| Not much for Trump to be thankful for in latest impeachment news Posted: 27 Nov 2019 02:12 PM PST  While House Democrats concluded their public hearings last Thursday in the impeachment inquiry of Donald Trump, a flurry of new developments and disclosures this week appeared to increase the odds that he will become the third U.S. president to face a trial in the Senate that could (although most likely won't) end with his removal from office.
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| 'Stay put,' officials warn: Winter storms slam US as 50 million people travel for Thanksgiving Posted: 27 Nov 2019 03:41 PM PST  Two storms, including a bomb cyclone, were hammering the West Coast and Midwest, shutting down highways and snarling Thanksgiving travel plans.
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| Dutch prosecutors charge isolated farm father with sex abuse Posted: 28 Nov 2019 04:23 AM PST  A Dutch father accused of holding six of his children against their will on an isolated farm for nine years is now also suspected of sexually abusing two of his other children, prosecutors said Thursday. The abuse allegations add a grim new element to a case that is shrouded in mystery and garnered huge attention across the Netherlands. The 67-year-old father and a 58-year-old man, who is reportedly an Austrian national and rented the farm to the family, are suspected of illegal deprivation of liberty and abuse for their alleged detention of six young adults on a farm in the rural farming village of Ruinerwold.
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| Europeans fear climate change more than terrorism, unemployment or migration Posted: 28 Nov 2019 06:30 AM PST ![Europeans fear climate change more than terrorism, unemployment or migration]( "Europeans fear climate change more than terrorism, unemployment or migration") Almost half of all Europeans fear climate change more than losing a job or of a terrorist attack, a study by the European Investment Bank (EIB) showed on Thursday as EU lawmakers declared a "climate emergency". The symbolic vote by lawmakers was designed to pressure for action against global warming at an upcoming United Nations summit.. The EIB survey of 30,000 respondents from 30 countries, including China and the United States, showed 47% of Europeans saw climate change as the number one threat in their lives, above unemployment, large scale migration and concerns about terrorism.
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| ICE arrested an estimated 250 people who enrolled in a fake university set up by federal authorities as part of an immigration sting operation Posted: 27 Nov 2019 09:02 AM PST  A grand-jury indictment from January alleged that "the University was being used by foreign citizens as a 'pay to stay' scheme" to obtain visas.
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| 21 of the Most Beautiful Sacred Sites That Every Traveler Must Visit Posted: 28 Nov 2019 05:00 AM PST |
| TikTok Blocks Teen Who Posted About China's Detention Camps Posted: 27 Nov 2019 05:15 AM PST  SHANGHAI -- The teenage girl, pink eyelash curler in hand, begins her video innocently: "Hi, guys. I'm going to teach you guys how to get long lashes."After a few seconds, she asks viewers to put down their curlers. "Use your phone that you're using right now to search up what's happening in China, how they're getting concentration camps, throwing innocent Muslims in there," she says.The sly bait-and-switch puts a serious topic -- the mass detentions of minority Muslims in northwest China -- in front of an audience that might not have known about it before. The 40-second clip has amassed more than 498,000 likes on TikTok, a social platform where the users skew young and the videos skew silly.But the video's creator, Feroza Aziz, said this week that TikTok had suspended her account after she posted the clip. That added to a widespread fear about the platform: that its owner, Chinese social media giant ByteDance, censors or punishes videos that China's government might not like.A ByteDance spokesman, Josh Gartner, said Aziz had been blocked from her TikTok account because she used a previous account to post a video that contained an image of Osama bin Laden. This violated TikTok's policies against terrorist content, Gartner said, which is why the platform banned both her account and the devices from which she was posting."If she tries to use the device that she used last time, she will probably have a problem," Gartner said.Aziz, a 17-year-old Muslim high school student in New Jersey, said in an email on Tuesday that her TikTok videos tried to make light of the racism and discrimination she experienced growing up in the United States. In one video, she addressed a slur that she said she and other Muslims heard regularly: that they would marry bin Laden."I think that TikTok should not ban content that doesn't harm anyone or shows anyone being harmed," Aziz said.In recent months, U.S. lawmakers have expressed concerns that TikTok censors video content at Beijing's behest and shares user data with Chinese authorities.The head of TikTok, Alex Zhu, denied those accusations in an interview with The Times this month. Zhu said that Chinese regulators did not influence TikTok in any way and that even ByteDance could not control TikTok's policies for managing video content in the United States.But episodes such as Aziz's show how difficult it might be for TikTok to escape the fog of suspicion that surrounds it and other Chinese tech companies.China's government rigidly controls the internet within the nation's borders. It exerts influence, sometimes subtly, over the activities of private businesses. The concern is that, when companies like ByteDance and telecom equipment maker Huawei expand overseas, Beijing's long arm follows them.China would certainly prefer that the world did not talk about its clampdown on Muslims. Over the past few years, the government has corralled as many as 1 million ethnic Uighurs, Kazakhs and others into internment camps and prisons.Chinese leaders have presented their efforts as a mild and benevolent campaign to fight Islamic extremism. But internal Communist Party documents reported by The Times this month provided an inside glimpse at the crackdown and confirmed its coercive nature.On Tuesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said at a news conference in Washington that the documents showed "brutal detention and systematic repression" of Uighurs and called on China to immediately release those who were detained. President Donald Trump, however, has refused to impose sanctions on Chinese officials deemed responsible, despite recommendations from some U.S. officials to do so.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company
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| Russia says it showed nuclear missile system to U.S. inspectors Posted: 27 Nov 2019 08:43 AM PST  Russia's Ministry of Defense said on Tuesday it had shown the country's new Avangard nuclear missile system to U.S. inspectors for the first time, a development that Moscow said showed a key arms control treaty was still effective.
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| Your talking points for the 2020 race, in time for Thanksgiving dinner Posted: 27 Nov 2019 01:30 PM PST  Frequently asked questions — and some straightforward answers — about every candidate still in the race for the White House.
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| Unhappy Thanksgiving: Explosions at Texas chemical plant keep more than 50,000 out of their homes Posted: 28 Nov 2019 04:15 PM PST  More than 50,000 people in southeast Texas remain under evacuation orders on Thanksgiving after two powerful explosions at a chemical plant.
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| Forty years on, New Zealand apologizes for Antarctic plane disaster Posted: 27 Nov 2019 08:18 PM PST  New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern apologized on Thursday for the then-government's handling of a plane crash in Antarctica 40 years ago that took the lives of 257 people in the country's worst peacetime disaster. On 28 November 1979, Air New Zealand flight 901 was on a sightseeing tour from Auckland when it crashed into the side of Mount Erebus, a 3,794 meter (12,448 ft) volcano near the U.S. Antarctic research base of McMurdo Station. Originally the crash was blamed on the pilots, but following a public outcry, a Royal Commission of Inquiry was set up to investigate the disaster.
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| Leaked Chinese documents give unprecedented insight into how Muslim detention centers in Xinjiang control detainees' every move Posted: 27 Nov 2019 12:06 AM PST  Uighur activities, including indoctrination classes, mealtimes, family visits, medical treatments, and even bathroom breaks are "strictly managed."
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| Vietnamese families bury first victims of UK truck tragedy Posted: 27 Nov 2019 04:27 PM PST  Throngs of weeping relatives on Thursday buried the first of 39 Vietnamese people found dead in a truck in Britain last month, in emotional ceremonies for the young victims whose deaths have rattled their rural towns. The first of the remains arrived in Vietnam from London on a commercial flight Wednesday, closing a weeks-long, agonising wait by families eager to have their children back home. All 31 men and eight women found dead in a refrigerated trailer in Essex last month were Vietnamese, many from small towns in central Vietnam.
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| 7 People Sentenced to Death for Bangladesh’s Worst Terrorist Attack Posted: 26 Nov 2019 11:08 PM PST  (Bloomberg) -- A trial court sentenced seven people to death for their roles in Bangladesh's worst terrorist attack, which killed 20 diners, most of them foreigners, in a cafe in 2016.Judge Mojibur Rahman pronounced the verdict in a packed Dhaka courtroom on Wednesday, Dhaka Metropolitan Chief Public Prosecutor Abdullah Abu said at a briefing. The decision brings to a close the year-long trial that followed a two-year investigation, which saw one accused being acquitted. The indicted have the right to appeal."They wanted to destabilize the country and destroy the economy by forcing foreigners and investors to leave Bangladesh," prosecutors said in case documents.Nine Italians, seven Japanese, one Indian and three Bangladeshis were killed by terrorists who stormed the Holey Artisan restaurant in the diplomatic area of Dhaka in 2016. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the 12-hour hostage crisis.Security forces shot dead five attackers and also, reports say mistakenly, a pizza chef during the rescue operation codenamed "Thunderbolt."The convicts yelled "Allahu Akbar," or "Allah is the greatest," in the courtroom, according to prosecutor Abu.At least two suspected militants tied to the attack are at large, according to Monirul Islam, chief of the police's counterterrorism unit.To contact the reporter on this story: Arun Devnath in Dhaka at adevnath@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Arijit Ghosh at aghosh@bloomberg.net, Jeanette Rodrigues, Abhay SinghFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Fire in Minnesota High-Rise Apartment Building Leaves 5 Dead, 4 Injured Posted: 27 Nov 2019 08:49 AM PST  "It's a very tragic night at the beginning of the holiday weekend," said fire chief John Fruetel.
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| Dubai police adding Tesla's new Cybertruck to their fleet? Posted: 27 Nov 2019 02:36 AM PST  After a botched demonstration of the Cybertruck's armor glass windows – which shattered – the Dubai Police still seem impressed with Elon Musks' latest invention
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| Trump peddles 'war on Thanksgiving' that he probably heard about on Fox News Posted: 27 Nov 2019 09:18 AM PST  Like the so-called war on Christmas, the rhetorical assault on Thanksgiving is being led by the president's favorite cable news network.
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| Customs agents seize $95M in counterfeit goods along with thousands of fake IDs Posted: 27 Nov 2019 08:38 PM PST  Customs officials said in a statement that counterfeiting sales can be traced to organized crime, drug trafficking and terrorist organizations.
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| Italy uncovers plot to create new Nazi party Posted: 28 Nov 2019 06:05 AM PST ![Italy uncovers plot to create new Nazi party]( "Italy uncovers plot to create new Nazi party") Italian police said on Thursday they uncovered a plot to form a new Nazi party and seized a cache of weapons during searches across the country. Police in 16 towns and cities from the Mediterranean island of Sicily to the Alps in northern Italy took part in the investigation, which was launched two years. The probe revealed a "huge and varied array of subjects, residents in different places, united by the same ideological fanaticism and willing to create an openly pro-Nazi, xenophobic and anti-Semitic movement", a police statement said.
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| 30 Clever-Approved Sofas That Won't Blow Your Budget Posted: 28 Nov 2019 05:00 AM PST |
| German museum confirms 49-carat diamond among heist haul Posted: 27 Nov 2019 09:07 AM PST  Publishing a list of the pieces taken in Monday's brazen raid, the Green Vault museum at Dresden's royal palace said the items stolen included a sword whose hilt is encrusted with nine large and 770 smaller diamonds, and a shoulderpiece which contains the famous 49-carat Dresden white diamond. The Dresden white is one of the most precious jewels in the collection of former Saxon ruler August the Strong. "None of the diamonds would have been in themselves extra special except for the one large Dresden White," he said.
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| UN expert: Zimbabwe hunger ‘shocking’ for country not at war Posted: 28 Nov 2019 05:29 AM PST ![UN expert: Zimbabwe hunger 'shocking' for country not at war]( "UN expert: Zimbabwe hunger 'shocking' for country not at war") Zimbabwe is on the brink of man-made starvation and the number of people needing help is "shocking" for a country not in conflict, a United Nations special expert on the right to food said Thursday. Hilal Elver said she found stunted and underweight children, mothers too hungry to breastfeed their babies and medicine shortages in hospitals during her 10-day visit to the economically shattered country. Zimbabwe's food crisis has the potential to spark fighting, the U.N. expert said.
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| No F-35, But a Real Killer: Don't Underestimate China's J-20 Stealth Fighter Posted: 27 Nov 2019 01:00 PM PST  Just because it isn't as powerful as an F-22 or F-35, doesn't mean it isn't a tough plane.
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| Founders wanted a powerful president Posted: 27 Nov 2019 08:48 PM PST  Many on the left have made it their mission to hinder and undermine Trump's government: Opposing view
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| GOP's closed-door conspiracy theory led to Hill's public rebuke Posted: 27 Nov 2019 10:29 AM PST  Russia expert Fiona Hill rebuked Republicans during the impeachment hearings for pushing a narrative about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election. It was the false equivalence between Russia's systematic, government-driven campaign and the actions of a few Ukrainian individuals that created Hill's concern.
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| Beijing accuses developing countries, the U.S. of not doing enough to curb global warming Posted: 27 Nov 2019 09:07 AM PST  Beijing on Wednesday accused developed countries including the US of doing too little to curb global warming, ahead of a UN summit discussing controversial issues including climate compensation. China is the world's second-largest economy and the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, but has repeatedly argued that developed nations should lead on tackling international climate obligations.
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| Israel says envoy's 'GOOD LUCK' to Myanmar for genocide case was a mistake Posted: 28 Nov 2019 01:52 AM PST ![Israel says envoy's 'GOOD LUCK' to Myanmar for genocide case was a mistake]( "Israel says envoy's 'GOOD LUCK' to Myanmar for genocide case was a mistake") The Israeli ambassador was mistaken to have sent a "GOOD LUCK" message to Myanmar ahead of World Court hearings on accusations the state committed genocide against Rohingya Muslims, Israel's foreign ministry said on Thursday. Israel's Haaretz newspaper reported that the ambassador to Myanmar wished authorities good luck in tweets that have since been deleted ahead of the hearings next month at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague.
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| Row over Chinese 5G equipment further strains U.S.-German relations Posted: 27 Nov 2019 07:43 PM PST  U.S. Ambassador Richard Grenell called a German official's remarks this week "an insult to the thousands of American troops who helped ensure Germany's security."
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| Native Americans Have Little to Celebrate on Thanksgiving Posted: 28 Nov 2019 02:51 AM PST  Bettmann/GettyWhile I have been researching and writing a Wampanoag-centered history of Plymouth Colony and the Thanksgiving holiday, my conversations with Native people have opened my eyes to some profound lessons about their past and present. These teachings have particular resonance this Thanksgiving season as the United States continues to struggle with white nationalism, the importance of distinguishing between truth and lies in democratic debate, and the place of indigenous people in a pluralistic country with a colonial foundation.Native people widely agree that the U.S. has yet to reckon with its history of white violence against their people. Instead, the country uses the myth of the First Thanksgiving to make it appear that Indians consented bloodlessly to colonialism.That myth, reinforced over and over again through grade school Thanksgiving pageants, holiday decorations, and television specials, is the only cameo Indians make in the colonial history curriculum in many American schools. Unfortunately, it is terrible history and even worse civics.The myth tells that supposedly friendly Indians (rarely identified by tribe) voluntarily gifted their country to the Pilgrims in order to lay the foundations for a white, Christian, democratic United States. As for why these Indians were so welcoming in the first place, this myth has nothing to say. It does not address the fact that the Wampanoags had already experienced years of slave raiding by European sailors before the appearance of the Mayflower, and that those contacts had introduced them to a devastating plague that more than halved their population and left them vulnerable to their inter-tribal enemies. Thus, when the Pilgrims arrived, the Wampanoags looked to them for a military alliance despite their wariness of English treachery.Why Thanksgiving Is Better Than ChristmasThe Thanksgiving Myth also evades the fact that the celebrated peace between the Wampanoags and Plymouth was rife with tensions from the start and ultimately degenerated into a bloody war. During the celebrated 50 years of peace following the First Thanksgiving, the Wampanoags complained endlessly about the English encroaching on their land, undermining their political systems, and asserting their jurisdiction over purely Indian affairs.Not coincidentally, there were recurrent war scares during these years as Native leaders reached across tribal lines to make common cause against their common colonial threat. The tension finally broke in King Philip's War of 1675-76, which led to the deaths of thousands of Wampanoag, Narragansett, Nipmuc, and other indigenous people, and the enslavement of thousands more. The Thanksgiving Myth ignores this consequence of the Pilgrim-Wampanoag alliance, though clashes of this sort were a basic feature of American colonial history.Some American history courses might teach about King Philip's War, but few have anything to say about how many Wampanoags and other Native New Englanders survived after their military subjugation. Over the following centuries, they endured white society's reduction of them and their children to indentured servitude and the ongoing occupation of their lands. They also suffered white people denying they were Indians at all based on the intermarriages and cultural adjustments they had made to survive under white domination. In other words, Americans are rarely taught the incredible achievement that American Indians are still here, every bit as much a part of the modern world as everyone else.Indigenous people also widely bemoan that Americans' lack of historical understanding about the Native American contributes to a marked lack of recognition of their place in the country, a general lack of compassion for their historic struggles, and widespread unawareness about their ongoing fights for sovereignty and cultural self-determination. Indeed, many of them feel invisible to the general public.Worse still, every Thanksgiving season the country reduces historic Indians and their traumas to caricature, as if to say that Native Americans' only role in the national culture is to concede to colonialism and then go away.Lest we diminish the impact of these messages, consider the experience of a young Wampanoag woman who told me that when she was in kindergarten, the lone Indian in her class, her teacher cast her as Chief Massasoit in a Thanksgiving pageant and had her sing with her classmates "This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land." Reflecting on the moment as an adult, the cruel irony was not lost on her. As a child, she only knew enough to be embarrassed about it.The Trump era has cast into relief some of the dark consequences of this amnesia and ignorance. It includes the government's environmental racism and disregard of Native sovereignty evident in the battle over the Keystone Pipeline. It includes the ongoing use of racist stereotypes of indigenous people in sports mascots. It includes President Donald Trump's derision of Sen. Elizabeth Warren as Pocahontas, which feeds on the widespread assumption that it is ludicrous for someone with a light (or dark) complexion leading a modern life to have Native heritage and want to claim it.Trump's juvenile trolling of Warren also plays on the widespread ignorance of the American public about the difference between being an enrolled member of an Indian tribe (which Warren is not) and being a descendant of Native people (which Warren is). Such thinking is part of a long American tradition of white people insisting that Indians should disappear, the better to reduce the numbers of them laying claim to the land.The belief that Indians do not matter also contributed to Trump posing a delegation of Navajo leaders visiting the White House in front of a portrait of Andrew Jackson, the proponent of Indian Removal, and then making light on Twitter about the historic massacre of Wounded Knee.Not least of all, the widespread belief that modern Indians cannot be authentic and have no legitimate historic rights has contributed to a recent decision by Trump's Department of the Interior to revoke a 2007 federal ruling that restored reservation lands to the Mashpee Wampanoags of Cape Cod, descendants of the very people who welcomed the Pilgrims.No wonder, then, that many Native people, including the Wampanoags, charge that their fellow Americans lack sufficient gratitude for what they've sacrificed for the country. This feeling of victimhood is especially poignant given that many Native communities still suffer extraordinarily high levels of poverty, with all of its associated ills, while living in the shadow of sometimes garish wealth. Wampanoag people in southeastern New England, for instance, are confronted daily with the sight of outsiders' extravagant coastal estates, occupied for only six or eight weeks in summer, built atop places where the ancestors are buried and where some of them fished, hunted, and gathered within memory. The image sickens and depresses. And yet there is no escaping it or the sense that other Americans revel in it.In Thanksgiving season, one cannot drive past neighbors' lawns or go to the store without confronting happy Pilgrim and Indian decorations, or turn on the television, radio, or computer without being bombarded with Pilgrim and Indian themes. Some schools continue to have children, including Native children, perform Thanksgiving pageants. For these reasons and more, the United New England Indians have held a National Day of Mourning in Plymouth every Thanksgiving Day since 1970, which is attended by indigenous people from throughout the hemisphere. They do not see American colonialism as something to celebrate.Part of what I've learned through my conversations with Wampanoag people is that achieving some measure of repair and signaling that Americans value their Native countrymen and women requires compassion, gratitude, and a willingness to confront uncomfortable history. Taking these steps might also help us, collectively, to restore basic dignity, intelligence, and humanity to our civic culture. 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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| Spain 'narco-sub' carried 100 mn euros of cocaine: officials Posted: 27 Nov 2019 10:05 AM PST  A submarine seized off the Spanish coast over the weekend was carrying three tonnes of cocaine worth 100 million euros ($110 million), officials said Wednesday. Police intercepted the 20-metre (65-foot) submarine -- thought to be the first of its kind captured in Europe -- off the northwestern region of Galicia on Saturday. While traffickers, especially from Colombia, have been caught using submarines to transport cocaine into Mexico and the United States, police said Saturday's seizure was "the first time that this system of transporting drugs has been detected in Europe".
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| The Secret of China's Aircraft Carriers Posted: 28 Nov 2019 12:30 AM PST  "China understands that if conflict with the United States comes, its carriers' warfighting capability would—like the rest of its arsenal—have to be employed based on the principle of calculated risk. It would be wise for strategists in the United States to remember these same principles."
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| Trump told to put up or shut up as judiciary committee invites President to attend impeachment hearing Posted: 26 Nov 2019 10:31 PM PST  Donald Trump could face formal impeachment charges within weeks after the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee on Tuesday invited the US President to its first impeachment hearing scheduled for December 4. Mr Trump is not required to attend the hearing but the the move allows the president and his legal team access to congressional impeachment procedures that he and other Republicans have denounced as unfair, partly because the White House has not been able to call or cross-examine witnesses. The House Intelligence Committee, which has led the impeachment investigation into Trump's dealings with Ukraine through weeks of closed-door testimony and televised hearings,is expected to release a formal evidence report shortly after lawmakers return to Congress from their Thanksgiving recess. The Judiciary panel will use the report to consider formal charges that it could recommend for a full House vote by mid-December. It gave Trump until 6 pm on Sunday to advise the committee on whether he would attend the hearing, and to indicate by then who would be his counsel. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Representative Jerrold Nadler, the Judiciary Committee's Democratic chairman, told Trump in a letter that he was reminding the president that the committee's rules allow him to attend the hearing and for his legal team to question witnesses. The hearing will have legal experts, who have not yet been identified, as witnesses. "The president has a choice to make: he can take this opportunity to be represented in the impeachment hearings, or he can stop complaining about the process," Nadler said in a statement. "I hope that he chooses to participate." The impeachment probe is looking into whether Trump abused his power to pressure Ukraine to launch investigations of political rival Joe Biden and a discredited conspiracy theory promoted by Trump that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In an interview on Tuesday with former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, Trump denied he directed his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who had been pushing Ukraine for the investigations, to act on his behalf in trying to get Ukraine to help turn up dirt on his political rivals. "No, I didn't direct him, but he is a warrior," Trump told O'Reilly, adding Giuliani "possibly saw something" and "he's done work in Ukraine for years." Where now? | Next steps in the impeachment inquiry Giuliani has said he conducted an investigation into corruption and possible collusion in Ukraine in his role as a defense attorney trying to clear Trump. The inquiry centers on a July 25 phone call in which Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate Biden, now a leading Democratic presidential contender, and his son Hunter, who had worked for a Ukrainian energy company while his father was vice president under Democratic President Barack Obama. Democrats have accused Trump of abusing his power by withholding $391 million in security aid to put pressure on a vulnerable U.S. ally to interfere in an American election by digging up dirt on his domestic political opponents. Trump denies wrongdoing and has dismissed the inquiry as a sham by Democrats who want to overturn the result of the 2016 US presidential election. In his letter, Nadler said the hearing was intended as an opportunity to discuss the historical and constitutional basisof impeachment, as well as the meaning of terms like "high crimes and misdemeanors." "We will also discuss whether your alleged actions warrantthe House's exercising its authority to adopt articles of impeachment," Nadler wrote. Donald Trump has denied claims he directed his personal lawyer, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, pictured, to act on his behalf in trying to get Ukraine to help turn up dirt on his political rivals. Credit: Angela Weiss/AFP House Republican Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney tweeted that Democrats "have decided to give @realDonaldTrump the right to question liberal law professors, but not any fact witnesses. At all." The Democratic-led House is aiming to resolve the question of Trump's impeachment before the end of the year, possibly by approving formal charges known as articles of impeachment and forwarding them to the Republican-controlled Senate for a trial that could begin in January. A trial would determine whether Trump should be convicted and removed from office. But Senate Republicans have shown little inclination to remove Trump, their party's leader, who is seeking re-election in 2020. On Tuesday, the House Intelligence Committee released transcripts of closed-door testimony from Mark Sandy, a career official with the White House Office of Management and Budget and Philip Reeker, acting assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs. In his testimony, Sandy, one of the only current White House aides to agree to testify to congressional investigators, said a budget office attorney and another staffer in that office resigned partly because of concerns over the hold on U.S.military aid to Ukraine. Reeker in his testimony discussed the "irregular" role three officials close to Trump - the ambassador to the European Union and Trump donor Gordon Sondland, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Giuliani - played in U.S. policy toward Ukraine. A Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Tuesday found support for impeaching Trump tracked higher over the past few weeks of televised impeachment hearings. According to the poll, which split largely along party lines, 47% of respondents believed Trump should be impeached and 40% were opposed.
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| New toll road cuts Moscow-Saint Petersburg drive in half Posted: 27 Nov 2019 07:54 AM PST  President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday opened what has been billed as Russia's first modern motorway, almost halving the driving time between the two biggest cities of Moscow and Saint Petersburg. The "Neva" toll road, running 669 kilometres (416 miles) and named after Saint Petersburg's main river, is Russia's first long-distance toll road. It boasts no traffic lights and a higher maximum speed limit of 130 kilometres per hour (81 miles per hour) versus 110 kph on other roads.
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| Lawsuit: Alabama Sheriff 'Big John' Williams shot in parking lot 'without provocation' Posted: 27 Nov 2019 12:12 PM PST  Suspect William Chase Johnson faces murder charges. He is the son of a Montgomery County Sheriff's Office deputy.
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| U.S. Fertility Rate Falls for Fourth Consecutive Year in 2018, Reaching Record Low Posted: 27 Nov 2019 06:00 AM PST  The U.S. fertility rate declined in 2018 for the fourth consecutive year, reaching a record low 59.1 births for every 1,000 women able to bear children, the National Center for Health Statistics announced on Wednesday.The fertility rate has been on the decline since the 2008 recession, with a slight rebound in 2014. Typically, economic crises lead to a decline in fertility rates, but the current decline has not reversed even as the economy has recovered."It is hard for me to believe that the birthrate just keeps going down," University of New Hampshire demographer Kenneth Johnson told to the New York Times."The data suggest that people want to establish themselves before having children," Alison Gemmill, a demographer at Johns Hopkins University, told the Times. "They also want to make sure they have adequate resources to raise quality children."The median age at which women give birth has increased continuously over the past several decades. William Frey, a senior demographer at the Brookings Institution, said the median childbearing age in the 1970's was 21 for women and 23 for men, while data from the Census Bureau show that the median childbearing age in 2018 was 28 for women and 30 for men. The number of women giving birth under the age of 35 has also steadily declined, with more women giving birth in their 30's and 40's.The annual rate of births per woman, which for 2018 was 59.1/1000 is known as the general fertility rate. A different metric, the total fertility rate, measures the likely number of children the average woman will have during her lifetime, if current fertility patterns hold.For 2018 the TFR stood at 1.73, according to a Pew study released in May. This means that women are having fewer than two children on average, below replacement level for the general population.
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| Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp fumes at 'attacks' over Senate appointment Posted: 27 Nov 2019 04:34 PM PST  Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp pushed back on Wednesday against speculation over who he'll appoint to replace retiring Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson.
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| Japan beer exports to S.Korea dry up amid hiccup in ties Posted: 27 Nov 2019 11:26 PM PST  Not a single drop of Japanese beer was exported to South Korea last month, according to official figures on Thursday, as a boycott campaign against Japan over a historical dispute dries up demand. Japanese beer shipments to South Korea stood at 7.9 billion yen ($72 million) last year, accounting for more than 60 percent of the country's global exports of the amber nectar. Exports of Japanese instant noodles and sake to South Korea have also plummeted.
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| Why NATO Is Stronger Than Ever Posted: 27 Nov 2019 02:37 AM PST  The twenty-nine countries of the Western military alliance are now responsible for 53 percent of the global GDP. Half of that total is American, but the other half comes from countries like the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy.
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| Thanksgiving brings brief respite from worst of snow, winds Posted: 28 Nov 2019 07:36 AM PST  Wintry weather temporarily loosened its grip across much of the U.S. just in time for Thanksgiving, but travelers were bracing for heavy snow and blizzard conditions in some areas as they made plans to return home. The wind, ice and snow that tied up major highways and airports Tuesday and Wednesday largely let up Thursday, with a notable exception in California, where the main north-south Interstate 5 was shut down in Southern California as heavy snow blanketed the region. High winds that had ripped a wooden sign from scaffolding on Chicago's Willis Tower and nearly felled the Christmas Tree to close Cleveland's Public Square Wednesday were calm enough by Thursday morning to allow the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York to proceed, albeit with balloons flying at lower levels.
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| White House officials resigned over Trump threat to freeze Ukraine aid, official says Posted: 27 Nov 2019 06:12 AM PST  Two officials at the White House budget office have resigned over disagreements on a hold on $400m of congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine, according to a transcript of testimony from a career official during the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump.Mark Sandy — associate director for national security at the White House Office of Management and Budget — testified that the unnamed employees had resigned "in part" due to the decision to withhold assistance to Ukraine.
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| Police chief blasted over handling of aide's alleged racism Posted: 26 Nov 2019 08:06 PM PST  Assistant Chief Justin Newsom retired last month amid allegations he used the n-word to refer to African Americans
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| Private investigators focused on frat party in Cornell University freshman’s death Posted: 28 Nov 2019 02:30 AM PST  Another element of the parents' search for answers is the history of Cornell student suicides connected to the gorges in Ithaca.
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| CORRECTED-WRAPUP 7-China warns U.S. over Hong Kong law as thousands stage 'Thanksgiving' rally Posted: 27 Nov 2019 08:52 PM PST ![CORRECTED-WRAPUP 7-China warns U.S. over Hong Kong law as thousands stage 'Thanksgiving' rally]( "CORRECTED-WRAPUP 7-China warns U.S. over Hong Kong law as thousands stage 'Thanksgiving' rally") HONG KONG/BEIJING, Nov 28 (Reuters) - China warned the United States on Thursday that it would take "firm counter measures" in response to U.S. legislation backing anti-government protesters in Hong Kong, and said attempts to interfere in the Chinese-ruled city were doomed to fail. U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed into law congressional legislation which supported the protesters, despite angry objections from Beijing, with which he is seeking a deal to end a damaging trade war.
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