| Canadian police divers search river for missing teen murder suspects Posted: 04 Aug 2019 02:23 PM PDT  Canadian police divers are searching a river for two missing teenagers suspected of a double murder, after finding an abandoned boat on its shores.The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has been chasing Kam McLeod, 19, and Bryer Schmegelsky, 18, for weeks since the pair were connected to two separate killings in British Columbia earlier this month.Authorities announced on 31 July that they were scaling back the search, which had taken officers to the remote town of Gillam in northern Manitoba.On Friday RCMP officers, travelling in a helicopter, spotted a damaged aluminium boat on the shores of the Nelson River, near Gillam.RCMP divers have now travelled to the town to search a section of the river.Their hunt began on Sunday."RCMP Underwater Recovery Team (URT) will conduct a thorough underwater search of significant areas of interest today," the force said on Twitter.The teenagers have been tracked in a series of stolen cars as they have travelled thousands of miles across Canada, from its Pacific coast in the west all to the way east to rural Manitoba.RCMP units believe the pair have been cornered in this region of rural Manitoba.The manhunt began on 12 July when Mr McLeod and Mr Schmegelsky, childhood friends, left their home in Port Alberni on Vancouver Island and travelled 1,500 miles north to Whitehorse, in the Yukon, claiming that they were looking for work.But on 15 July police discovered the bodies of a young couple near Liard Hot Springs, back in British Columbia. The RCMP has said the teenagers are suspects in the case and are wanted for questioning.A few days later a burnt-out truck driven by the pair was discovered, along with the body of Leonard Dyck. Mr McLeod and Mr Schmegelsky have been charged with his murder and chased across Canada by the RCMP ever since.The father of Mr Schmegelsky has told reporters he believes his son is on a "suicide mission" and expects him to eventually die in a confrontation with the police."A normal child doesn't travel across the country killing people," he said. "A child in some very serious pain does."
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| Police: Ohio gunman who killed 9 was stopped in 30 seconds Posted: 04 Aug 2019 04:44 PM PDT  A masked gunman in body armor opened fire early Sunday in a popular entertainment district in Dayton, Ohio, killing nine people, including his sister, and wounding dozens before he was quickly slain by police, officials said. Connor Betts, 24, was armed with a .223-caliber rifle with magazines capable of holding at least 100 rounds of ammunition and squeezed off dozens of shots before he was gunned down no more than 30 seconds after his rampage began, Police Chief Richard Biehl said. Surveillance video shared by police showed officers shot Betts at the doorstep of further destruction, just stopping him from entering a bar where some people took cover when the chaos broke out around 1 a.m. in the historic Oregon District.
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| Sherrod Brown rips Republican inaction on guns Posted: 04 Aug 2019 08:10 AM PDT  The Ohio Democrat also assails Trump for "racist, divisive talk."
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| Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Just Lost 2 Key Staff Members Posted: 03 Aug 2019 12:21 AM PDT  New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, has departed from her D.C. office to work with an outside group focused on pushing the Green New Deal, her office announced Friday.Also departing from Ocasio-Cortez's D.C. office is her communications director Corbin Trent, who will head communications for her 2020 re-election campaign."Saikat has decided to leave the office of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez to work with New Consensus to further develop plans for a Green New Deal," Trent told The Intercept. "We are extraordinarily grateful for his service to advance a bold agenda and improve the lives of the people in NY-14. From his co-founding of Justice Democrats to his work on the Ocasio-Cortez campaign and in the official office, Saikat's goal has always been to do whatever he can to help the larger progressive movement, and we look forward to continuing working with him to do just that."Chakrabarti told a Washington Post reporter in July the Green New Deal "wasn't originally a climate thing at all.""We really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing," he said.Chakrabarti played a significant role in Ocasio-Cortez's rise to national prominence. He co-founded Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats, the two outside political action committees (PACs) credited with recruiting the New York Democrat to run for office and spearheading her successful primary campaign against former New York Democratic Rep. Joe Crowley.
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| Gun control won't prevent deadly shootings: Brazil's Bolsonaro Posted: 04 Aug 2019 04:59 PM PDT  Brasília (AFP) - President Jair Bolsonaro argued Sunday for his signature policy of relaxing gun control measures, saying they will not stop mass shootings such as those that left 29 dead in the US over the weekend. "Disarming people isn't going to keep that from happening," Bolsonaro said. The United States was in mourning Sunday for victims of two mass shootings that killed 29 people in less than 24 hours.
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| Russian opposition plans new protest despite over 1,000 arrests Posted: 04 Aug 2019 07:24 AM PDT  Russia's anti-Kremlin opposition said it was planning a nationwide protest next weekend despite police forcibly detaining over 1,000 people on Saturday for attending what they said was an illegal march in Moscow to demand free elections. Saturday's protest, conceived by opposition activists as a peaceful walk to protest against the exclusion of their candidates from a Moscow election next month, was systematically and sometimes violently dispersed by police. Russian investigators had initiated a criminal case against one man, accusing him of injuring a police officer, the TASS news agency reported.
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| 31 dead, 62 rescued after boats capsize in Philippines Posted: 04 Aug 2019 03:08 AM PDT  Rescuers recovered more bodies in rough seas where three ferry boats capsized after being buffeted by fierce winds and waves off two central Philippine provinces, bringing the death toll to 31 with three missing, the coast guard said Sunday. Coast guard spokesman Armand Balilo said the dead were mostly passengers of two ferries that flipped over in sudden wind gusts and powerful waves Saturday off Guimaras and Iloilo provinces. Sixty-two other passengers and crew were rescued.
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| Day care worker charged after four toddlers suffer broken legs Posted: 03 Aug 2019 11:27 AM PDT  A Florida day care worker was charged with child neglect two months after fourtoddlers were found with leg fractures, the Northwest Florida Daily Newsreports
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| El Paso shooting: 21-year-old suspect in custody as officials investigate possible hate crime Posted: 03 Aug 2019 06:44 PM PDT  Officials investigating whether suspect wrote a 'manifesto' ahead of mass shooting that left at least 20 people dead and two dozen injuredPolice SWAT team members in the aftermath of a mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas Photograph: STRINGER/ReutersA mass shooting at a Walmart in the Texas border city of El Paso that has left 20 people dead and 26 injured is being investigated as a possible hate crime, Texas officials said.A 21-year-old white man is in custody after the mass shooting, one of the deadliest incidents in Texas history, El Paso's police chief said. Local news outlets reported the name of the suspected shooter, but his name has not yet been officially released by law enforcement.He was named by the Associated Press and other media as Patrick Crusius, citing law enforcement sources.A local TV station published what it said was a picture of the suspect from CCTV footage.There was "little to minimum force" used when law enforcement took the suspect into custody, El Paso police spokesman Robert Gomez said at an earlier press conference. "No law enforcement personnel fired their weapon.""It happened without incident so I can assume that the person dropped his weapons," Gomez added.Law enforcement officials are investigating "a manifesto from this individual" that suggests the incident may be a hate crime, police chief Greg Allen said. He added that law enforcement still needed to "validate for certain" that the document under investigation was from the arrested suspect.The chief did not immediately offer more details on the document under investigation.> Confirmed Photo of the shooter as he entered the Cielo Vista Walmart store. EPShooting https://t.co/wfXkVy7a3y pic.twitter.com/TWVZwQXIyl> > — KTSM 9 News (@KTSMtv) August 3, 2019Investigators are "reasonably confident" that the Walmart shooting suspect posted the document on 8chan, an extremist online message board that often features racist content, senior law enforcement officials told NBC News.If the manifesto is authentic, it would make it the third mass shooting announced in advance on 8chan in less than five months.In response to the document, 8chan commenters speculated whether the shooting would produce an impressive body count, mocked the shooter, and wrote "Hello FBI"."That's it. This website is getting shutdown," one 8chan commenter wrote.Since mid-morning, commenters on 8chan had been circulating a document posted to the site that referenced Texas and a planned shooting attack motivated by white nationalist ideology.The 8chan document under investigation by Texas law enforcement described a gun attack that was intended to be "a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas".Its author described a hatred of race-mixing, and suggested that the United States should be separated into different territories for different races. His opinions on immigration predated Donald Trump's run for president, the author wrote.El Paso is in western Texas, right on the border with Mexico. The diverse city has around 680,000 residents, and its population is around 80% Latino. More than 23,000 pedestrians cross from its Mexican twin city, Ciudad Juárez, across the border to El Paso to work every day.The document includes expression of support for the Christchurch gunman, whose attack on peaceful worshippers in New Zealand left 51 people dead in March. The alleged Christchruch gunman also described immigrants of color as an "invasion".President Donald Trump has continued to refer to migrants at the United States' southern border as an "invasion", including in the immediate wake of the Christchurch shooting.El Paso has been at the center of the crisis over the Trump administration's punitive treatment of migrants and refugees from Central America. It is more than 600 miles away from Allen, the Dallas suburb where law enforcement said the suspect lived.David Stout, El Paso county commissioner, told the Guardian he was concerned about reports that some victims or relatives might be afraid to go to reunification centers or seek medical attention due to their immigration status. He said he had not directly heard these accounts, but was worried people might be deterred since there were border patrol agents involved in the response."People who are dealing with this type of tragedy, if they happen to be undocumented or an immigrant, they should not have to feel any further strife or any further pain or any further fear," he said.Stout, who represents the district that includes the Walmart and spent the day at the hospital and school where people gathered, said it was "heartening and beautiful to see how in this community, we care for each other".He noted that there were massive lines of people donating blood, and that he witnessed many people offering rides and meals to victims' families. "People just keep showing up to help."Still, he added, "This is the most difficult day that I've seen in El Paso."Globally, there have been at least 16 major violent attacks clearly linked to white supremacist ideology since 2011, not including last week's attack on a garlic festival in Gilroy, California, which law enforcement officials are still investigating. After that shooting, media reports highlighted an Instagram post from an account with the same name as the alleged shooter, which referenced a late-19th century white supremacist text and described mixed-race people in derogatory terms.Suspects in two previous white supremacist shootings, the Christchurch shooting, and an April shooting targeting synagogue in Poway, California, that left one person dead and three injured, both posted documents on 8chan before the attacks.Posts linked to the suspect in a November mass shooting attack on a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which left 11 Jewish worshippers dead, also referred to immigrants and refugees as "invaders." Those posts were made on Gab, a different extremist social network.Early reports suggested the gun used in the shooting was a rifle, but police could not immediately confirm the make or model of the weapon, police officials said. The police chief said only one weapon had been identified.
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| Ohio shooting: Police have identified 24-year-old man as suspect who killed 9 in Dayton shooting Posted: 04 Aug 2019 05:03 PM PDT  A 24-year-old man has been identified as the shooter who killed nine people, including his 22-year-old sister, Megan Betts, in Dayton, Ohio.
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| Cory Booker compares Trump 'spouting racism' to segregationists George Wallace and Bull Connor Posted: 03 Aug 2019 10:02 AM PDT  Sen. Cory Booker says why he thinks President Trump's remarks are "deeply disturbing" and compares the strategy of "spouting racism" to the infamous segregationists George Wallace and Bull Connor.
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| Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's chief of staff, spokesman leave her office Posted: 02 Aug 2019 06:34 PM PDT  Saikat Chakrabarti to work for climate change non-profit
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| Chicago shootings leave 40 shot, 3 fatally; Mt. Sinai Hospital closes emergency room Posted: 04 Aug 2019 01:01 PM PDT  A West Side hospital is not accepting any more patients to its emergency room after a violent weekend in which 40 people were shot, three fatally, across the city.
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| Nuon Chea, ideologue of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, dies at 93 Posted: 04 Aug 2019 06:37 AM PDT  Nuon Chea, the chief ideologue of the communist Khmer Rouge regime that destroyed a generation of Cambodians, died Sunday, the country's U.N.-assisted genocide tribunal said. Nuon Chea was known as Brother No. 2, the right-hand man of Pol Pot, the leader of the regime that ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. Researchers believe Nuon Chea was responsible for the extremist policies of the Khmer Rouge and was directly involved in its purges and executions.
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| Italian Police Mistakes May Help American Teens in Cop Stabbing Case Posted: 03 Aug 2019 10:13 AM PDT  Ciro De Luca/ReutersOne week has passed since the brutal stabbing death of 35-year-old Italian Carabinieri police officer Mario Cerciello Rega, allegedly at the hands of two San Francisco teens, and the investigation seems to have gone awry. Rome Cops: American Teens Stabbed Police Officer to Death in Drug-Fueled FrenzyReporting that closed camera television footage is missing from the area where 19-year-old Finnegan Elder allegedly stabbed Rega 11 times has raised eyebrows. The manager of the pharmacy directly across from where blood still stains the cobblestones says they only run their cameras when they are open. The stabbing took place around 2:30 a.m. Police now also say the camera on the bank across the street was broken. What we don't know with certainty is who decided where the fateful rendezvous would take place or if it was possible that anyone involved could have known that cameras would not be working. The fatal stabbing took place during a humid Roman night when local residents without air conditioning, of which there are many in Rome, would have been sleeping with their windows open. Italian media reports have already hinted of secret witnesses who may have heard and seen the whole thing. Police contend that they showed their badges and identified themselves as Carabinieri officers before the American teens allegedly launched the attack that would turn fatal. Officer Rega, we now know, forgot his gun that evening. His partner, Andrea Varriale, was unable to access his because Gabe Natale Hjorth, Elder's 18-year-old alleged accomplice, was beating him up. And since it is illegal for police to shoot at suspects running away, Varriale did not use his weapon at all. Natale Hjorth, who is half Italian and speaks the language, allegedly told investigators that he did not know the men who approached them to retrieve a bag they stole over a bad drug deal were cops. In fact, he says he was sure they were not. But without video surveillance tape, it may prove impossible to prove whether the police showed their badges or just how they approached the American teens. Elder told investigators that Rega had grabbed him by the neck. Again, without proper surveillance video, the truth may never come out. Elder's uncle who is acting as a family spokesman confirmed that Elder took part in informal "fight nights" back in San Francisco, so while it is certain he knew how to throw a punch, it remains unclear how he could have so easily overtaken a trained paramilitary police officer who, one would hope, would be equally trained in self defense. Of course the brutal stabbing of anyone is indefensible, but the circumstances leading up to this particular crime will prove crucial as the court drama plays out. If the teens were acting in self defense against older men they did not know were police, as Elder told investigators, they could receive leniency. If footage clearly shows the police showing their badges before the attack, it could prove far worse for the suspects. In a police reconstruction of events presented to the press, investigators say it took only a few minutes for the teens to run nearly two miles from where they allegedly stole a backpack back to their hotel room. That timeline, though, has an empty 24-minute window when the police, the teens and the alleged drug dealer and his interloper were all unaccounted for. Attorneys for both teens are demanding a clearer picture of the evidence. Elder's father Ethan, who is returning to California Saturday after visiting his son in prison Thursday and Friday, said he hoped the video would answer questions about the circumstances of the case. Elder's attorney has so far not tried to deny the confession given during the early hours of the investigation. Natale Hjorth's attorneys now say their client didn't know there was a stabbing at all until after his arrest despite the fact the two teens spent the hours after the attack in the same hotel room. A leaked photo of Natale Hjorth blindfolded before he was interrogated has only further muddied the waters. Police have confirmed they are investigating both why that happened and who leaked the photo. The knife–a seven-inch military-style weapon–was found hidden under the ceiling tile in the Le Méridien Visconti hotel room Elder had rented for his Roman holiday. Natale Hjorth was not listed as a guest at the hotel but was arrested in Elder's room. If Natale Hjorth's claims are true, it would mean that Elder lifted the ceiling tile and hid the knife and both men's bloody clothing without him knowing. Investigators are still collecting forensic evidence from the room which could validate or contradict Natale-Hjorth's claims. Lawyers for Natale-Hjorth have filed an appeal to the court order that will keep the teens incarcerated during the preliminary investigative stage. Under Italian law, police can do so for six months before formally indicting them for a crime and then another six months if they need it. While rarely successful so early in an investigation, the appeal will allow the defense to see certain discovery evidence that they have so far not been provided. Elder's lawyers have not yet filed a similar brief, and given news that the two young Americans are turning agaisnt each other, it seems unlikely that the defense teams will share what they learn. The case continues to draw comparisons to the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher. American student Amanda Knox was at first implicated and eventually convicted and acquitted of that murder, in part because of shoddy police work. In the first days of that investigation, police directed the narrative that Knox had confessed, that there was a bloody knife and that CCTV cameras did not work. That case took nearly a decade to play out. This one could take even longer. Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| UPDATE 3-Turkey to launch offensive in Kurdish-controlled area in northern Syria -Erdogan Posted: 04 Aug 2019 07:55 AM PDT ![UPDATE 3-Turkey to launch offensive in Kurdish-controlled area in northern Syria -Erdogan]( "UPDATE 3-Turkey to launch offensive in Kurdish-controlled area in northern Syria -Erdogan") Turkey will carry out a military operation in a Kurdish-controlled area east of the Euphrates in northern Syria, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday, its third offensive to dislodge Kurdish militia fighters close to its border. Turkey had in the past warned of carrying out military operations east of the river, but put them on hold after agreeing with the United States to create a safe zone inside Syria's northeastern border with Turkey that would be cleared of the Kurdish YPG militia.
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| Democrats condemn mass shootings – and point finger at Trump Posted: 04 Aug 2019 11:26 AM PDT  * O'Rourke: 'We have a problem with white nationalist terror' * Castro warns of 'toxic brew' of white nationalismKamala Harris: 'We cannot remain idle and allow this level of carnage to ravage our communities. We need courage. We need to act.' Photograph: Robin Buckson/APTwin mass shootings, 13 hours apart, in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, were swiftly condemned by Democratic politicians.The presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke, who formerly represented El Paso in Congress, accused Trump of being a white nationalist, hours after the mass shooting in the city that left 20 dead and more than two dozen injured."The things that he has said both as a candidate and then as the president of the United States, this cannot be open for debate," O'Rourke told CNN, referring to Trump's record of talking publicly about Mexicans as "rapists" and repeatedly referring to an "infestation" of the US when referring to black Americans and Mexican asylum seekers.O'Rourke referred to the testimony of the FBI director, Chris Wray, in Washington last month that hate crimes against minority populations were increasing in the US."We have a problem with white nationalist terrorism in the United States of America today," O'Rourke said, adding that "these are white men motivated by the kind of fear that this president traffics in."In relation to Trump's reference to white nationalists rallying in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 as "very fine people", O'Rourke said this was: "A very public signal to the rest of this country about what is permissible, and in fact, even, what he encourages to happen."His fellow Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris said the recent spate of massacres demanded a strong response."Last week it was Gilroy," she said, referring to a mass shooting at the annual garlic festival in the northern California town last weekend, which killed three and injured many more. The 19-year-old gunman in that shooting was killed in a confrontation with police, but had referred to white supremacist literature online.Harris added: "Today it's El Paso. How can our country tolerate this? My prayers are yet again with families who are grieving and my thanks are with the first responders, but that is not enough."In a separate tweet, Harris added: "We cannot remain idle and allow this level of carnage to ravage our communities. We need courage. We need to act."Another Democratic 2020 presidential candidate, Pete Buttigieg, told CNN: "Every time this happens we say never again. We say we're going to do something. We say it's going to change and it hasn't … I'm wondering what it will take to get the sense of urgency."Cory Booker, the US senator for New Jersey and yet another presidential runner for the Democrats, accused Trump of "fueling white supremacy and hatred"."The president has been a moral failure. He has sown the seeds that we are seeing now become this harvest of hate. He is responsible. He is a problem in this nation that is driving so much of this hatred," he told MSNBC."If you don't think that having a president speak of such hatred, bigotry and racism … demonize people, calling them invaders, calling people infestation … if you cannot see that that rhetoric is contributing to the violence and hate in our country, then you are unfit to serve," Booker continued.The former housing secretary Julián Castro described a "toxic brew" of white nationalism building in the US. The El Paso shooting, he told NBC's Chuck Todd, "is just one more example of that".The shooter's manifesto, he said, referring to fears that "Hispanics are taking over the state of Texas and changing the country" echoes the language that the president encourages."There is this very toxic brew of white nationalism that is arising. And I know that doesn't reflect by any means – by any means – the vast, vast majority of Americans … we need to pay attention to this, and we need to do something about this."The response, Castro said, is not more people with guns."The answer is to make sure that especially these semiautomatic weapons, these weapons of war are not out on the street and that we do things like universal background checks and red flag laws so that people who shouldn't have their hands on weapons don't get them in the first place."He accused the president of "fanning the flames of bigotry" as a political strategy to win election in 2020.The Ohio Democratic senator Sherrod Brown predicted that shock and sadness at the latest attacks would quickly turn to anger that the government had again failed to pass effective reform of assault weapons laws.He called on the Republican Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, to call the Senate back into session on Monday to pass the background check bill passed by the lower house, widening background checks on those purchasing guns.
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| Zimbabwe Reaches ‘Tipping Point’ as Inflation Blacked Out Posted: 03 Aug 2019 10:00 PM PDT ![Zimbabwe Reaches 'Tipping Point' as Inflation Blacked Out]( "Zimbabwe Reaches 'Tipping Point' as Inflation Blacked Out") (Bloomberg) -- Zimbabwe's finance minister responded to the country's worsening economic crisis last week by blacking out inflation statistics for the next six months, boosting the price of the little power that's available five-fold and admitting what the International Monetary Fund told him in April: the economy will contract for the first time since 2008.At the same time he spoke of fiscal surpluses and a relaxation in local ownership requirements for the key platinum industry. This all happened in a country with daily power cuts of up to 18 hours and shortages of everything from bread to motor fuel. People are receiving food aid in cities for the first time and a drought has necessitated the import of hundreds of thousands of tons of corn.When Robert Mugabe was ousted after four decades in power in late 2017 his replacement, Emmerson Mnangagwa, promised economic regeneration and declared that Zimbabwe is "open for business." Instead things have gone from bad to worse with the effects of rapidly expanding money supply through the sale of Treasury bills under Mugabe's rule coming home to roost and this year's outlawing of the U.S. dollar in favor of a local quasi currency that can't be traded outside the country causing panic."Zimbabwe is at a tipping point and if it falls over the edge it's going to be quite a long way in coming back," said Derek Matyszak, a Zimbabwe-based research consultant for South Africa's Institute for Security Studies. "The wheels are falling off. There is no way out of a Ponzi scheme other than a massive infusion of cash to pay off your creditors."The country with the world's highest inflation rate after Venezuela also suspended annual consumer-price data for the next six months. The authorities need to collect comparable data since the introduction of the new currency in February. That marked a return to 2009, when the country abandoned the Zimbabwe dollar in favor of the U.S. dollar and other currencies after inflation surged to an estimated 500 billion percent.If the more commonly used black-market exchange rate is used, Zimbabwe's annual inflation is currently 558%, about three times the official rate, while Venezuela's is 35,004%, according to Steve H. Hanke, a professor of applied economics at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.Scrapping the official annual rate is "no real loss from an analytical perspective," said Jee-A van der Linde, an economist at NKC African Economics in Paarl, South Africa. "These elevated inflation readings did little more than create panic and damage what little confidence was left."Still, the decision evokes other countries in crisis. Venezuela halted publication of inflation data and while it periodically releases figures, it isn't operating on a regular schedule. In 2013, Argentina was censured by the IMF for tampering with its data.A de-linking of the country's quasi-currencies from parity with the U.S. dollar in February and the re-imposition of the Zimbabwe dollar overnight in June has fueled depreciation with the currency officially trading at 9.28 to the dollar on Aug. 2. The black-market rate was 10.8, according to Marketwatch.co.zw, a website run by analysts. While the government has argued that in the face of foreign-currency shortages it has no choice but to reintroduce its own currency, Hanke disagrees."The Achilles heel is the introduction of the new currency to the exclusion of the dollar," he said. "They have decided to go in the completely opposite direction and claimed it's the best thing since sliced bread and it's going to be an absolute disaster."While the cost of basic services has climbed 400% this year, pay rises have been around 10%, said Japhet Moyo, secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, which has 130,000 members.Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube tried to highlight the country's first positive current-account balance in a decade as a sign of progress. Since his appointment last year, the government has sold only marginal amounts of Treasury bills. And earlier this year, the Cambridge University-trained economics professor forecast that month-on-month inflation, which surged to 39.3% in June, would be close to zero by year-end.The fundamental problem is that the government has failed to attract significant investment and hasn't substantially changed the policies of the Mugabe era, said John Robertson, an independent economist in Harare, the capital."People are very angry" and even though a quarter of the population has already emigrated, more may follow, said Matyszak."The Zimbabwe I once loved has become a cemetery for my son's future" said Ashley Randen, an unemployed single mother of a 12-year-old boy in Harare.\--With assistance from Daniel Cancel and Carolina Millan.To contact the reporters on this story: Antony Sguazzin in Johannesburg at asguazzin@bloomberg.net;Prinesha Naidoo in Johannesburg at pnaidoo7@bloomberg.net;Ray Ndlovu in Johannesburg at rndlovu1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Rene Vollgraaff at rvollgraaff@bloomberg.net, Antony SguazzinFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Iran seizes another foreign oil tanker, state media says Posted: 04 Aug 2019 08:34 AM PDT  Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps accused the vessel, the third detained by Iran amid U.S. tensions, of trying to smuggle oil from Iran.
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| Five dead, several injured after powerful quake rocks Indonesia Posted: 03 Aug 2019 01:31 PM PDT  Five people died and several were injured after a powerful undersea earthquake rocked Indonesia's heavily populated Java island, triggering a brief tsunami warning, the national disaster agency said Saturday. The 6.9 magnitude quake on Friday evening sent residents fleeing to higher ground, while many in the capital Jakarta ran into the streets. An official from Indonesia's national disaster agency warned the quake could generate a tsunami as high as three metres (10 feet), but the alert was lifted several hours later.
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| In 1981, a British Submarine Crashed into a Nuclear Russian Sub Posted: 04 Aug 2019 12:30 AM PDT  Immediately ordering the boat to periscope depth, the Delta III's sonar team detect propeller noise on a bearing 127 degrees. The contact was judged to be a submarine.On May 23, 1981 the Soviet submarine K-211 Petropavlovsk cruised quietly at nine knots, one hundred and fifty feet below the surface of the Arctic Barents Sea. The huge 155-meter-long Delta III (or Kalmar)-class submarine was distinguished by the large boxy compartment on its spine which accommodated the towering launch tubes for sixteen R-29R ballistic missiles, each carrying three independent nuclear warheads. K-211's mission was hair-raisingly straightforward: to cruise undetected for weeks or months at a time, awaiting only the signal that a nuclear war had broken out to unleash its apocalyptic payload from underwater on Western cities and military bases up to four thousand miles away.British and American nuclear-power attack submarines (SSNs), or "hunter-killers," were routinely dispatched to detect Soviet ballistic missiles subs (SSBNs) leaving from base to discreetly stalk them. The quieter SSNs also awaited only a signal of war, an event in which they would attempt to torpedo the Soviet subs before they could unleash their city-destroying weapons.(This first appeared in July 2019.)
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| Suspect sought after woman stabbed in stomach at Brooklyn subway station Posted: 04 Aug 2019 08:33 AM PDT  Police released video of the suspect wanted in connection with a stabbing on a subway platform in Brooklyn.
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| You Probably Forgot All about These Great Performing '90s Cars Posted: 04 Aug 2019 01:00 PM PDT |
| German far-right party ahead in east before regional votes Posted: 04 Aug 2019 01:10 AM PDT  The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has taken the lead in the east of the country ahead of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), just a month before regional elections there, an opinion poll showed on Sunday. The AfD is favored by 23% of voters in the former east, ahead of the CDU on 22%, the far-left Linke on 14%, the Greens on 13% and the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) on 11%, according to a poll in the Bild am Sonntag newspaper.
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| The DOJ Will Not Prosecute James Comey over Trump Memos Posted: 03 Aug 2019 02:30 AM PDT  A free society cannot stay free for long if the criminal-justice system becomes a political weapon, if that becomes our norm.The most alarming aspect of the Trump–Russia investigation, and of the stark difference between the aggression with which it was pursued and the see-no-evil passivity of the Clinton emails caper, is the way the investigative process was used to influence political outcomes.The way to right that wrong is to prevent it from becoming the new normal, not to turn the tables of abuse when power shifts from one side to the other. We can only make things worse by losing the distinction between rebuking errors in judgment and criminalizing them.Ardent Trump supporters are growling over news that the FBI's former director, James Comey, will not be prosecuted by the Justice Department for the mishandling of memoranda he wrote about his contacts with the president. The news has been reported by The Hill's John Solomon and the Washington Post's Devlin Barrett, among others.Comey's handling of his memos is one aspect of probes related to investigations attendant to the 2016 election, which are being conducted by Justice Department independent counsel Michael Horowitz. Indications are that Horowitz referred the memos issue to the Justice Department for possible prosecution and that, after reviewing the IG's findings, Justice declined to pursue the matter as a criminal case.That is the way things are supposed to work. The inspector general's job is to ensure that colorable allegations of misconduct against Justice Department officials (including FBI officials) are thoroughly examined, so that all of the relevant facts are uncovered. The Justice Department then reviews the IG's report, mindful of two imperatives that are in tension. On one hand, clear criminal misconduct must be prosecuted; otherwise we have a two-tiered justice system in which those we trust to enforce the law can violate it with impunity. On the other hand, poor judgment, while it should be censured and may be the basis for disciplinary action, must not be criminalized; otherwise, we discourage talented, honorable people from taking jobs that are all about excruciating judgment calls.What happened in this instance? We don't know yet -- and that alone calls for restraint. It is no knock on Messrs. Solomon and Barrett, who are excellent reporters with good sources, to caution that we have not yet seen the IG report.To be sure, many relevant facts are known. The Comey memos have been public for some time, the former director has testified about them in congressional hearings, and they were part of the mountain of information from which Special Counsel Robert Mueller's staff derived their final report. Still, there is much we do not know. Past experience informs us that IG Horowitz is thorough and careful. His office has interviewed lots of witnesses and scrutinized government reports to which we do not have access. His report is not expected to be released until September. Until then, we won't know what happened, and why. In the meantime, since I have known both Attorney General Bill Barr and former director Jim Comey for many years, I am confident about two things.First, no one is better suited than Barr to weigh the pros and cons of prosecuting alleged government misconduct. He has prioritized the importance of resisting the politicization of law enforcement and he grasps the stakes involved. He is also a big enough boy to tune out the noise from the Trump–Comey feud: the president's nonstop depiction of Comey as the reincarnation of Lavrentiy Beria, and the former director's worn-thin moralizing about how "Trump eats your soul in small bites" -- including Barr's own. The attorney general is not going to authorize a prosecution in the absence of clear evidence of a serious crime.Second, I do not believe that Jim Comey would willfully leak classified information. Unless and until someone can show me he did it, I am going to continue assuming he did not.That does not mean his handling of the memos was model behavior, though. It seems to me that he played with fire.The existence of the memos became known shortly after Comey was fired on May 9, 2017. It is only natural that they raised alarm. One would expect that if a president and an FBI director met several times, memos documenting those conversations would contain at least some classified information. Comey, moreover, brazenly acknowledged that he had orchestrated the leak of at least a portion of one memo to the New York Times. That is not normal.Nevertheless, Comey is very smart. And you don't have to agree with his politics or like his style to realize that he has spent much of his career protecting national security. By definition, when information is classified, that means its unauthorized disclosure could damage American national security. Might Comey mishandle classified information? Sure, it's possible -- plenty of smart, patriotic public officials have done that. But to me, it is implausible that Comey would knowingly do that, much less intentionally transmit classified intelligence to the media.That said, the classified-information facet of this episode has been exaggerated. There were seven memos in all, totaling 15 pages. Our understanding is that Comey tried to avoid putting classified information in them, and believed he had succeeded. Yet after obtaining and accounting for all of them, the FBI designated two of them as "confidential," the lowest level of classification. We do not know at this point (or, at least, I don't know) whether the memo leaked to the Times -- regarding the February 2017 Trump–Comey discussion of the investigation of former national-security adviser Michael Flynn -- was one of the classified ones. But we can easily deduce that Comey neither intended it to be classified nor thought it was. At one point in the memo, Comey wrote, "NOTE: Because this is an unclassified document, I will be limited in how I describe what I said next."We know that Comey shared this memo with a friend (who is also a friend of mine, and who was his intermediary with the Times), and that he shared at least some of the memos with his lawyers (who are also friends of mine). From a classified-information standpoint, however, we are talking about a small number of documents, and it is unclear that Comey knew anything in them was classified. Even if he turned out to be wrong about that, it is highly unlikely that prosecutors could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he was grossly negligent in mishandling them, much less that he willfully mishandled them.To my mind, the issue here has never been criminal misconduct in connection with classified information. The relevant matters are the non-criminal but serious impropriety in the handling of non-public government information, and the failure to protect the confidentiality of communications as to which the president has a presumptive privilege -- a privilege that subordinate executive officials are obliged to respect, regardless of whether they respect the president himself.There is no problem with Comey's having chosen to write the memos. Much is made of the fact that he did not trust President Trump and that he felt compelled to document their communications, even though he did not do that when he spoke with President Obama. So what? He is entitled to feel that way. He was under no duty either to write or to refrain from writing memos. As long as he recorded events fairly and honestly when he chose to report them, nothing more was required.The problem, however, is that the former director seems to have regarded the memos as his own property, rather than the government's. To the contrary, these were clearly accounts of government business compiled by a government official using government property on government time. The memos were not Comey's to keep; and they were certainly not his to disseminate to the media.Reports of non-public government business are sensitive, regardless of whether they contain classified information. Conversations between the president and top national-security officials are among the most sensitive. Top executive officers, such as the FBI director, are well aware that those communications are presumptively privileged, and that the privilege belongs to the president. The director can be cut some slack for keeping memos he wrote in his home rather than in his office -- an FBI director is never off duty. But he's got no business leaking government files of any kind to the media, and that goes double for memoranda about communications with the president -- any president, end of story.It makes no difference that, at the time of the leak, Comey was no longer the FBI director. A public official, particularly of such high rank, has continuing fiduciary duties upon leaving government service -- even when the departure is against his will. Of course it was wrong for the administration to give conflicting rationales for Comey's firing. It was also wrong for the president to goad the former director with a farcical, shades-of-Watergate tweet, suggesting there might be White House recordings of their conversations. There are many ways the former director could appropriately have responded to these provocations; leaking a government memo was not one of them.Comey has said he was hoping to trigger the appointment of a special counsel. But he could have done that, in his new capacity as a private citizen, by arranging a press conference at which he called for the appointment of a special counsel. It would have gotten plenty of attention. Comey, a gifted public speaker, would have made a forceful presentation that would have gotten significant traction on Capitol Hill, where Democrats were already clamoring for a special counsel.The former director's decision to proceed by leaking to the media a government memo, documenting a sensitive but probably not classified meeting with the president, was wrong. It was the kind of behavior it is impossible to imagine that Comey, as FBI director, would abide if one of his subordinates had done it. Indeed, in Comey's memo about the Flynn conversation, he describes speaking at length with Trump about the menace of leaks, about how they undermine the president's capacity to do his job. He even recounts telling the president that he was "eager to find leakers and would like to nail one to the door as a message."To leak the memo was unbecoming conduct. It is worthy of censure. That does not make it a felony.The ongoing Justice Department and congressional inquiries into the investigations attendant to the 2016 election are wide-ranging. In assessing investigative overreach, it is vital to remember that the remedy for politicized law enforcement is not more politicized law enforcement. If officials with a commendable record of service to the country took steps they should not have taken out of lapses in judgment -- including lapses driven by overwrought suspicions of impending danger to the nation -- then there needs to be an accounting. We will also need to implement better oversight procedures to insure against a repetition.That, however, does not mean crimes were committed. The president's fans should remember that their main complaint has been that Donald Trump and his campaign were treated as suspects in heinous, traitorous crimes despite the absence of credible incriminating evidence. The investigators, too, are entitled not to be presumed guilty of crimes, even by those of us who are convinced that there were investigative irregularities.Let's get the facts first, and then we can decide whether laws were broken, and whether there has been misconduct worthy of prosecution. And when we decide, let's bear in mind that a norm against criminalizing political disputes cannot be reestablished unless we commit to reestablishing it. That means keeping the political vendettas out of the investigations.
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| Dayton, El Paso, Gilroy and beyond: You're right to be afraid. Mass shootings are more numerous and deadly Posted: 04 Aug 2019 12:10 PM PDT  A survey found 41% of Americans fear random mass shootings. FBI data shows a rise in shootings – and victims – so that's not an unreasonable fear.
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| Canada resident home after Iran jail escape: ministry, family Posted: 03 Aug 2019 11:36 PM PDT  An Iranian serving a life sentence on a conviction of designing a pornographic website has fled the country while on short-term release from prison and has arrived in Canada, the foreign ministry and his family said. "Canada welcomes the news that Saeed Malekpour has been reunited with his family in Canada," a foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement received by AFP. "We have advocated for Mr Malekpour's release and are pleased that he is now in Canada," the spokesman said, without elaborating due to privacy considerations.
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| Trump ‘blames mental illness’ for mass shootings as Democrats say president’s racism is responsible Posted: 04 Aug 2019 12:00 PM PDT  Democratic presidential candidates condemned Donald Trump's racism and the failure to take action on gun control following the mass shooting by a suspected white supremacist in El Paso.Former Texas congressman Beto O'Rourke, who represented the district where the attack took place, said the US president bore some responsibility for the attack which left at least 20 people dead."He is a racist, and he stokes racism in this country," he added. "It does not just offend our sensibilities; it fundamentally changes the character of this country and it leads to violence."Mr Trump suggested that the gunmen were "really seriously mentally ill".The president spent the weekend golfing at his Bedminster course.He emerged to speak to reporters on Sunday afternoon."Hate has no place in our country," he said. "We're going to take care of [the problem,]"The president pointed to a mental illness problem in the US, calling the gunmen "really very seriously mentally ill".He did not mention gun control or the El Paso shooter's alleged links to white supremacist ideology.Cory Booker, the first African American US senator from New Jersey, highlighted Mr Trump's use of words like "infestation" and "invasion" as he accused the president of "giving licence to this kind of violence"."One of the lessons in my faith is that you reap what you sow," the senator for New Jersey said. "He's responsible."Bernie Sanders also targeted the president as he urged the US to "come together to reject this dangerous and growing culture of bigotry espoused by Trump and his allies"."Instead of wasting money putting children in cages, we must seriously address the scourge of violent bigotry and domestic terrorism," the Vermont senator added."We must treat this violent racism like the security threat that it is."Mr Sanders also joined renewed calls for gun safety legislation following the shooting at a Walmart store on Saturday."After every tragedy the Senate, intimidated by the NRA's power, does nothing," he said. "This must change. We need a president and congress that listen to Americans, not the ideology of a right-wing extremist organisation. We must pass common sense gun safety legislation."California senator Kamala Harris urged the president to "have the courage to do something" and said congress should pass "reasonable gun safety laws", adding: "We shouldn't have to live in fear of mass shootings."Former vice president Joe Biden tweeted: "How many lives must be cut short? How many communities must be torn apart? It's past time we take action and end our gun violence epidemic.""Time to ban and buy back every assault weapon in America," said California congressman Eric Swalwell.Targeting the Republican leadership in Washington DC, Elizabeth Warren said: "Americans shouldn't have to live in fear that if they go to Walmart, or a festival, or school, or just walk down the street that they won't make it home alive. This has to stop."As it emerged that the suspect – a white man in his 20s named as Patrick Crusius – had posted a racist manifesto online before launching the attack, Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg said the US was "under attack from white nationalist terrorism".He said the attacker was "abetted by weak gun laws", and added: "If we are serious about national security, we must summon the courage to name and defeat this evil.""Our president isn't just failing to confront and disarm these domestic terrorists, he is amplifying and condoning their hate," he said.Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was one of four female politicians attacked by Mr Trump in recent racist tweets, said right-wing extremists were being radicalised on social media."White supremacy has quickly turned into a domestic terror crisis," she said. "They rely on you thinking it's not a big deal. It is a big deal. White supremacy now makes up the majority of domestic terrorism in the United States. They radicalise online."The congresswoman added: "We can no longer bear to see gun violence and mass shootings continue as a norm in America. How many deaths to gun violence could have been preventable with responsible gun safety laws? How many children would still have their mothers? Enough. It's way past time we act.""Video games aren't causing mass shootings, white supremacy is," she said."Sadly the GOP refuse to acknowledge that, bc their strategy relies on rallying a white supremacist base. That's why the President hosts stadiums of people chanting 'send her back"& targets Congress-members of color.'"Gabrielle Giffords, the congresswoman who survived an attempted assassination by a gunman in Tucson, Arizona, urged the president and Republican leader Mitch McConnell to call the Senate back from recess "immediately"."I have no more words. I only have anger," she tweeted. "We cannot afford to wait another day for lawmakers to address this horrific national public safety threat."Mr Trump has faced widespread criticism during his presidency for calling immigrants "animals", drug dealers and rapists, and describing their arrival at the US-Mexico border as an "invasion".A poll found more than half of American voters thought Mr Trump was racist, following his attacks on Baltimore as a "rodent-infested mess" and his tweet telling four Democrat congresswomen – including Somali-born Ilhan Omar – to "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came".The US president has condemned the shooting as a "hateful act" and said it "was not only tragic, it was an act of cowardice ... there are no reasons or excuses that will ever justify killing innocent people."
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| McDonald's employee fired after allegedly turning away paramedics: 'We don't serve badges here' Posted: 03 Aug 2019 01:31 PM PDT  A McDonald's employee was fired after she allegedly refused to serveparamedics Wednesday night, WFTS reports
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| The Latest: HK police tear gas protesters in shopping area Posted: 04 Aug 2019 07:19 AM PDT  Riot police in Hong Kong have fired rounds of tear gas at protesters occupying a high-end shopping area. The tear gas Sunday evening beat back most of the crowd, but some protesters resisted by throwing the canisters back at officers and hurling eggs and other objects. Demonstrators debated whether they could feasibly defend the area or if they should migrate to another district, as they have been doing throughout the night.
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| Here's What Russia Thinks About the Future of America's Aircraft Carriers Posted: 03 Aug 2019 02:14 PM PDT  The 2019 iteration of the naval exercise Sea Breeze, which brought together nineteen nations (mostly from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and thirty-two ships, ended in the Ukrainian port of Odesa on July 12. The exercise was apparently conducted without incident. The Black Sea has indeed become fraught with tension since the November 2018 Kerch Strait skirmish, which witnessed Russia's violent seizure of three Ukrainian vessels, whose crews remain in Russian captivity.If some nationalists in Kyiv thought that crisis would cause Ukrainians to "rally round the flag" and support Petro Poroshenko's continuing hard line regarding Russia and the fate of the Donbas, they were utterly mistaken. Now, if Moscow is serious about dealing constructively with the new administration in Kyiv, then Kremlin needs to cut the gamesmanship and release the captive crews and vessels as a gesture of goodwill.
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| EU must change its negotiating terms for Brexit, says Britain's Barclay Posted: 04 Aug 2019 06:36 AM PDT  The European Union's chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, must go back to the bloc's leaders to change the terms of the talks because Britain's parliament will not accept the current deal, British Brexit minister Stephen Barclay said on Sunday. Writing in the Mail on Sunday newspaper, Barclay said the "political realities" had changed since Barnier's instructions were set after Britain voted to leave the EU more than three years and that his mandate should reflect those differences. Britain's new prime minister Boris Johnson has pledged to leave the EU on Oct. 31 with or without a deal, and has told the bloc there is no point in new talks unless negotiators are willing to drop the so-called Northern Irish backstop agreed with his predecessor Theresa May.
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| Brazil gang leader dresses up as daughter in jail escape bid Posted: 04 Aug 2019 10:57 AM PDT  A Brazilian gang leader tried to escape from prison by dressing up as his daughter when she visited him behind bars and walking out the penitentiary's main door in her place, authorities said Sunday. Rio's State Secretary of Prison Administration released photos showing da Silva in a silicon girl's mask and long dark-haired wig, wearing tight jeans and a pink shirt with a cartoon image of donuts. Authorities say da Silva was part of the leadership of the Red Command, one of the most powerful criminal groups in Brazil that controlled drug trafficking in a large part of Rio.
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| '#ThanksObama': 2020 Democrats walk back Obama criticisms Posted: 02 Aug 2019 07:52 PM PDT  Several 2020 Democrats took aim at former President Barack Obama during the primary debates this week but seemed to have a change of heart in the days since.
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| Migrants on German NGO ship allowed to disembark in Malta Posted: 04 Aug 2019 04:45 AM PDT  Forty migrants aboard a German NGO rescue ship arrived in Malta on Sunday after Italy refused to let them land and a distribution agreement was made between several EU countries. The Alan Kurdi ship, run by charity Sea-Eye, had rescued the migrants off the Libyan coast on Wednesday but Italy's far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini denied the boat the right to use Italian ports. The boat instead travelled to Malta.
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| Trump smirked at idea of shooting migrants at rally three months before El Paso massacre Posted: 04 Aug 2019 10:34 AM PDT  Donald Trump laughed and joked after a supporter suggested shooting Mexican migrants at a rally in May 2019.The clip of the interaction is once again spreading across social media, as the US reels from the El Paso massacre."When you have 15,000 people marching up, and you have hundreds and hundreds of [immigrants], and you have two or three border security people that are brave and great – and don't forget we don't let them and we can't let them use weapons," Mr Trump said, to an audience of thousands in Florida."We can't. Other countries do, we can't. I would never do that. But how do you stop these people?"In response someone from the audience shouted: "Shoot them!"Mr Trump then appeared to laugh before shaking his head and saying: "That's only in the Panhandle you can get away with that statement."The crowd then erupted into laughter and cheers, and Mr Trump added: "Only in the Panhandle!"The Florida Panhandle is a region in the north west of the state.The interaction was remembered with anger online, in the aftermath of the El Paso massacre.At least 20 people were killed when a white male opened fire at a Walmart in the Cielo Vista mall on Saturday.Several people are injured and being treated in hospital. Police said that at least three Mexicans were among the dead.The suspected gunman, Patrick Crusius, is an alleged white supremacist.In the wake of the massacre politicians condemned Donald Trump's racism and Congress' failure to take action on gun control.Pete Buttigieg, a presidential primary candidate, said the US was "under attack from white nationalist terrorism".He said that the attacker was "abetted by weak gun laws" and added: "If we are serious about national security, we must summon the courage to name and defeat this evil."Former Texas congressman Beto O'Rourke, who represented the district where the attack took place, said the US president bore some responsibility for the attack which left 20 people dead."He is a racist, and he stokes racism in this country," he added."It does not just offend our sensibilities; it fundamentally changes the character of this country and it leads to violence."
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| Malaysia Voices Trust in South China Sea Pact Posted: 04 Aug 2019 03:00 PM PDT ![Malaysia Voices Trust in South China Sea Pact]( "Malaysia Voices Trust in South China Sea Pact") (Bloomberg) -- Malaysia is confident it can reach an agreement with China to settle tensions in the South China Sea after its neighbors warned that incidents in the disputed waters had "eroded trust."The country is "very hopeful" that a code of conduct for the area will be completed within the three-year deadline or earlier, Malaysia's Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah said in an interview with Bloomberg Television's Haslinda Amin."We are very hopeful that within three years or perhaps even earlier we can come up with a better understanding of things," Saifuddin said in the interview in Bangkok after the Asean Foreign Ministers Meeting. "We are also hopeful that the U.S. and other superpowers will respect the CoC once its implemented."Saifuddin said he had not seen an increased presence of Chinese navy vessels in the disputed region, which includes a waterway that carries more than $3 trillion in trade each year.His comments come after a joint communique from Asean aired concerns on the same day that China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi touted a preliminary draft of the code of conduct to end the decades-long conflict over the area. Activities in the South China Sea, including land reclamation, "increased tensions and may undermine peace, security and stability in the region," the 10-nation bloc of Southeast Asian countries said in the statement.Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's stance on China has warmed ever since he stepped into power last year and quickly put Chinese-backed projects on hold for review. He has since resumed some of the contracts and looked to Chinese companies from Huawei Technologies Co. to SenseTime Group Ltd. for cooperation in artificial intelligence and transport.As trade tensions between the U.S. and China escalate, Saifuddin is concerned that possible U.S. sanctions against Malaysia could prevent it from trading with China. Vietnam is a cautionary tale, with the U.S. imposing duties on steel imports from the country in July."We are a small player and we would like to trade with both the U.S. and China," Saifuddin said. If Malaysia were to be punished for its trade surplus with the U.S., then "we just have to tell the U.S. that you are just being very unfair and you are being a big bully," he added.To contact the reporters on this story: Anisah Shukry in Kuala Lumpur at ashukry2@bloomberg.net;Haslinda Amin in Singapore at hamin1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Yudith Ho at yho35@bloomberg.net, Ruth PollardFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Deadly mass shooting in El Paso rocks the entire state of Texas Posted: 04 Aug 2019 06:35 AM PDT  Authorities remain on scene following shooting; Jeff Paul has the latest details from El Paso.
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| Iraq's Yazidi women must abandon kids born in IS captivity Posted: 03 Aug 2019 09:44 AM PDT ![Iraq's Yazidi women must abandon kids born in IS captivity]( "Iraq's Yazidi women must abandon kids born in IS captivity") Yazidi women and girls who were enslaved and raped by Islamic State militants have few choices. Five years ago Saturday, IS militants launched attacks on Yazidi villages in northern Iraq, kidnapping, enslaving and massacring thousands. In April, a month after the final military defeat of IS, Yazidi religious leaders made an apparent bid to protect the insular and still-grieving community by decreeing that they will embrace survivors of militant attacks.
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| Russia’s Military Admits It Needs Western Technology Posted: 03 Aug 2019 01:00 PM PDT  When Western nations imposed economic sanctions after Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, Moscow had an answer: Russia would substitute domestic products for foreign imports.But Russia's defense industry is still using imported parts despite the government ban, according to Russia's top prosecutor."Import substitution in the defense industry remains a problem," warned Prosecutor-General Yuri Chaika. "Instances of non-compliance with the ban to purchase foreign equipment whose counterparts are manufactured in Russia continue to be revealed.""In the framework of import substitution in the defense industry, it is vital to ensure compliance with the deadlines for replacing components," said First Deputy Prosecutor General Alexander Buksman. "Raw and [other] materials produced by NATO countries and Ukraine, used to manufacture machines, arms, military and special equipment, prevent non-compliance with the ban on the budget-funded purchase of foreign equipment, analogues of which are produced in Russia."Unfortunately, the problem is that equivalents to Western goods are often not produced in Russia. "Russia produces few high value goods that can compete with imports," noted a 2017 Moscow Times article. "Thanks to oil inflating the value of the ruble it has always been cheaper and easier to import finished goods than go through the process of investing money into expensive production and development lines that produce goods that are, at the end of the day, inferior to the imports."
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| Trial for priests accused of abusing deaf Argentine students Posted: 04 Aug 2019 09:54 AM PDT  Ezequiel Villalonga signs frantically with his hands to express the power he feels after years of suffering now that the priests whom he and other former students at an Argentine institute for the deaf accuse of abuse are finally going to trial. Villalonga, 18, is one of about 20 ex-students of the Antonio Próvolo Institute for Deaf and Hearing Impaired Children in Mendoza province who say they were sexually abused, including cases of rape, between 2004 and 2016. The complaints at the institute came to light at the end of 2016 and created a scandal that deepened when it emerged that one of the accused, the Rev. Nicola Corradi, had been reported for similar allegations at the Antonio Próvolo institute in Verona, Italy, and that the pope had been notified that Corradi was running a similar center in Argentina.
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| Kashmir turmoil rises as India restricts movement, regional leaders fear arrest Posted: 04 Aug 2019 05:55 AM PDT  SRINAGAR/ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - The disputed region of Kashmir was thrown into further turmoil in the early hours of Monday as regional leaders said they feared being arrested and Indian officials imposed restrictions in the city of Srinagar and suspended mobile data services in parts of the state. Tensions in Kashmir, which is claimed by both India and Pakistan, had risen since Friday when local Indian officials issued an alert over possible militant attacks by Pakistan-based groups. Pakistan has rejected those assertions, but thousands of Indian tourists, pilgrims and workers left the region in panic over the weekend.
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