| Romney speculates Turkey called Trump's bluff: 'Are we so weak and inept?' Posted: 17 Oct 2019 03:20 PM PDT  The Utah senator delivers an impassioned speech on the Senate floor that accuses the president of betraying American values.
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| Police arrest 2nd suspect in case of isolated Dutch family Posted: 18 Oct 2019 04:43 AM PDT  Dutch police said Thursday that a group of people discovered on an isolated farm this week may have been kept there against their will for up to nine years, as they arrested a 67-year-old man who says he is the father of the group. The man who raised the alarm after walking into a local bar and ordering five beers for himself also says he belongs to the family. While the six people on the farm and the man who raised the alarm say they are all from the same family — a father and six siblings all now young adults — police say they are still investigating their exact relationship as none of the siblings appears to have been registered with authorities.
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| Suspect in Case Behind Unrest to Surrender: Hong Kong Update Posted: 18 Oct 2019 09:56 PM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Hong Kong protesters flooded the city's streets again on Friday and police banned a large pro-democracy march planned for Sunday, as the Asian financial hub prepared for yet another weekend of unrest. Meanwhile, the suspect in a Taiwan murder case that sparked Hong Kong's crisis agreed to surrender himself.Protesters are seeking to keep the pressure on Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam with a 20th straight weekend of demonstrations. Earlier this week, Lam was twice shouted down in the city's legislature by opposition lawmakers as she discussed her annual policy address.The protests began in opposition to Lam's since-scrapped bill allowing extraditions to mainland China and have since expanded to include calls for greater democracy and an independent inquiry. The unrest has turned increasingly violent, with frequent clashes between protesters and police, including an attack Wednesday on the organizer of Sunday's march by several men wielding hammers.Here's the latest (all times local):Taiwan gets letter (10:45 a.m.)Taiwan's Criminal Investigation Bureau confirmed it had received a letter from the Hong Kong police offering assistance in the case of Chan Tong-kai, Central News Agency reported.There is no precedent for the cooperation and the Taiwan bureau will follow up with relevant departments for discussion, CNA reported.Homicide suspect to surrender himself to Taiwan (11:28 p.m.)Hong Kong's Chief Executive received a letter Friday from Chan Tong-kai, a Hong Kong man who's been accused of killing his pregnant girlfriend during a Valentine's Day trip to Taiwan, saying that he'd decided to surrender himself to Taiwan, according to a statement on the website of Hong Kong's government.Chan, who's currently serving a prison sentence for money laundering in a Hong Kong jail, "requested the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government to assist him in making the relevant arrangement," according to the statement.Hong Kong newspaper Sing Tao Daily reported earlier on Friday, citing a person it didn't identify, that Chan made the decision after consulting with a pastor.Protesters march across city (1 p.m.)Demonstrators marched in the Central financial district on Hong Kong Island, temporarily blocking traffic, as well as in the Tsim Sha Tsui and Mong Kok neighborhoods of Kowloon. Some carried a banner calling on the Hong Kong government to agree to their five demands, which include an independent inquiry into police violence, an amnesty for arrested protesters and greater democratic freedoms.Police deny weekend permit (12:30 p.m.)Hong Kong police denied a protest permit for the Civil Human Rights Front's planned march in Kowloon on Sunday. The group -- whose organizer Jimmy Sham was hospitalized this week -- has been behind some of the largest protests during the last five months, including a few that have drawn over one million people. In many cases, protesters have continued to show up at events that lack police permits, with some devolving into violent clashes with police.\--With assistance from Dominic Lau.To contact the reporter on this story: Iain Marlow in Hong Kong at imarlow1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Brendan Scott at bscott66@bloomberg.net, Stanley JamesFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| China says will work with the U.S. to address each other's core concerns Posted: 18 Oct 2019 08:06 PM PDT  Chinese Vice Premier Liu He said on Saturday that China will work with the United States to address each other's core concerns on the basis of equality and mutual respect, and that stopping the trade war would be good for both sides and the world. "The two sides have made substantial progress in many fields, laying an important foundation for the signing of a phased agreement," Liu, also the chief negotiator in the trade talks, told a virtual reality conference in Nanchang, the capital of southeastern Jiangxi province. It's what producers and consumers alike are hoping for," Liu said in a rare public speech about the trade war.
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| New ICE Program Exposes Hundreds of Fraudulent ‘Family Units’ Trying to Cross The Border Posted: 18 Oct 2019 05:41 AM PDT  U.S. immigration authorities have discovered hundreds of instances at the border of "family unit fraud," or unrelated individuals posing as families, over the last six months thanks to a new investigative initiative.Authorities exposed 238 fraudulent families presenting 329 false documents, according to the results of an investigation run by Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations unit in El Paso, Texas, the results of which were announced Thursday.More than 350 of those individuals are facing federal prosecution for crimes including human smuggling, making false statements, conspiracy, and illegal re-entry after removal. Authorities have referred 19 children to U.S. Health and Human Services as a result of this investigation. Another 50 migrants fraudulently claimed to be unaccompanied minors."Some of the most disturbing cases identified involve transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) and individuals who are increasingly exploiting innocent children to further their criminal activity," ICE said in a statement.In some cases, criminal organizations made deals with the children's biological parents to transfer children as young as 4 months old to the U.S. and pose as a family unit either for human smuggling purposes or to fraudulently obtain immigration benefits, ICE said."These are examples of the dark side of this humanitarian crisis that our Border Patrol and HSI agents are working tirelessly to identify," said El Paso Sector Interim Chief Gloria Chavez. "We will pursue the highest of judicial consequences for those who commit fraud and exploit innocent children."The Trump administration has attempted to end the "catch and release" policy for migrant family units, which provides migrant families an expedited release into the U.S. as their asylum cases are being processed.Then–acting Homeland Security secretary Kevin McAleenan said last month that the vast majority of migrant families who enter the country illegally will no longer be eligible for "catch and release" due to the implementation of stricter policies. One such policy, the Migrant Protection Protocols, requires that migrants wait in Mexico while their asylum claims are being adjudicated.
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| One year on, migrant caravan leaves unexpected legacy Posted: 18 Oct 2019 06:25 PM PDT  A year ago, thousands of Central American men, women and children chasing the American dream arrived in Mexico in a massive caravan that has left a lasting legacy -- just not the one people generally thought it would. Fleeing chronic poverty and brutal gang violence at home, they banded together in hopes of finding safety in numbers against the dangers of the journey, including criminal gangs that regularly extort, kidnap and kill migrants. The images made an impact around the world: carrying their meager belongings on their backs, many migrants pressed small children to their chests or held them by the hand.
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| Moms Demand Action founder says advocacy group is not anti-gun Posted: 17 Oct 2019 07:08 PM PDT  Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts spoke with CBS News' Major Garrett for this week's episode of "The Takeout"
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| Volvo launches very first fully electric vehicle: the XC40 Recharge Posted: 17 Oct 2019 08:13 AM PDT  Volvo has officially launched its very first EV line and its very first EV: The XC40 small SUV is the first member of the Recharge family. To add to the firsts surrounding this launch, the XC40 small SUV is also the first of the brand equipped with an Android-powered infotainment system -- it's better late than never. This premiere has been coupled with an announcement by the company about their plans to launch a fully electric car every year "with the rest hybrids." Recharge will be the name encapsulating all the brand's electrified vehicles.
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| Trump says Kurds are 'very happy' with U.S.-brokered deal and U.S. has 'taken control' of oil Posted: 18 Oct 2019 02:11 PM PDT  Fighting is continuing near the Syria-Turkey border despite a Trump administration boast it had helped broker a 'cease-fire,' Kurdish authorities say.
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| Atatiana Jefferson's death highlights a long history of police violence in Fort Worth, and the community says it's time for a 'reckoning' Posted: 18 Oct 2019 08:07 AM PDT  Atatiana Jefferson was shot and killed by Fort Worth police officer Aaron Dean. Her death was the sixth fatal police shooting in the city since June.
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| U.S. ground troops will not enforce Syria safe zone: defense secretary Posted: 18 Oct 2019 10:53 AM PDT  Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan earlier on Friday said Turkey will set up a dozen observation posts across northeast Syria, insisting that a planned "safe zone" will extend much further than U.S. officials said was covered under a fragile ceasefire deal.
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| Rep. Nunes tries to use Steele dossier to defend Trump during closed-door hearing Posted: 18 Oct 2019 12:18 PM PDT  During a closed-door impeachment meeting on Capitol Hill, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) brought up a topic that surprised some attendees: the Steele dossier. The context, according to three sources familiar with the episode, was his effort to explain why President Trump might be "upset" about Ukraine.
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| Macron Says U.K. Shouldn’t Get New Delay If Johnson Loses Vote Posted: 18 Oct 2019 07:59 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- French President Emmanuel Macron heaped pressure on the British Parliament to back Boris Johnson's Brexit deal, saying the U.K.'s departure from the European Union shouldn't be delayed a moment longer.With Parliament due to vote on the revised agreement on Saturday, Macron's remarks echoed the message Johnson himself has been sending to reticent MPs: it's now or never. "I don't think a new extension should be granted," Macron told reporters after a summit of EU leaders in Brussels, where the deal had been rubber stamped. "The Oct. 31 deadline must be met."Macron's stance increases the risk that the U.K. will crash out of the EU without a deal on Oct. 31. But the reality is more nuanced, according to EU diplomats who doubt the bloc will ever throw the U.K. off a cliff without a safety net. The pound dipped on the comments, and then recovered.Selling the DealAfter sealing a revised deal with the EU on Thursday, Johnson is spending Friday frantically talking to politicians from his own and other parties as he tries to rustle up a majority. The prime minister needs to add 61 votes to the tally his predecessor Theresa May managed when her version of the Brexit deal was defeated for a third and final time in March.The new agreement differs from May's agreement because only Northern Ireland rather than the whole U.K. will continue to apply the EU's customs rules. That's upset the province's Democratic Unionist Party whose MPs say they won't back Johnson's deal on Saturday.If Johnson loses the vote, he's obliged by law to request from the EU another extension by the end of the day. But any postponement must be approved unanimously by the EU's 27 leaders so Macron would have a veto.EU officials were expecting such an intervention by Macron, who made similar noises before approving a Brexit delay in April, but they said that it's very unlikely that he or any other leader would prevent another one, particularly if the U.K. was headed for a general election. While the bloc is just as keen to get Britain's departure over the line as Johnson, it considers a no-deal exit in two weeks a far worse prospect than another postponement.Envoys from the 27 remaining countries and the European Commission are due to meet on Sunday to discuss next steps should Johnson's deal fall.The French have consistently taken a hard line in Brexit negotiations and Macron argues that the tight deadline he insisted on the last time the process was extended helped force Johnson into concessions. Several EU governments privately now regret delaying Brexit from April until October, acknowledging that it took the pressure of the U.K. to pass a deal."I was alone and I don't think I was wrong," Macron said, referring to the decision six months ago.Other leaders were more circumspect on the issue, with Leo Varadkar, the prime minister of Ireland, which stands to be affected most by a no-deal Brexit, saying a delay isn't guaranteed and Luxembourg premier Xavier Bettel insisting the ball was now in the U.K. Parliament's court."We have done our job," he said. "There's a plan A, but there's no plan B."(Updates with context throughout.)\--With assistance from Stephanie Bodoni.To contact the reporters on this story: Helene Fouquet in Paris at hfouquet1@bloomberg.net;Ian Wishart in Brussels at iwishart@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.netFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Clever-Approved Travel Gear That Looks Good and Works Even Better Posted: 18 Oct 2019 12:34 PM PDT |
| Murderer who triggered Hong Kong protests will go to Taiwan: pastor Posted: 18 Oct 2019 12:05 PM PDT  A man who inadvertently triggered Hong Kong's huge protests after he murdered his girlfriend in Taiwan has agreed to return to the island to face justice, a clergyman who has visited him in prison said on Friday. Chan Tong-kai, 20, is wanted in Taiwan for the murder of his pregnant girlfriend during a holiday the two Hong Kongers took there in February last year. The case triggered an ill-fated proposal by Hong Kong's pro-Beijing government to ram through a sweeping extradition bill which would have allowed the city to extradite suspects to any territory, including the authoritarian mainland.
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| Trump's former personal lawyer says Rudy Giuliani has 'gone off the rails,' has a secret Ukraine ledger Posted: 17 Oct 2019 10:50 PM PDT ![Trump's former personal lawyer says Rudy Giuliani has 'gone off the rails,' has a secret Ukraine ledger]( "Trump's former personal lawyer says Rudy Giuliani has 'gone off the rails,' has a secret Ukraine ledger") Jay Goldberg, President Trump's personal lawyer for 15 years, told MSNBC's Ari Melber on Thursday night that he warned Trump not to hire his current personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani."I think he's gone off the rails," Goldberg said of Giuliani, now being scrutinized by federal prosecutors in Manhattan for his work in Ukraine. "I think he will have legal liability." When Trump asked him last March if he should retain Giuliani's legal services, "I said despite his background, which as extraordinarily good, Giuliani would not make a good defense-type lawyer," Goldberg said, because "he had spent too much time as a prosecutor; prosecutors can generally go outside the line and there's nobody to correct them." He added that he thinks "Giuliani has been seduced by Mar-a-Lago, the lifestyle.""Does Rudy Giuliani have any evidence or records that could resolve what he was doing with Ukraine?" Melber asked, and Goldberg dropped a potential bombshell: "Yes, there's a book that he kept of all the contacts that he made while in the Ukraine. It hasn't been subpoenaed thus far, it hasn't come to light, and I tell you that if the subpoena is issued for that book that he prepared, it will redound to the detriment of Donald under an agency kind of concept, that Donald will be responsible for all the things that he did. And Giuliani did a lot of the things that he's used to doing while he was a prosecutor.""Rudy Giuliani prepared this book, you say?" Melber asked. "Yes," Goldberg replied. "I've seen the book." Melber pointed out that now he has disclosed its existence on national TV, it is likely to be subpoenaed. "Let the chips fall where they may," Goldberg said. "Giuliani likes to keep a log of the things that he's doing because he wants to show it to the client.""This is crazy," journalist Marcy Wheeler said of Goldberg's revelation. "In what capacity did he see the book? And why does 'cybersecurity' expert Rudy G have a book of his mob ties?" There's also a question of whether the likely subpoena will arrive in time. > Rudy Giuliani right now thanks to Jay Goldberg on the @TheBeatWithAri pic.twitter.com/slNaxSg7NC> > -- Mickey (@Mickey115207446) October 17, 2019
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| Family Feud Throws Police Shooting Victim Atatiana Jefferson’s Funeral Into Chaos Posted: 18 Oct 2019 07:17 PM PDT  FacebookAtatiana Jefferson, the black woman shot dead in her home by a white Texas cop who didn't identify himself, was supposed to be laid to rest this weekend.But funeral plans have been thrown into disarray amid a family legal battle over the arrangements.Local news outlets reported Friday night that Marquis Jefferson, who is identified on the death certificate as Atatiana's father, went to court and got a judge to issue a restraining order to stop the burial.He claims that Atatiana's aunt, Venitta Body, cut him out of the funeral planning and that he will suffer "immediate and irreparable injury" if it goes forward. Body has said Marquis Jefferson is not Atatiana's legal or biological father, the Dallas Morning News reported.Texas Police Officer Fatally Shoots Black Woman Inside Her Own Home During Welfare CheckLee Merritt, the attorney representing some relatives, said on Twitter that the Saturday funeral—which was to feature prominent civil rights activists—would still happen.Both sides are due in court Monday morning for a hearing.Atatiana Jefferson, 28, was gunned down in her Fort Worth home on Oct. 12 after a neighbor called police to check on an open door in the dead of night.Her 8-year-old nephew told authorities she heard someone outside, got a gun out of her purse and pointed it at the window, fearing an intruder, according to court documents.Bodycam footage shows Officer Aaron Dean shouting at her to put her hands up before opening fire within seconds; it's not clear if he saw the weapon.Texas Cop Who Fatally Shot Black Woman Charged With MurderDean resigned from the police force the next day and has since been charged with murder."I get it. We are trying to do better... anyone who had looked at that video saw it was wrong," Fort Worth Police Chief Ed Kraus told reporters earlier in the week.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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| Plans pushed back to explode 2 cranes in New Orleans Posted: 18 Oct 2019 01:15 PM PDT  Plans have been pushed back a day to bring down two giant, unstable construction cranes in a series of controlled explosions before they can topple onto historic New Orleans buildings, the city's fire chief said Friday, noting the risky work involved in placing explosive on the towers. Making it happen, putting people back in danger," McConnell said. Light, intermittent rain and winds were complicating efforts Friday as workers in buckets suspended from another crane worked to prepare the site, McConnell said.
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| Clinton says Russia 'grooming' Gabbard for third-party 2020 run Posted: 18 Oct 2019 03:57 PM PDT  Hillary Clinton has warned that Russia, which interfered in the U.S. election she lost in 2016, is "grooming" a Democratic candidate for a third-party run next year, signalling congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard could fill the role.
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| Meet the Nanchang Q-5: China's Nuclear Bomber Posted: 18 Oct 2019 07:36 AM PDT  Beijing's got deterrence.
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| House GOP Leader Praises Mark Zuckerberg for Political Ads Policy Posted: 18 Oct 2019 09:26 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Facebook Inc. chief executive Mark Zuckerberg's decision not to ban political ads that Democrats say are inaccurate drew praise from the top Republican in the House of Representatives Friday.Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, said he appreciated Zuckerberg's comments on Thursday that policing political speech would be undemocratic."The idea of banning speech you might not like is nonsense, but sadly the mindset is creeping into places like college campuses and our presidential campaign platforms," McCarthy told reporters. "Yesterday was a heartwarming reminder that free expression is the best business model in the world."In recent weeks, the presidential campaigns of Democrats Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren have called on Facebook to remove ads from President Donald Trump's campaign that include claims with no evidence. Facebook has declined to do so, raising the larger question of whether such ads on social media should be regulated."I don't think most people want to live in a world where you can only post things that tech companies judge to be 100% true," Zuckerberg said Thursday at Georgetown University in Washington. "People should be able to see for themselves what politicians are saying.""In a democracy, I believe people should decide what's credible, not tech companies," Zuckerberg said.\--With assistance from Emily Wilkins.To contact the reporter on this story: Erik Wasson in Washington at ewasson@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Anna Edgerton, Laurie AsséoFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Return of Argentine Peronism throws shadow over Falklands Posted: 18 Oct 2019 12:15 AM PDT  Argentina is going to the polls on October 27 with a Peronist politician backed by former president Cristina Kirchner expected to win an outright majority, something that has got Falkland Islanders worried. The Falklands have been in British hands since 1833 but Argentina has waged a diplomatic battle -- that spilled into economic and then actual warfare -- since the 1960s to try to gain control of the archipelago. Argentine troops invaded the windswept islands for 74 days in 1982, before Britain swiftly defeated them.
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| The most shocking part of the 'meltdown' photo Trump tweeted isn't who's in it — it's who isn't Posted: 17 Oct 2019 02:17 PM PDT  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was one of two women at the table at a Wednesday meeting, joined only by Rep. Liz Cheney.
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| Serial Bank Robber Who Wrote Book About Prison Time With Bernie Madoff Faces Fifth Robbery Charge Posted: 17 Oct 2019 02:15 PM PDT  Multnomah County Detention CenterRalph Griffith, a serial bank robber who penned a self-published book about his time in prison with Bernie Madoff, appeared in federal court Wednesday to face his fifth bank robbery charge.Griffith spent his 68th birthday at the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse, where he was ordered to remain in jail pending his trial for an alleged armed robbery of a Milwaukie Wells Fargo Bank in July, The Oregonian first reported.The career criminal, who describes himself as the founder and executive producer of XAK Media Group, was released from California prison in August 2017 after spending time behind bars for three San Francisco bank robberies in 2003. He was also previously convicted of a bank robbery in 1985.Billionaire David Koch, Who Reshaped American Politics and Paved the Way for Trump, Has DiedShortly after his 2017 prison release, Griffith wrote a self-published book, The Real Bernie Madoff: Our 7 Years Together in Prison, about his time behind bars at a North Carolina federal prison with the former financier, who was convicted of running one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in history."I lived with the man," Griffith said in a YouTube video about the book. "After about seven years I got a pretty good understanding about what Bernie Maddoff was up to."The 68-year-old has also written fictional accounts of his life of crime, including a four-paragraph story called "The Proper Way to Rob a Bank" and another involving a character "who inadvertently robs a bank and a star is born."On Wednesday, prosecutors argued that his stories about his misdeeds prove he is still a danger to the community. Griffith's defense lawyer, Mark Ahlemeyer, insisted his client's books are protected under the First Amendment. Ahlemeyer declined to comment about the allegations to The Daily Beast on Wednesday, citing the "active criminal case." On July 26, authorities allege Griffith walked up to a Wells Fargo teller at around 10:30 a.m. wearing sunglasses, a black wig, a white surgical mask under his chin, and clear gloves. Court records show Griffith rested what authorities believed to be a black handgun on the counter before pointing it at the teller and saying, "Give me the money and no one will get hurt."Stephanie Madoff Mack Talks Mark Madoff's Suicide, Bernie Madoff & MoreAfter the teller handed him a stack of cash with a GPS tracker hidden inside, a second bank employee walked over—and Griffith allegedly demanded money from her as well."You too, sweetie," he said, according to a federal affidavit obtained by The Oregonian, before stuffing the cash into a grocery bag. Griffith allegedly threw away the two GPS devices and left. One tracker was later located in some bushes with a ripped $20 bill attached, and the second was found in the middle of the street. Surveillance video caught Griffith fleeing the scene in a blue Nissan Sentra.On Tuesday, Griffith was allegedly on his way to rob another bank when he got into a minor accident, prosecutors allege. While searching the car, authorities found multiple medical masks, wigs, and black sunglasses in the front passenger seat."It is my belief that Griffith was on his way to conduct another bank robbery at the time of his traffic accident and arrest,'' FBI agent Zachary Clark reportedly wrote in the affidavit. Griffith is currently being held at the Multnomah County Detention Center. He is expected to be back in court on Oct. 24. 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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| Asylum-seeking Mexicans are more prominent at US border Posted: 18 Oct 2019 05:46 PM PDT ![Asylum-seeking Mexicans are more prominent at US border]( "Asylum-seeking Mexicans are more prominent at US border") Lizbeth Garcia tended to her 3-year-old son outside a tent pitched on a sidewalk, their temporary home while they wait for their number to be called to claim asylum in the United States. The 33-year-old fled Mexico's western state of Michoacan a few weeks ago with her husband and five children — ages 3 to 12 — when her husband, a truck driver, couldn't pay fees that criminal gangs demanded for each trailer load. "I'd like to say it's unusual, but it's very common," Garcia said Thursday in Juarez, where asylum seekers gather to wait their turn to seek protection at a U.S. border crossing in El Paso, Texas.
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| View 2020 Chevrolet Corvette vs. Porsche 718 Cayman Cargo Comparison Photos Posted: 17 Oct 2019 07:26 AM PDT |
| Clinton email probe finds no deliberate mishandling of classified information Posted: 18 Oct 2019 05:09 PM PDT  A U.S. State Department investigation of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while she was secretary of state has found no evidence of deliberate mishandling of classified information by department employees. The investigation, the results of which were released on Friday by Republican U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley's office, centered on whether Clinton, who served as the top U.S. diplomat from 2009 to 2013, jeopardized classified information by using a private email server rather than a government one.
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| U.S. Air Force F-35s Are Knocking on Russia’s Back Door Posted: 17 Oct 2019 10:30 PM PDT  The U.S. Air Force has stood up a fighter squadron to operate F-35A Lightning II stealth fighters in Alaska. It might not be long before F-35s join Alaska-based F-22s in intercepting Russian bombers and other warplanes that frequently probe American defenses.
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| EU and U.K. Reach a Brexit Deal, But It Quickly Hits a Snag Posted: 17 Oct 2019 09:12 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Sign up to our Brexit Bulletin, follow us @Brexit and subscribe to our podcast.Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Brexit deal with the European Union was barely agreed before it ran into trouble at home, as his Irish allies in parliament said they could not support it.Johnson and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker announced simultaneously on Twitter Thursday morning they'd reached a deal that could pave the way for Britain to finally break 46 years of ties with the world's largest trading bloc. EU leaders are now meeting in Brussels.But while that sorted one key piece of the Brexit puzzle, Johnson still needs to get the agreement through the House of Commons, with a vote planned for Saturday as the prime minister seeks to deliver Brexit on Oct. 31.The parliamentary arithmetic is very tight, the more so because three officials from Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party said Thursday their party won't support the deal, citing concern about customs checks in the Irish Sea, among other things.Johnson's been defeated in a string of crucial votes since taking office in July and lost his majority in the chamber. Nevertheless, the prime minister struck an upbeat tone as he arrived in Brussels.Five Takeaways From the U.K., EU Brexit Agreement: TOPLiveHe said the deal is "a reasonable, fair outcome that reflects the large amount of work undertaken by both sides." The U.K. would leave the EU "whole and entire" on Oct. 31, Johnson said, in a nod to the DUP's concerns. EU leaders endorsed the agreement and called on the European Parliament to ratify it in time to meet the deadline.Much of the wrangling over Brexit has been how to avoid a hard border on Ireland as a result of the split from the EU.The DUP is opposed to Northern Ireland being treated any differently to the rest of the U.K. Under Johnson's deal, the region would still be subject to some of the EU's single market rules to mitigate the need for customs checks on the border with Ireland. That would, in effect, put a customs border in the Irish Sea.As attention swung toward the vote at Westminster, Juncker offered support to Johnson as he tries to bring critics of his deal into line."If we have a deal, we have a deal and there is no need for prolongation -- that's not only the British view, that's my view too," Juncker said. "He and myself we don't think that it's possible to give another prolongation."By ruling out another extension, Juncker is framing the vote in the House of Commons as a straight choice between Johnson's deal or no deal, just as the British leader has tried to do himself. That increases the pressure on undecided lawmakers in Westminster to back the government, but it also raises the cost of failure dramatically.Still, the decision over whether or not to grant another extension isn't actually down to Juncker. That's something that has to be decided, unanimously, by the 27 EU leaders.U.K. Plc Urges Lawmakers to Pass Brexit Deal and End UncertaintyWithout his Northern Irish allies, Johnson needs to pick up roughly 61 votes from a pool of about 75 deputies who might be persuaded to join him -- that will involve persuading hold-outs in his own party to side with him rather than the DUP. It's the final, treacherous hurdle for the U.K. leader to clear before he can complete his ambition of leading Britain out of the EU.The pound rallied on news of the deal, touching $1.2990 before dropping again as the scale of the remaining challenge became clear. It traded 0.2% lower at $1.2812 at 2:37 p.m. in London.Stocks Jump With Pound on Brexit Deal; Bonds Slump: Markets WrapIf Johnson can pull off his deal, it will draw a line under three years of political turmoil since the U.K. voted to leave the world's biggest trading bloc. If he fails, Britain the prospect of a no-deal Brexit will also come into the equation again.Here's a run down of the main pledges:establish a wide-ranging free trade agreementreach a deal on services that goes beyond WTO levelsagree equivalence for financial services firmsallow free movement of capitalestablish visa-free travel for short-term visitscommit to a level playing field, with common high standards in state aid, competition, welfare, tax, and environmental mattersAt a Glance: More Key Points of the Brexit Political DeclarationEU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier told reporters in Brussels that he believes the deal can be ratified by the end of October. He called it a "fair and reasonable basis for an orderly withdrawal" by the U.K.In a nod to the painful to-and-fro of the past three years, he also compared getting the deal done to climbing a mountain.Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn called for a second referendum, saying in Brussels that Johnson's deal -- which he described as a "sell-out" -- was worse than that put forward by predecessor Theresa May. Scotland's first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, said her Scottish Nationalist Party will vote against the deal as well, complaining that it creates too great a separation from the EU.At a Glance: What Johnson's Brexit Will Do for the Irish BorderOne important question as the summit talks begin is whether EU leaders will be prepared to ratify Juncker's gambit. Ireland's Leo Varadkar and Denmark's Mette Frederiksen both warned against interfering in the U.K.'s domestic affairs."The best thing that we can do in Ireland is not to intervene or interfere in U.K. internal politics," Varadkar said. "It's up to the members of the House of Commons to decide whether they want a deal. As of now we have no requests for an extension. If and when a request is received we can consider it but not before then."(Updates with EU leaders endorsing the deal.)\--With assistance from Richard Bravo, Tim Ross, Morten Buttler, Nikos Chrysoloras, Helene Fouquet, Alexander Weber, Adam Blenford, Dara Doyle, Jonathan Stearns, John Follain, Katharina Rosskopf, Tiago Ramos Alfaro, Viktoria Dendrinou, Stephanie Bodoni and Edward Evans.To contact the reporters on this story: Ian Wishart in Brussels at iwishart@bloomberg.net;Kitty Donaldson in London at kdonaldson1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Rosalind MathiesonFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Plane collides with pickup truck while landing, pilot killed Posted: 18 Oct 2019 04:07 PM PDT  Witnesses reported the airplane was at an altitude of just 5 feet as it crossed a county road near the airstrip and struck a pickup truck.
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| Income Inequality Has Soared While Taxes Have Become Dramatically Less Progressive . . . or Not Posted: 18 Oct 2019 11:00 AM PDT  The truth gets its boots on pretty quickly in the Internet age. On October 6, the New York Times ran a piece broadcasting the striking claims made by the economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman in the new book The Triumph of Injustice. Just a couple of weeks later, it's clear that these claims are built atop a foundation of often questionable and sometimes indefensible assumptions.Per Saez and Zucman, while the rich have been pulling in more and more of the nation's income — grabbing about a fifth of it now, double what they got a few decades back — they're paying lower and lower tax rates. Indeed, in 2018, the richest 400 Americans paid the lowest overall tax rate (including state, local, and federal taxes) of any income group. While the very richest Americans in 1950 paid two-thirds of their income in taxes, in 2018 it was down below a quarter; even the full top 0.1 percent barely pay more than the bottom 90 percent these days. It's not that much of an exaggeration to say we have a flat tax system, not a progressive one.The debunkings came from everywhere: a Twitter thread by Journal of Public Economics editor Wojtek Kopczuk, an article by the economic historian Phil Magness, an academic response from the economist David Splinter, a report from the Republican side of the Senate's Joint Economic Committee (JEC), a traditional book review in Le Grand Continent, and more.Let's take the two claims, rising inequality and rich people paying low tax rates, in turn. Both of these problems are probably overstated, in the latter case quite dramatically, in Saez and Zucman's numbers. And I say "probably" only because no one writing about these trends should pretend that even the best estimates are much more than guesswork, and necessarily so, because the data here are spotty and there are legitimate disagreements over what should even count as income and tax payments.The alleged rise of income inequality was recently the focus of some congressional hearings about the government's plan to start reporting more data on the topic, as well as an extensive but readable summary of the academic literature from the JEC Republicans. You might think this would be an easy question to answer, whether the rich are pulling away from the rest of us, because the IRS can tell you how much income people report to the government. But — I hope you're sitting down — not all income is reported to the government. And that's only the first big obstacle to measuring inequality accurately.We know from the "national accounts," the data we use to monitor overall economic activity, approximately how much money goes unreported overall. But to account for the missing money while measuring inequality, we need to know how much unreported income goes specifically to the rich versus the poor, and that is hard to do. Splinter, for example, argues that Saez and Zucman use a method that gives too much of this income to the rich; Splinter's own approach relies on data from IRS audits and gives more of it to folks down the income scale.If your eyes are glazing over, I have bad news: As the JEC report details, this is only the first of many technical decisions researchers must make that affect the results. Should we worry about income inequality before or after taxes are taken out? Should we include governmental transfers as income? Should we analyze married couples together or separately, bearing in mind the decline of marriage in recent decades, especially among the poor? How to handle corporate profits that are retained rather than given out to shareholders? How to handle stocks that have grown in value but have not been sold?The JEC report provides a remarkable buffet of options to anyone wanting to find a study to cite in favor of a preferred narrative, with the general pattern being that Saez and Zucman's work is on the high end. By all accounts, pre-tax income has become more concentrated at the top, though this trend is more dramatic in some estimates than others. But the share of post-tax income going to the top 1 percent may have risen only from 7.2 to 8.5 percent from 1979 to 2015.If it's hard to tell how much money people make, it's even harder to calculate their total tax rates, which requires you to know not only their income but also their payments to several levels of government. Once again the IRS is very helpful when it comes to what's reported to the federal government, but then you also have to estimate how much money people across the income spectrum spend on state income taxes, sales and property taxes, etc. It's no easy task.And here too, beyond problems with the basic data, there are arguments over what to include. A big one — a way that The Triumph of Injustice departs even from its authors' own previous work — has to do with the tax on corporate profits. Since corporations are just legal entities, they don't really pay these taxes; people do. And there's a lot of debate over how much of this tax burden falls on corporate shareholders, as opposed to other folks, including workers and customers, who tend to be less wealthy and might benefit if the government didn't take this money. Faced with this conundrum, the right-leaning Tax Foundation will point to studies showing "that labor bears between 50 and 100 percent of the burden of the corporate income tax," while the left-leaning Tax Policy Center assigns 60 percent of the burden to shareholders, 20 percent to capital in general (because the corporate tax has spillover effects for other forms of capital), and 20 percent to labor.Saez and Zucman's approach? To assume the entire corporate tax falls on shareholders, and to make this clear only after their number-crunching has been reported as fact in the national media. As the economist Tyler Cowen put it in a scathing post, "no Western fiscal authority I have heard of thinks of tax incidence in these terms." And as this animation from Kopczuk shows, this new assumption largely explains a big change in the trend for rich people's taxes even relative to Saez and Zucman's own approach in a recent paper with Thomas Piketty:> So why is sky falling in the S-Z book? Recall this animation. There are just two changes of relevance here. One is corporate tax incidence. This is what turns very mild decline in progressivity into rapid drop. The other somewhat important one is treatment of capital gains pic.twitter.com/vOQchHMGAY> > -- Wojtek Kopczuk (@wwwojtekk) October 15, 2019There are other points too at which anyone making a chart like this needs to make decisions about what to include as taxes, and for whom. For instance, what are we to make of "refundable" income-tax credits that are paid even to people with no income-tax liability to offset? Should we treat those as offsetting the other taxes that people pay, which after all is one of their purposes? Or should we just classify them as outright transfers, not part of the tax system at all? Unsurprisingly, Saez and Zucman do not include them, because they would boost income and thereby reduce taxes as a percentage of income for the poor.As with inequality, we can point to other sources of data on tax progressivity to show that Saez and Zucman are an outlier. Splinter's response illustrates this, and so does this from Jason Furman, who headed the Obama administration's Council of Economic Advisers:> The standard data shows that the tax system is overall progressive. This chart combines CBO estimates for federal taxes with ITEP estimates for state & local taxes. Federal income taxes highly progressive, when you add in payroll/state/local/etc. is still progressive but less so. pic.twitter.com/WTOgm58Fyo> > -- Jason Furman (@jasonfurman) October 7, 2019At every step of the way, Saez and Zucman made decisions that skewed the income distribution toward the top and the tax burden away from it. You can have a reasonable debate about the best way to analyze these data and what they say about our tax policies. But it does no one any favors to treat these estimates as established fact, the way the New York Times did.
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| Mystery traders 'made $1.8bn from stock bet' placed hours before Trump tweeted talks with China were ‘back on track’ Posted: 18 Oct 2019 01:16 PM PDT  */Unknown actors may have made billions from the turmoil Donald Trump has created in the markets through erratic tweets, shoot-from-the-hip foreign policy, and the trade war with China, according to a new report.
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| High-profile cases turn spotlight on domestic violence in Russia Posted: 18 Oct 2019 07:34 PM PDT  Natalia Tunikova's partner pushed her towards the open balcony in their high-rise Moscow flat, before punching her to the floor. A Moscow court later ruled that her use of force in self-defence was not justified. Cases like Tunikova's are ever more widely reported in Russia, leading to a public outcry in a country that has no specific law on domestic violence and where feminist movements like #MeToo had little impact.
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| Kim Kardashian urges clemency for Oklahoma death row inmate Posted: 17 Oct 2019 03:20 PM PDT  Kim Kardashian West has joined a chorus of voices calling for clemency for a black man on Oklahoma's death row who has exhausted his appeals, arguing that a racist juror tainted the outcome of his 2002 trial. Julius Jones was convicted of murder for the 1999 slaying of 45-year-old Paul Howell, who was fatally shot in the driveway of his parents' home in Edmond, Oklahoma. Jones filed a clemency petition with the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board on Tuesday, asking that his death sentence to be commuted to time served.
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| Mayor Pete Buttigieg Drops Fundraiser Tied to Laquan McDonald Coverup Posted: 18 Oct 2019 09:10 AM PDT  REUTERSMayor Pete Buttigieg's presidential campaign announced Friday that the co-host of a controversial campaign fundraiser was dropping out amid sharp public criticism over the role he played in delaying the release of a video of an infamous 2014 shooting death of a black teenage boy.The would-be co-host, Steve Patton, is a former Chicago city attorney who pushed to withhold video depicting the death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald until after a contentious mayoral runoff election, more than a year after a judge had ordered the video to be released. Patton already donated $5,600 to Buttigieg in June—a donation that the South Bend mayor's campaign said it would be returning. "Transparency and justice for Laquan McDonald is more important than a campaign contribution," Chris Meagher, the Buttigieg campaign's national press secretary, told The Daily Beast. "We are returning the money he contributed to the campaign and the money he has collected. He is no longer a co-host for the event and will not be attending."Patton's role in the Friday fundraiser, first reported by the Associated Press, prompted sharp criticism of Buttigieg, including from the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the city's most prominent civil rights leader, who called on the Democratic nominee to "adjust his schedule."Buttigieg's campaign had initially declined to comment on the story, directing the Associated Press to his "Douglass Plan" to end systemic racism.Buttigieg, who is struggling in the polls among black voters, has had difficulty trying to reconcile his sweeping proposals for deconstructing structural racism with his record as the mayor, where he fired the city's first black police chief and has conceded that he has failed in diversifying the city's law enforcement. South Bend's police department is 90 percent white while the city itself is 27 percent black.In June, Buttigieg left the campaign trail following the shooting death of a black man, Eric Logan, by a white police officer. At a town hall discussing the shooting, Buttigieg was heckled by angry South Bend residents who demanded that he focus on the city's problems with racism in its police force rather than his run for the White House."I just want you to know that we're not running from this," Buttigieg said at the time. "Of course I'm upset. A man died in this city at the hands of one of the people in charge of protecting the city."Other president campaigns were quick to jump on Patton's participation in the fundraiser as evidence of misplaced priorities. Rob Flaherty, digital director for Buttigieg rival Beto O'Rourke, tweeted that it was "good to see that despite The Pete Pivot, he's remaining consistent on some things."According to Federal Election Commission filings, Patton donated $2,700 to O'Rourke's 2018 campaign for the U.S. Senate.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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| Prince William and wife Kate leave Pakistan, day after aborted flight Posted: 18 Oct 2019 12:39 AM PDT |
| See This Plane? It Was Suppose to Turn Aircraft Carriers into Scrap Metal Posted: 18 Oct 2019 01:23 AM PDT  As in make them obsolete--but the carrier remains. Here is what happened.
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| Lebanon Leader Threatens to Abandon Ship During Largest Protests in Years Posted: 18 Oct 2019 01:06 PM PDT ![Lebanon Leader Threatens to Abandon Ship During Largest Protests in Years]( "Lebanon Leader Threatens to Abandon Ship During Largest Protests in Years") (Bloomberg) -- Tens of thousands of protesters set fires and cut off roads across Lebanon Friday, demanding the removal of a political class whose mismanagement and corruption they say has brought the economy to the brink of bankruptcy.In a televised speech, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri gave his feuding coalition government a 72-hour deadline to get behind his plan for an economic overhaul or he would step aside and let them deal with a deepening crisis that has engulfed Lebanon in the biggest and most violent demonstrations in years.Hariri accused his rivals inside the government of blocking measures that could unlock some $11 billion in international aid pledges and help restore investor confidence."If anyone thinks they have another solution" they are welcome to take power and try to implement it, Hariri said.The ultimatum did little to ease anger on the streets, where protests were into their second night. Amid chants of "revolution" and "the people want the fall of the regime," demonstrators burned tires, blocked roads and converged on the government headquarters in the upscale business district of Beirut.As night fell, relatively peaceful protests in downtown Beirut descended into all out riots, with small groups of masked youths setting fires, smashing windows, overturning skips and throwing rocks at police who fired tear gas to disperse the crowd. With the violence worsening, large numbers of riot police and soldiers chased rioters down streets littered with debris and piles of broken glass. Army units deployed around Beirut to secure the streets. The economic stakes are high for Lebanon, a tiny country that straddles the geopolitical fault-lines of the Middle East and has struggled to emerge from the shadow of a 15-year civil war that ended in 1990. One of the most indebted countries in the world, it needs to find fresh sources of funding as the foreign inflows on which it has traditionally relied have dried up. With the economy slowing and living standards falling, anger has grown at politicians who protesters say have lined their pockets at the public's expense. Fractious GovernmentThe protests have increased pressure on Hariri, who heads a fractious coalition government that has struggled to overcome sectarian and political differences.A Sunni Muslim, Hariri has been traditionally backed by Saudi Arabia, but the kingdom has withheld support in recent years as the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia's political influence in the government has grown. Saudi Arabia urged its citizens not to travel to Lebanon amid the violence, the official Saudi Press Agency said. At the same time, Hezbollah-allied ministers and lawmakers have steadfastly opposed higher taxes and other difficult measures to spare their supporters further economic pain amid tightening U.S. sanctions on the group's members and on its patron, Iran.The crisis has catapulted Lebanon into a new and unpredictable phase. If Hariri and his allies resign, Lebanon could end up with a government dominated by Hezbollah, making it even harder to attract investment from Gulf Arab countries or the West.If it survives, few observers see how the government can overcome divisions that have already brought the economy to the precipice. Earlier in the day, Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, a son-in-law of the president and opponent of Hariri, warned that the resignation of the government would lead to chaos and a collapse in Lebanon's currency. The International Monetary Fund projects Lebanon's current-account deficit will reach almost 30% of gross domestic product by the end of this year. Amid the violence on Thursday, it issued a new report predicting that economic growth, stagnant at 0.3% in 2018, would continue to be weak amid political and economic uncertainty and a severe contraction in the real estate sector. Public debt is projected to increase to 155% of gross domestic product by the end of 2019, it said.Persistent instability in Lebanon has shaken investor confidence and made it harder to revive an economy already struggling to absorb more than 1.5 million Syrian refugees who have fled the war next door.The yield on Lebanon's dollar bonds due in 2021 jumped more than two percentage points to 20.38% as of 10:44 a.m. in London, snapping six days of declines. The cost of insuring Lebanese debt against default climbed, with the nation's five-year credit-default swaps rising 87 basis points to 1,262 -- the highest level on a closing basis since the start of the month.WhatsApp CallsSporadic demonstrations have erupted for months in Lebanon as the economic crisis has led to shortages of dollars and threatened the pensions of retired soldiers, but the latest unrest is more widespread and violent.Walls of burning tires and debris effectively severed the main thoroughfares at the northern and southern entrances of Beirut, and crowds also headed toward the presidential palace in Baabda, footage aired on Lebanese television stations showed.The latest unrest was sparked by plans to impose a fee of 20 U.S. cents on the first WhatsApp call that users make every day. The government also discussed on Thursday a proposal for a gradual increase to value-added tax, currently at 11%, and levies on gasoline. "The most problematic aspect of the crisis is that only large-scale fiscal reforms would help avoid financial collapse, yet these unpopular measures are incredibly difficult to approve and implement given the current unrest and potential for further backlash," Ayham Kamel, Middle East Practice Head at Eurasia Group, said in a note.(Recasts with protests, adds Saudi travel warning, analyst in final paragraph.)To contact the reporters on this story: Lin Noueihed in Beirut at lnoueihed@bloomberg.net;Dana Khraiche in Beirut at dkhraiche@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Lin Noueihed at lnoueihed@bloomberg.net, Mark WilliamsFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| A day without teachers: 32,000+ educators in Chicago went on strike. Here's what happened Posted: 17 Oct 2019 10:29 PM PDT  Chicago Public Schools teachers went on strike Thursday morning, seeking smaller class sizes, more support staff and a pay raise.
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| The ATF Has Been Enforcing a Rule That Does Not Exist Posted: 18 Oct 2019 03:30 AM PDT  Anyone else sick to death of watching the Democrats debate each other already? Tuesday saw them rehash numerous conversations they've already had, and there are still eight excruciating nights of such television for us to endure.Beto O'Rourke, for instance, once again loudly and obnoxiously announced his intention to confiscate semiautomatic "assault weapons" from their lawful owners. He said he "believes" that compliance will be forthcoming.If I really need to engage with this nonsense, I'll go ahead and note that the American people don't support gun confiscation — even in polls where they endorse banning sales of new assault weapons; that compliance with gun bans is low pretty much everywhere; that his policy would violate the Second Amendment; and that there's little solid evidence that blanket gun bans are effective in reducing crime. We're not going to pass this law, we wouldn't comply with it if we did, and the courts might not allow it anyway.But with that out of the way, let's address what should be an elephant in the room: While Beto was rambling on about his bizarre fantasies in which docile AR-15 owners happily identify themselves to the government and dutifully surrender their arms, our actual legal regime for regulating these guns came under serious threat from a case out of California — because the folks who are supposed to enforce the gun laws have royally messed up for decades.To understand what's going on here, you need a little bit of background. There are lots of rules about making and selling guns in this country: If you sell guns regularly as a business, you need to get a license and conduct background checks on your buyers; each gun a manufacturer creates for sale needs a serial number; etc. However, it's generally legal to sell firearm parts without following those rules.The exception is the "receiver." Federal law treats this part — the frame that holds the gun's guts, basically — the same way it treats an entire firearm. It needs to have a serial number and so on even when it's sold by itself, preventing people from evading the law by simply buying and selling firearms piece by piece.But this creates an issue for AR-15s, whose receivers themselves are divided into two parts. For these guns, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives treats the bottom part — the "lower receiver" — as the firearm for regulatory purposes. The only way to skirt the law is to sell "80 percent lowers," hunks of metal mostly made into lowers but still requiring some machining. (It's legal to finish these off yourself, but only for personal use.)But wait a minute: Could the ATF's usual practice be wrong? Is it actually flat-out legal to sell a completed lower with no serial number and no background check? That's the issue raised by the recent case.You can read the whole story over at CNN, and find the judge's order here, but for our purposes, these are the important facts: A guy named Joseph Roh illegally manufactured and sold AR-15s and other guns through a slapstick scheme to avoid the law. A judge issued a tentative order against Roh — but in the process held that lower receivers are not firearms under current regulations, thus acquitting Roh of some of the charges. The government decided to let Roh off with a slap on the wrist rather than pursue the matter further, to prevent the order, as CNN puts it, from "becoming permanent, drawing publicity, and creating case law that could hamper ATF enforcement efforts." It ended up on CNN's website regardless, and anyone prosecuted for selling AR-15 lowers going forward will be tempted to try Roh's defense.How did this happen? Vague laws and poorly crafted bureaucratic rules.Congress's law on this matter simply refers to a "receiver"; it doesn't define the word. The definition is found instead in the Code of Federal Regulations:> That part of a firearm which provides housing for the hammer, bolt or breechblock, and firing mechanism, and which is usually threaded at its forward portion to receive the barrel.This is very bad, for the reason noted above: AR-15s don't have a single receiver. The bolt and threading are found in the upper receiver, while the hammer and firing mechanism are in the lower. Neither, in other words, by itself meets the definition of "receiver" in the regulation — and for decades the ATF has been enforcing, via its opaque in-house classification process, a rule that doesn't exist in the official rulebook. As a result, someone who carefully reads both the law and the regulation is not on notice that it's illegal to sell a lower receiver without a serial number and background check, and cannot rightfully be punished for doing so.The upshot? Here's how the government put it in a filing noted by CNN, warning the judge about the consequences of enforcing the rule as written:> Unregulated parts could be manufactured, sold, and combined with other commercially available parts to create completed, un-serialized firearms which would not be subject to background checks, and which would be untraceable.It also stressed that the problem is common to many semiautomatic guns, not just AR-15s and their variants.This isn't the first time a court has noticed this problem, surprisingly enough. In 2016's U.S. v. Jimenez, a court found similarly when faced with wording like this in a related part of the regulatory code. It further noted that the ATF itself was confused about how to handle split receivers when it discussed them internally in the 1970s.This might be a loophole the executive branch can plug fairly easily, since the problem lies mainly in the regulation and not the statute passed by Congress — though prosecutors could lose cases against illegal gun sellers in the meantime. It's also possible that other courts will let the agency get away with pretending that the rule means something other than what it says. (See, for instance, ATF's decision to ban "bump stocks" by administrative fiat despite the fact the statute at issue clearly does not cover them.)But you have to ask: If Congress and the ATF can't write rules clearly ensuring that our basic gun laws apply to AR-15s, how well could Beto's confiscation drive possibly go?
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| Fears of military build-up as China secretly leases entire island in Solomons Posted: 17 Oct 2019 05:33 AM PDT  The government of the Solomon Islands has reached a secretive deal with a Chinese company with close ties to the Communist party that grants it exclusive rights to develop Tulagi, once the seat of British colonial rule in the Pacific archipelago. The confidential arrangement has alarmed residents and raised fears that Beijing could be planning to use the tiny territory for future military rather than just commercial purposes. Tulagi, which has a protected deepwater harbour, has long been viewed as a strategic outpost. Japan occupied the island during the Second World War in 1942 before it was seized by the US marines in a fierce battle. China extended its reach last month after it persuaded the Solomon Islands and the Pacific nation of Kiribati to switch formal diplomatic ties from Taipei to Beijing, as it seeks to expand its influence in the Indo-Pacific region while undermining the US and its allies' strategy there. A copy of the "strategic cooperation agreement" which sets out a renewable 75-year lease was granted to the China Sam Enterprise Group, a conglomerate founded in 1985 as a state-owned enterprise, according to the New York Times, which obtained a copy. The vague wording of the document has sparked suspicion that it could be used for infrastructure that shares both civilian and military uses, causing concern among US officials who see the island chains of the South Pacific as crucial to protecting important sea routes, said the Times. Dated September 22, the deal mentions provisions for a fishery base, an operations centre, and the "building or enhancement of the airport," noting also that the company has ambitions to build an oil or gas terminal even though there are no confirmed natural reserves. The Solomons' authorities have not commented on the reports, but Stanley Maniteva, the provincial governor, told the local media earlier this week that the agreement had not been completed and formalised. But the news follows reports earlier this year that Pacific nations would seek new, stronger ties with China as they pivot away from traditional allies towards Beijing. In a speech in February in Port Vila, Vanuatu, Dame Meg Taylor, the secretary general of the Pacific Islands Forum, an intergovernmental body, said it was time to debate how to "collectively engage" with Beijing to gain access to its markets, technology, financing and infrastructure.
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| The Latest: Woman denies link to Alabama child abduction Posted: 18 Oct 2019 10:23 AM PDT  A woman described as a person of interest in the abduction of a 3-year-old Alabama girl is denying any involvement. Attorneys for 29-year-old Derick Irisha Brown of Birmingham released a statement Friday saying she had no role in the kidnapping and hopes for the safe return of Kamille "Cupcake" McKinney. Brown and a man were arrested earlier this week after being described as persons of interest in the child's abduction from a birthday party last weekend.
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| Fox News Host Ed Henry: Not ‘Media’s Fault’ Mick Mulvaney Admitted Quid Pro Quo Posted: 18 Oct 2019 09:57 AM PDT  Fox News attempted to help "acting" White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney clean up his admission of a "quid pro quo" with Ukraine, but Fox & Friends Weekend host and reporter Ed Henry wasn't quite ready to let him off the hook.After telling the press corp on Thursday that there is "going to be political influence in foreign policy" and that they should just "get over it," Mulvaney released a statement later in the day that walked back his comments and blamed the media for supposedly twisting his words."Once again, the media has decided to misconstrue my comments to advance a biased and political witch hunt against President Trump," Mulvaney said. "Let me be clear, there was absolutely no quid pro quo between Ukrainian military aid and any investigation into the 2016 election." When he heard those words read aloud on Fox Friday morning, Henry said, "I'm not sure what Mick Mulvaney's case is. The media is to blame for writing down what he said, for Fox recording on video what he said? He stood at the podium and connected the dots for Democrats!" It was only after both Democrats and some Republicans pounced on what Mulvaney had said that he decided to walk it back, Henry explained. "So if it's the media's fault, I'm not quite sure why the White House chief of staff is clarifying," he added. Henry has been straddling the line between Trump critic and defender on impeachment for the past few weeks after the president lashed out at him for daring to suggest that pressuring a foreign country for dirt on a political opponent may be inappropriate. He later lauded Trump as "honest and transparent" for admitting his offenses out loud instead of doing them only in secret. Here, he seemed to be splitting the difference and laying most of the blame not on President Trump but on Mulvaney for admitting the truth. "There may not be a quid pro quo but Mick Mulvaney, the president's own chief of staff, sort of messed it up and made it seem like there was," Henry said. "So he's hurting their own case.""Well, maybe there was," his colleague Juan Williams replied. "Maybe he's trying to say, that's the reality, and now he's trying to walk back to the truth because he wants to save his 'acting' job." Sean Hannity Goes Off on Mick Mulvaney: 'I Just Think He's Dumb'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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| Mexico flies 300 Indian migrants to New Delhi in mass deportation Posted: 17 Oct 2019 02:32 PM PDT  Mexico has deported more than 300 Indian nationals to New Delhi, the National Migration Institute said late on Wednesday, in what it described as an unprecedented transatlantic deportation.
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