| Democrats release impeachment resolution that calls for open hearings Posted: 29 Oct 2019 02:02 PM PDT  House Democrats have released a resolution that calls for "open and investigative proceedings" in the impeachment inquiry against President Trump for his alleged political interference in foreign aid to Ukraine.
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| PHOTOS: Yugoslavia's brutalist relics fascinate the Instagram generation Posted: 30 Oct 2019 08:52 AM PDT  Genex Tower is unmissable on the highway from the Belgrade airport to the center of the city. Its two soaring blocks, connected by an aerial bridge and topped with a long-closed rotating restaurant resembling a space capsule, are such an unusual sight, the tower, built in 1977, has become a magnet for tourists despite years of neglect. The tower is one of the most significant examples of brutalism — an architectural style popular in the 1950s and 1960s, based on crude, block-like forms cast from concrete.
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| Australian sentenced to 36 years for murder, rape of Israeli Posted: 29 Oct 2019 04:34 PM PDT  An Australian judge sentenced a man to 36 years in prison on Tuesday for the murder and rape of an Israeli student whom he bludgeoned into unconsciousness moments after she stepped off a tram in Melbourne before setting her corpse on fire. Victoria state Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Hollingworth ordered Codey Herrmann, 21, to serve at least 30 years behind bars for his crimes against 21-year-old Aiia Maasarwe last January. The judge said she would have sentenced Herrmann to 40 years in prison with 35 years to be served before he became eligible for parole if he had not pleaded guilty in the face of an overwhelming prosecution case.
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| Biden Denied Communion at South Carolina Church Owing to Stance on Abortion Posted: 29 Oct 2019 06:31 AM PDT  Former vice president Joe Biden was denied communion by a Catholic priest in South Carolina on Sunday because of his public stance on abortion.Father Robert E. Morey confirmed to the Florence Morning News via email on Monday that he had refused the sacrament to Biden."Sadly, this past Sunday, I had to refuse Holy Communion to former Vice President Joe Biden," Father Morey, pastor at St. Anthony Catholic Church in Florence, said. "Holy Communion signifies we are one with God, each other and the Church. Our actions should reflect that. Any public figure who advocates for abortion places himself or herself outside of Church teaching."Biden, who is Catholic, would not confirm whether he had attended Mass at St. Anthony's. The campaign told the Florence Morning News that "if he did attend, he did so in a private capacity."Biden has said in the past that he is "personally opposed" to abortion, but publicly advocates for its protection, including the establishing of a federal law to preserve the right to abortion even if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade.Biden flipped multiple times on the campaign trail earlier this year over support for the Hyde amendment, which bans federal funding of abortion under Medicaid except in rare circumstances."I've been working through the finer details of my health care plan like others in this race, and I've been struggling with the problems that Hyde now presents," Biden said during a Democratic National Committee gala in Atlanta in June. "If I believe health care is a right, as I do, I can no longer support an amendment that makes that right dependent on someone's ZIP code."Denial of communion to politicians who publicly support abortion has long been a hot-button topic. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops wrote in 2004 that "such decisions rest with the individual bishop in accord with the established canonical and pastoral principles." Morey's email said that the matter of pro-choice Catholic politicians is a difficult situation, but his responsibility remains to minister to souls."I will keep Mr. Biden in my prayers," Morey's statement concludes.
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| China pushes higher 'moral quality' for its citizens Posted: 30 Oct 2019 04:16 AM PDT  From budgeting for rural weddings to dressing appropriately and avoiding online porn, China's Communist Party has issued new guidelines to improve the "moral quality" of its citizens. Officials have released several sets of guidelines this week alongside a secretive conclave of high-ranking officials in Beijing which discusses the country's future direction. Public institutions like libraries and youth centres must carry out "targeted moral education" to improve people's ideological awareness and moral standards, according to the rules.
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| Putin faces Syria money crunch after U.S. keeps control of oil fields Posted: 30 Oct 2019 11:16 AM PDT  Russian President Vladimir Putin is facing an unwelcome new financial challenge in Syria after the U.S. pullback enabled his ally Bashar Assad to reclaim the biggest chunk of territory in the country still outside his control.
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| Tucker Carlson and Guest Blame Diversity and ‘Woke’ Culture for California Fires Posted: 30 Oct 2019 04:17 AM PDT  Fox NewsFox News host Tucker Carlson and his guest, conservative YouTube personality Dave Rubin, both insisted Tuesday night that the wildfires burning across California are due largely to progressive ideology, "woke" culture, and diversity in hiring.During Tuesday's broadcast of Tucker Carlson Tonight, Carlson welcomed on Rubin, a political commentator and podcaster, to discuss the issues surrounding the large fires engulfing the state, including those related to the electrical grid and firefighting methods."PG&E; strikes me as almost a metaphor for the destruction of the state," Carlson said about the state's power company. "Here's the utility which doesn't really know anything about its own infrastructure but knows everything about the race of its employees. How did we get there?"After noting that he lives near one of the fires in the Los Angeles area, Rubin immediately took aim at liberal politics as the main reason the wildfires have grown so large and dangerous."The problem right now is that everything, EVERYTHING, from academia to public utilities to politics, everything that goes woke, that buys into this ridiculous progressive ideology that cares about what contractors are LGBT or how many black firemen we have or white this or Asian that, everything that goes that road eventually breaks down," he declared.As Carlson nodded and said "that's true," Rubin continued, complaining that this isn't how "freedom is supposed to operate.""What is supposed to happen—imagine if your house was on fire," he added. "Would you care what the public utility or what the fire company, what contractor they brought in, what gender or sexuality or any of those things he or she was? It's just absolutely ridiculous."The Fox News host continued to agree with Rubin, who went on to tie PG&E;'s preemptive blackouts to a lack of "libertarian or conservative-minded people in California to fight what the progressives are doing to the state.""If you can't keep the lights on and you can't keep the place from burning down, you've reached the point where there is no kind of lying about it anymore," Carlson concluded. "It's falling apart. It's a disaster. It's not civilized anymore."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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| Man loses foot, another seriously injured in shark attack while snorkeling in Australia Posted: 29 Oct 2019 06:56 AM PDT  The shark attack occurred in Hook Passage in the Whitsunday Islands off Australia's Queensland coast, rescuers say.
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| Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren got behind the Facebook employees slamming Mark Zuckerberg for allowing lies in political ads Posted: 29 Oct 2019 04:17 AM PDT  The two Democratic politicians tweeted their support for the Facebook workers who oppose the company's stance on lies in political ads.
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| Disaster for Trump? What If the Philippines Became Russia's Ally? Posted: 29 Oct 2019 05:00 PM PDT  How could that happen?
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| Judge Allows Covington Student’s $250 Million Suit against WaPo to Move Forward Posted: 29 Oct 2019 05:15 AM PDT  A Covington Catholic High School student can move forward with his defamation suit against the Washington Post, a federal judge in Kentucky ruled on Monday.U.S. District Judge William Bertelsman of Kentucky had ruled in July that the student, Nicholas Sandmann, could not sue the Post for defamation. Bertelsman partially reversed that decision on Monday, ruling that of 33 allegedly defamatory statements in the Post's coverage of Sandmann, three of those statements could be challenged in court."The Sandmann family and our legal team are grateful that Judge Bertelsman has allowed the case to proceed," said Sandmann family attorney Todd McMurtry in an email to the Washington Times. "The Court's ruling preserves the heart of the Nicholas Sandmann's claims. We can consider this a huge victory and look forward to initiating discovery against the Washington Post."On January 18 of this year, Sandmann and classmates were in Washington, D.C. to participate in the March for Life, an annual pro-life demonstration. A viral video of Sandmann and his classmates appeared to show a confrontation between the students and a Native American man, Nathan Phillips.Sandmann and several other students were wearing MAGA hats, and the Post asserted in its coverage of the incident that the students had blocked Phillips on his way to the Lincoln Memorial. Phillips told the Post that the students had surrounded him.The three defamatory statements approved by Bertelsman for further investigation assert that Sandmann blocked Phillips's path.The students were pilloried as racist on social media when the video went viral. However, longer videos of the incident showed that Phillips had in fact approached the students and started to drum loudly when he came close to Sandmann. The students were also chanting during the incident with permission of their instructor, to drown out the shouts of a group of black nationalists nearby who were yelling insults such as "fa**ot" and "cracker" at the group.Covington Catholic High School cancelled classes for several days after the incident due to online harassment of its students.
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| Who are the Vietnamese feared dead in UK truck tragedy? Posted: 29 Oct 2019 03:37 AM PDT  AFP has spoken to several families of Vietnamese nationals missing in Britain, feared to be among the 39 people found dead in a truck in Essex last week. DNA has been collected from relatives as officials in Vietnam and the UK scramble to officially identify the victims. On October 21 he wrote to his family asking them to get $13,000 to pay to smugglers for his trip to the UK, the last they heard from him.
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| Malaysia says trade spat with India over palm oil will not be prolonged Posted: 30 Oct 2019 03:33 AM PDT |
| Meghan McCain Spars With Cory Booker Over Civility: Beto Was ‘Very Nasty’ to Me! Posted: 30 Oct 2019 09:39 AM PDT  During a Wednesday interview with Democratic presidential candidate Cory Booker, The View's Meghan McCain did what she apparently does best: Make the conversation about herself and, in this case, her personal beef with a presidential hopeful.After applauding Booker for saying Medicare for All is unrealistic, the conservative View co-host took issue with the New Jersey senator's support for mandatory gun buybacks. This then prompted McCain to lump Booker in with former Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke, who has made buybacks a central focus of his campaign."When I heard you and Beto say that, to me, that's like a left-wing fever dream," McCain said. "And I want to know how you think you and Beto are going to go to red states and go to my brother's house and get his AR-15s because, let me tell you, he's not giving it back."Booker, meanwhile, asserted he is not nearly where O'Rourke is when it comes to gun buybacks, causing McCain to reply, "Good! Because he's crazy!""We should watch the way we talk about each other," Booker shot back. "Seriously, we can't tear the character of people down. We have different beliefs."McCain, however, invoked her ongoing feud with the one-time Texas Senate candidate, complaining that O'Rourke "has no problem doing it to me.""He was very nasty to me about this," the ex-Fox News star lamented.Last month, reacting to McCain's overt warning that gun buybacks would lead to "a lot of violence" from gun owners, O'Rourke said "that kind of language and rhetoric is not helpful" and it could become "self-fulfilling" and give permission to violence."You and I both know that just because somebody does something to us, doesn't mean we show the same thing back to them," Booker responded to McCain, garnering audience applause."I'm not running for president, with all due respect," McCain snapped back. "And the way he talks about me inciting violence on this, I take very seriously and I speak for a lot of red state Americans whether he likes it or you like it or not, there's a lot of Republicans you have to win over."The New Jersey lawmaker reacted by telling McCain that her voice was one he respected before noting that "what we say about other people says more about us than it does about them."Booker would then go on to relay an anecdote from the campaign trail in which he defused a voter's call for violence against President Donald Trump. McCain, meanwhile, brushed it aside and went back to pressing Booker on his buyback proposal and how he's going to take her brother's guns.After a bit more back-and-forth over Booker's gun proposals, host Whoopi Goldberg jumped in to send the show to a commercial break, promising the pair that they'd continue the conversation in the next segment."No we're not," McCain grumbled. "It's fine."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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| Trump impeachment: Democrats respond to Republican attacks by unveiling new procedures for inquiry Posted: 29 Oct 2019 02:28 PM PDT  House Democrats unveiled new procedures for the impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump Tuesday, responding to Republican demands for due process by setting out rules for future public hearings delving into whether Trump should be removed from office.The resolution backed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., hands the lead role to the House Intelligence Committee and its chairman, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who would have broad latitude to organize extended questioning of potential public witnesses. Two other committees who have so far participated in the closed-door investigation into Trump's dealings with Ukraine - Foreign Affairs, and Oversight and Reform - would not be permitted to directly participate in the open proceedings under the legislation.
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| A California couple who was forced to evacuate their home and winery share what it's really like to endure the wildfires engulfing the state Posted: 30 Oct 2019 06:53 AM PDT  California's Sonoma wine country dealt with destructive wildfires in 2017. Here's how one winery is dealing with 2019's Kincade Fire.
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| Georgia Supreme Court temporarily halts man's execution Posted: 30 Oct 2019 01:29 PM PDT  With about eight hours to spare before a man convicted of killing a convenience store clerk was to be put to death Wednesday, Georgia's highest court stepped in and temporarily halted the execution. Ray Jefferson Cromartie, 52, was to receive a lethal injection at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the state prison in Jackson. Cromartie was convicted of malice murder and sentenced to death for the April 1994 killing of 50-year-old Richard Slysz in Thomasville, just inside Georgia's southern border.
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| Facebook Uncovers Russian Disinformation Campaign in Africa in Prelude to 2020 U.S. Elections Posted: 30 Oct 2019 08:40 AM PDT  Facebook announced on Wednesday that it had removed three Russian-backed influence networks from its platform that targeted several African countries including Cameroon, Mozambique, Libya, and Sudan.The networks posted information in Arabic critical of U.S. and French policies in Africa, while praising Russian initiatives in the region. Russian operatives worked with local citizens to set up Facebook accounts that appeared more authentic."They are trying to make it harder for us and civil society to try and detect their operations," Nathaniel Gleicher, head of Facebook's cybersecurity policy, told the New York Times.Director of the Stanford Internet Observatory Alex Stamos, himself a former Facebook executive, said the Russian campaign in Africa will have implications for the 2020 presidential elections."We will see a model where American groups are used as proxies, where all the content is published under their accounts and their pages," Stamos said.The Russian networks are linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch who has been sanctioned by the U.S. for interfering in U.S. elections.When the State Department announced new sanctions on Prigozhin in September, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. will not tolerate any interference in the voting process."We have been clear: We will not tolerate foreign interference in our elections," said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a statement. "The United States will continue to push back against malign actors who seek to subvert our democratic processes and we will not hesitate to impose further costs on Russia for its destabilizing and unacceptable activities."
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| Bangladesh opposition stalwart jailed for threatening PM Posted: 29 Oct 2019 05:49 PM PDT  A Bangladesh opposition stalwart was jailed in absentia for three years Wednesday for threatening the prime minister in what his party said was another example of government critics being muzzled. Thousands of opposition activists have been arrested under the rule of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who has tightened her grip on power since being re-elected in December. Giasuddin Quader Chowdhury, a vice-chairman of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), was found guilty of making statements "conducive to public mischief" and "criminal conspiracy", the court said.
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| Bosnian Serb ex-soldier jailed for 20 years for burning Muslim civilians Posted: 30 Oct 2019 07:59 AM PDT ![Bosnian Serb ex-soldier jailed for 20 years for burning Muslim civilians]( "Bosnian Serb ex-soldier jailed for 20 years for burning Muslim civilians") A Bosnian court jailed a former Bosnian Serb soldier for 20 years on Wednesday for setting ablaze 57 Muslim Bosniaks, of whom 26 including a two-day-old baby died, near the eastern town of Visegrad early in Bosnia's 1992-95 war. Radomir Susnjar, 64, known as Lalco, was also found guilty of robbery and illegal detention of civilians, the court said. The group of Muslim Bosniaks had been seized after an attack on the village of Koritnik and locked in a house that was set ablaze with an accelerant and explosives while Susnjar and other Bosnian Serb Army members shot at it to prevent anyone fleeing.
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| North Atlantic spawns Subtropical Storm Rebekah Posted: 30 Oct 2019 09:42 AM PDT  This image, taken during Wednesday morning, Oct. 30, 2019, shows Rebekah shortly before it became a named system. (NOAA/GOES-East) In a pattern setup similar to what gave birth to Pablo last week, a spinning area of disturbed weather west of the Azores developed into Subtropical Storm Rebekah in the otherwise quiet Atlantic basin.The swirl initially developed in a pool of cool air located over the North Atlantic, several hundred miles west of the Azores. However, water temperatures were warm enough to modify the air just above the ocean and allow the feature to gain some tropical characteristics.A subtropical storm means that Rebekah exhibits both tropical and non-tropical features. Rebekah became the 17th named storm of the Atlantic season on Wednesday afternoon.The system is not likely to become a hurricane, given the predicted short life span. However, it could transition from a subtropical storm to a tropical storm. It may be fully tropical in nature for only a couple of days."The overall environment is likely to become more hostile, including colder waters, for a tropical system from Thursday to Friday," Dan Kottlowski, AccuWeather's top hurricane expert, said."Regardless of the classification, the system will generate gale-force winds, rough surf and downpours as it drifts close to the Azores during Thursday night and Friday," Kottlowski added.A large, non-tropical storm is forecast to shred Rebekah apart before reaching the United Kingdom this weekend. However, the U.K. and a portion of western Europe can expect strong winds.Meanwhile, the rest of the Atlantic Ocean is expected to remain free of organized tropical features with unremarkable disturbances emerging from the west coast of Africa to the Caribbean Sea. Download the free AccuWeather app to see the latest forecast for your region. Keep checking back for updates on AccuWeather.com and stay tuned to the AccuWeather Network on DirecTV, Frontier and Verizon Fios.
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| Russia's Risky Game Plan for Syria Posted: 29 Oct 2019 09:35 AM PDT  Moscow had hoped to be rewarded with the opportunity to base additional military equipment inside Syria in exchange for standing by Bashar al-Assad.
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| Trump news – live: Key impeachment witness gives 'extremely disturbing' testimony about Ukraine call Posted: 29 Oct 2019 11:23 AM PDT  Alexander Vindman, the top Ukraine expert at the US National Security Council, is testifying to the House impeachment inquiry over concerns he raised about Donald Trump's 25 July phone call with Volodymyr Zelensky and the administration's bid to pressure the country into investigating the son of domestic political rival Joe Biden.The president has meanwhile taken to Twitter to join right-wing media pundits in questioning the patriotism and political loyalties of the decorated Iraq War veteran, branding Lieutenant Colonel Vindman a "Never Trumper".
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| London's Gatwick airport is testing out new technology to board passengers by individual seat, which could be faster and avoid long lines Posted: 30 Oct 2019 03:41 AM PDT  The major UK airport is running a two-month trial on some EasyJet flights. It uses screens to call single seat numbers, for maximum efficiency.
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| Family of missing British woman pursuing jungle search Posted: 30 Oct 2019 08:50 AM PDT  The brother of a British woman who disappeared after attending a late-night beach party on a Cambodian island said Wednesday her family is planning to hire a private team of professional searchers to comb the jungle for her. Harry Bambridge, the brother of 21-year-old backpacker Amelia Bambridge, said he "absolutely" believes there is a chance his sister is still alive. The police chief for the Cambodian province said earlier Wednesday that he fears she has drowned, but that searches for her will continue.
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| Whoopi Goldberg calls out Meghan McCain: ‘Let me tell you something’ Posted: 30 Oct 2019 08:00 AM PDT  On Tuesday's episode of "The View," moderator Whoopi Goldberg intervened when things got heated among the show's co-hosts on the topic of national security ― specifically regarding attempts by Fox News and its pundits to question the patriotism of the National Security Council's top Ukraine expert, Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, ahead of his testimony in the impeachment inquiry into President Trump.
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| 2020 Toyota Land Cruiser Heritage Edition Is Even More Capable and Luxurious Posted: 29 Oct 2019 06:00 PM PDT |
| U.S. bill would provide Puerto Rico a path to statehood Posted: 29 Oct 2019 04:33 PM PDT  Proponents of the bill said it would provide the island with the same path to statehood taken by Alaska and Hawaii, the last two states admitted to the union. Under the legislation, which has some bipartisan support, a federally authorized referendum would appear on the Nov. 3, 2020, ballot in Puerto Rico. Approval by a majority of the island's voters would lead to a presidential proclamation within 30 months making Puerto Rico the 51st state.
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| 2 women have been criminally charged over their partners' suicides. Why do men escape the same blame? Posted: 30 Oct 2019 12:46 PM PDT  Experts told Insider they could not recall a similar instance of a man being charged with manslaughter in connection with his partner's suicide.
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| Beachgoers capture photos of washed up whale, sea turtle along New Jersey beaches Posted: 29 Oct 2019 07:37 AM PDT  A humpback whale and a sea turtle were found on two New Jersey beaches. The causes of death are unknown, but turtle may have been hit by boat.
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| Former </>Time Editor Wants Hate-Speech Laws, Thinks Trump ‘Might’ Violate Them, and Misses the Irony Posted: 30 Oct 2019 02:11 PM PDT  A former Time editor claimed that the United States needs a law banning hate speech, and that President Donald Trump "might be in violation of it" if there were one -- because, apparently, he doesn't notice the irony of holding both of these views at once.In a Tuesday tweet promoting his Washington Post piece, titled "Why America needs a hate speech law," Richard Stengel stated:> My @WashingtonPost piece on why the very broadness of the First Amendment suggests we should have a hate speech law. And if we did, why the President might be in violation of it. https://t.co/3ybv3kC69f> > -- Richard Stengel (@stengel) October 29, 2019In the piece, Stengel writes that "many nations have passed laws to curb the incitement of racial and religious hatred" in the wake of World War II:> These laws started out as protections against the kinds of anti-Semitic bigotry that gave rise to the Holocaust. We call them hate speech laws, but there's no agreed-upon definition of what hate speech actually is. In general, hate speech is speech that attacks and insults people on the basis of race, religion, ethnic origin and sexual orientation."I'm all for protecting 'thought that we hate,' but not speech that incites hate," he continues. "It undermines the very values of a fair marketplace of ideas that the First Amendment is designed to protect."It's interesting how Stengel actually does acknowledge the fact that "there's no agreed-upon definition of what hate speech actually is," and yet he still wants laws banning it. This makes absolutely no sense. After all, when he calls for laws to ban "hate speech," he is, inherently, giving the government the power to decide what would and would not qualify -- the exact same government that is led by Donald Trump, and that is full of people who support him.In other words: Stengel somehow trusts that the government will have the same view of "hate speech" as he does, and then, in the same thought, seems to acknowledge that there's actually no way that many of them would. Unless he thinks that the president and his congressional supporters would actually pass a law that they'd be in violation of, his argument for "hate speech" laws winds up being a pretty great argument against them.It's ironic, but it's not new: More often than not, it's the uber-progressives arguing for laws against "hate speech" -- despite the fact that they're often the same people who are also arguing that Donald Trump and Republicans are constantly spewing it. Maybe it's just me, but if I thought that the leader of my government was, you know, literally Hitler or whatever, the last thing that I'd want would be to give that person and their supporters control over my speech.Yes, the First Amendment gives us the right to be "offensive" with our speech. Given the fact that a new thing seems to be declared "racist" or "sexist" every day, I'm certainly glad that we do have this protection. After all, it would only take there being a few too many of the "super woke" in our government for a phrase like "you guys" to become a criminal offense.The truth is, though, the right to be "offensive" (however you define that subjective term, anyway) is not even the most important role that our First Amendment plays. No, what's most important is that it protects our right to speak out against the government when we see fit -- without having to worry about its retaliation. Like it or not, the only way to ensure that we retain this important check on government power is to never (ever) give its leaders a vehicle take it away.
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| Has the climate crisis made California too dangerous to live in? Posted: 28 Oct 2019 11:00 PM PDT  As with so many things, Californians are going first where the rest of us will followThe San Francisco skyline is shrouded in smoke from wildfires in the north part of the state. Photograph: Jose Carlos Fajardo/Associated PressMonday morning dawned smoky across much of California, and it dawned scary – over the weekend winds as high as a hundred miles an hour had whipped wildfires through forests and subdivisions.It wasn't the first time this had happened – indeed, it's happened every year for the last three – and this time the flames were licking against communities destroyed in 2017. Reporters spoke to one family that had moved into their rebuilt home on Saturday, only to be immediately evacuated again.The spectacle was cinematic: at one point, fire jumped the Carquinez Strait at the end of San Francisco Bay, shrouding the bridge on Interstate 80 in smoke and flame.Even areas that didn't actually burn felt the effects: Pacific Gas and Electric turned off power to millions, fearful that when the wind tore down its wires they would spark new conflagrations.Three years in a row feels like – well, it starts to feel like the new, and impossible, normal. That's what the local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, implied this morning when, in the middle of its account of the inferno, it included the following sentence: the fires had "intensified fears that parts of California had become almost too dangerous to inhabit". Read that again: the local paper is on record stating that part of the state is now so risky that its citizens might have to leave.On the one hand, this comes as no real surprise. My most recent book, Falter, centered on the notion that the climate crisis was making large swaths of the world increasingly off-limits to humans. Cities in Asia and the Middle East where the temperature now reaches the upper 120s – levels so high that the human body can't really cool itself; island nations (and Florida beaches) where each high tide washes through the living room or the streets; Arctic villages relocating because, with sea ice vanished, the ocean erodes the shore.But California? California was always the world's idea of paradise (until perhaps the city of that name burned last summer). Hollywood shaped our fantasies of the last century, and many of its movies were set in the Golden state. It's where the Okies trudged when their climate turned vicious during the Dust Bowl years – "pastures of plenty", Woody Guthrie called the green agricultural valleys. John Muir invented our grammar and rhetoric of wildness in the high Sierra (and modern environmentalism was born with the club he founded).California is the Golden state, the land of ease. I was born there, and though I left young enough that my memories are suspect, I grew up listening to my parents' stories. They had been newlyweds in the late 50s, living a block from the ocean in Manhattan Beach; when they got home from work they could walk to the sand for a game of volleyball. Date night was a mile or two up the Pacific Coast Highway to the Lighthouse, the jazz club where giants such as Gerry Mulligan showed up regularly, inventing the cool jazz that defined the place and time. Sunset magazine showcased a California aesthetic as breezy and informal as any on earth: the redwood deck, the cedar-shake roof, the suburban idyll among the eucalyptus and the pine. That is to say, precisely the kinds of homes that today are small piles of ash with only the kidney-shaped pool intact.Truth be told, that California began to vanish fairly quickly, as orange groves turned into airplane factories and then tech meccas. The great voices of California in recent years – writers such as Mike Davis and Rebecca Solnit – chronicle the demise of much that was once idyllic in a wave of money, consumption, nimbyism, tax dodging, and corporate greed. The state's been booming in recent years – it's the world's fifth biggest economy, bigger than the UK – but it's also home to tent encampments of homeless people with no chance of paying rent. And it's not just climate change that's at fault: California has always had fires, and the state's biggest utility, PG&E, is at this point as much an arsonist as electricity provider.Still, it takes a force as great as the climate crisis to really – perhaps finally – tarnish Eden. In the last decade, the state has endured the deepest droughts ever measured, dry spells so intense that more than a hundred million trees died. A hundred million – and the scientists who counted them warned that their carcasses could "produce wildfires on a scale and of an intensity that California has never seen". The drought has alternated with record downpours that have turned burned-over stretches into massive house-burying mudslides.And so Californians – always shirtsleeved and cool – spend some of the year in face masks and much of it with a feeling of trepidation. As with so many things, they are going first where the rest of us will follow. * Bill McKibben is an author and Schumann Distinguished Scholar in environmental studies at Middlebury College, Vermont. His most recent book is Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?
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| Belgium bars Chinese professor suspected of spying for Beijing Posted: 30 Oct 2019 10:53 AM PDT  The head of a Chinese language and cultural institute at a Brussels university has been banned from Belgium after security services accused him of being a spy. Xinning Song, 65, was also barred from the EU's passport-free Schengen zone for eight years, Belgian media reported. Professor Song has lived in Belgium for ten years. His work visa expired while he was on a trip to China. When he applied for its renewal, however, he was rejected by Belgian authorities. Their decision to impose the Schengen ban infers he is viewed as an espionage threat by security services, the De Morgen newspaper reported. Mr Song was the director of the Confucius Institute at the VUB (Free University Brussels), a department said to benefit from 200,000 euros a year in money from the Chinese government. Scrutiny has intensified around the world regarding Confucius Institutes, language and cultural centres that operate on university campuses. What separates these institutes from organisations like the British Council is that they fall directly under the Chinese ministry of education, which ultimately reports to the ruling Communist Party's central propaganda department. US and UK politicians have raised concerns about the risks Confucius Institutes pose in terms of academic freedoms, and potential theft of proprietary research on university campuses. Confucius Institutes, for instance, must obey Chinese law, which could include advocating for Beijing's territorial claims around the world and censoring discussion by not allowing events, speakers or textbooks deemed sensitive by the Communist Party, according to a report by the Royal United Services Institute, a security think tank. "Pressure has also been applied to academics at [the University of] Nottingham to stand down or avoid inviting certain external speakers, because they and/or their chosen subjects were deemed too sensitive," reads the report written by Charles Parton, a British diplomat who was posted to China. Beijing approves Confucius Institute course materials, events and even evaluates teachers. The centres "represent an endeavour by the Chinese Communist Party to spread its propaganda and suppress its critics beyond its borders," said a February report by the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission, an advocacy group. The UK alone has around 30 of these on attached to major universities such as Edinburgh, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Cardiff and University College London. There are an additional 148 Confucius "classrooms" in schools around the UK, according to a Chinese government website. At least 27 universities around the world have terminated ties with Confucius Institutes, including campuses in the US, the Netherlands, Sweden, France and Canada, while others reversed decisions to break ground on an institute In 2018, Belgian security services advised government ministers against supporting a Confucius Institute at the VUB, but the warning was ignored. Mr Song couldn't immediately be reached for comment.
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| Senior adviser Jared Kushner: Time in White House spent 'cleaning up the messes' left by Biden Posted: 29 Oct 2019 04:28 PM PDT  Jared Kushner, senior adviser and son-in-law to President Trump, responded to former Vice President Joe Biden's claim that he was unqualified to serve in the White House in a recent interview, telling an Israeli journalist that he's spent his time in the administration addressing problems of Biden's making.
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| Researchers: Chicago must overhaul homicide investigations Posted: 30 Oct 2019 01:58 PM PDT  The Chicago Police Department must make significant changes in the way it investigates homicides in a city where more than half of killings go unsolved, a police research group said in a report released Wednesday. The Police Executive Research Forum found problems in the department that included inadequate training; a lack of a detective unit devoted solely to homicide investigations; and a failure to adequately help witnesses or even have a witness protection unit that is critical in persuading people to come forward to help solve crimes. The report shows the clearance rate for homicides in 2017, the most recent year listed, was at 36% for the nation's third-largest city, compared with 84% for New York and 73% for Los Angeles.
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| London police detain jailed former Mexican governor's wife; faces extradition trial Posted: 29 Oct 2019 11:05 AM PDT  Police in London on Tuesday detained Karime Macias, the wife of a disgraced former Mexican state governor who is serving a 9-year jail sentence for money laundering and links to organized crime, a spokesman for Mexico's attorney general's office said. Macias will now face an extradition trial in Britain, the spokesman said. A judge in the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz, where Macias' husband Javier Duarte governed from 2010 to 2016, issued a warrant for her arrest in 2018 for the alleged misuse of over 112 million pesos ($5.9 million) in funds from a social welfare program.
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| Greta Thunberg declines environmental prize: 'Climate movement does not need any more awards' Posted: 30 Oct 2019 12:06 PM PDT  Greta Thunberg declined an environmental award worth $52,000 from the Nordic Council. She said she wants leaders to listen to science, not prizes.
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| Trump Sides With Indicted Oligarch Over His Own Diplomat Posted: 29 Oct 2019 04:10 PM PDT  Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty ImagesPresident Donald Trump boosted a tweet Monday promoting a controversial allegation from an indicted Ukrainian oligarch: that a top U.S. diplomat put fabricated information about the mogul in a diplomatic cable. That diplomat happens to be one of Democrats' key impeachment witnesses. And that oligarch happens to have a long-standing beef with Joe Biden.Scott Adams, a Washington, D.C., talk radio host, sent out a tweet Monday night about U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor, who delivered some of the impeachment inquiry's most damaging testimony yet. The tweet alleged that Taylor lied about Ukrainian natural gas baron Dmytro Firtash in a cable to State Department headquarters in 2008. At issue was a conversation Taylor had with Firtash in Kyiv that December. Taylor wrote in a diplomatic cable (later published by WikiLeaks) that Firtash told him he had "acknowledged ties to Russian organized crime figure [Semion] Seymon Mogilevich," one of the most notorious accused mobsters on the planet. According to Taylor, Firtash said "he needed Mogilevich's approval to get into business in the first place," but had not committed any crimes in the course of his business.When WikiLeaks published the cable in 2010, Firtash issued a statement on his website disputing its contents. Firtash, the statement claimed,"has never stated, to anyone, at any time, that he needed or received permission from Mr. Mogilevich to establish any of his businesses."Earlier this year, Firtash reiterated that defense. Without mentioning any American official by name, he said someone must have fabricated the detail about Mogilevich. Taylor, meanwhile, has defended the State Department's notes. The Justice Department appears to side with Taylor; its lawyers have argued in court that Firtash has ties to Russian organized crime. The criminal charges he faces, however, don't involve any such alleged relationships. Instead, the Justice Department charged him in 2014 with helming a conspiracy to bribe Indian government officials. Trump's retweet, however, offers a presidential thumbs-up to Firtash's side of the story, and raises a new line of attack on Taylor's credibility for the president's allies. Asked about his sourcing for the allegations against Taylor, Adams told The Daily Beast, "My sources are solid Foggy Bottom people." He also noted the explanation for the cable that Firtash provided to The Daily Beast earlier this year.This specific defense of Firtash took hold in The Hill over the summer, when columnist John Solomon, whose articles informed Rudy Giuliani's Biden-Ukraine investigation, published a piece in July claiming that Special Counsel Robert Mueller's deputy said Firtash's criminal charges in the U.S. might "go away" if he shared damaging information about Trump with Mueller's team. Solomon cited "multiple sources with direct knowledge" and contemporaneous memos. Firtash and Solomon share the same lawyers: Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova. The husband-wife team are veterans of the conservative movement's most contentious legal battles, with longstanding ties in the Justice Department and Trump administration. Ukrainian Oligarch Seethed About 'Overlord' Biden for YearsRead 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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| Photos from space show the Kincade Fire's spread across California wine country Posted: 30 Oct 2019 08:19 AM PDT  Satellites in space observed the Kincade Fire burning through dry vegetation. Infrared images show scorched land.
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| Period emoji arrives on iPhones in bid to 'break the taboo' over menstruation Posted: 29 Oct 2019 08:54 AM PDT  Apple has released a new set of more than 350 new emojis for its iPhone keyboard, including gender-neutral characters, mixed-race couples, people with disabilities and a period "blood drop" that campaigners have heralded as a "breakthrough in the fight against period stigma". Girl's rights charity Plan International launched a campaign in 2017 to create a new period emoji in order to "make it easier for girls and women to talk about their period with friends, family and colleagues". More than 54,000 people cast their vote on the design to be submitted to the Unicode Consortium, which maintains and regulates the library of emojis. The original winning design of "period pants" was initially rejected, but the runner-up blood drop design – made in collaboration with the NHS – was proposed and accepted as an alternative. "We are thrilled to see the arrival of this long-awaited blood drop emoji, which signals a real breakthrough in the fight against period stigma," said Rose Caldwell, Plan International UK's chief executive. "Girls, women and other menstruators told us this emoji would help them talk more freely about their periods, which is why we campaigned so hard to make it a reality." Along with the blood-drop icon, the new emojis feature characters with disabilities as part of Apple's push to make the library more inclusive "But this is only one part of the solution. We know that girls around the world are being held back because of their periods, whether that's the one in five girls here in the UK who are bullied and teased, girls in Zimbabwe who have dropped out of school because the recent cyclone destroyed their period-friendly toilets, or those living in refugee camps in Bangladesh who can't access period products since fleeing their homes. "Period poverty will not stop until we fix the toxic trio of affordability of products, lack of education and period shame. We hope this emoji helps to keep the conversation going." The new period emoji arrives on iPhone with a slew of new icons submitted by Apple after the company said last year that it wanted to improve representation within its library. After consulting with charities on various issues, the new update includes allowing users to choose the gender and ethnicity of each person in the "holding hands" icon. There is also a gender-neutral option on each character emoji along with the original male and female. Insight | How are new emoji introduced? The largest addition, however, comes in the addition of characters with disabilities. The icons include hearing aids, prosthetic limbs, guide dogs and wheelchairs. On submitting its proposal to the Unicode Consortium last year, Apple said: "Currently, emoji provide a wide range of options, but may not represent the experiences of those with disabilities. "Diversifying the options available helps fill a significant gap and provides a more inclusive experience for all." The new emojis are part of Apple's 13.2 update for iOS,which also includes its "deep fusion" camera mode, which uses artificial intelligence to improve photographs, and support for its newly announced AirPods Pro earphones.
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