose organized crime, only to find they lack the manpower and budget to keep up the fight over time. Unfortunately, that often leads to alliances with well-heeled drug lords, who then use the militias as proxy groups to wage war on their rivals.Guerrero expert Chris Kyle, a professor of anthropology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, says that pattern has been in play for years."Since 2013 there's been an explosion of community policing groups in Guerrero," says Kyle in a phone interview with The Daily Beast. While villages with native indigenous populations that pre-date the Spanish conquest are legally allowed to form such units under Mexico's constitution, the proliferation of non-indigenous figures "claiming to be community police has baffled authorities."The swift spread of the comunitarios is related directly to a lack of effective security measures, according to Kyle."If the state would provide security, many of these groups would likely stand down," he says. In the absence of state power, however, and due to a lack of sufficient resources to operate long-term on their own, many vigilante squads become co-opted."The drug trafficking organizations take advantage of them," Kyle says, because the community police provide the cartels with "a semi-legitimate wing that extends their reach."Alanis's FUPCEG umbrella group includes both indigenous and mestizo, or mixed race, cells from all over the state, including the Regional Coordinator for Community Authorities (CRAC), the oldest and most respected such organization in Mexico. Even so, Alanis admits that part of his revised strategy involved aligning with certain deep-pocketed backers. He claims that instead of working on behalf of a crime syndicate, he's merely defending free enterprise.This may strike drug enforcement authorities in the United States as a distinction without a difference, but here in Guerrero such distinctions matter.Alanis says that in fact he is not opposed to campesinos growing poppies, since that's the only crop that pays enough to support many families in the sierra. What he's opposed to, as he puts it, is how the Cartel del Sur seeks to drive out competitors, keep prices low, and control poppy farmers through violence and intimidation."The people should be able to grow [poppies] if they want to. Or not, as they see fit. That's up to them. But nobody should be forced to sell [opium gum] at an unfair price to a single buyer. Nobody should be threatened or forced to worry about their family's safety. All we want is for the people to live in peace," he says, back in his bullet-riddled HQ."The Cartel del Sur wants to control the whole sierra," he adds. "They want to own a monopoly on poppy gum and heroin production, and also extort from shop owners, taxi drivers, you name it. Other businessmen I know want an open market for poppies up here, and they understand that requires healthy local economies. So that's why they help us fight the contras."To launch a full-scale assault like the one that liberated Filo would be impossible without outside financial support, according to Alanis. The Filo battle involved some 3,000 comunitarios and hundreds of trucks to ferry them, he explains. When the cost of ammunition, gas, and fighters' salaries are factored in, a single campaign can cost about 300,000 pesos [about $15,700] per hour. And the Filo firefight alone last for more than seven hours."We need their help," he says, referring to those independent opium gum buyers who help fund FUPCEG's efforts, "but they need us too. If part of the money to liberate the people must come from opium, I'm willing to accept that equation," the economist by training says.* * *Terrorizing The Resistance* * *During a series of independent interviews conducted in Filo de Caballos and surrounding communities it becomes clear that, prior to liberation by Alanis and his cohorts, local citizens had suffered greatly under rule by the Cartel del Sur.Run by Isaac Navarette Celis, one of Mexico's most wanted men, the Cartel del Sur specializes in the production and northbound transport of China White, a particularly potent form of heroin. Navarette is a relative newcomer to Guerrero's populous criminal underworld, first announcing his arrival back in 2016. Younger drug lords like Navarette often are especially bloodthirsty as they attempt to carve out a competitive niche against established rivals. Residents in the swath of towns and villages formerly under Navarette's control describe a reign of terror that included kidnappings for ransom, forcing young people to work as sicarios under threat of death, mass killings, crippling extortion rates, and random violence that caused schools, clinics, and small businesses to be shuttered indefinitely."We denounced the criminals to the police many times but they never did anything to help us," says Reina Maldonado, 53. Maldonado was married to the comisario, or sheriff, of a village called Corralitos. Last June several sicarios from the Cartel del Sur kidnapped Reina's husband from their home and brought him to a local safehouse. "He wouldn't back down from them. He defied their orders and bribes, so they took him," she said. When Maldonado's husband's body was found, she explains, he showed signs of having been tortured and had been shot multiple times."They killed him to terrorize the village against resistance," the sheriff's widow says, "but that didn't work." Hours after the comisario was reported missing, Alanis arrived with hundreds of comandos to battle it out with those responsible for his murder. Four cartel members were killed in the ensuing firefight, and the rest fled in armored vehicles. According to Maldonado, they haven't been back to Corralitos since."Life here is much better now," she says, as she walks around the ruins of the house where her husband's body was found. Many of the families that had fled Corralitos under cartel rule have since returned, and the shops and fruit stands that line the small main street are again open for business."We're still poor," Maldonado says, "but at least now we're safe."* * *Government Silence* * *Ruperto Pacheco Vega, 44, the mayor of Filo de Caballo, agrees with Maldonado's assessment:"Many businesses were completely shut down under [Navarette's] cartel," he says. "There was no commerce, nobody could move. The store owners couldn't make a profit due to extortion, and many people were out of work."Even worse, Vega says, was the cartel's habit of impressing young men into its service. "They wanted our boys to join them, put on their colors, and fight against Salvador and the comunitarios." To decline the cartel's "invitation," he says, was punishable by death. In contrast, the mayor explains that Alanis has helped local communities diversify their economies. The financial backbone of the region has long been poppy cultivation to produce opium gum to sell to the cartels to make heroin. But a recent drop in the price of heroin (apparently due to U.S. users preferring synthetic opioids like Fentanyl) has caused a backlash among growers. According to Vega, Alanis has been instrumental in helping the farmers develop detailed crop substitution plans in order to replace illicit poppy plots with legal alternatives like avocado, peaches, pears, and lemons."The government says we mustn't grow poppies, and that's fine with us. So we sent them precise and detailed petitions asking for basic subsidies until the [fruit] trees reach maturity," says Vega, riffing through signed and stamped copies of the official documents addressed to various politicians in Mexico City, including President López Obrador. As with local authorities who ignore cartel malfeasance, it seems the bid for federal assistance to produce legal crops has also fallen on deaf ears."Their offices acknowledged receipt of our requests," Vega says, "but we never heard anything back from them."* * *A Question Of Ethics* * *For all the careful planning put into it, El Burro's assault on the cartel-held town of El Naranjo didn't go as expected."Somebody must've talked because they were waiting for us," says El Burro, in the aftermath of the failed offensive. "They had a damned mortar and belt-fed machine guns. We killed a few of them but we then we had to pull back."Now rumors are swirling around town that Navarette's men are planning a counter-attack to retake Filo. Comunitarios run in and out of the lobby of the bombed-out hotel, fetching weapons and ammunition from stockpiles in the armory. Meanwhile Alanis sits surrounded by cell phones and a half-dozen radios, diligently coordinating with units in the field and his mysterious financial backers.In answer to a question about the ethics of his current line of work, Alanis waxes philosophical."I used to have a different idea about ethics," he says, putting down his phone. "I never accepted any drug money back when I first began to oppose [the cartels]." But, he adds, that's also why he lost the first time around. "You see suffering like this," and he waves his hand as if to take in the whole sierra: "You see people without work. People without health care. Children starving. Kids with no future. And you ask me about ethics?"In Alanis's estimation, "Our worst enemy is the state, due to their alliance with organized crime. There is no democracy in Guerrero" because the cartels "rig elections" and "control the politicians," he says."We came up with a plan to eliminate 65 percent of the poppy plants in our territories and replace them with legal orchards, but the politicians never even answered our letters." Alanis picks up his phone again. "Why don't you ask them about ethics?" he says.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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| Trump racist tweets: Democrat Elijah Cummings says constituents are ‘scared’ of president Posted: 21 Jul 2019 08:07 AM PDT  Elijah Cummings rebuked Donald Trump's continued attacks against four Democratic congresswomen of colour during an interview on Sunday, calling the president a racist and saying his constituents tell him they're "scared of their leader".The Maryland congressman spoke to ABC News' George Stephanopoulos about the House voting last week to condemn Mr Trump's "racist comments" after the president told the congresswomen to "go back" to their countries – despite all four being US citizens and only one having been born outside the US. "What I'm hearing over and over again from my constituents, is 'please save our democracy, please save our country,'" Mr Cummings said. "And you know something else they say George? They say 'I'm scared.'"He added, "I have never in my total of 37 years in public service – ever, heard a constituent say that they were scared of their leader."When asked if he believed the president was racist, Mr Cummings said, "Yes. No doubt about it." He added, "I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I got to tell you George … when I think about what [Mr Trump] said to these young ladies who are merely trying to bring excellence to government and trying to make sure that generations yet unborn have an opportunity to experience a true democracy, when I hear those things it takes me back."Mr Cummings, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, condemned Mr Trump's attacks throughout last week as the president spent several days hurling insults towards Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley, claiming the congresswomen don't love the United States. He said in a statement during the House vote last week he was "disappointed" the president "would share these racist sentiments," adding, "We are still working to fight against redlining, voter intimidation, hate crimes, and mass incarceration. Our country deserves better than this. The world deserves better than this."The congressman later recalled facing similar racist taunts as a child in an interview with NBC News. "I could not help but think about when I was 11 years old, trying to integrate ... We were taunted. Stones were thrown at us. Bottles. They said the same words. They said, 'Go back to your neighbourhood. Go back to where you came from.'"Mr Cummings' statements echoed that of thousands Americans of colour who also recalled memories of being told to "go back" to where they came from.At least 16,000 people shared their experiences of dealing with the old racist trope to the New York Times after the president made the incendiary comments last week.
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| Murders in Mexico surge to record in first half of 2019 Posted: 21 Jul 2019 03:10 PM PDT ![Murders in Mexico surge to record in first half of 2019]( "Murders in Mexico surge to record in first half of 2019") Murders in Mexico jumped in the first half of the year to the highest on record, according to official data, underscoring the vast challenges President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador faces in reducing violence in the cartel-ravaged country. There were 14,603 murders from January to June, versus the 13,985 homicides registered in the first six months of 2018, according to data posted over the weekend on the website of Mexico's national public security office. Mexico is on course to surpass the 29,111 murders of last year, an all-time high.
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| Two soldiers, civilian killed in east Ukraine ahead of polls Posted: 20 Jul 2019 10:46 AM PDT  Two Ukrainian soldiers and one civilian were killed in incidents involving Kremlin-backed separatists, Kiev said Saturday, a day before the country votes in a parliamentary election. The Ukrainian army's press secretary, Dmytro Gutsulyak, said the two soldiers were killed by sniper fire, and added that four other servicemen were injured. Ukraine is to hold a parliamentary election on Sunday in which President Volodymyr Zelensky's party is expected to win the largest share of votes.
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| Booming Philippine Markets Pin Hopes on Duterte for Next Rally Posted: 21 Jul 2019 03:00 PM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- When President Rodrigo Duterte delivers his annual speech to the nation on Monday, he'll have plenty to brag about. The Philippine economy is among the fastest-growing in the world and markets are booming.But global risks are rising amid the prolonged trade war, and investors looking for the next leg of the market rally will scrutinize Duterte's economic priorities as he embarks on the last half of his six-year term. Top on their minds are the $180 billion infrastructure program and new tax policies."If Duterte hits the right notes, markets would have another leg to rally on," said Jonathan Ravelas, chief market strategist at BDO Unibank Inc. "There's great interest in these measures to be prioritized to sustain the kind of growth rates we've been seeing."Duterte is scheduled to speak before lawmakers at about 4 p.m. in Manila., after market close.PesoIf history is any guide, there's a big chance the peso will rise the day after the State of the Nation Address. The currency has risen in nine of the last 10 years, posting an average gain of 0.15%."We remain bullish on peso and we would like to sell the dollar-peso on rallies," said Qi Gao, a Singapore-based currency strategist at Scotiabank. The currency is among those that will benefit the most as the Federal Reserve's dovish stance lures inflows, he said.The peso closed at 51.04 per dollar on Friday, near its strongest level since January 2018. The currency's next resistance is at the 50 pesos a dollar, Gao said.StocksFor stocks traders, it may be bad news first before good news, according to three decades of data. On the day of the president's speech, the benchmark Philippine Stock Exchange Index retreated about two-thirds of the time, and posted an average loss of 0.4%.The gauge recovered more than half of the time the day after since Congress was restored in 1987, posting an average gain of 0.3%. The trend will likely hold and given the current market momentum, the index will hit 8,500 sooner than later, according to Jun Calaycay, head of research at Philstocks Financial Inc., who called the bull market a week before it happened."The market is used to Duterte's controversial antics," Calaycay said. "But should he start talking about policy, regulation and his legislative agenda then that would be a plus."Local BondsPhilippine peso bonds are outperforming peers in emerging-markets as the central bank embarks on interest-rate cuts. Ten-year bond yields fell below 5% this month from more than 8% in October."Relative to the rest of EM world, the Philippines is an island of stability, continuing a pace of high growth and foreign investment," said Edwin Gutierrez, head of emerging-market sovereign debt at Aberdeen Standard Investments in London, who remains long on Philippine bonds.Meanwhile, the government's push to cut corporate income taxes will attract more foreign investors while the move to tax foreigners working in the offshore gaming sector will generate additional annual revenue, said Alan Atienza, treasurer at Philippine Bank of Communications in Manila.\--With assistance from Lilian Karunungan.To contact the reporters on this story: Ditas Lopez in Manila at dlopez55@bloomberg.net;Ian Sayson in Manila at isayson@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Cecilia Yap at cyap19@bloomberg.net, ;Tomoko Yamazaki at tyamazaki@bloomberg.net, Karl Lester M. Yap, Lianting TuFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Original moon landing tapes fetch $1.82 million at New York auction Posted: 21 Jul 2019 10:47 AM PDT  Original videotapes of the Apollo 11 moon landing which a NASA intern bought for $217.77 (£174.14) were sold for $1.82 million at a Sotheby's auction in New York on Saturday. They were bought by Gary George at a government surplus auction in 1976. Lasting two hours and 24 minutes, the tapes are far sharper than those seen around the world at the time of the moon landing on July 20 1969. The footage broadcast across the globe lost quality by the time they were seen on television sets, because of being transmitted via microwave towers, Ticker tape welcome for Apollo 11 astronauts in New York Credit: NASA/Reuters These tapes remained in-house. They represent the "earliest, sharpest, and most accurate surviving video images of man's first steps on the moon," Sotheby's said. They show the entire moonwalk as it was seen by Mission Control staff in Houston, as well as Neil Armstrong's phone call with US president Richard Nixon. The tapes were recorded on a Westinghouse camera NASA had commissioned to send the footage back to earth. Placed in a shock-proof insulated mount, the camera captured Armstrong's descent onto the lunar surface, before being placed on a tripod. Mr George was an engineering student at Lamar University in Texas as well as an intern at the NASA Johnson Space Centre in Houston. He bought around 1,500 reels of magnetic tape and gave most away, apart from three which his father noticed were labelled "APOLLO 11 EVA | July 20, 1969 REEL 1. Mr George gave the reels little attention until 2008 when he heard that NASA was trying to locate the original tapes. The purchaser of the tapes was not disclosed by Sotheby's.
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| Horse kicks man in groin at popular Maryland beach Posted: 21 Jul 2019 11:02 AM PDT  A tourist was kicked in the crotch by a wild horse on the beach of Assateague Island, located off the coast of Maryland, after the man attempted to pet the animal.
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| 5 shot dead, 6 wounded in Acapulco bar near beach Posted: 21 Jul 2019 03:11 PM PDT ![5 shot dead, 6 wounded in Acapulco bar near beach]( "5 shot dead, 6 wounded in Acapulco bar near beach") Gunmen killed five men and wounded six other people at a popular bar in Acapulco on Sunday, the latest in a string of violent incidents for the once-glamorous Pacific Coast resort city that has fallen on hard times. The Guerrero state prosecutor's office said the shootings took place in the morning at a watering hole called Mr. Bar, which is on the city's broad coastal avenue across the street from high-rise beachside hotels. Acapulco is full of summer vacationers, and days earlier authorities launched a security operation for the tourist season.
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| El Chapo complained about New York jail. Let's see how Supermax works out. Posted: 21 Jul 2019 02:18 PM PDT  Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán probably will find his more permanent federal digs at the "Supermax" in Colorado little more amenable than his NYC jail.
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| Trump demands congresswomen he subjected to racist tweets apologise to US and Israel Posted: 21 Jul 2019 05:17 AM PDT  Donald Trump has once again attacked the four Democratic congresswomen he launched racist tweets at last week, demanding Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley apologise "for the horrible (hateful) things they have said.""I don't believe the four Congresswomen are capable of loving our Country," the president wrote in a Sunday morning tweet. "They should apologize to America (and Israel) for the horrible (hateful) things they have said."He added, "They are destroying the Democrat Party, but are weak & insecure people who can never destroy our great Nation!"The latest tweets arrived after an extraordinary rebuke of the president's racist attacks against the four congresswomen of colour — colloquially known as "the squad" — last week, in which the US House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning Mr Trump's "racist comments."Mr Trump tweeted that the four Democratic freshmen should "go back" to their countries, despite the fact the congresswomen are all US citizens and all but one were born in the US (Ms Omar emigrated to the US from Somalia as a refugee twenty-three years ago).The resolution passed by a 240-187 vote, marking an embarrassing moment for Mr Trump despite carrying no legal repercussions. The Democrats were joined by Republicans Brian Fitzpatrick, Fred Upton, Will Hurd and Susan Brooks. Justin Amash, who left the Republican party months after becoming the its sole member of Congress to back an impeachment inquiry into Mr Trump, also backed the measure. Democrats saved one of the day's most passionate moments until near the end. "I know racism when I see it," said John Lewis of Georgia, whose skull was fractured at the 1965 "Bloody Sunday" civil rights march in Selma, Alabama. > I don't believe the four Congresswomen are capable of loving our Country. They should apologize to America (and Israel) for the horrible (hateful) things they have said. They are destroying the Democrat Party, but are weak & insecure people who can never destroy our great Nation!> > — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) > > July 21, 2019"At the highest level of government, there's no room for racism," he added.Before the showdown roll call, Mr Trump characteristically plunged forward with time-tested insults. He accused his four outspoken critics of "spewing some of the most vile, hateful and disgusting things ever said by a politician" and added, "If you hate our Country, or if you are not happy here, you can leave !" — echoing taunts long unleashed against political dissidents rather than opposing parties' lawmakers.The president was joined by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and other top Republicans in trying to redirect the focus from Trump's original tweets, which for three days have consumed Washington and drawn widespread condemnation. Instead, they tried playing offense by accusing the four congresswomen — among the Democrats' most left-leaning members and ardent Trump critics — of socialism, an accusation that's already a central theme of the GOP's 2020 presidential and congressional campaigns.Underscoring the stakes, Republicans formally objected after Nancy Pelosi said during a floor speech that Mr Trump's tweets were "racist." Led by Doug Collins, Republicans moved to have her words stricken from the record, a rare procedural rebuke.After a delay exceeding 90 minutes, Steny Hoyer said Ms Pelosi had indeed violated a House rule against characterising an action as racist. Mr Hoyer was presiding after Emanuel Cleaver stormed away from the presiding officer's chair, lamenting, "We want to just fight," apparently aimed at Republicans. Even so, Democrats flexed their muscle and the House voted afterward by party line to leave Ms Pelosi's words intact in the record.Mr Trump took a positive view of the vote on Twitter, saying it was "so great" that only four Republicans had crossed party lines and noting the procedural rebuke of Ms Pelosi. "Quite a day!" he wrote.Some rank-and-file GOP lawmakers have agreed that Mr Trump's words were racist, but on Tuesday party leaders insisted they were not and accused Democrats of using the resulting tumult to score political points. Among the few voices of restraint, Mitch McConnell said Mr Trump wasn't racist, but he also called on leaders "from the president to the speaker to the freshman members of the House" to attack ideas, not the people who espouse them."There's been a consensus that political rhetoric has gotten way, way heated across the political spectrum," said the Republican leader from Kentucky, breaking his own two days of silence on Mr Trump's attacks.Hours earlier, Mr Trump tweeted, "Those Tweets were NOT Racist. I don't have a Racist bone in my body!" He wrote that House Republicans should "not show 'weakness'" by agreeing to a resolution he labelled "a Democrat con game."Additional reporting by AP
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| UPDATE 1-Suspected Japan arsonist a reclusive, quarrelsome gamer, neighbour says Posted: 20 Jul 2019 07:34 PM PDT ![UPDATE 1-Suspected Japan arsonist a reclusive, quarrelsome gamer, neighbour says]( "UPDATE 1-Suspected Japan arsonist a reclusive, quarrelsome gamer, neighbour says") The man suspected of killing 34 people in an arson attack in Japan lived alone, hundreds of kilometres from the torched Kyoto Animation studio, where he played video games non-stop and had "terrified" his neighbour just days earlier. Police late on Saturday issued an arrest warrant for 41-year-old Shinji Aoba, suspected of causing Japan's worst mass killing in two decades on Thursday when he went to the studio in western Japan, poured fuel around the entrance and shouted "Die" as he set the building ablaze, according to public broadcaster NHK. Aoba lived alone on the ground floor of a two-floor apartment building on the outskirts of Omiya, a commuter suburb of Tokyo and some 500 km (310 miles) east of Kyoto.
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| SOS Mediterranee relaunches migrant rescue missions off Libya Posted: 21 Jul 2019 08:44 AM PDT  Humanitarian group SOS Mediterranee said Sunday it has relaunched rescue efforts off Libya seven months after it abandoned operations using its ship Aquarius and despite a refusal by European ports to accept the migrants. The Norwegian-flagged Ocean Viking will "conduct search and rescue activities in the central Mediterranean" for SOS Mediterranee and Doctors Without Borders (known by its French initials MSF), the group said in a statement.
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| Putin Hints at Rapprochement With Ukraine on Eve of Vote Posted: 20 Jul 2019 05:28 AM PDT ![Putin Hints at Rapprochement With Ukraine on Eve of Vote]( "Putin Hints at Rapprochement With Ukraine on Eve of Vote") (Bloomberg) -- Virtually on the eve of Ukraine's parliamentary elections, the Kremlin released comments by President Vladimir Putin, saying that the two countries will mend ties despite their five-year conflict.Putin went as far as to say that Russians and Ukrainians are one people. "We have many things in common, we can use this as our competitive advantage during some form of integration," Putin said, according to the transcript of a June 19 interview with American film director Oliver Stone. "Rapprochement is inevitable."Ties between the former allies deteriorated after protesters in Kiev unseated the country's Kremlin-backed leader in 2014 and Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea before fomenting a war in which he still denies involvement. A party backed by Ukrainian businessman Viktor Medvedchuk, whose daughter counts Putin as her godfather, is campaigning for the Sunday elections and he met with Putin on Thursday to discuss potential cooperation.President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a former comedian elected in April, entered into his first negotiations with Putin earlier this month as he seeks to diffuse the conflict and negotiate the release of 24 Ukrainian sailors detained by Russia in 2018.Speaking about another election, Putin said it was "nonsense" to assume that comments by Russians on social networks could have influenced the result of the 2016 U.S. presidential vote."No matter what our bloggers –- or whoever's job it is to comment on the internet -– might say about the situation in the U.S., this could not have played a decisive role," he said. But Russia's "sympathies" were with Donald Trump "because he said he wanted to restore normal relations with Russia," Putin said.To contact the reporter on this story: Anatoly Medetsky in Moscow at amedetsky@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Lynn Thomasson at lthomasson@bloomberg.net, Andrew Davis, James AmottFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Amid Dangerous Heat Wave, Hundreds of Thousands of Michigan Homes Are Without Power After Severe Storms Posted: 21 Jul 2019 12:36 PM PDT  DTE Energy says it hopes to restore power to 80% of affected customers by Monday
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| How Quickly Can an Attached Tick Make You Sick? Posted: 21 Jul 2019 03:03 AM PDT  For a tick bite to make you sick, the tick must be attached to you and feeding for a certain amount of time. For some diseases, this can take a day or more. For others, it takes just minutes. We...
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| The U.S. Government Has Found a Devious Way to Hire More Bureaucrats Posted: 20 Jul 2019 02:22 AM PDT  These salaries are underwritten by the $235 billion the federal government lays out to nonprofits each year. To constrain the growth of central government, conservatives have fought to keep down the number of federal bureaucrats.This strategy has failed.Since the 1960s, the number of federal employees has remained constant at about 2 million, yet federal power has greatly expanded.This phenomenon arises because Washington has outsourced many civil service functions to contractors, nonprofit groups, and lower levels of government.According to New York University professor Paul Light, the true size of the federal government's "blended workforce" is now somewhere between 7 million and 9 million people.The biggest portion of the blended federal workforce consists of federal contractors. Today, there are about 3.7 million federal contractors—almost twice as many as there were in the 1960s.These contractors fill a wide range of functions: security in war zones, statistical analyses, janitorial services, management consulting, and almost everything in between. Many of these functions were once performed by the largely blue-collar federal workforce of the mid-20th century.
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