| With Acosta in crosshairs, Trump unleashes tweet barrage at everything else he can think of Posted: 11 Jul 2019 07:00 AM PDT  The president published a multi-tweet rant on a host of unrelated subjects that seemed intended to shift attention away from the controversy surrounded his embattled labor secretary.
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| Woman who claimed to be Uber driver charged with smuggling immigrants in New Mexico Posted: 11 Jul 2019 04:00 PM PDT  The driver, Evelyn Limas, has been charged with one felony count of smuggling undocumented immigrants.
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| U.S. wants 'El Chapo' in prison for life, after he hears from murder plot victim Posted: 11 Jul 2019 06:06 AM PDT  U.S. prosecutors said they want the Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman to spend the rest of his life - plus 30 years - in prison, after he hears from a victim who survived one of his murder plots. Guzman, 62, faces a mandatory minimum of life in prison at his scheduled sentencing hearing next Wednesday, following his February conviction on a variety of drug charges. In a Wednesday night letter, prosecutors asked U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan in Brooklyn to add another 30 years because jurors convicted Guzman of illegally using a firearm, including a machine gun, in connection with drug trafficking.
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| What the A-10 Warthog Would Do in a Second Korean War Posted: 11 Jul 2019 12:00 AM PDT  North Korea has a very large army that may number 3.5 million men and women, although the quality of the forces is open to question and skepticism.The much-maligned A-10 Thunderbolt ground attack airplane could prove to be a savior if fighting breaks out with North Korea. However, the US Air Force wants to get rid of the plane, and is not asking for funds to fix the wings on some 100 A-10s, which therefore may end up in the scrap yard.In any conflict with North Korea, a US-South Korean-Coalition's objective will be to knock out North Korea's nuclear facilities and missiles. This will surely involve strategic bombers and maybe even stealth aircraft. But one immediate consequence will be that North Korea will attack South Korea, probably aiming first at neutralizing US and Korean forces by destroying bases, airfields, depots and equipment.This first appeared in January 2018.North Korea has a very large army that may number 3.5 million men and women, although the quality of the forces is open to question and skepticism. The country also has a considerable armored capability. There are 4,200 tanks, 2,200 armored personnel carriers, 8,600 artillery pieces and 4,800 multiple rocket launchers. While most of these are of old designs, if North Korea is able to move them in position, cross the DMZ and mount an attack on the south, its army could quickly defeat the south.Recommended: How North Korea Could Start a WarRecommended: This Is What Happens if America Nuked North Korea
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| Boycott the Oven With These Summer Slow Cooker Recipes Posted: 10 Jul 2019 10:28 AM PDT |
| UK Labour under pressure over anti-Semitism after BBC doc Posted: 11 Jul 2019 03:25 AM PDT  Britain's Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn came under renewed pressure over anti-Semitism on Thursday after a string of former officials spoke out about the party's failure to tackle discrimination in a BBC documentary. Former officials, including the main opposition's former general secretary Iain McNicol, broke non-disclosure agreements to allege that members of Corbyn's inner circle had interfered with investigations into anti-Semitism in the left-wing party. Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson, who has been critical of Corbyn, said the revelations were "harrowing".
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| Spanish-language reporter released from immigration custody Posted: 11 Jul 2019 02:26 PM PDT  A Spanish-language reporter who has been facing deportation since his arrest 15 months ago while covering an immigration protest in Tennessee was released Thursday from custody as his case proceeds. Manuel Duran was released from an Alabama detention center on a $2,000 bail set by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Southern Poverty Law Center attorney Gracie Willis said. "I feel like I'm reborn," Duran said in a statement released by the center.
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| Some of Putin’s Top Cops Are Mobsters. Even KGB Vets Are Ashamed. Posted: 10 Jul 2019 01:35 AM PDT  Michael Klimentyev/RIA Novosti/Kremlin/ReutersMOSCOW—Crime scandals involving Russia's most powerful law enforcement agency have rocked this capital, exposing some phenomenal corruption at the heart of President Vladimir Putin's power structure. Ranking officers of the Federal Security Service, known as the FSB, are allegedly involved, as are members of some of its most elite units. In April, authorities arrested three officials from the FSB's Department K, which deals with economic crimes and financial counterintelligence. Kirill Cherkalin, the former head of the unit, and Andrey Vasilyev and Dmitry Frolov, his associates, were jailed on suspicion they took huge bribes from banks and other commerce they were supposed to supervise. A video purported to show the equivalent of $185.5 million being hauled out of Cherkalin's residence. The initial charge against him involved a single bribe worth $850,000.The Liberation of Ivan Golunov Felt Like a Burst of Freedom in Russia, but Not for LongOne might think those arrests made by the internal affairs division of the FSB would make other criminals in the security force lie low. But no. Others were allegedly robbing banks. Last week RBC, one of Russia's most respected newspapers, reported the arrests of four FSB agents from the Alfa and Vympel special forces units, and two more from Department K. The number has since grown to 15 suspects, according to press reports. But the FSB has confirmed only two arrests.While supposedly conducting legitimate searches, or shepherding shipments of currency, the accused are supposed to have removed the heavy ballistic plates from their bullet-proof vests and stuffed them with money instead, but such details have not been confirmed officially.There must be massive turmoil in the depths of the gloomy FSB headquarters, the nerve center of Russia's police power located just across Lubyanka Square from the buildings of the Kremlin's administrative offices. All of Russia's leading newspapers reported that Instead of providing security, FSB agents robbed the Metallurg Bank, reportedly controlled by a former officer in Military Intelligence (the GRU) named Yury Karasev. If true, that's an interesting wrinkle since the FSB and GRU are rival secret services.Moscovskij Komsomolets, a newspaper with a circulation approaching one million copies, says in its Friday report: "Generals of the special services were shocked to hear about the arrests of FSB agents accused of a bank robbery on Ivan Babushkin Street and of stealing 140 million rubles ($2.2 million.)" Veteran agents of the Soviet KGB, the predecessor of the FSB, said they were disgusted by the scandal."This is the first time in the entire history of the Russian secret police when we see the triumph of greed that surpasses greed—so many officers of elite departments committing crimes," retired Maj. Gen. Aleksei Kandaurov told The Daily Beast. "The FSB is not a security service any longer, it has changed its status completely: it is now a service that enforces Putin's rule, and in exchange abuses its authority for purposes of enrichment."Gen. Kandaurov remembers the last days of the KGB, which had an infamous heritage dating back to the Cheka at the time of the revolution, and the NKVD under Joseph Stalin. As the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 there was popular rage against the Communist regime's symbols and its obsession with secrecy, but the officers of the KGB—among them one Vladimir Putin—saw themselves as defenders of a regime and indeed an empire that they had served all their lives. They worked on fixed salaries.On the night of August, 22, 1991, Kandaurov watched from the window of his office as thousands of protesters demanded the removal of the statue of Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the Bolshevik leader Vladmir Lenin appointed to be the director of the All-Russia Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counter-revolution and Sabotage (Cheka). Dzerzhinsky is seen as the symbol of the Bolseviks' political repressions and mass killings. "We represent in ourselves organized terror—this must be said very clearly," Dzerzhinsky proclaimed during the period known as the Red Terror that began in 1918.The modern state security agency, FSB, has been reviving the memory of Dzerzhinsky just as Putin has burnished the reputation of Joseph Stalin. Today many officials hang portraits of the secret police founder on their walls. In 2017 the agency celebrated the 100th anniversary of Cheka-NKVD-KGB-FSB, as a proud successor. But veterans see the current organization as an inglorious pretender to the fame of the older ones."FSB agents should stop hiding behind the KGB reputation, behind Dzerzhinsky. If he were alive, he would have executed most of these corrupt officers as his ideological enemies," Kandaurov told The Daily Beast. When the KGB Wanted You Dead, This Is How They Killed YouRussia has glorified "Alfa" and "Vympel" as legendary, heroic special operators who saw service in the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan during the 1980s and many other more secretive theaters. At the Balashikha Cemetery near Moscow there are sad rows of tombstones where each is marked with an "A" or "V" for the soldiers of these units who gave their lives rescuing hostages during the Beslan school siege in September 2004. In the past few years Russian special operators have died anonymously in secret operations in Ukraine."Today's thugs in the special forces put shame on all the past heroes," a retired KGB officer and corruption fighter, Gennady Gudkov, told The Daily Beast. "The FSB violates its authority for 'operative activities,' which was given to them to stop transactions for terrorism or drug deals. Now a group of elite FSB and special forces units used their authority to rob a bank; but the bank informed Moscow police investigators and the organized criminal group was arrested."A channel on the Telegram messaging service covering the latest news about Russian gangsters, oligarchs and bureaucrats, said on Monday that authorities fired the head of Moscow's FSB Directorate, Alexey Dorofeyev.Last month police tried to stop an investigation by a Medusa Project reporter, Ivan Golunov, into Dorofeyev's links to a corrupt funeral business. After spending months researching figures and beneficiaries of the funeral industry, Golunov discovered some links connecting shadowy figures and senior FSB officers. But somebody decided to stop the reporter from publishing: police planted drugs on Golunov and kept him behind bars for five days, while thousands of people joined protests in support of the journalist.Russian veterans of secret services gossip about three "towers" of FSB power: the richest one is allegedly supported by the almighty Putin's ally, Igor Sechin, the head of the vast Rosneft energy company; the second one also enjoys enormous financial resources and is backed by another of Putin's long-time friends, Sergey Chemizov, the head of the Russian arms export agency; the third, the weakest financially, nonetheless has the best network of secret agents and is backed by the head of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Sergey Naryshkin. Some see a connection between these rivalries and the revelations about high-level criminality."It feels like everything is falling down," a major general of the FSB reserve, Alexander Mikhailov, told reporters last week. "I want to tell you that all the old employees are shocked by what is happening. During my entire service in the Moscow KGB, and I worked there for 20 years, there were only three criminal cases.""None of the people from the old guard understands where that number of criminals in the system came from," said Mikhailov. "It is also disturbing that today we are confronted with the widest range of units that are involved in criminal activity. We repair it in one spot and it breaks down in another one."There are no checks and balances at FSB management, Gudkov pointed out. "The Soviet KGB was massively repressive, you can blame that service for anything, but not for corruption. The worst we could hear about was a colleague sleeping with somebody's wife or some secret agent bringing a pair of sneakers for a colleague from abroad—that was already a big enough scandal to write a report," Gudkov remembered. "Even in our worst nightmare we could not imagine officers stealing millions of dollars, robbing banks. What will we hear next? The Russian Federal Security Service robbing the Kremlin's treasury or the Central Bank's reserves?" 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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| Mackenzie Lueck case: Gruesome details revealed in slaying of Utah college student Posted: 11 Jul 2019 08:36 AM PDT  The charred body of slain University of Utah student Mackenzie Lueck was discovered bound in a shallow grave, prosecutors said Wednesday as formal charges were filed against her suspected killer.
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| Britain 'recommends heightened security' for ships in Straits of Hormuz after Iran tries to block oil tanker Posted: 11 Jul 2019 07:18 AM PDT  The British government raised its security warning for shipping in Iranian waters to its highest level as the Royal Navy was forced to fend off the attempted obstruction of a British oil tanker by Iranian Revolutionary Guards. British flagged ships were notified at the beginning of this week that Iranian waters were considered a level three, or "critical" security environment, the Telegraph understands. The security alert, which amounts to advice to avoid Iranian waters where possible and would have been accompanied by advice on specific precautions to take, came after Iran threatened "reciprocal" action for the recent seizure of an Iranian tanker by the Royal Navy near Gibraltar. That action appeared to come on Wednesday, when the British Heritage, owned by BP Shipping and registered to the Isle of Man, was approached by three Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps boats as it sailed through Persian Gulf towards the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranians ordered the vessel to stop in nearby Iranian territorial waters, according to the Ministry of Defence, but withdrew after HMS Montrose, a Royal Navy frigate which had been escorting the tanker, aimed its guns on the Iranians and warned them to move away. A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said: "Contrary to international law, three Iranian vessels attempted to impede the passage of a commercial vessel, British Heritage, through the Strait of Hormuz. "HMS Montrose was forced to position herself between the Iranian vessels and British Heritage and issue verbal warnings to the Iranian vessels, which then turned away." The tanker is believed to have been in waters disputed by Iran and the United Arab Emirates when the incident took place A US aircraft flying overhead filmed the incident, but the footage had not been released by late Thursday evening. Read more The incident is the most serious involving a British ship since the current crisis in the Gulf began and will raise fears that Britain could get dragged into a brewing military confrontation between the United States and Iran in the Gulf. Iran warned last week that it might seize a British oil tanker after Royal Marines boarded and detained the Grace 1, a super tanker carrying two million tons of Iranian oil, as it passed through Gibralatan waters last Thursday. British and Gibraltan authorities say they suspect the ship of running oil to Syria, in breach of EU sanctions, and have denied the move was targeted at Iran. Police in Gibraltar said on Thursday that they have arrested and interviewed under caution the Grace 1's captain and chief officer on suspicion of breaching EU sanctions on Syria, in a move likely to further inflame tensions. Neither man has yet been charged. Iran's revolutionary guard denied attempting to seize the British Heritage, but a senior commander also warned that Britain would "strongly regret" detaining the Grace 1 . "If the enemy had made the smallest assessment they wouldn't have done this act," said Rear-Admiral Ali Fadavi on Thursday. "Our reciprocal action will be announced." Iran earlier described the seizure of Grace 1 as an act of "piracy" and accused Britain of bowing to US pressure to hinder its attempts to export oil under the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal. Gulf of Oman Mohsen Rezaei, a general in the Revolutionary Guard Corps and an advisor to Iran's supreme leader, on Friday warned Iran might go after a British tanker. And President Hassan Rouhani called the seizure of the vessel "mean and wrong" during a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday. He warned London: "You are an initiator of insecurity and you will understand its repercussions," without elaborating. Oil companies have warned that continued disruption around the Strait of Hormuz, which handles up to a third of the world's seaborne oil exports, could have a dramatic impact on petrol prices. There are usually between 15 and 30 British flagged ships operating in the vicinity of the strait at any given day, more than the Royal Navy can realistically provide escorts for. Besides HMS Montrose, a type 23 frigate, the Royal Navy has four minesweepers and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship Cardigan Bay in the region. Britain is also a member of a 33-nation Combined Maritime Force with a mandate to protect shipping in the Western Indian Ocean from piracy and terrorism. The United States has said it wants a new international force to guarantee freedom of navigation in the Persian gulf, although it has yet to lay out those plans in detail. Last month Donald Trump called of military strikes against the Islamic Republic after it shot down a US surveillance drone over the Strait of Hormuz. Tensions in the Persian Gulf have risen dramatically since Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018 and imposed a series of punishing sanctions on the Islamic Republic, including measures designed to prevent it exporting oil. Britain, France, and Germany have defended the deal, including Iran's right to export oil, but Iran has complained the European powers have done too little to help it continue to trade. It began to violate the deal's restrictions on uranium enrichment in protest last week. A spokesman for BP, which operates the British Heritage tanker, said: "Our top priority is the safety and security of our crews and vessels. While we are not commenting on these events, we thank the Royal Navy for their support."
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| Guatemalan mother brings AOC to tears with account of harrowing conditions at border detention facilities Posted: 10 Jul 2019 03:56 PM PDT  A Guatemalan migrant recounts the death of her baby after entering the United States and being detained.
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| Heavy rains flood New Orleans streets in taste of storm ahead Posted: 10 Jul 2019 12:16 PM PDT  The weather system churning in the Gulf of Mexico is expected to intensify this week into the second named tropical storm of the year, and ultimately the first Atlantic hurricane of 2019 as it heads closer to land, forecasters said. New Orleans officials warned that a hurricane could bring a coastal storm surge into the mouth of the Mississippi River capable of raising the river's height to 20 feet (6 meters) above sea level, high enough to overflow some sections of the levee system protecting the city. The storm is most likely to make landfall west of New Orleans on Saturday, National Weather Service senior hurricane specialist Jack Beven said.
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| Hundreds of blindfolded goats airdropped into mountain range Posted: 10 Jul 2019 03:17 AM PDT  For the second straight summer, mountain goats are flying in Olympic National Park.Officials this week began rounding up the sure-footed but non-native mammals from remote parts of the park, where humans introduced them in the 1920s, to relocate them to the Cascade Mountains, where they do belong.Animal capture specialists called "gunners" and "muggers" sedate the animals with darts or capture them in nets, blindfold them, pad their horns and fly them — on slings dangling from a helicopter — to a staging area. There, they're looked over by veterinarians and outfitted with tracking collars before being trucked to the Cascades and once again flown by helicopter, this time into their new alpine habitats.The relocations began last year, following a years-long stretch of planning and public comment, with 115 of the roughly 725 mountain goats in the Olympics being moved to the Cascades.Officials captured 17 Monday and Tuesday at the start of a two-week goat relocation period, including a kid about 6 weeks old, which got a ride on a mugger's lap inside the helicopter instead of hanging beneath it.The Olympics have few natural salt licks. That makes it more likely goats there will be attracted to the sweat, urine and food of hikers, potentially endangering the hikers. One goat fatally gored a hiker in 2010.A coalition of state and federal agencies and American Indian tribes is behind the effort, which involves closing parts of the park, including the Seven Lakes Basin and Klahhane Ridge. A second two-week closure period is planned for August."Mountain goat relocation will allow these animals to reoccupy historical range areas in the Cascades," Jesse Plumage, a U.S. Forest Service wildlife biologist, said in a news release.The capture of the goats was contracted out to Leading Edge Aviation, a company that specialises in animal capture and relocation.The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife plans to release the goats at six sites in the Cascades. They include the Chikamin area in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, Preacher Mountain in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, Hardscrabble Ridge and mountain peaks south of Darrington.Rich Harris, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist leading the agency's work to move the goats, told The Seattle Times this month that of those relocated last year, about 65 to 70 survived the winter. Half of the 10 relocated kids survived, he said.Agencies contributed to this report
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| Afghan warrior Massoud's image becomes national icon Posted: 09 Jul 2019 07:11 PM PDT  In Kabul, it is hard to miss the late Ahmad Shah Massoud. More than 17 years since his assassination, the legendary fighter who battled the Soviets and the Taliban has become something of an Afghan icon. The feats of the "Lion of Panjshir", named for his home valley north of Kabul, has earned him a devoted following in war-weary Afghanistan.
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| Mexican President Warns Others May Leave Government After Urzua Posted: 10 Jul 2019 06:15 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, under pressure after the resignation of his finance minister, warned other officials may quit his government as part of the deep policy changes he is leading."In a democratic government there are always differences and disagreements," Lopez Obrador said Wednesday at his daily press conference. "You have to get used to the changes and there could even be other resignations."The Mexican peso dropped as much as 0.8%, leading emerging markets currency losses for a second straight session. It fell 0.4% to 19.2344 per dollar at 9:01 a.m. in New York.AMLO, as the Mexican leader is known, said the resignation of Carlos Urzua on Tuesday stems from disagreements over the country's national development plan. Urzua also disagreed about the management of Mexico's state-owned banks, the president said, adding that the former finance minister had clashed with his Chief of Staff Alfonso Romo and with the head of Mexico's tax collection agency."This is a government of free men and women. Suddenly someone can say 'I don't agree with the government's path'," AMLO said, adding that no other resignation has been presented to him so far. "What I want to make clear is that the way of doing politics won't change at all."To contact the reporters on this story: Carlos Manuel Rodriguez in Mexico City at carlosmr@bloomberg.net;Cyntia Barrera Diaz in Mexico City at cbarrerad@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Juan Pablo Spinetto at jspinetto@bloomberg.net, Walter BrandimarteFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Second Couple Sues in Scrambled Embryo Snafu Posted: 10 Jul 2019 07:07 PM PDT  Peiffer Wolf Carr & KaneAn alleged fertility clinic foul-up that resulted in a woman giving birth to the biological sons of two other couples—and then having to give them up—has spawned a second lawsuit.Los Angeles residents Anni and Ashot Manukyan said in court papers they were horrified to learn that a New York City stranger mistakenly received their embryo and the embryo of another couple, carried them for eight months, and then gave birth—believing they were her own babies.While the Manukyans eventually won custody of one of the twins, they were "devastated that they never were able to experience the wonder of their son's childbirth," they said in the lawsuit filed against CHA Fertility on Wednesday."They never saw their baby's entrance into the world or cuddled him in his first seconds of life—moments that other parents treasure for the rest of their lives."Couple Forced to Give Up Babies After Embryo Mixup, Lawsuit SaysLast week, the New York City woman and her husband also sued CHA Fertility, saying doctors there transferred the wrong embryos when they underwent in vitro fertilization last year.The couple accused the clinic of covering up its mistake until the twins were born and it was clear they were not of Asian descent like their parents—and a DNA test confirmed they were not the biological parents.In their lawsuit, filed in federal court in Brooklyn, the couple then described the heartbreak of losing custody of the newborns the wife had carried in her womb for eight months.Now, one of the couples whose embryos ended up in the New York woman is also suing and accusing the clinic of misleading her and her husband, too.The Manukyans also underwent IVF at CHA in 2018, and two frozen embryos they believed came from her eggs and his sperm were thawed and transferred to Anni.They said they were crushed no pregnancy resulted and then confused when the clinic called eight months later and asked them to come back "under false pretenses" for a DNA swab."What Anni and Ashot discovered, much to their horror, was that their son had been stolen from them when he was still an embryo and implanted into a stranger that later became his birth mother," according to the lawsuit filed Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court against CHA. "Anni and Ashot did not know of their son's existence until he was nearly two weeks old. From then, it took more than a month, including an expensive legal battle, to ensure that they would gain custody of their son and ultimately bring him home.""During those weeks of uncertainty, Anni and Ashot had zero assurance that they would ever even be able to meet their child."The Manukyans say they now realize the two embryos that were implanted in Anni by CHA could not have been their own since one was actually given to the New York woman—who unwittingly became their surrogate.They said that while they eventually were reunited with their son, their joy at being parents was ruined."They cry every day. They continue to see mental-health professionals," the lawsuit says. "They no longer trust anyone, and their guard is always up. Their ordeal has not ended; it is just beginning. This is something that they will live with for the rest of their lives."Lawsuit Claims Connecticut Fertility Clinic Gave Wrong Embryo to Couple Who Had Baby of Different RaceThe New York couple, who filed their lawsuit against CHA anonymously, also had to give up the second twin boy—to biological parents who have not yet been identified. It's unknown if they are taking legal action.CHA declined to comment after the first lawsuit was filed, and could not be reached for comment on the Manukyans' suit. The clinic has not filed a response to the allegations in either case.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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| Iranian ships tried to block British oil tanker in Persian Gulf Posted: 11 Jul 2019 06:25 AM PDT  Iranian ships attempted to obstruct a British-flagged commercial oil tanker as it sailed in the Persian Gulf, Britain's Defense Ministry said.
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| Super Weapon? The Air Force Wants a (New) Nuclear Armed Cruise Missile Posted: 10 Jul 2019 04:02 AM PDT  Should major global powers be immersed in a high-stakes, dangerous escalation of tension, raising the possibility of a nuclear confrontation, could the existence of a long-range nuclear-armed cruise missile provide that unique additional variable necessary to keep the peace?Such is the Air Force thinking when it comes to the current developmental trajectory for its emerging Long-Range Standoff Weapon (LRSO) -- a new, aircraft-launched nuclear cruise missile engineered to prevent nuclear conflict by holding enemy targets at risk potentially inaccessible to other methods of attack.The LRSO 'will allow the Air Force to 'counter adversaries' ever-improving integrated air defense with a lethal, tailorable, standoff nuclear strike capability," Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein, told an audience at a recent Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies Nuclear Deterrence event, according to transcripts.The LRSO will be operational by 2030, Goldfein said.The weapon will provide commanders with a wider range of options, as a bomber-launched nuclear cruise missile brings the prospect of deterring nuclear attack without needing to have a stealth bomber actually penetrate the airspace. Naturally, this lowers risk and also increases the deterrence posture by virtue of letting a potential adversary know there are a wide range of methods through which a response might be possible. Interestingly, the existence of nuclear weapons, according to Goldfein and other U.S. Air Force senior leaders, - is entirely based upon the notion of deterrence -- bringing the prospect of massive destructive power to achieve the opposite effect - stopping nuclear war before it happens.
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| Democratic U.S. presidential hopeful Kamala Harris unveils plan to tackle rape kit backlog Posted: 11 Jul 2019 11:59 AM PDT  U.S. Senator Kamala Harris on Thursday pledged the nation's backlog of rape kits needing review would be processed by the end of her first four-year term if elected president. Harris estimated she would invest $1 billion to eliminate the backlog, which she said would cover an estimated 225,000 kits that remain untested. Rape kits are collected when a victim reports an assault and DNA or other physical evidence is collected.
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| Magnitude 3.7 earthquake hits near Barstow Posted: 11 Jul 2019 08:00 AM PDT  A minor earthquake struck Thursday morning near Barstow, less than 100 miles from the epicenter of last week's powerful temblors.
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| The Burr vs. Hamilton duel happened 215 years ago today Posted: 11 Jul 2019 03:00 AM PDT  Today marks the anniversary of the deadly duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. What caused the sitting vice president to duel a Founding Father on the cliffs overlooking New York City?
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| Slain Danish student's mother urges death sentences in Morocco trial Posted: 11 Jul 2019 10:39 AM PDT  Salé (Morocco) (AFP) - The mother of a Danish student beheaded along with another Scandinavian woman while hiking in Morocco's High Atlas mountains called Thursday for the suspected jihadist killers to face the death penalty as their trial neared its end. "The most just thing would be to give these beasts the death penalty they deserve, I ask that of you," said Helle Petersen in a letter read by her lawyer in an anti-terrorist court in Sale, near the capital Rabat. "My life was destroyed the moment that two policemen came to my door on December 17 to announce my daughter's death," the mother of 24-year-old Louisa Vesterager Jespersen wrote in the letter, read out in total silence and with the defendants' faces impassive.
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| Small leak found from nuclear Soviet sub that sank in 1989 Posted: 11 Jul 2019 02:06 AM PDT ![Small leak found from nuclear Soviet sub that sank in 1989]( "Small leak found from nuclear Soviet sub that sank in 1989") A small radiation leak from a Soviet nuclear submarine that sank 30 years ago has been found, Norwegian researchers said Thursday, but it poses no risk to people or fish. The institute said that findings were around 100 Becquerel (Bq) per liter as opposed to around 0.001 Bq per liter elsewhere in the Norwegian Sea. Several samples taken in and around a ventilation duct on the wreck of the submarine contained far higher levels of radioactive cesium than you would normally find in the Norwegian Sea, the institute said in a statement.
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| The Jeep Gladiator Has No Competition Posted: 10 Jul 2019 06:00 AM PDT  It's a four-door convertible. It's a pickup truck. It'll tow a boat. Now let me tell you which one to get.
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| Trump Says Deutsche Bank, Now ‘Maligned,’ Wanted His Business Posted: 11 Jul 2019 05:52 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump defended troubled Deutsche Bank AG on Thursday and said the German financial institution wanted his business, which is now the subject of investigations by congressional Democrats.In a Twitter thread attacking media coverage of his past banking practices, Trump said, "A bank that I did use years ago, the now badly written about and maligned Deutsche Bank, was then one of the largest and most prestigious banks in the world! They wanted my business, and so did many others!"Trump comments came after his personal lawyers faulted House Democrats' demand for records from his outside accounting firm as an unauthorized attempt to pry into his business dealings as they prepare for a showdown Friday in an appeals court.Trump's lawyers are trying to convince a three-judge panel that a Washington judge erred in allowing the House Oversight and Reform Committee to demand that Trump's accountant, Mazars USA LLP, turn over records dating back to 2011, including those pertaining to the Trump Organization, his charitable foundation and the operating company for his luxury hotel just blocks from the White House.A New York-based federal appeals court will hear arguments next month as the president's attorneys seek a reversal of a separate court ruling giving a different House panel access to Trump records held by Deutsche Bank and Capital One Financial Corp.The president owes Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank about $300 million for loans related to his Washington hotel, a Chicago tower and Florida golf resort Doral, financial disclosures and property records show. The bank on July 7 said it would slash 18,000 jobs -- about 20% of its workforce -- by 2022 as part of a sweeping overhaul of its operations after years of mismanagement, multibillion-dollar fines and declining revenue eroded profitability.To contact the reporter on this story: Terrence Dopp in Washington at tdopp@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Kasia Klimasinska at kklimasinska@bloomberg.net, Elizabeth Wasserman, Steve GeimannFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Hurricane warning issued in Louisiana as Tropical Storm Barry gains strength in Gulf of Mexico Posted: 11 Jul 2019 03:42 PM PDT  Tropical Storm Barry formed in the Gulf of Mexico and is expected to hit Louisiana and already-soaked New Orleans as a hurricane Saturday.
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| How one freshman congresswoman plans to save the Affordable Care Act Posted: 10 Jul 2019 02:00 AM PDT  Nobody in Washington seems to like the Affordable Care Act. Republicans want to repeal it, claiming it gives too much power to the federal government. Democrats argue that it doesn't go far enough: Sen. Bernie Sanders wants to replace the ACA with Medicare for All, which would get rid of private insurance entirely.
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| View 2019 Mazda MX-5 Miata RF Photos Posted: 10 Jul 2019 05:00 AM PDT |
| This Is Iran's Sad Attempt at Reverse-Engineering an Old F-5F Fighter Posted: 10 Jul 2019 07:00 PM PDT  Rouhani called on the Iranian military to strengthen their readiness in the face of enemy threats in a speech during Tuesday's defense show. Iran says its new Kowsar fighter jet has flown. President Hassan Rouhani was on scene to see the jet – which is a carbon copy of the American F-5F – undergoing flight trials.Test flights of the Kowsar, took place on Aug. 21, 2018 on the eve of the National Day of the Defense Industry, according to semi-official Mehr News Agency. It was unclear whether the jet's first public display flight has yet taken place.The Kowsar can be used for "short aerial support missions" and is equipped with systems that "promote precision targeting," according to state media.Rouhani called on the Iranian military to strengthen their readiness in the face of enemy threats in a speech during Tuesday's defense show."When we say we are ready for defense, it means that we seek the establishment of sustainable peace," Rouhani said.
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| Germany steps up warnings about right-wing Identitarian Movement Posted: 11 Jul 2019 04:18 AM PDT  Germany's domestic intelligence agency (BfV) classified the Identitarian Movement as an extreme right-wing group on Thursday, a sign that authorities are increasingly worried about radicals with anti-Islamic and racist views. The murder last month of a prominent regional politician by a suspected neo-Nazi shook Germans and prompted the interior minister to warn that right-wing extremism was a threat to Germany's democratic system. The Identitarian Movement has not been directly linked to the killing, but the intelligence agency said the group discriminated against non-Europeans and Muslims and as such was incompatible with the constitution.
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| Media watchdog slams Pakistan curbs on TV broadcasters Posted: 10 Jul 2019 02:22 AM PDT  A global media watchdog has slammed Pakistani authorities over the removal of three television channels from the country's airwaves, saying the move was "indicative of disturbing dictatorial tendencies" as pressure mounts on journalists in the South Asian nation. The statement from Reporters Without Borders (RSF) comes days after AbbTakk TV, 24 News, and Capital TV all had their broadcasts cut, after screening a press conference with opposition leader Maryam Nawaz. Pakistani authorities say the channels were unavailable due to "technical issues", but RSF described the outage as an act of "brazen censorship".
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| Bosnian Muslims mark 1995 massacre of thousands with burials Posted: 11 Jul 2019 11:29 AM PDT  SREBRENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Thousands of mourners gathered Thursday to commemorate the 24th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, the worst mass killing in Europe since World War II, as Serbian officials continued to dispute that genocide was committed in the eastern Bosnian enclave. Relatives of the more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys killed by Bosnian Serb troops were among those attending a ceremony at a memorial site that included the burial of 33 newly identified victims of the killings that took place July 11-22, 1995. More than 1,000 are still considered missing from the mass slaughter during the Bosnian civil war.
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| Armoured van spills thousands of dollars in cash across major highway. Police are asking for it back Posted: 10 Jul 2019 11:23 PM PDT  An armoured truck spilled thousands of dollar bills onto a busy highway, prompting chaos as commuters pulled over to pick up fistfuls of money.On Tuesday before sunset, a fluttering swirl of cash blowing through the air brought traffic to a halt and people into the street when a side door of an armoured Garda truck suddenly opened on a highway.About $175,000 (£140,000) in bills spilled out and were carried away by the wind over a section of Interstate 285, which encircles Atlanta, Georgia, police said.The bills scattered to the shoulder of the six-lane westbound section of the highway. Some floated across the divider into eastbound lanes. Bills blew into the woods or sank into storm drains.More than a dozen commuters screeched to a halt or veered off to the shoulder of the highway near the Dunwoody Road exits, police said. They scooped up bills from the pavement and returned to their vehicles with fistfuls, and sometimes armloads, of cash.One of them was Randrell Lewis, an Uber Eats driver who was en route to Alpharetta, Georgia."I just saw a cloud full of what looked like leaves," he said in an interview. "No, it was money. I could not believe my eyes. I am not going to lie. The first thing I did was I pulled over and started picking up some money. Everybody started pulling over and it was crazy."Within minutes, Mr Lewis said, he had snatched up about $2,000 in singles, fifties and hundreds. He returned $2,094 on Wednesday, police said."I just wanted to really make sure I am not going to get in trouble for this," he said.As investigators from the Dunwoody Police Department scoured videos on social media of the spontaneous cash grab, reports filtered in on Wednesday of people stopping on their morning drives on the half-mile stretch of highway to see if there was anything left to scavenge, Sergeant Robert Parsons, a department spokesperson, said."If the temptation is there, and you see money falling from the sky, most people would probably take the money," he said.The nation's highways have been accidentally generous before. In 2004, an armoured truck carrying $2 million flipped over on the New Jersey Turnpike during the evening rush, spilling tens of thousands of dollars in coins.Last year, the back door of a Brink's armoured truck swung open during the morning rush on Interstate 70 near Indianapolis, Indiana, losing an estimated $600,000 in cash onto the highway. A few months later, a Brink's armoured truck was driving on Route 3 in East Rutherford, New Jersey, when one of its doors malfunctioned and money blew out onto the roadway.Some returned the money to police, while others made off with sacks of cash. In the East Rutherford incident, police recouped about $6,000.As authorities did elsewhere when the highways were unexpectedly giving, the police in Dunwoody, a suburb north of Atlanta, were watching on Wednesday to see how the limits of ethical behaviour would play out."Heads up Dunwoody, it's cloudy with a chance of cash," the department said on Facebook, adding, "While we certainly understand the temptation, it's still theft and the money should be returned."In an interview, Mr Parsons said that officers received a 911 call around 8pm on Tuesday about people "frantically" scooping up the money near the Ashford Dunwoody Road exit along the highway, which is bordered by creek beds, trees and office towers."Multiple callers said there was cash flying all over the road," he said.By the time officers arrived, people who had pulled over to grab the bills were nowhere to be seen, Mr Parsons said."People likely saw the police lights coming over the highway," he said. "'Oops, time to go! Police are here! Party's over!' "Officers spoke to the Garda employees, who had stopped the truck on the shoulder after passing drivers had gestured to them that a door was open.About $200 was retrieved from the highway and surrounding woods — a small fraction of the estimated $175,000 believed to have gone missing, or into peoples' pockets, he said.Detectives were trying to contact drivers by looking for license plate numbers on mobile phone videos that had been posted on social media. But Mr Parsons said authorities had no intention of prosecuting anyone who returns the money."No harm, no foul," he said. "But you need to turn that money in."The New York Times
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| Oliver North Claims NRA’s Leader Defamed Him Posted: 11 Jul 2019 02:31 PM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Former National Rifle Association President Oliver North accused the group's leader, Wayne LaPierre, of defaming him, forcing him out of the gun rights group and retaliating after North raised questions about lavish spending and financial mismanagement.In a court filing Thursday, North said the NRA falsely accused him of fomenting a failed "coup" to get LaPierre, once a "long-term, close personal friend," to step down. Instead, North lost the power struggle and resigned in April after saying he had quietly tried to protect the NRA and its mission.LaPierre, aided by the NRA's outside counsel, William Brewer, has since used adverse publicity to "undermine North and his efforts to address allegations of financial misconduct at the NRA," according to the filing.North is responding to an NRA lawsuit filed last month in New York state court in which the gun group claims he's not entitled to legal fees. North says the NRA's bylaws require the association to cover fees stemming from a May 3 inquiry by the Senate Finance Committee and any other queries he may receive from law enforcement or investigative bodies about the gun rights group.The NRA has been in turmoil since North left his unpaid presidency. It suspended its chief lobbyist, Chris Cox, after accusing him of joining North and the NRA's former advertising and public relations firm, Ackerman McQueen Inc., in the failed coup. Cox has left the association, and Ackerman McQueen cut ties after LaPierre accused it of breach of contract.New York Attorney General Letitia James is investigating the NRA's finances. The group claims in a lawsuit that the state illegally discouraged banks and insurers from doing business with it. The NRA also sued Ackerman McQueen, which produced the now-defunct NRATV. The advertising firm countersued.North said he objected in April to LaPierre receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in clothing, private jet travel, and other personal benefits paid by Ackerman McQueen. He also sought an independent review of Brewer's law firm, which North said was billing the NRA $2.9 million a month in fees.Ackerman McQueen hired North in 2018 after he left Fox News, when LaPierre "urged and convinced" him to take on the new role. However, Ackerman McQueen has been "unable to pay" North since late June. The NRA's lawsuit against Ackerman McQueen "appears to be motivated by Brewer's long-simmering animosity toward his current in-laws, who run Ackerman McQueen," according to North's filing."The NRA views this as a misguided attempt to deflect from reality -- Col. North played a central role in an extortion scheme that caused the issues for which he now seeks indemnification," Brewer, the outside NRA attorney said in an email. "The NRA will not look the other way when it appears that crimes against the association have been committed by people motivated by their own self-interests."(Updates with details of lawsuit and NRA attorney's response.)To contact the reporters on this story: David Voreacos in New York at dvoreacos@bloomberg.net;Neil Weinberg in New York at nweinberg2@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Jeffrey D Grocott at jgrocott2@bloomberg.net, Joe SchneiderFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Ilhan Omar calls Tucker Carlson 'racist fool' after he says she proves 'immigration has become dangerous' Posted: 11 Jul 2019 10:11 AM PDT  "After everything America has done for Omar, and her family, she hates this country more than ever," Tucker Carlson said on his show Tuesday night.
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| Donald Trump earns place in history with how America treats migrant children Posted: 11 Jul 2019 06:43 AM PDT  On immigration, there's room for disagreement. But on kids crammed into border detention centers, there ought to be no room for debate: Our view
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| Meet India's BrahMos II: The World's Fastest Supersonic Cruise Missile? Posted: 10 Jul 2019 12:47 AM PDT  With the BrahMos II venture put on indefinite hold, the Indian military is forging ahead with new, long-range and deep-dive versions of their BrahMos supersonic cruise missile.Earlier this week, BrahMos CEO Sudhir Kumar Mishra announced that vertical deep-dive and 500 kilometer-range BrahMos variants are ready to enter India's missile arsenal: "India has successfully test-fired a vertical deep dive version of BrahMos, the world's fastest supersonic cruise missile, that can now change the dynamics of conventional warfare...the upgraded version of the missile with enhanced range of up to 500 km is also ready." Both of these new variants will feature the Mach 2.8 speed of the original BrahMos missile, roughly three times the speed of sound.As the name implies, vertical deep-capability allows the missile to be fired at a "near-vertical" trajectory of 90 degree, climbing fourteen 14 kilometers before making making a steep dive toward its target. Mishra asserts that this will make BrahMos more effective on mountainous terrain and against bunkers as well as large surface vessels, suggesting that these improvements are aimed at bolstering Indian missile strike capability vis-à-vis China amid ongoing tensions over the Tibet region.
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| U.S. government posts $8 billion deficit in June Posted: 11 Jul 2019 11:10 AM PDT  The U.S. government posted an $8 billion budget deficit in June, according to data released on Thursday by the Treasury Department. The Treasury said federal spending in June was $342 billion, down 12% from the same month in 2018, while receipts were $334 billion, up 6% compared with June 2018. The deficit for the fiscal year to date was $747 billion, compared with $607 billion in the comparable period the year earlier.
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| French supermarket managers ousted over safari hunting snaps Posted: 10 Jul 2019 08:39 AM PDT  It was meant to be a trophy picture, showing their success on safari, but the photo of a French couple posing beside a lion they had shot ended up costing them their jobs. Managers of a supermarket in L'Arbresle, a small town in eastern France, the pair had in 2015 taken part in a so-called captive hunt that involves shooting at animals kept inside an enclosed area. Such a set-up virtually guarantees a kill for private trophy hunters.
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| New Orleans area braces for first hurricane of the season Posted: 11 Jul 2019 05:01 PM PDT  Thousands of Louisianans broke out sandbags or fled to higher ground Thursday as Tropical Storm Barry threatened to turn into the first hurricane of the season and blow ashore with torrential rains that could pose a severe test of New Orleans' improved post-Katrina flood defenses . National Guard troops and rescue crews in high-water vehicles took up positions around the state as Louisiana braced for the arrival of the storm Friday night or early Saturday. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, who declared an emergency earlier in the week as the storm brewed in the Gulf of Mexico, warned that the storm's blow could form a dangerous combination with the already-high Mississippi River, which has been swelled by heavy rain and snowmelt upriver this spring.
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| A Missouri suspect was hiding from police. A loud fart gave him away Posted: 10 Jul 2019 08:24 AM PDT ![A Missouri suspect was hiding from police. A loud fart gave him away]( "A Missouri suspect was hiding from police. A loud fart gave him away") Law enforcement officers in Missouri managed to find a suspect they were looking for after he farted and gave away his position.
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| U.K. Navy Intervenes After Iran Tries to Stop British Oil Tanker Posted: 11 Jul 2019 08:50 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- The British Navy intervened to stop Iran from blocking a BP Plc oil tanker, the U.K. government said, in the latest evidence that merchant shipping is becoming increasingly embroiled in the wider confrontation with the Islamic Republic.The BP-operated British Heritage, which can carry as much as 1 million barrels of oil, was attempting to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, a shipping chokepoint at the mouth of the world's largest oil-producing region, when "three Iranian vessels attempted to impede it," according to a U.K. government statement.The HMS Montrose "was forced to position herself between the Iranian vessels and British Heritage and issue verbal warnings to the Iranian vessels, which then turned away," the statement said. The frigate was escorting the tanker, which had remained inside the Persian Gulf to avoid being targeted in response to last week's seizure by British special forces of a tanker hauling Iranian crude in the Mediterranean Sea.Iran denied any such intervention took place.The flare up is the latest involving merchant ships trading to and from the Middle East, a region that handles about a third of all seaborne petroleum. Six tankers were attacked just outside the Persian Gulf between mid-May and mid-June and the U.S. blamed Iran, an allegation Tehran denied.Why Tanker Attacks Raise Fears Over Strait of Hormuz: QuickTakeAuthorities in Gibraltar, assisted by British Royal Marines, seized the supertanker Grace 1 last week, claiming the ship was taking oil to Syria in breach of European Union sanctions. Iran denied the vessel was heading to Syria and vowed to retaliate. On Thursday, Gibraltar police announced they had arrested the master and chief officer of the Grace 1, following a search of the vessel.The escalating tensions come as European nations scramble to salvage a landmark accord with the Islamic Republic intended to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon. The U.K. has been a leading voice in trying to rescue the the 2015 deal after U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out and Iran stepped up uranium enrichment in defiance of extended sanctions."We are concerned by this action and continue to urge the Iranian authorities to de-escalate the situation in the region," Prime Minister Theresa May's spokesman, James Slack, told reporters in London. "We have a long standing maritime presence in the Gulf. We are continuously monitoring the security situation there and are committed to maintaining freedom of navigation in accordance with international law."Seized Gibraltar Tanker Starts What May Be Lengthy Legal ProcessIran's Revolutionary Guard Corps denied trying to impede the British tanker but said its forces could act fast if ordered to do so. "If it receives an order to seize foreign ships, naval forces can act fast, with determination and without hesitation within the geographic scope of its mission," the semi-official Fars news agency reported.Benchmark Brent crude was 3 cents higher at $67.04 a barrel in London trading at 4:47 p.m. local time. Oil has been rallying since the middle of last week as tensions surrounding Iran stoke concerns crude flows may be disrupted.The British Heritage was able to pass safely through the Strait of Hormuz and was sailing along the Omani coast, according to tanker tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.BP had been keeping the British Heritage empty inside the Gulf, near Saudi Arabia, rather than risk its seizure by Iran in a tit-for-tat retaliation over the Gibraltar action, a person familiar with the matter said Monday.The U.K. repeated its insistence that the seizure of the Grace 1 in Gibraltar was about Syria, not Iran. "We've been very clear that Grace 1 is a Syrian sanctions rather than an Iran issue," Slack said.Insurance costs for covering tankers and their cargoes jumped as much as tenfold in the wake of the incidents in May and June. Some owners were initially wary of sending vessels to the region, although that reticence appears to have subsided.U.S. Push to Pressure Iran Rebuffed at Nuclear Meeting in ViennaThe prospects of a showdown between the U.S. and Iran have spiked since the Trump administration quit the multiparty nuclear accord with Iran a year ago and re-imposed sanctions. In early May, the U.S. tightened penalties on buyers of Iranian oil prompting Iran to begin scaling back its commitments under the deal.Iran said this week it's enriching uranium beyond the agreed cap and would gradually roll back compliance unless European signatories find ways to ensure it can sell its oil and access the global financial system.Iran is producing oil at the slowest clip since 1986, making U.S. sanctions as effective as the devastating Iraq-Iran war that ended more than 30 years ago. The measures have hit the currency, fueled inflation and hobbled growth.U.K. FrictionThe stand-off also comes at an awkward time for Britain which, along with its European allies, is trying to keep the nuclear deal alive, but is also relying on Trump's White House to clinch a trade deal after Brexit.The British Heritage was meant to load crude from Iraq before sailing onto Europe but a person with knowledge of the matter said BP elected not to lift the cargo because of concerns about the wider political situation. The ship didn't have oil on board when it left the region, the person said.There are six vessels operating in the Gulf registered to Britain, or a British Overseas Territory, and five operating under the British flag. In total, they have the capacity to transport almost 9 million barrels of crude.The incident was originally reported by CNN, which cited two U.S. officials saying Iran had tried to seize, rather than impede, the tanker and order it to change course.(Adds Gibraltar police arrest master of tanker carrying Iranian oil in sixth paragraph.)\--With assistance from Ladane Nasseri, Karen Leigh, Verity Ratcliffe, Kelly Gilblom, Thomas Penny, Ana Monteiro and Jessica Shankleman.To contact the reporters on this story: Tim Ross in London at tross54@bloomberg.net;Anthony DiPaola in Dubai at adipaola@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Lin Noueihed at lnoueihed@bloomberg.net, ;Flavia Krause-Jackson at fjackson@bloomberg.net, Mark Williams, Stuart BiggsFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| MH370 pilot in control ‘until the end’, French investigators suspect Posted: 11 Jul 2019 08:37 AM PDT  The pilot of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was in control of the plane "until the end", French investigators reportedly suspect, after gaining access to "crucial" flight data. The readouts "lend weight" to suspicions that he crashed into the sea in a murder-suicide, they were cited as saying. The revelations based on Boeing data came days after a new account suggesting the pilot may have been clinically depressed, leading him to starve the passengers of oxygen and then crash the Boeing 777 into the sea. MH370 was on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board, when it vanished and became one of the world's greatest aviation mysteries. In July last year investigators released a 495-page report, saying the plane's controls were probably deliberately manipulated to take it off course but they were not able to determine who was responsible. The only country still conducting a judicial inquiry into the crash is France, where two investigating magistrates are looking into the deaths of three French passengers, the wife and two children of Ghyslain Wattrelos - an engineer who met the judges on Wednesday. According to Le Parisien, they informed him that Boeing had finally granted them access late May to vital flight data at the plane maker's headquarters in Seattle. This included numerous documents and satellite data from Britain-based company Immarsat. They were obliged to sign a confidentiality contract, meaning the documents cannot be cited in court. The investigators also visited Immarsat headquarters in the UK. Investigators say it will take "a year" to scour all the data received from Boeing Credit: Laurent Errera/AP It will take "a year" to sift through all the data and "nothing permits us to say the pilot was involved," according to the plaintiffs' lawyer, Marie Dosé. However, French investigators cited by Le Parisien said the data "lends weight' to the idea that "someone was behind the control stick when the plane broke up in the Indian Ocean". It cited a source close to the inquiry as saying someone was flying the plane "until the end." "Certain abnormal turns made by the 777 can only have been carried out manually. Someone was in control," the source was cited as saying. Asked whether the data pointed to a deliberate crash, the source said: "It's too early to assert it categorically but there is nothing to suggest anyone else entered the cockpit." Mr Wattrelos, who lost family members in the crash, hailed the "incredible" work of the judges, who he said "were able to note that the case was riddled with incoherences". "For example, we know that the data initially provided by Malaysian authorities on the plane's altitude were wrong. And I hope that by analysing all the data collected at Boeing, they will discover a problem that will jump out at them," he told Le Parisien. But he said he remained convinced that the plane was "taken down". "I don't know why or where but I'm convinced of it," he said. Mr Wattrelos said that French investigators could meet FBI agents to discuss the case "over the summer in Paris". More than 30 bits of suspected washed up debris have been collected from various places around the world. A modern mystery | Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Last month, friends of the pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, told aviation specialist William Langewiesche that he had become obsessed with two young models he had seen on the internet after his wife left him, and that he "spent a lot of time pacing empty rooms." Mr Langewiesche wrote: "There is a strong suspicion among investigators in the aviation and intelligence communities that he was clinically depressed." An electrical engineer quoted in the account in The Atlantic magazine said that, after depressurising the plane, the pilot probably made a climb which "accelerated the effects of depressurising, causing the rapid incapacitation and death of everyone in the cabin." The oxygen masks in the main cabin were only designed to last 15 minutes in an emergency descent below 13,000ft. The pilot, however, would have had access to oxygen in the cockpit and could have flown for hours. Writing in the Atlantic, Mr Langewiesche said: "The cabin occupants would have become incapacitated within a couple of minutes, lost consciousness, and gently died without any choking or gasping for air." One theory claims the pilot conducted a series of manouveres to "ditch the plane" - but some experts argue it would have been impossible for him to remain conscious during the emergency landing. Pater Foley, the head of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), has suggested to the Australian Senate the pilot was unconscious when the plane crashed into the Indian ocean. Mr Foley said: "Today we have an analysis of the flap that tells us it is probably not deployed. "We have an analysis of the final two transmissions that say the aeroplane was in a high rate of descent. "We have 30 pieces of debris, some from inside the fuselage, that says there was significant energy at impact ... We have quite a lot of evidence to support no control at the end." He added: "We haven't ever ruled out someone intervening at the end. It's unlikely."
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| Court rules against Florida officials on medical marijuana Posted: 10 Jul 2019 01:33 PM PDT ![Court rules against Florida officials on medical marijuana]( "Court rules against Florida officials on medical marijuana") A Florida appellate court ruled that the state's approach to regulating marijuana is unconstitutional, possibly allowing more providers to jump into a market positioned to become one of the country's most lucrative. If the ruling stands, it could force state officials to lift existing caps on how many medical marijuana treatment centers can operate in Florida. Tuesday's ruling by the 1st District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee was another setback for Florida officials trying to regulate the burgeoning marijuana industry more tightly.
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| Nearly two dozen countries unite at UN to condemn China’s mass detention of one million Muslims for first time Posted: 10 Jul 2019 07:57 AM PDT  China has been urged to stop its mass detention of Uighur Muslims by 22 members of the United Nations Human Rights Council in the first such joint move on the issue.The UN says at least one million Uighurs and other Muslims have been detained by China in the western region of Xinjiang.In an unprecedented letter seen by Reuters, ambassadors from 22 countries voiced their concerns about reports of unlawful detention in "large-scale places of detention, as well as widespread surveillance and restrictions, particularly targeting Uighurs and other minorities in Xinjiang".Britain, France and Germany were among the European nations to join the call, along with Australia, Canada and Japan, but not the United States, which quit the council a year ago.However, the letter fell short of activists demands for a formal statement to be read out at the council, or a resolution submitted for a vote.The letter to the forum's president, dated 8 July, cited China's obligations as a member of the 47-state forum to maintain the highest standards."We call on China to uphold its national laws and international obligations and to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, including freedom of religion or belief in Xinjiang and across China," the letter said."We call also on China to refrain from the arbitrary detention and restrictions on freedom of movement of Uighurs, and other Muslim and minority communities in Xinjiang."It urged China to allow international independent experts, including Michelle Bachelet, the UN high commissioner for human rights, "meaningful access" to Xinjiang.Ms Bachelet, a former president of Chile, has lobbied China to grant the UN access to investigate reports of disappearances and arbitrary detentions of Muslims in Xinjiang.Last month, China's ambassador to the UN in Geneva said he hoped Ms Bechelet would take up an invitation to visit.One diplomat told Reuters China's delegation was "hopping mad" at the move and was preparing its own letter in response.In a statement, Human Rights Watch welcomed the letter as "important not only for Xinjiang's population, but for people around the world who depend on the UN's leading rights body to hold even the most powerful countries to account."At the start of the three-week session, which ends on Friday, the vice-governor of Xinjiang responded to international condemnation of the state-run detention camps by saying they were vocational centres which had helped "save" people from extremist influences.Last week, a study said thousands of Muslim children in the region were being separated from their parents in what it called a "systematic campaign of social re-engineering and cultural genocide".
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| Sen. Kamala Harris attacks former Vice President Joe Biden on 'The Breakfast Club' Posted: 11 Jul 2019 12:54 PM PDT  Harris called Biden's comments about his stance on busing "revisionist history."
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| NASA shake-up in new race to the moon Posted: 10 Jul 2019 09:52 PM PDT  As NASA scrambles to meet U.S. President Donald Trump's mandate to return humans to the moon by 2024, two longtime heads of NASA's human exploration wing were demoted Wednesday in a slew of administrative shakeups, officials said in an internal memo. The biggest change to rock the agency is the demotion of Bill Gerstenmaier, who was leading the efforts to return humans to the lunar surface. The agency's chief Jim Bridenstine announced the changes in an internal memo to employees, signaling the latest leadership changes.
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