| ‘He died like a dog’: Trump announces killing of ISIS leader al-Baghdadi in Syria Posted: 27 Oct 2019 07:06 AM PDT  President Trump announced the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State, or ISIS, group, in a televised address on Sunday morning.
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| Number of bodies found near Mexican resort town rises to 42 Posted: 27 Oct 2019 11:30 AM PDT ![Number of bodies found near Mexican resort town rises to 42]( "Number of bodies found near Mexican resort town rises to 42") Searching Mothers of Sonora uncovered a mass grave with the remains of 13 people inside, located near the popular beach resort town of Puerto Peñasco.
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| The Latest: Truck driver charged with 39 manslaughter counts Posted: 26 Oct 2019 09:31 AM PDT  UK police have charged a truck driver with 39 counts of manslaughter and conspiracy to traffic people in connection with 39 deaths in the back of the truck he was driving in southeastern England. Police say Maurice Robinson, 25, of Craigavon, Northern Ireland is due to appear at Chelmsford Magistrates Court on Monday. U.K. police are struggling to identify the victims, who are believed to have come from Asia, and autopsies are being performed.
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| Being the frontrunner takes its toll: Joe Biden is more disliked than Bernie Sanders Posted: 27 Oct 2019 05:50 AM PDT  While 27% of Democratic voters dislike former Vice President Joe Biden, 21% dislike Sen. Bernie Sanders, and about 15% dislike Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
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| South Korea Is Still Having Big Problems With Corruption Posted: 27 Oct 2019 09:00 AM PDT  A bad day for the Moon administration.
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| California wildfires force 180,000 to evacuate as ‘historic' winds send embers travelling for miles Posted: 27 Oct 2019 09:10 AM PDT  More than 180,000 people have been forced to flee their homes after "historic" winds whipped up a wildfire in northern California's wine country and forced the state's largest utility company to cut electricity for millions to prevent more fires.It's one of the biggest evacuations in Sonoma County's history, and California governor Gavin Newsom has now declared a state of emergency across the state, saying: "We're deploying every resource available as we continue to respond to these fires and unprecedented high-winds."
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| Hong Kong Protests Flare for 21st Weekend Amid Global Unrest Posted: 27 Oct 2019 04:36 PM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Hong Kong pro-democracy activists demonstrated for the 21st straight weekend as unrest inspired by the movement spread around the globe, from South America to Europe to the Middle East.Police fired tear gas on Sunday at protesters in Tsim Sha Tsui who blocked roads and disrupted traffic. That followed a night of clashes in the New Territories district of Yuen Long and a peaceful rally that drew thousands in Central. Some protesters set fire to shops in Jordan and hurled petrol bombs at a police station in Sham Shui Po, an area in Kowloon, while others threw smoke grenades at train exits.The Monday morning commute was normal, with nearly all train lines running as scheduled. Rail operator MTR Corp. announced that all subway lines would shut down at 11 p.m., except for the Airport Express.The rallies have become increasingly violent over the course of October, with two protesters shot and a police officer slashed. Efforts by Hong Kong's authorities to quell the protests have largely failed, from banning marches and withdrawing the proposed extradition bill, to using an emergency law to outlaw face masks and pledging to make housing more affordable.The protests have been cited as inspiration for demonstrators around the world who've flooded the streets of major cities this month over economic inequality, regional grievances and alleged corruption.Spanish authorities are facing down separatist riots in Catalonia. In Chile, opposition to a 4-cent subway-fare hike has snowballed into the worst unrest there in decades, with at least 18 people killed so far. And in Lebanon, nationwide protests for more than a week, including hundreds of thousands demonstrating in Beirut, have pressured the country's leader to shake up his cabinet. There have also been protests in Iraq.Last week, reports surfaced that China's leaders were mulling a plan to replace Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam by early next year in a bid to calm public anger.Data due in Hong Kong this week will likely signal a technical recession is under way after a contraction in the second quarter. The benchmark Hang Seng Index tumbled 8.6% last quarter, the biggest loss among major global gauges tracked by Bloomberg.(Adds details on commute in third paragraph.)\--With assistance from Denise Wee.To contact the reporter on this story: Iain Marlow in Hong Kong at imarlow1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Brendan Scott at bscott66@bloomberg.net, Gregory Turk, Ros KrasnyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Impeachment reveals rifts as GOP argues over how to defend Trump Posted: 26 Oct 2019 07:33 AM PDT  Public support for impeachment of President Trump is rising — and so is anxiety among Republicans who worry that the White House has not done enough to coordinate an aggressive response.
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| Man Opens Fire in Georgia Walmart Dies After Turning Gun on Himself: Police Posted: 26 Oct 2019 10:56 AM PDT  No one besides the shooter was injured
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| Vietnamese village prays, awaits news on loved ones' fate Posted: 27 Oct 2019 12:13 AM PDT  The rural village of Do Thanh in central Vietnam has relied on its sons and daughters working abroad to send money back home. The mother and a sister of Bui Thi Nhung cried as they set up an altar with incense and a photo of the missing 19-year-old. The family heard from a friend living in the U.K. that "Nhung is one of the victims," said a relative who was visiting the woman's despaired mother.
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| Marine Veteran Is Deported to El Salvador Posted: 26 Oct 2019 06:59 AM PDT ![Marine Veteran Is Deported to El Salvador]( "Marine Veteran Is Deported to El Salvador") A Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan was deported to El Salvador this week after several failed attempts to stay in the United States, where he had lived since he was 3 and had been convicted of several felonies, his lawyer and immigration officials said.The case was another chapter in the contentious debate over how the United States' immigration system handles military veterans who are not citizens and have been convicted of crimes, leaving them open to deportation.The deported man, Jose Segovia-Benitez, 38, who grew up in Long Beach, California, is in hiding in El Salvador after his removal Wednesday, his lawyer, Roy Petty, said Thursday night. Segovia-Benitez's background in the U.S. military makes him a target for kidnapping by gangs, Petty said."He's a Marine," Petty said. "He's tough. He's been in worse situations before. He's in good spirits."Lori K. Haley, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declined to answer questions about the case, saying in a statement, "Mr. Segovia-Benitez is a citizen of El Salvador who has repeatedly violated the laws of the United States."Segovia-Benitez was ordered removed in October 2018 and had been held at a detention center in Arizona for about a week before he was deported without advance notice, his lawyer said.Segovia-Benitez suffered a brain injury from an explosive device in Iraq and was honorably discharged from the military in 2004 after serving for five years, Petty said."He's been classified by the VA as 70% disabled for traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder," Petty said, adding that his client had not received sufficient treatment from the Department of Veterans Affairs.While in the military, Segovia-Benitez had applied for naturalization, Petty said, but because of his deployment and his injury, he was unable to complete the process.Segovia-Benitez repeatedly ran into legal trouble over the years. His felony convictions included assault with a deadly weapon, false imprisonment and narcotics possession, and he was sentenced to eight years in prison for corporal injury to a spouse.Petty said that people with traumatic brain injuries are more likely to act erratically.Carlos Luna, president of Green Card Veterans, an organization that works on behalf of veterans who are at risk of deportation or under removal orders, said Thursday: "The communities where these men and women come from are overpoliced. They are judged more harshly than other Americans."He added, "Veterans are no exception to any of these. In fact, we see an increased rate of veterans within our justice system."There is little data on how often veterans are deported, Luna said. The U.S. Government Accountability Office released a report in June that said ICE had developed policies for handling cases of veterans who are not citizens and may face deportation, but the agency does not consistently adhere to those policies, and it does not consistently track the veterans.Segovia-Benitez was ordered deported Oct. 10, 2018, and he appealed his case with the Board of Immigration Appeals, which was denied, ICE said. He also filed two stay requests with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and those requests were also denied, according to the agency.Segovia-Benitez had nearly been deported Oct. 16 of this year, according to Petty. He was pulled off a plane bound for El Salvador after his lawyer contacted ICE arguing that his immigration case should be reopened. Segovia-Benitez was sent to the ICE facility in Arizona, where he was held until Wednesday.Segovia-Benitez's deportation was reported Wednesday by The Orange County Register, which had covered his case extensively.Efforts to stop Segovia-Benitez's deportation had reached Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, who was asked to consider a pardon on an expedited basis, Petty said, adding that the governor was still weighing it.Vicky Waters, a spokeswoman for Newsom, said his office was "unable to discuss individual pardon applications but can assure that each application receives careful and individualized consideration."Segovia-Benitez's deportation added him to the list of deported people who have made national headlines after being deported to countries they had never visited or had left as children.Miguel Perez-Montes, an Army veteran who arrived in the United States legally when he was 8 and served two tours of duty in Afghanistan, was deported to Mexico in early 2018 after his application for citizenship was denied because of a 2010 felony drug conviction.Other deportation stories involving veterans have ended differently. Marco A. Chavez, a Marine veteran who was deported to Mexico in 2002, was allowed to return in 2017.Petty said he was still trying to reopen Segovia-Benitez's immigration case. "We're still able to present evidence showing that his life is in danger in El Salvador because of his service in the U.S. Marines," he said, adding that criminal defense lawyers are also working to reopen his criminal cases.Petty said it was "impossible to know" how long it could take to resolve Segovia-Benitez's case."Immigration could still choose to leave him outside of the country," he said.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company
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| This Is How America Can Stop China From Dominating the South China Sea Posted: 27 Oct 2019 05:00 AM PDT  America can't do it alone.
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| 'Potentially historic': dangerous winds expected as fires burn across California Posted: 26 Oct 2019 03:23 PM PDT  Fresh evacuations in Sonoma county as Kincade fire spreads and wave of power blackouts begin across the state A firefighter works to extinguish the Tick fire in a factory near Santa Clarita, California, 24 October 2019. Photograph: Étienne Laurent/EPACalifornians braced for power cuts and a "potentially historic" wind event on Saturday as a growing wildfire prompted fresh evacuations for 50,000 people in the northern Bay Area.The tumultuous Kincade fire spread to 25,455 acres in the wine-growing region of Sonoma county, with meteorologists warning of severe, windy conditions beginning Saturday night that could see gusts of up to 80mph. The entire communities of Windsor and Healdsburg, where one of the original evacuation shelters was set up, were ordered to evacuate.The Sonoma county sheriff's office said it is expected to be the biggest evacuation in the county in more than 25 years, with warnings to be prepared to leave reaching the coast. Traffic snarled roadways leading out of the communities of Windsor and Healdsburg as residents scrambled to close up their homes, find last-minute accommodations and transport their livestock to safety."Once we get that red-flag warning starting at 8pm and we get those high winds, we're going to see some erratic fire behavior," said the Cal Fire captain Stephen Volmer, a fire behavior analyst with the agency. "There is the potential for a lot of this fire-weakened timber to be falling down across power lines, across roads. There is also the potential for those long-ranged spotting issues that we have to ignite new fires."The National Weather Service described the conditions as "the strongest since the 2017 wine country fires and potentially a historic event given the strength and duration of the winds". The Tubbs fire of that year killed 22 people.The Kincade fire broke out late on Wednesday night and has so far destroyed nearly 50 structures. There have been no fatalities but a firefighter and two civilians were injured when they were overwhelmed by fire as they tried to evacuate from approaching flames, authorities said.Meanwhile, millions across the state will have their power cut again as California's largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), said it would shut off electricity for the third time in as many weeks. PG&E said the power cuts would be implemented in stages through Saturday afternoon and evening for about 940,000 homes and businesses in 36 counties for 48 hours or longer throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, wine country and Sierra foothills. An estimated 2.35 million people are due to be affected, thousands more than previously predicted.Two previous power shutdowns were done amid concern that gusty winds could disrupt or knock down power lines and spark devastating wildfires.The Kincade fire burned near Geyserville, California on 24 October. Photograph: Peter Dasilva/EPAAnother blaze that forced evacuations of 50,000 residents in suburbs north of Los Angeles grew to 4,615 acres overnight. The Tick fire, which started on Thursday, has destroyed nine homes and businesses while threatening 10,000 more, according to firefighters. While some evacuees were allowed back into their homes as of Friday night, certain mandatory evacuation orders still remained.As of Saturday afternoon the Tick fire was 25% contained, while the Kincade fire was 10% contained.California's governor, Gavin Newsom, has declared a local emergency to assist with battling the blazes, and thousands of firefighters have been deployed to both locations. PG&E has a history of sparking wildfires throughout the state, including two of the deadliest disasters in recent California history.Firefighters battling the Kincade fire discovered what appeared to be a broken jumper by a PG&E transmission tower that had lost power. Though PG&E had shut off power to the area as part of planned shutoff, the transmission lines remained energized, the utility said. The cause of the Kincade fire is still under investigation.The power shutoff in Geyserville created a dangerous challenge when it came time to evacuate residents as the blaze crept nearer. Typically during evacuations, local authorities deploy reverse 911 calls to alert individual residents. With the power out, evacuees reported being awakened in the early hours by frantic knocks on their front doors.Gavin Newsom has been highly critical of the investor-owned public utility and the shutoffs, calling the impact "unacceptable"."We gotta hold them accountable and we are going to do our best to get through these high wind events, and work Saturday, Sunday into Monday to get these lights back on and do everything in our power to make sure PG&E is never in a position where they are doing this to us again," he said in a statement on Saturday.In San Diego county, where other small wildfires are burning, helicopters were forced to make the evacuation orders over loudspeaker because the power was shut off. San Diego runs its own utility and is conducting its own planned shutoffs during high-fire weather conditions.Californians in the vicinity of the fires faced a weekend of smokey haze and bad air quality. Sonoma county, where the Kincade fire rages, advised residents to cancel plans and stay indoors.In the Bay Area, with residents still leery after the heavy smoke event from last year's Camp fire, officials warned residents to close windows and use masks. Local high school sporting events were canceled, while the University of California, Berkeley announced it was canceling all Saturday afternoon classes, as well as other indoor events and activities scheduled through Sunday.Though nine wildfires are currently burning throughout the state, none have reached the level of death and destruction witnessed in the past few years. Nevertheless fears remain, especially among those who lived through the devastation of the previous fires. The Kincade fire was raging near the path of the 2015 Valley fire, which killed four people and burned through more than 76,000 acres.The shadow of the Camp fire in Paradise, the deadliest in the state's history which left 86 dead, wasn't far off either. The senator and 2020 candidate Kamala Harris evoked the disaster in a tweet on Saturday.> As devastating fires spread across California, an important lesson from the survivors in Paradise: we are strong and we will rebuild. Proud of this community for its continued resilience. https://t.co/10dqbEBEHw> > — Kamala Harris (@SenKamalaHarris) October 26, 2019The harsh fire weather conditions have spread beyond the state, kicking up flames in parts of Baja California, just across the border from San Diego in Mexico.Mexican authorities say three people have died, with several fires forcing 1,645 people to evacuate their homes and burning more than 35,000 acres."This is the strongest Santa Ana wind related-fires ever struck Baja California in its history, due to the number of cities and houses affected and the number of people that have perished," Antonio Rosquillas, the director of Baja California Civil Protection, told the San Diego Union-Tribune. The Santa Ana winds are extremely strong, dry winds affecting southern California and northern Baja California.Susie Cagle and agencies contributed reporting
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| Ousted Republicans plot rematches with Trump back on the ballot Posted: 27 Oct 2019 04:16 AM PDT  Former Rep. Claudia Tenney got swept out of Congress in 2018 on an anti-Trump wave. And with Trump back on the ballot in 2020, Tenney and her supporters see a chance to make her comeback. "I think it's going to be a good year," Tenney said in an interview.
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| Hitman outsourced a murder to hitman, who hired hitman, who hired hitman, who hired hitman Posted: 27 Oct 2019 09:17 AM PDT  Six men — including five hitmen — have been charged in Chinese court last Thursday, after all attempted to subcontract the killing to another hitman.
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| World ‘Awash’ in Oil as U.S. Sees Its Shale Boom Barreling Ahead Posted: 26 Oct 2019 11:34 PM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Global markets are "awash" in crude thanks to the surge in U.S. oil output, and the boom looks set to continue, U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry said in a Bloomberg TV interview.U.S. shale production has turned the world "on its head," and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is "off a bit" in a report last week saying that the bonanza is fading, Perry said on Sunday in Dubai.Oil and natural gas from American shale fields have made the U.S. one of the world's largest producers and enabled it to become a net energy exporter. Perry will travel in the coming week to Saudi Arabia to discuss possible sales of U.S. liquefied natural gas and Saudi efforts to develop a nuclear power program. Perry held talks in the United Arab Emirates and visited the country's largest solar-power facility at a site near the U.A.E.'s commercial hub of Dubai.The U.S. sent 11 LNG shipments to the U.A.E. over the past three years and is seeking to sell more of the fuel there and to Saudi Arabia, Perry said.The world needs to be prepared for attacks disrupting the global economy, and the U.S., Saudi Arabia and other allies are discussing the safety of oil supply routes, he said. Aerial strikes against Saudi oil facilities on Sept. 14 temporarily knocked out half of the kingdom's output, and the U.S. is currently doing enough to help Saudi Arabia defend against such attacks in the future, Perry said.Washington won't hold a grudge forever against Saudi Arabia over the murder last October of government critic and U.S. columnist Jamal Khashoggi, though there's not a "massive amount of forgiveness" in Congress for his killing in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Perry said.The energy secretary said he asked U.S. President Donald Trump to call Ukraine to try to sell U.S. LNG there. The approach to Ukraine is important for energy sales and to break that country's over-reliance on Russian gas, he said.The U.S. is "making progress" with its Middle East foreign policy, while efforts to impeach Trump won't be an issue in the U.S. presidential election next year and will go away in six months, Perry said.\--With assistance from Giovanni Prati.To contact the reporters on this story: Anthony DiPaola in Dubai at adipaola@bloomberg.net;Manus Cranny in London at mcranny@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Nayla Razzouk at nrazzouk2@bloomberg.net, Bruce StanleyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Vietnam takes forensic samples to help in truck deaths case Posted: 27 Oct 2019 07:47 AM PDT  Police in central Vietnam said Sunday that they have taken forensic samples from residents who believe their family members may be among the 39 victims found dead last week in the back of a truck in England. Police in Nghe An province took samples including hair and nails from the family members to try to help identify the victims, the VNExpress news website reported. Up to 24 Vietnamese families had reported their missing family members to local authorities as of Sunday afternoon, the website said.
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| ‘Many’ dead as Myanmar military sinks boats carrying kidnapped troops: Arakan Army Posted: 27 Oct 2019 04:39 AM PDT !['Many' dead as Myanmar military sinks boats carrying kidnapped troops: Arakan Army]( "'Many' dead as Myanmar military sinks boats carrying kidnapped troops: Arakan Army") Myanmar's army sunk several boats carrying dozens of soldiers and police officers taken hostage by rebels in the restive western Rakhine state, the Arakan Army said on Sunday, adding that many had died. The ethnic armed group abducted more than 50 people, most of them members of the security forces, a day earlier in the latest escalation of violence in the region where it has been fighting government troops for months. The AA, which is demanding greater autonomy for Rakhine state, said troops opened fire on three vessels where the group were being held in Rathedaung township, sinking two and damaging one.
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| Does Russia's Anti-Drone Pantsir S1 System Even Work? Posted: 26 Oct 2019 06:00 PM PDT  Let's take a look.
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| Flight attendant alleges pilots watched a livestream of the plane's bathroom Posted: 27 Oct 2019 08:41 AM PDT  A flight attendant is suing Southwest Airlines after she reported a disturbing discovery she made in a plane's cockpit. A lawsuit filed by Renee Steinaker alleges that she was working on a flight between Pittsburgh and Phoenix when she entered the cockpit and noticed an iPad mounted on the plane's windshield, displaying what appeared to be live footage of the plane's bathroom.
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| Could Trump Serve a Second Term if Ousted? It's Up to the Senate Posted: 27 Oct 2019 09:12 AM PDT  WASHINGTON -- With chances rapidly increasing that President Donald Trump will be impeached by the House and tried in the Senate, an intriguing question has reared its head: Could he be ousted only to try to return to the White House in 2020 in a Trumpian bid for redemption and revenge?Like so much of the coming impeachment showdown, that decision rests entirely with the Senate. The Constitution famously grants senators the sole power to convict and remove a president -- something that has never been done. What is seldom discussed is a more obscure clause of the Constitution that allows the Senate discretion to take a second, even more punitive step, to disqualify the person it convicts from holding "any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States."Imposing that penalty would effectively bar the president from reclaiming his old job. In an added twist, tacking on the extra punishment requires only a majority vote in the Senate, not the two-thirds -- or 67 senators -- required to convict.For now, the idea of disqualifying Trump is the remotest of hypotheticals, since it would first require the Senate to vote to impeach and remove him. That seems far-fetched, given how little appetite Republicans in the chamber have shown so far for deserting him, despite the flood of damaging revelations that have come forth in the impeachment inquiry. But if nearly two dozen Republicans did vote to impeach him, it would take only a simple majority to banish him from the presidency for life.The little-known constitutional quirk -- which has been applied unevenly in the cases of federal judges removed from office -- is only one example of what can happen in the freewheeling process of a presidential impeachment, an exceedingly rare and constantly evolving proceeding that is replete with untested precedents.The likelihood of an impeachment trial has senators and aides reading up on the process, with a lot to digest. Uncertainty is rife. Could the Senate censure Trump as an alternative to ousting him, a proposal that was defeated on procedural grounds during the 1999 impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton? Is a motion to dismiss the articles of impeachment in order -- and if so, when?Then there are much larger questions. Could new revelations about Trump's efforts to pressure Ukraine to smear his political rivals shake Republicans from strongly backing him? How would Congress impose its will on the president, and would he comply? Would the courts intervene, and what would they have to say?Some constitutional scholars wonder whether the disqualification clause even applies to a president, but the consensus is that it was written precisely for that purpose when the authors of the Constitution gathered in Philadelphia in 1787."If we know anything about what the framers were particularly thinking of when they were drafting the impeachment clauses, it was that they had the president clearly in mind," said Frank Bowman, a constitutional law professor at the University of Missouri and author of "High Crimes and Misdemeanors: A History of Impeachment for the Age of Trump."Now 73, Trump might not even be interested in running again if he were ousted by a Senate dominated by members of his own party. But for a president who is always spoiling for a fight, it might be sweet payback to be reelected by voters after Democratic and Republican lawmakers banded together to give him the boot.At least one constitutional expert said that given the nature of the allegations against Trump -- that he abused his power to enlist foreign help in next year's election -- disqualifying him would be an illogical penalty."If the impeachment is based on the Ukraine phone call and activity around that, and the idea is that he is improperly using his office to get dirt on his opponent, the remedy to that is to remove him from office," said Edward Foley, an election law authority and constitutional law professor at The Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law. "If the fear is the incumbent can't fight a fair fight, then disable the candidate's ability to not wage a fair fight."Of the eight federal judges who have been removed from the bench for crimes or misconduct, just three were disqualified from future office. The most notable person who was not barred was Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla. Hastings, a former federal district judge, was tossed out by the Senate in 1989 on bribery accusations despite being acquitted in a criminal trial, only to be elected in 1992 to the House, where he still serves. (Some scholars argue that an ousted federal officer could not be barred from running for Congress in any event.)The case of Hastings was a cautionary tale for congressional officials handling the impeachment in 2010 of Judge G. Thomas Porteous of Louisiana on bribery and perjury charges. They made sure to not only convict and remove the judge but to disqualify him as well.Yet disqualification remained something of an afterthought, and the Senate nearly missed its chance to do so. After the vote to convict Porteous, which automatically carries the penalty of removal from office, senators raced for the exits amid confusion over whether a second vote was needed on the future ban. It turned out one was, and senators were called back to cast a hasty vote of disqualification, which passed 94-2.That overwhelming margin was not needed. The Senate has concluded, based on its own precedents, that disqualification can be done with a simple majority. The Constitution explicitly requires a two-thirds vote for conviction but does not specify the margin needed for disqualification, so parliamentarians have ruled that the default for Senate votes is sufficient.Some scholars believe that such a potentially significant penalty should require a more definitive vote, arguing that a two-thirds supermajority should be the standard for both punishments."It should be invoked through the same kind of vote," said Michael Gerhardt, a constitutional law professor at the University of North Carolina and author of "Impeachment: What Everyone Needs to Know.""It is not clear why one should be easier than the other," he added.The lower threshold has driven some speculation that even if the Senate did not convict Trump, it might still be able to disqualify him from future office on a simple majority vote. But that notion is generally dismissed as unconstitutional, since the ban on future office has to flow out of conviction on articles of impeachment."It is a sentencing provision," Bowman said.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company
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| Germany Budget Surplus to Reach Billions in 2019: Handelsblatt Posted: 27 Oct 2019 05:34 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Explore what's moving the global economy in the new season of the Stephanomics podcast. Subscribe via Pocket Cast or iTunes.Germany will have a budget surplus this year amounting to billions of euros, Handelsblatt reported, citing government sources.Greater-than-expected tax revenue will result in the figure reaching the "high-single digits," the paper said.Germany's finance ministry is preparing a tax revenue estimate for next week, and calculations show the number has increased by 4 billion euros ($4.4 billion) compared to the last assessment in May, Handelsblatt reported.The government also has to pay about 5 billion euros less than planned to serve its current debt. On top, "many billions" earmarked for investments for states and municipalities will not be called, the newspaper wrote, while some of the surplus will be reserved to help refugees.With countries from China to the U.K. announcing fiscal stimulus plans, Germany is facing pressure to loosen the purse strings. So far, Germany hasn't committed to such a program, instead discussing measures including higher investments, subsidies for electric cars or corporate tax write-offs.To contact the reporter on this story: Richard Weiss in Frankfurt at rweiss5@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Daniel Schaefer at dschaefer36@bloomberg.net, Sara Marley, Jon MenonFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Woman, 78, gets 22 years for attempted murder of lawyer Posted: 26 Oct 2019 11:56 AM PDT ![Woman, 78, gets 22 years for attempted murder of lawyer]( "Woman, 78, gets 22 years for attempted murder of lawyer") Patricia Currie of Mandeville was 75 when she raised a loaded shotgun toward Keith Couture in 2016. A St. Tammany Parish jury convicted Currie in August of attempted second-degree murder, which carries a minimum sentence of 10 years. Prosecutors asked for the 50-year maximum at Thursday's sentencing by Judge Alan Zaunbrecher, District Attorney Warren Montgomery said in a news release Friday.
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| UK PM Johnson's Conservatives hold 16-point poll lead ahead of election decision Posted: 26 Oct 2019 11:15 AM PDT  British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Conservative Party holds a 16-point lead over the opposition Labour Party ahead of a parliamentary vote on Monday on whether to hold a snap general election, according to an Opinium poll. According to the survey, support for the Conservative Party rose three points since a previous poll eight days ago to stand at 40%, while Labour was unchanged on 24%. The pro-European Union Liberal Democrat Party slipped one point to 15% while Nigel Farage's Brexit Party, which could challenge the Conservatives for the support of Brexit backers, was on 10%.
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| After India's Aircraft Carrier Fire Left 1 Sailor Dead, China Had Words Posted: 27 Oct 2019 06:00 AM PDT  Beijing didn't mince words.
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| After This War, India Became A Powerhouse and Pakistan Was Ruined Posted: 26 Oct 2019 05:14 PM PDT  The 1971 India-Pakistan War's legacy lives on.
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| 'Beautiful' moments as Mexican migrants meet families on US border Posted: 27 Oct 2019 01:11 AM PDT  Ciudad Juárez (Mexico) (AFP) - Hundreds of Mexican migrants to the United States have reunited with their families for a few fleeting moments as part of the "hugs not walls" meetup on the US-Mexico border. People shed tears on a bridge linking Mexico's Ciudad Juarez with El Paso in the United States, flinging their arms around relatives they hadn't seen for years and walking slowly along together. The bridge was made neutral territory for four hours during the event, held for the seventh time, to allow undocumented migrants to the US to see their Mexican families.
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| Steal The Show In This 1994 Ford F-150 SVT Lightning Posted: 27 Oct 2019 04:00 AM PDT  An attractive muscle truck created for performance.From 1993 through 1995, Ford created a potent version of its top-selling F-150 pickup truck to compete against other performance-oriented GM vehicles such as the GMC Syclone and Chevy 454 SS. That's when the SVT (Special Vehicle Team) developed the performance-oriented SVT Lightning with impressive power but still retained the ruggedness and capability of Ford's F-Series. Classic Car Liquidators is happy to offer the chance to take home this incredible 1994 Ford F-150 SVT Lightning with just 20,863 miles on the clock.While there is no denying that the sporty pickup has an attractive exterior, the main selling point was tucked under the hood. Powered by a slightly modified fuel-injected 351cui V8 engine, the muscular Lightning generated 240-horsepower and 340 ft/lb of torque straight out of the gate. The truck handles smooth and sits low thanks to modifications made to a basic F-150 chassis. The sporty pickup sprints from 0 to 60 in 7.6 seconds and can reach a top speed of 110 miles per hour.Under the truck is a Ford 8.8-inch solid rear that houses 4.10 gears. Stopping power comes from the combination of ABS drum and disc brakes. The Lightning was given a custom tubular intake manifold, and it came with true dual exhaust mated to stainless steel tubular exhaust headers. The '94 Ford Lightning was only offered as a standard 2-door cab with a short-bed, and it was only produced with a 4-speed automatic transmission with overdrive. Even more, the truck was only available in three colors: red, black, and white. The Lightning was easy to identify with badges and accents placed from the exterior to the engine bay. Only 11,563 first-gen SVT Lightnings were produced total over its 3-year span, and only 1,460 of those were slathered in white for the 1994 model year. Who knows how many of that number actually still exist today.If you want to haul more than just the mail, contact Classic Car Liquidator today. The truck is listed at $19,999, but feel free to make an offer here. Read More... * Pack A Potent Punch In This 2015 Ford Mustang GT Hennessey * Pro-Touring 1965 Ford Mustang GT Up For Grabs
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| Who Is Bill Barr? Posted: 27 Oct 2019 09:06 AM PDT  William Barr had returned to private life after his first stint as attorney general when he sat down to write an article for The Catholic Lawyer. It was 1995, and Barr saw an urgent threat to religion generally and to Catholicism, his faith, specifically. The danger came from the rise of "moral relativism," in Barr's view. "There are no objective standards of right and wrong," he wrote. "Everyone writes their own rule book."And so, at first, it seemed surprising that Barr, now 69, would return after 26 years to the job of attorney general, to serve President Donald Trump, the moral relativist in chief, who writes and rewrites the rule book at whim.But a close reading of Barr's speeches and writings shows that, for decades, he has taken a maximalist, Trumpian view of presidential power that critics have called the "imperial executive." He was a match, all along, for a president under siege. "He alone is the executive branch," Barr wrote of whoever occupies the Oval Office, in a memo to the Justice Department in 2018, before he returned.Now, with news reports that his review into the origins of the Russian investigation that so enraged Trump has turned into a full-blown criminal investigation, Barr is arousing fears that he is using the enormous power of the Justice Department to help the president politically, subverting the independence of the nation's top law enforcement agency in the process.Why is he giving the benefit of his reputation, earned over many years in Washington, to this president? His Catholic Lawyer article suggests an answer to that question. The threat of moral relativism he saw then came when "secularists used law as a weapon." Barr cited rules that compel landlords to rent to unmarried couples or require universities to treat "homosexual activist groups like any other student group." He reprised the theme in a speech at Notre Dame this month.In 1995 and now, Barr has voiced the fears and aspirations of the conservative legal movement. By helping Trump, he's protecting a president who has succeeded in confirming more than 150 judges to create a newly conservative judiciary. The federal bench now seems more prepared to lower barriers between church and state and reduce access to abortion -- a procedure that Barr, in his 1995 article, included on a list of societal ills that also included drug addiction, venereal diseases and psychiatric disorders.In his unruffled and lawyerly way, Barr emerged as the president's most effective protector in the spring, when he limited damage from special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election by shaping the public narrative of the Mueller report before he released any of it.In his pursuit of investigating the investigators, he even traveled to Britain and Italy to meet with intelligence officials there to persuade them to help it along. Now it is possible that the Justice Department could bring charges against its own officials and agents for decisions they made to investigate Trump campaign advisers in the fraught months around the 2016 election, when the Russian government was mounting what the Mueller report called "a sweeping and systematic" effort to interfere.This criminal investigation seems ominous in the context of Barr's other moves.His Justice Department recently declined to investigate a whistleblower's complaint that the president was "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election" and advised the acting director of national intelligence not to send the complaint to Congress. Last week, dozens of government inspectors general warned in a letter to the Justice Department that its position "could seriously undermine the critical role whistleblowers play in coming forward to report waste, fraud, abuse and misconduct across the federal government."So while Rudy Giuliani is freelancing U.S. diplomacy as the president's personal lawyer, often leaving bedlam in his wake, and Mick Mulvaney flails as acting chief of staff, Barr has used the Justice Department, with precision, on the president's behalf. The New York City Bar Association complained a few days ago that Barr "appears to view his primary obligation as loyalty to the president individually rather than to the nation."William Barr (Billy, when he was young) grew up in an apartment on Riverside Drive in Manhattan with a framed Barry Goldwater presidential campaign poster in the foyer, according to Vanity Fair. His mother, who was of Irish descent, taught at Columbia University. His father, a Jew who converted to Catholicism, taught at Columbia, too, and then became the headmaster of the elite Dalton School, leaving after 10 years amid criticism over his authoritarian approach to student discipline.Barr went to high school at the equally elite Horace Mann and then to college at Columbia, where he majored in government and then got a master's degree in government and Chinese studies. He went to work for the CIA in Washington in 1973 and attended George Washington University Law School at night.He joined the Reagan White House in 1982, where he sought to curb regulation. After George H.W. Bush was elected president in 1988, he became director of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department, which provides legal advice to the president and all executive agencies.It didn't take long for Barr to express his views on executive power. He warned in one of his early opinions, in July 1989, of congressional "encroachments" on presidential authority. "Only by consistently and forcefully resisting such congressional incursions can executive branch prerogatives be preserved," he wrote. Some of his Republican colleagues remember being taken aback."Bill's view on the separation of powers was not overlapping authority keeping all branches in check, but keeping the other branches neutralized, leaving a robust executive power to rule. George III would have loved it," said Douglas Kmiec, a law professor at Pepperdine who preceded Barr as head of the Office of Legal Counsel.Barr also argued that the president had the "inherent authority" to order the FBI to abduct people abroad, in violation of an international treaty principally written by the United States. This view reversed the position that the Office of Legal Counsel had taken nine years earlier. When Congress asked to see Barr's opinion, he refused, even as the government defended the abduction of a man in Mexico accused of participating in the killing of a Drug Enforcement Administration agent. The charges against the man were dismissed. It took four years for Barr's opinion to come to light."You have a secret opinion that violated the internal rules of the Justice Department" and "diminished America's reputation as a country that operates by the rule of law," said Harold Hongju Koh, a Yale law professor who worked in the Office of Legal Counsel under the Reagan administration and advised the State Department. "At the time, we thought that was as bad as it was going to get."After becoming deputy attorney general in 1990, Barr continued to push the limits on questions of presidential power. He told the first President Bush that he didn't need congressional approval to invade Iraq. Bush asked for it anyway.Barr, who took over the Justice Department in the fall of 1991, also urged Bush to pardon all six of the Reagan administration officials who faced criminal charges in an arms-for-hostages deal at the heart of the Iran-Contra scandal. The president took his advice.When Bush lost his bid for reelection, Barr went back into private practice before taking jobs as the general counsel first for GTE and then Verizon. He served on the boards of several religious groups, including the Catholic Information Center, a self-described "intellectual hub," affiliated with the ultraconservative order Opus Dei.Those groups include other conservative Washington insiders, such as Leonard Leo, the executive vice president of the Federalist Society. Leo has also served on the board of the Catholic Information Center, and he came out strongly in favor of Trump's nomination of Barr for attorney general.In a sense, both Barr and Leo have found parallel ways to use the Trump administration as a vehicle for their causes. Leo has enormous influence from outside the government on the selection of judicial nominees. From the inside, Barr plays a role in federal judicial appointments and has supported a Justice Department task force set up to look for cases of religious discrimination.When Barr undercut the Mueller report, he lost some supporters. While delaying its release, he presented the conclusions as far less damning for Trump than Mueller found them to be. (For example, Barr said that the special counsel did not find sufficient evidence of a crime when in fact Mueller had not exonerated Trump of wrongdoing.)"Not in my memory has a sitting attorney general more diminished the credibility of his department on any subject," wrote Benjamin Wittes, the editor-in-chief of Lawfare.Despite criticism, Barr has continued to champion the presidency -- and this president. But on Friday, a federal judge in Washington ruled against the Justice Department's effort to block Congress from getting grand jury evidence obtained in the Mueller investigation. The department has also asked a federal judge to block a subpoena from the Manhattan district attorney for eight years of Trump's personal and corporate tax returns."From my perspective," Barr told Jan Crawford of CBS News in May, "the idea of resisting a democratically elected president and basically throwing everything at him and, you know, really changing the norms on the grounds that we have to stop this president, that is where the shredding of our norms and our institutions is occurring."In other words, amazingly, it wasn't Trump, or Barr, who was violating the norms of American governance. It was their critics.Since Watergate, a crucial norm of Justice Department independence has prevented presidents from ordering or meddling in investigations for partisan reasons.In 2001, Barr praised the first President Bush for leaving the Justice Department alone. Bush's White House "appreciated the independence of Justice," Barr said. "We didn't lose sight of the fact that there's a difference between being a government lawyer and representing an individual in his personal capacity in a criminal case."Now, Barr seems hard-pressed to maintain a semblance of those boundaries. The criminal investigation of the origins of the Russia investigation that he ordered is official government business. It's headed by an experienced prosecutor, John Durham, the U.S. attorney for Connecticut, and it's supposed to be on the up and up.But when Barr told Congress in April that he thought "spying" on the Trump campaign by U.S. intelligence agencies occurred -- the FBI director, Christopher Wray, told Congress that "spying" was "not the term I would use" -- he echoed Trump's conspiracy theory of being a victim of the "deep state." And in the last month, Barr has found his review mixed up with the machinations of Giuliani, who was directed by Trump to investigate the 2016 election and the Biden family in Ukraine.Trump made the overlap explicit when he lumped Giuliani and Barr together in his July phone call with Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. "I will have Mr. Giuliani give you a call and I am also going to have Attorney General Barr call," Trump told Zelenskiy, according to notes released by the White House. Barr was reportedly "surprised and angry" by the president's reference, and a Justice Department representative has denied he had any contacts with Zelenskiy.Then, Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, brought up Barr's review of the Russia investigation at his news conference on Oct. 17 in defense of Trump's request to Zelenskiy for "a favor" and information. ("So you're saying the president of the United States, the chief law enforcement person, cannot ask somebody to cooperate with an ongoing public investigation into wrongdoing?" he asked.)The White House's use of the Justice Department as a shield in the Ukraine scandal risks leaving Barr's review "hopelessly compromised," tweeted Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith, an alumnus of the Office of Legal Counsel who has defended Barr.And in blockbuster testimony before Congress last Tuesday, the topU.S. diplomat in Ukraine, William Taylor, said that he and Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, who was conveying Trump's orders concerning Ukraine, discussed the possibility that Ukraine's prosecutor would make a public statement about "investigations, potentially in coordination with Attorney General Barr's probe." Either people in the president's circle are using Barr as a pawn, or he's in deeper than he has said.Either way, maybe the lesson is the same one that applies throughout the administration: The fallout from the president's maneuvering taints the people around him. The longer Barr stays in office, the more that Trump will look for the attorney general to do for him.When Mueller closed up shop, he left several cases pending with the Justice Department, including charges against the Trump operative Roger Stone, which could end with disclosures at trial that damage the president (Stone has pleaded not guilty). What if Trump would rather make cases like these go away, with pardons or other inducements? Will Barr go along?During the Bush administration, in a more moderate time, Barr worked for a buttoned-down president who called for a "kinder" nation and "gentler" world. Now he has a boss who calls the impeachment process "a lynching," Republican critics "human scum" and the news media "the enemy of the American people."As the buttons fly off, Barr seems unperturbed. He's the perfect attorney general for Trump. Not so much, it seems, for the country.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company
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| Samsung pseudo satellite falls out of the sky, lands in rural Michigan neighborhood Posted: 27 Oct 2019 01:55 PM PDT  According to a statement from Samsung, the landing was planned, and no injuries occurred when the "Samsung Europe's SpaceSelfie balloon" landed.
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| Giuliani Butt-Dials NBC Reporter, Heard Saying He Needs Money Posted: 26 Oct 2019 12:59 AM PDT ![Giuliani Butt-Dials NBC Reporter, Heard Saying He Needs Money]( "Giuliani Butt-Dials NBC Reporter, Heard Saying He Needs Money") (Bloomberg) -- Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump's personal lawyer, accidentally dialed the phone of an NBC reporter and inadvertently left recordings of his conversations with associates, including one where he is heard looking for money."The problem is we need some money," Giuliani is heard telling an unidentified person in the voice mail left on the phone of NBC reporter Rich Shapiro, NBC reported. Giuliani goes on to tell an unidentified man that "we need a few hundred thousand."NBC said it is unclear what the two men are discussing or who the other man is in the roughly three-minute message left on Oct. 16.It wasn't the first time that Giuliani inadvertently called the reporter, NBC said. Shapiro also received a butt-dial voice mail message on Sept. 28. In that call, Giuliani could be heard attacking former Vice President and 2020 Democratic hopeful Joe Biden, as well as Biden's son Hunter. Giuliani is a central figure in the impeachment investigation and the allegations that Trump improperly solicited Ukraine's help in investigating a political rival.NBC's follow-up calls to Giuliani for comment on the voice mails weren't returned and the phone's voice mailbox was full."I have yet to receive an intentional or unintentional call back," Schapiro said in an interview with MSNBC.\--With assistance from Kathleen Miller.To contact the reporter on this story: Andrew Davis in London at abdavis@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Matthew G. Miller at mmiller144@bloomberg.net, Sara Marley, Jon MenonFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Comey: If reports are true, Trump engaged In 'shocking abuse of power' Posted: 27 Oct 2019 10:39 AM PDT  If news accounts are accurate about the facts concerning President Trump's dealings with Ukraine, said former FBI Director James Comey, then the president engaged in a "shocking abuse of power," and "the House has no choice but to pursue an impeachment inquiry."
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| The Latest: California governor declares statewide emergency Posted: 27 Oct 2019 11:50 AM PDT  California Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a statewide emergency as wildfires and extreme weather conditions forced almost 200,000 people from their homes. The flames came dangerously close to homes in Vallejo. In the south, a wildfire in the Santa Clarita area north of Los Angeles has destroyed 18 structures, threatened homes and critical infrastructure.
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| Honduran inmate who linked president's brother to drug deals killed Posted: 26 Oct 2019 06:04 PM PDT ![Honduran inmate who linked president's brother to drug deals killed]( "Honduran inmate who linked president's brother to drug deals killed") An alleged drug dealer with knowledge of drug shipments involving a brother of Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez convicted this month for drug trafficking, was killed on Saturday in prison, his lawyer said. Magdaleno Meza, who had been in the El Pozo prison since June 2018 on charges of money laundering, was shot dead during a fight between inmates of the facility, the deputy director of the national penal authority, German McNiel, told reporters. Meza's lawyer, Carlos Chajtur, told Reuters his client was attacked by two armed men trying to stop him from talking about the information about drug deals he had in several notebooks in case he was called to testify in the United States.
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| Saudi takes command of coalition troops in Yemen's Aden Posted: 27 Oct 2019 08:22 AM PDT  Saudi Arabia took command of anti-rebel troops in Yemen's Aden, Saudi state media said Sunday, after the government and southern separatist forces struck a power-sharing deal following clashes in the city. "Coalition forces have been repositioned in Aden to become under the kingdom's command and redeployed to conform with requirements of current operations," the Saudi-led pro-government coalition said in a statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency.
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| Mind your language: Archbishop of Canterbury's Brexit warning for Boris Posted: 26 Oct 2019 07:21 PM PDT  The Archbishop of Canterbury has taken Prime Minister Boris Johnson to task for his use of "inflammatory" language through the Brexit debate. Justin Welby told The Sunday Times there was a risk of pouring "petrol" on the country's divisions on the issue of Britain's departure from the European Union. The archbishop said Mr Johnson had come to symbolise a climate in which Britain had become consumed by "an abusive and binary approach to political decisions", and where those with opposing views treated each other as "total" enemies. In an era in which social media had made it "extraordinarily dangerous to use careless comments", and in which hate speech was on the rise, Mr Welby called for political leaders to take more care with their language. He said his criticisms were not confined to Mr Johnson and his Government, but made it clear he considered the prime minister partly to blame for the fact society had become "quite broken". The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby during an address at Westminster Abbey. Credit: Paul Grover/Paul Grover "I think we have become addicted to an abusive and binary approach to political decisions: 'It's either this or you're my total enemy'," Mr Welby told the paper. "There have been inflammatory words used on all sides, in parliament and outside - 'traitor', 'fascist', all kinds of really bad things have been said at the highest level in politics." Mr Welby said he was "shocked" by Mr Johnson's recent dismissal of concerns extreme language could encourage death threats against politicians as "humbug". And he added political leaders could no longer behave the same way as Mr Johnson's hero, Winston Churchill. "Churchill was well known for his somewhat inflammatory putdowns in parliament," the archbishop said. "But this is happening at a time when we have social media, which amplifies things. "In a time of deep uncertainty, a much smaller amount of petrol is a much more dangerous thing than it was in a time when people were secure. "There is a great danger to doing it when we're already in a very polarised and volatile situation." Mr Welby said action was needed to heal divisions "at almost every level of society, including the political level of society", adding: "I don't only blame government. I think we are quite broken."
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| Four-star US army general compares Trump to Mussolini after ‘watershed moment’ for America Posted: 26 Oct 2019 06:06 AM PDT  A decorated retired US Army general has compared Donald Trump to fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, and said the president's actions over the past week are a watershed moment for America.Mr Trump ordered his administration to cancel subscriptions to The New York Times and The Washington Post at the start of the week, a move that Barry McCaffrey called 'deadly serious'.
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| Car crash stopped red light runner from hitting couple with stroller, traffic cam shows Posted: 27 Oct 2019 10:49 AM PDT  Shannon Vivar was driving a Chevrolet Cruz when it crashed into a vehicle that ran a red light, possibly saving the pedestrians.
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| Why the 2020 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500's Carbon Wheels Are Superior to the GT350R's Posted: 27 Oct 2019 10:40 AM PDT  It's more than just looks, although they are beautiful: the carbon-fiber wheels are as advanced as those on a Ferrari.
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| This tough-as-nails $125,000 fully electric SUV will be able to go where the Tesla Model X can't Posted: 26 Oct 2019 05:49 AM PDT  Bollinger Motors has unveiled its first cars: a fully electric SUV and a pickup truck, both for $125,000.
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| Venezuelans buy gas with cigarettes to battle inflation Posted: 25 Oct 2019 06:33 PM PDT  Motorists in socialist Venezuela have long enjoyed the world's cheapest gasoline, with fuel so heavily subsidized that a full tank these days costs a tiny fraction of a U.S. penny. Bartering at the pump has taken off as hyperinflation makes Venezuela's paper currency, the bolivar, hard to find and renders some denominations all but worthless, so that nobody will accept them. Without cash in their wallets, drivers often hand gas station attendants a bag of rice, cooking oil or whatever is within reach.
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