| Sanders retracts controversial endorsement less than 24 hours after making it Posted: 13 Dec 2019 02:03 PM PST  Sen. Bernie Sanders retracted his endorsement of congressional candidate Cenk Uygur on Friday, less than 24 hours after making it, as allegations of sexism hit the former online talk show host.
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| Judge's decision may shine light on secret Trump-Putin meeting notes Posted: 13 Dec 2019 10:49 AM PST  A district court judge in Washington, D.C. has ordered administration lawyers to explain why, for more than two years, the White House has refused to turn over to the State Department an interpreter's notes from a meeting between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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| 2 children dead after being swept away in Arizona floodwaters Posted: 14 Dec 2019 12:34 AM PST  The bodies of two children were found about three miles from the crash scene.
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| The CEO of a Silicon Valley startup was quietly fired after allegedly spending over $75,000 at strip clubs and charging it to a company credit card Posted: 14 Dec 2019 04:25 PM PST  Turvo named a new CEO in November named Scott Lang. The company was last valued at $435 million, according to Pitchbook.
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| Britain’s Political Map Changes Color in Ways Few Could Imagine Posted: 12 Dec 2019 11:24 PM PST ![Britain's Political Map Changes Color in Ways Few Could Imagine]( "Britain's Political Map Changes Color in Ways Few Could Imagine") (Bloomberg) -- Sign up to our Brexit Bulletin, follow us @Brexit and subscribe to our podcast.Towns in northern England share a history of mining, faded industry and neglect. For generations they also had another thing in common: staunch support for the Labour Party.From Workington on the west coast to Bishop Auckland and Blyth on the east, the dominoes fell as the results from the U.K. election rolled in through the small hours of Friday morning. The U.K.'s tortured efforts to leave the European Union redefined political tribes as Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Conservatives took seats his party has never held before.Johnson declared the victory as "historic." That will be even more apparent in places where most voters have never known a Conservative lawmaker.Workington, where mines and steelworks shut years ago, last voted Conservative in 1976. Back then Britain was in the grip of an economic crisis. It turned back to the red of Labour three years later. On Thursday it voted Conservative by a margin of 10 percentage points.Bishop Auckland, in the mining area south of Newcastle, had never turned Tory blue in more than a century. Elsewhere, Bassetlaw in Nottinghamshire elected a Conservative for the first time since the 1930s, as did swathes of the Midlands and Yorkshire. Labour's so-called "Red Wall" had fallen.Many of these former mining and steel towns endured mass unemployment under the Conservative governments of the 1980s. They then voted for Brexit in the 2016 referendum amid a wave of anger at austerity, frustration over immigration and dismay at joblessness and lack of opportunity. Today, they are embracing the Tories in their determination to finally quit the EU. Backing for Brexit also comes with a rejection of the socialist promises of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who now says he will step down.In Scotland, Labour's vote had already collapsed in the wake of the independence referendum in 2014. This time around the pro-independence Scottish National Party took the vast majority of districts again, even in some of the post-industrial regions that Labour had won back in 2017.In that election, the Conservatives planted a giant poster on a dilapidated building near the seafront in Redcar, a town in England's northeast haunted by steelworks that finally collapsed a few years ago. The Tories had never won in Redcar, and failed in 2017 as well. But as people demanded their voice be heard over Brexit, the voters of Redcar did in 2019 as so many did across the north of England: They abandoned Labour -- and embraced Boris Johnson.To contact the reporter on this story: Rodney Jefferson in Edinburgh at r.jefferson@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Heather Harris at hharris5@bloomberg.net, Adam Blenford, Alan CrawfordFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Brazilians arrive in waves at the US-Mexico border Posted: 13 Dec 2019 11:28 AM PST  Growing up along the U.S.-Mexico border, hotel clerk Joe Luis Rubio never thought he'd be trying to communicate in Portuguese on a daily basis. The quiet migration of around 17,000 Brazilians through a single U.S. city in the past year reveals a new frontier in the Trump administration's effort to shut down the legal immigration pathway for people claiming fear of persecution. Like hundreds of thousands of families from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, known collectively as the Northern Triangle, Brazilians have been crossing the border here and applying for asylum.
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| Kamala Harris flames out: Black people didn't trust her, and they were wise not to Posted: 14 Dec 2019 02:00 AM PST  Younger blacks and black progressives took a deeper, dispassionate dive into Kamala Harris' real-world record. They didn't like what they found
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| Man gives DNA to find out if he's Detroit boy missing since 1994 Posted: 13 Dec 2019 11:30 AM PST  A Michigan man give a DNA sample to the Livonia Police Department to find out if he is D'Wan Sims, a boy who has been missing for 25 years.
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| Warren, slumping in the polls, attacks Biden and Buttigieg Posted: 13 Dec 2019 12:39 PM PST  With polls showing her once steady rise to the top tier of the Democratic race stalling, Elizabeth Warren went on the attack in New Hampshire.
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| Body of 21-year-old vet recovered from volcano island as family fight for survival in hospital Posted: 14 Dec 2019 07:52 AM PST  Krystal Browitt, an Australian veterinary student from Melbourne who had just turned 21, was sightseeing with her sister and father on the island of Whakaari when toxic ash clouds spewed rocks and dust high into the air. Her mother stayed on the cruise ship, safe from the hot blanket of fumes and stones that rained down on the group of tourists hoping to see inside the crater of one of the country's most active volcanoes. The body of Ms Browitt was finally recovered from the island in a daring mission by elite military bomb squads on Friday. She was formally identified as among the 15 to have died so far on Saturday morning. The closure is likely to be little comfort for her mother Marie who was on Saturday keeping a bedside vigil for her surviving daughter, Stephanie, 23, and husband Paul fighting for their lives among the critically injured in hospital. Fourteen people remain hospitalised in New Zealand, 10 of whom are in critical condition with horrific burns. Thirteen others have been transported to Australia for treatment. One person succumbed to their injuries on Saturday morning, officials said. Police divers prepare to search the waters near White Island off the coast of Whakatane Credit: NZ Police Some patients have burns to up to 95 per cent of their bodies. Surgeons ordered 1.2 million sq cm of donor skin from the US earlier in the week in a desperate attempt to keep victims alive. It is understood that two British women are among the injured in hospital. The nature of the gas meant that survivors were found with third-degree burns to their skin but their clothing largely intact, and many suffered burnt lungs from inhaling the superheated gas, made up of sulphur dioxide and hydrogen chloride. Dr Watson said the gases would have reacted with the eyes, skin and mucous membranes, causing agony to the victims. Two people are missing, assumed dead, on the island itself. A team of nine from the Police National Dive Squad resumed their search at 7am on Saturday for a body seen in the water. Deputy Commissioner Tims said the water around the island is contaminated, requiring the divers to take extra precautions to ensure their safety, including using specialist protective equipment. "Divers have reported seeing a number of dead fish and eels washed ashore and floating in the water," he said. "Each time they surface, the divers are decontaminated using fresh water."
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| US Pacific commander says China seeks to intimidate region Posted: 13 Dec 2019 02:28 AM PST  China's activities in territory it claims in the South China Sea are meant to intimidate other nations in the region, the commander of the U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet said Friday. Adm. John Aquilino said China's actions, including constructing islands in the disputed waters, are intended to project its military capacity. China's vast territorial claims, far beyond its shores, have been challenged by other claimants, including Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia.
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| Iran Demands $6 Billion Oil Payment From South Korea: Chosun Posted: 14 Dec 2019 12:47 AM PST  (Bloomberg) -- Iran's Foreign Ministry called in the South Korean ambassador last month to demand payment of 7 trillion won ($6 billion) for oil it sold to the Asian country, Chosun Ilbo reported, citing officials it didn't identify.Iran expressed "strong regret" over Seoul's failure to complete the payment, which has been deposited at two South Korean banks without being transferred to Iran's central bank for years due to U.S. sanctions against the Middle Eastern country, the newspaper said. It added that other Iranian authorities including the central bank also complained.South Korea sent a delegation to the Middle East late last month and explained that the country will cooperate with the U.S. to successfully complete transfer of the payment, it added.To contact the reporter on this story: Kanga Kong in Seoul at kkong50@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Brendan Scott at bscott66@bloomberg.net, Sara Marley, Siraj DatooFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Turns out I'm Jewish after all Posted: 13 Dec 2019 02:45 AM PST ![Turns out I'm Jewish after all]( "Turns out I'm Jewish after all") Being Jewish has become hard again.After decades when Jews in America permitted themselves to believe they had finally found a welcoming home in a majority Christian, creedally universalist country, things have begun to shift in familiar and terrifying ways. Jews have been murdered in synagogues and kosher delis in the United States. They are regularly harassed and beaten on the streets of American cities. Swastikas scrawled on walls, acts of attempted arson and vandalism at synagogues, shouted slurs — the stories add up, amplifying one another and mixing with similar and worse stories from abroad.Over a hundred gravestones in a Jewish cemetery in France were spray-painted with swastikas earlier this month. It was the latest in a seemingly endless series of incidents across the continent. And of course leaders (and would-be leaders) of nations, along with prime-time TV pundits, now actively encourage such demonization, turning Jewish philanthropists into scapegoats, blaming them for a wide range of injustices. As enemies of the Jewish people have always done.It's a painful spectacle for anyone committed to liberal ideals of pluralism and tolerance. But it's especially, existentially, agonizing for Jews themselves — even for bad, part-time Jews like me.I was born Jewish — my father is the son of orthodox Jewish immigrants from Central Europe (Poland and Austria), and my mother a convert — but for much of the past two decades, that hasn't much mattered. I grew up identifying as a Jew, but we never worshipped at a synagogue (even on high holy days). I received no Jewish education. There was no Hebrew school. No bar mitzvah.By the time I started to sense religious stirrings in my late 20s, I knew far more about Christian, and especially Catholic, theology and moral teaching than I did about Judaism. Plus, by then I'd gone and done what American Jews are often warned against doing (and yet increasingly do anyway): I married a non-Jew. That my wife's family hoped and expected our children to be raised Catholic made the path forward obvious. I would repudiate my upbringing by converting to Catholicism.As regular readers know, the conversion didn't take. After 17 years, in August 2018, I publicly renounced Catholicism. The decision was mainly motivated by disgust at the church's systematic sexual perversion and corruption. But there was also something else going on.Exploration of existential possibilities is relatively easy in good times. When I turned away from my birthright, I knew it was a rejection — a turning of my back on my family, an act of disregard for the demographic fate of the Jewish community, which would lose me and my progeny forevermore. But I would still express love for my family in other ways, and my rejection of Judaism seemed like the infliction of a very small harm. True, there aren't that many Jews in the world. But really, how important was little old me, my kids, and those who would follow us? And anyway, the Jews were doing just fine — in the U.S., in other liberal democracies around the world, in Israel. My contribution seemed pretty close to infinitesimal, utterly irrelevant in the grand scheme of Jewish history.But things look and feel very different in dark times. Not that I'm now deluded enough to think the fate of Judaism in the world depends in any measurable way on whether or not I call myself a Jew or rise in defense of Jews when they face threat or come under outright attack. Of course it doesn't. I'm as infinitesimal and irrelevant as ever. Yet the fact remains that my youthful shirking of my inheritance no longer feels like a liberation. It feels more like an act of cowardice, perhaps even an expression of decadence, a sign that I took certain things for granted that no Jew should ever treat as a given.I also fear that at some level I was trying to hide, conceal, or camouflage myself by seeking to blend in so thoroughly and completely to the default Christianity of the surrounding culture. At the time of my conversion, in the center-right circles where I then worked, that culture was maximally welcoming of my spiritual decision while also treating the Judaism I left behind with a great deal of sincere respect. The borderline between traditions and faiths felt porous. Permeable.But not anymore. Walls are going up. Hard edges and irreconcilable differences are returning all over the liberal democratic world, raising a serious question about whether and to what extent that world will remain liberal and democratic. It would be nice if the cosmopolitan universalism that prevailed in the decade or so following the conclusion of the Cold War — during the era when so many of us permitted ourselves to believe that history had come to a peaceful end — could continue to feel compelling in the face of this threat. But it doesn't. It feels like foolishness. The world has changed, and we are changing with it. And we don't know how far the change is going to go.Turns out I'm Jewish after all. However malformed and badly enacted that Jewishness is and has been. The times are no longer compatible with, they no longer afford me the luxury of, denying it. Anything else would be irresponsible.That certainly doesn't mean I'll stop being infuriatingly, unreliably contrarian in my judgment of political issues and disputes. I'll continue to judge Israel's settlement policies and some of its punitive actions against the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza to be acts of moral and strategic idiocy. But I'll also continue to defend Israel's unconditional right to exist and defend itself against military threat. I'll continue to view President Trump's gestures of support for Jews with considerable skepticism — as incompatible with free speech and as doing little to compensate for the much greater harm precipitated by his intolerant and inflammatory rhetoric, which has done so much to activate previously dormant racism and anti-Semitism in the country. But I'll also continue to think of Judaism as a nationality or ethnicity as well as a religion. (Otherwise I could never have been considered a Jew in the first place.)But then what does my reaffirmation of my own Judaism amount to?All it means is that if things get worse — and who would dare try to reassure a Jew that it won't? — I will know exactly how and where I'll be taking my stand: in proud, defiant self-defense with my fellow Jews.More stories from theweek.com Trump's pathological obsession with being laughed at The most important day of the impeachment inquiry Jerry Falwell Jr.'s false gospel of memes
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| Joe Biden told a protestor at his Texas campaign rally that he's 'just like Donald Trump' for asking about corruption in Ukraine Posted: 14 Dec 2019 09:13 AM PST  At a campaign event in San Antonio, Joe Biden was interrupted by a protestor. Biden told the crowd not to hurt him, because it wasn't a 'Trump rally.'
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| Will the Navy's New LRASM Missile Change the Balance of Power? Posted: 13 Dec 2019 08:00 PM PST  Or will it keep the status quo?
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| The 25 Best Survival Games Posted: 14 Dec 2019 06:00 AM PST |
| Thousands join biggest protest for years in Thai capital Posted: 14 Dec 2019 12:07 AM PST  Several thousand people took part in Thailand's biggest protest since a 2014 coup on Saturday after authorities moved to ban a party that has rallied opposition to the government of former military ruler Prayuth Chan-ocha. The demonstration in Bangkok, called just a day earlier by Future Forward party leader Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, a 41-year-old billionaire, revived memories of the spasms of street protest that have roiled the Thai capital periodically during the past two decades of political turbulence. "This is just the beginning," Thanathorn told the cheering crowd that spilled across walkways and stairways close to the MBK Centre mall, in the heart of Bangkok's shopping and business district.
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| Satellite evades ‘day of reckoning' to discover puzzling weather phenomenon on Jupiter Posted: 13 Dec 2019 04:51 PM PST  At first glance, these newly released images by NASA may look like lava churning in the heart of a volcano, but they reveal otherworldly storm systems whirling in a way that surprised scientists.The swirls in the photos are cyclones around Jupiter's south pole, captured by NASA's Juno spacecraft on Nov. 3, 2019. Juno has been orbiting the solar system's largest planet since 2016 and has seen these polar cyclones before, but its latest flight over this region of the planet revealed a startling discovery - a new cyclone had formed unexpectedly. Six cyclones can be seen at Jupiter's south pole in this infrared image taken on Feb. 2, 2017, during the 3rd science pass of NASA's Juno spacecraft. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM) Prior to its early November pass, Juno had photographed five windstorms arranged in a uniform, pentagonal pattern around one storm sitting stationary over the south pole."It almost appeared like the polar cyclones were part of a private club that seemed to resist new members," said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.It is unclear when exactly the new cyclone formed, but it changed the arrangement of the storms from a pentagon to a hexagon.Winds in these cyclones average around 225 mph, according to NASA, wind speeds higher than any tropical cyclone ever recorded on Earth. An outline of the continental United States superimposed over the central cyclone and an outline of Texas is superimposed over the newest cyclone at Jupiter's south pole give a sense of their immense scale. The hexagonal arrangement of the cyclones is large enough to dwarf the Earth. (Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM) The discovery of this evolving meteorological phenomenon almost didn't happen as Jupiter itself almost caused the mission to end abruptly.Juno is a solar-powered spacecraft that relies on constant light from the sun to keep the craft alive. Flying through Jupiter's enormous shadow would take about 12 hours to complete, which would cut off the power source, drain the spacecraft's battery and potentially spell the end of the mission."Our navigators and engineers told us a day of reckoning was coming, when we would go into Jupiter's shadow for about 12 hours," said Steve Levin, Juno project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.To avoid the potential mission-ending eclipse, Juno fired up its engine (which was not initially designed for such a maneuver) and adjusted its trajectory just enough to avoid the icy grip of Jupiter's shadow. Jupiter's moon Io casts its shadow on Jupiter whenever it passes in front of the Sun as seen from Jupiter. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS Image processing by Tanya Oleksuik, (C) CC BY) "Thanks to our navigators and engineers, we still have a mission," said Bolton. "What they did is more than just make our cyclone discovery possible; they made possible the new insights and revelations about Jupiter that lie ahead of us."NASA scientists will continue to study these polar vortices in future flights over Jupiter's south pole to better understand the atmosphere over this part of the planet."These cyclones are new weather phenomena that have not been seen or predicted before," said Cheng Li, a Juno scientist from the University of California, Berkeley. "Nature is revealing new physics regarding fluid motions and how giant planet atmospheres work. Future Juno flybys will help us further refine our understanding by revealing how the cyclones evolve over time."
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| Iowa Democrats worry 'Medicare for All' hurts key industry Posted: 13 Dec 2019 09:43 PM PST  Nearly 17,000 Iowans are either directly employed by health insurance companies or employed in related jobs, according to data collected by America's Health Insurance Plans, an industry advocacy group. Des Moines, the seat of the state's most Democratic county, is known as one of America's insurance capitals partly because of the high number of health insurance companies and jobs in the metro area.
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| How to Get a Green Deal Done: Europe’s Lessons for U.S. Democrats Posted: 14 Dec 2019 03:00 AM PST ![How to Get a Green Deal Done: Europe's Lessons for U.S. Democrats]( "How to Get a Green Deal Done: Europe's Lessons for U.S. Democrats") (Bloomberg) -- When it comes to Green Deals, Europe has a lesson or two for liberal politicians in the U.S. trying to engineer far-reaching policies to address climate change.An American lawmaker, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, may have done more than anyone else to popularize the concept of a sweeping "green deal" to shift away from fossil fuels. But now the European Union is much closer to translating the goal into concrete policies that have a decent chance of actually being implemented.Both the U.S. Green New Deal resolution and the European Green Deal, which was unveiled this week by the EU's executive arm, share the same targets: limiting global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels, in line with the landmark Paris climate accord. To meet this objective, backers of the plans in the EU and the U.S. aim to eliminate emissions by 2050 at the latest. Both plans trace their lineage explicitly to the New Deal of the 1930s, a series of social programs, public work projects and financial reforms championed by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a way to counteract the Great Depression. The Green Deals may have identical goals and nearly matching branding, but the policies are oceans apart when it comes to the means of delivery.The European version is strictly focused on climate, and those policy areas which can affect it, such an industry, energy and public procurement. The U.S. Green New Deal — as it is laid out in the Ocasio-Cortez-sponsored resolution and the policy programs of Democratic presidential hopefuls such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren — is tied to a series of contentious issues unrelated to climate, from health care coverage to employment.Europe's narrow focus helped the plan gain the backing of conservative, centrist and center-left governments across the 28 nation-bloc, while the sweeping U.S. manifestos have little chance of garnering across-the-aisle support from legislators. Even ultra-conservative European governments, such as Poland's, which resisted committing themselves to Green Deal goals, didn't object to the bloc striving to meet the objective. Across the Atlantic, even modest efforts to curb climate change have been met with hostility by conservatives in the U.S. Congress, so reaction to the resolution was bound to split along political fault lines from the start. However, the Green New Deal's very broad ambition has made it a favorite target of Republicans, who have tried to cast it as an illustration of how their liberal opponents are both dangerous and laughably unrealistic.Larry Kudlow, Trump's chief economic advisor, stated that it would "literally destroy the economy." Republican Senator John Barrasso suggested that the Green New Deal would result in the banning of cows, who burp methane, a greenhouse gas, and therefore the end of ice cream. The House Republican Conference and U.S. Chamber of Commerce dismissed it as a "Trojan horse for socialism."The European Green Deal is also more concrete. The EU Commission unveiled on Wednesday a roadmap of specific legislative proposals divided by sector, measurable policy goals with due to be agreed interim benchmarks, and fixed dates. On the other hand, there are few numbers and details to be seen in any version of the Green New Deal advocated by U.S. Democratic hopefuls, other than public spending pledges.Europe's step-by-step and sector by sector approach has already delivered real wins. The world's biggest multilateral financial institution, owned by EU governments, has announced it will end funding for fossil fuel energy projects and its intention to mobilize a trillion euros ($1.1 trillion) over the next decade to finance the bloc's transition to a low-carbon economy.To minimize risks for a pushback from skeptics, the EU's Green Deal is also more flexible. While its U.S. counterpart aims 100% electricity production from renewables by 2030 — a target criticized by many as unrealistic — the EU lets its member states choose their energy mix, including zero-emitting nuclear power.The benefits of flexibility may end up outweighing any costs in terms of ambition and speed. Through a series of incentives and deterrents, such as the world's biggest cap-and-trade program for polluters and progressively stricter limits on emissions from transport, the EU is effectively pushing its industries and companies toward ever cleaner technologies.Another way the European climate push differs is by successfully engaging the private sector. The continent's biggest business leaders threw their weight behind a plan to make the bloc climate neutral, on the condition that appropriate safeguards "to avoid carbon and investment leakage and guarantee a global level playing field for competition," are adopted. The EU is already considering such measures, including adjusting restrictions on state aid for companies, changing public procurement rules and penalizing imports from countries with looser emissions controls.In a sign of such private-sector support, earlier this month Spain's Repsol SA became the first oil major to align itself with the Paris climate goals, saying it will eliminate all greenhouse gas emissions from its own operations and its customers by 2050. Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal — the world's largest steel-maker — announced on Friday that it set a target to reduce emissions by 30% by 2030 to contribute to the Green Deal.To be sure, the European Green Deal is facing its own headwinds. Leading airlines attacked plans to impose a region-wide kerosene tax as part of a sweeping new environmental strategy, saying investment in sustainable fuels and electric planes would be more effective in reducing carbon emissions. More is still to come. While the European Commission will draft all the rules to bring the bloc's Green Deal to life, they will require the support of EU governments and the bloc's assembly. Expect every word and comma to be analyzed by national governments, parliamentarians, companies, industry lobbies and environmental activists. But rallying more than two dozen governments behind a shared goal to eliminate emissions and initiating the process of legislative proposals is something to start with. That's the way the EU does things — one small, tedious, win at a time. \--With assistance from Jonathan Stearns and Ewa Krukowska.To contact the authors of this story: Nikos Chrysoloras in Brussels at nchrysoloras@bloomberg.netLeslie Kaufman in New York at lkaufman27@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Aaron Rutkoff at arutkoff@bloomberg.net, Ben SillsFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Supreme Court to decide Native American land dispute in Oklahoma Posted: 13 Dec 2019 03:43 PM PST  Ten states, from Maine to Texas to Montana, have warned that the boundaries of Native American lands have jurisdictional consequences there as well.
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| A Mobster's Murder, and the Jockeying to Move Up the Hierarchy Posted: 14 Dec 2019 07:20 AM PST  NEW YORK -- On a quiet night in March, a mob leader was executed in New York City for the first time since 1985. The body of Francesco Cali, a reputed boss of the Gambino crime family, lay crumpled outside his Staten Island home, pierced by at least six bullets.Hours later, two soldiers in the Gambino family talked on the phone. One of them, Vincent Fiore, said he had just read a "short article" about the "news," according to prosecutors.No tears were shed for their fallen leader. The murder was "a good thing," Fiore, 57, said on the call. The vacuum at the top meant that Andrew Campos, described by authorities as the Gambino captain who ran Fiore's crew, was poised to gain more power.Cali's death was just the beginning of surprises to come for the Gambino family.Last week, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn charged Fiore and 11 others in a sprawling racketeering scheme linked to the Gambinos, once the country's preeminent organized crime dynasty. The charges stemmed from a yearslong investigation involving wiretapped calls, physical surveillance and even listening devices installed inside an office where mob associates worked.As part of the case, the government released a court filing that offered an extremely rare glimpse at the reactions inside a Mafia family to the murder of their boss -- a curious mix of mourning and jockeying for power. The case showed that life in the mob can be just as petty as life in a corporate cubicle."Mob guys are the biggest gossips in the world," said James J. Hunt, the former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration's office in New York. "You think they're tough guys, but they're all looking out for themselves. The only way they get promoted is by a guy dying or going to jail."While Fiore initially plotted how Cali's death would help him and his faction, he adopted a different tone when calling his own ex-wife a few days later, prosecutors said. He warmly referred to Cali as "Frankie" and seemed to mourn the boss as a man who "was loved." He speculated about the killer's motive, saying he had watched the surveillance tape from Cali's home that captured the murder.Vincent Fiore appeared ambitious, court documents showed, eager to reveal his connections to other gangs and organized crime families. About two weeks after Cali's death, Fiore bragged in another wiretapped conversation about how he could take revenge on students who had hit his son at school, a government filing said.Fiore talked first about sending his daughter to beat the students up.But he also had other options, he said on the call. His ex-wife's father was a Latin King, her nephews were Bloods, and her cousin was a member of the Ching-a-Lings, the South Bronx motorcycle gang.Vincent Fiore and the other defendants have each pleaded not guilty to the charges. A lawyer for Fiore did not respond to a request for comment.Despite decades of declining influence in New York City, the Gambino family, led by the notoriously flashy John J. Gotti in the 1980s, is still raking in millions of dollars, according to the government. Prosecutors said they had evidence that the family had maintained its long-standing coziness with the construction industry, infiltrating high-end Manhattan properties.The indictments accused Gambino associates of bribing a real estate executive to skim hundreds of thousands of dollars from New York City construction projects, including the XI, a luxury building with two twisting towers being built along the High Line park in West Chelsea.At the height of their power in the 1980s and early 1990s, the Gambinos and other organized crime families had a stranglehold on New York City construction, through their control of construction unions and the concrete business.Some of the defendants charged last week operated a carpentry company called CWC Contracting Corp., which prosecutors said paid kickbacks to real estate developers in exchange for contracts.Despite the scramble after Cali's death in March, the Gambino crime family continued to thrive through fraud, bribery and extortion, investigators said.The wiretaps quoted in court papers hinted at the crime family's capacity for violence. One of the defendants was recorded in April claiming that he had a fight in a diner and "stabbed the kid, I don't know, 1,000 times with a fork." Inside another defendant's home and vehicle, agents found brass knuckles and a large knife that appeared to have blood on it.Among the notable names in last week's takedown were two longtime Gambino members, Andrew Campos and Richard Martino, who were once considered by Gotti to be rising stars in the Mafia, according to former officials."John was enamored by these guys," said Philip Scala, a retired FBI agent who supervised the squad investigating the Gambino family. "He couldn't believe what they were doing. These kids were making millions of dollars as entrepreneurs."In particular, Martino has long been viewed by mob investigators as somewhat of a white-collar crime genius, former officials said. Prosecutors have previously accused him of orchestrating the largest consumer fraud of the 1990s, which netted close to $1 billion. One part of that scheme involved a fake pornography website that lured users with the promise of a free tour and then charged their credit cards without their knowledge.Campos, 50, and Martino, 60, each pleaded guilty in 2005 to their role in the fraud and served time in federal prison.But as soon as they were released, the government said, they returned to the family business.Martino is now accused of hiding his wealth from the government to avoid paying the full $9.1 million forfeiture from his earlier case.After Martino's release from prison in 2014, he still controlled companies that conducted millions of dollars in transactions, using intermediaries to obscure his involvement, the government alleged. This included investments in pizzerias on Long Island and in Westchester County, according to a person familiar with the matter.Martino's lawyer, Maurice Sercarz, said his client fully paid the required forfeiture before reporting to prison. He added, "The suggestion that Mr. Martino concealed his ownership of businesses and bank accounts to avoid this obligation ignores or misrepresents his financial circumstances."Campos, meanwhile, climbed the ranks to become a captain inside the Gambino family, according to prosecutors.Henry E. Mazurek, a lawyer for Campos, said the government's photos and surveillance footage of his client were not evidence of a crime. "The government presents a trumped-up case that substitutes old lore for actual evidence," Mazurek said.After searching Campos' home in Scarsdale, New York, a wealthy suburb north of New York City, investigators found traces of a storied mob legacy. In his closet there were photos taken during his visits with Martino to see Frank Locascio, Gotti's former consigliere, or counselor, in prison.Locascio is serving a life sentence. He was convicted in 1992 alongside Gotti by the same U.S. attorney's office that brought last week's indictment. Gotti, who died in prison in 2002, was found guilty of, among other things, ordering the killing of Paul Castellano in 1985, the last time a Gambino boss was gunned down in the street.On March 14, the day after Cali's death, Campos drove into Manhattan around 5:50 p.m. to discuss the circumstances of the murder with Gambino family members, seemingly unaware that law enforcement was tracking his every move.He parked near a pizzeria on the Upper East Side, according to a person familiar with the matter. As the night progressed, he met with Gambino family captains on the Upper East Side and near a church in Brooklyn. They stood in the street, chatting openly, but law enforcement officials could not hear the conversations.Several days later, Campos and Fiore drove to Staten Island for a secret meeting. A group of about eight high-level Gambino lieutenants gathered to discuss Cali's murder, a court filing said. In a wiretapped call the next day, Fiore complained that he had stayed out past midnight.Fiore said on the call that a woman had been at Cali's home the night of his death, pointing to her as a possible connection. Court papers do not reveal the woman's identity.Nobody within the mob family seemed to suspect the person who was charged: a 25-year-old who appeared to have no clear motive.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company
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| Blowback from U.K. election burns Warren, Sanders Posted: 13 Dec 2019 06:10 PM PST  Centrists warn Corbyn defeat highlights the dangers of a progressive nominee.
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| Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warns Iran of 'decisive response' if harm in Iraq Posted: 13 Dec 2019 03:52 PM PST  Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday warned Iran of a "decisive" response if U.S. interests are harmed in Iraq, after a series of rocket attacks on bases.
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| Pirates release three oil tanker crew kidnapped off Togo Posted: 13 Dec 2019 05:44 AM PST  A fourth hostage, a Filipino, died from illness during captivity, European Products Carriers Ltd added.
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| Disagreement drags UN climate talks into a 2nd extra day Posted: 14 Dec 2019 01:25 AM PST  U.N. climate talks in Madrid dragged into a second day of extra time Sunday, with officials from almost 200 countries unable to break the deadlock on key points of difference. The chair of the meeting, Chilean Environment Minister Carolina Schmidt, told weary delegates to examine new agreements drafted by her team and meet at 1:30 a.m. (0030 GMT) for further talks. Developing countries and environmental groups warned that the drafts circulated overnight Saturday risked undoing or stalling on commitments made in the 2015 Paris climate accord.
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| Italy Government Braces for Upheaval After Five Star Defections Posted: 13 Dec 2019 01:21 AM PST ![Italy Government Braces for Upheaval After Five Star Defections]( "Italy Government Braces for Upheaval After Five Star Defections") (Bloomberg) -- Italy's ruling coalition, rocked by the defection of three senators, prepared for a period of heightened instability as some lawmakers warned that more exits could be coming.A day after Senators Francesco Urraro, Stefano Lucidi and Ugo Grassi left the Five Star Movement to join the opposition League party, Lucidi warned that another "20-30 people will leave" Five Star's delegation in the two houses of parliament, possibly to form a new political group, in comments reported by Corriere della Sera.The defections leave Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte's Five Star-Democratic Party coalition with a razor-thin majority in the upper house, although senators from other parties as well as independent lawmakers could continue to support the government.Conte doesn't expect any further lawmakers to leave the coalition, the premier said in Brussels Friday. "Everyone who wants to work with us can do so until 2023," he added.With the state budget for 2020 due for parliamentary approval by the end of the year, Conte's challenge will be to hammer out a government agenda in January, in a bid to lock in the coalition's divided partners on a raft of future policy measures.While the defections complicate the parliamentary math for Conte, his problems don't end there. Lawmakers from both Five Star and the Democrats suspect that League leader Matteo Salvini has struck a deal with ex-premier Matteo Renzi, who leads a small party within the coalition, to bring the government down and force early elections, daily la Repubblica reported Friday.To contact the reporters on this story: Jerrold Colten in Milan at jcolten@bloomberg.net;John Follain in Rome at jfollain2@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Chad Thomas at cthomas16@bloomberg.net, Marco Bertacche, Karl MaierFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| EF1 tornado flips over camper, leaves a path of damage, downed power lines Posted: 14 Dec 2019 11:12 AM PST  Thunderstorms erupted in parts of the southeastern United States, which spawned an EF-1 tornado Saturday morning in Flagler County, Florida.Numerous trees are down and several structures have been damaged, according to WOGX. There are also reports that a tree has gone through a home."A tornado touched down on the south side of Flagler Beach this morning at approximately 5:45 a.m. There have been no reported injuries and a camper was overturned in Gamble Rogers State Park. SRA1A is open and there was no damage to the Pier or any Dune Walkover," The Flagler Beach Police Department said in a Facebook post. The tornado overturned a camper in Flagler County, Florida. Image via The Flagler Beach Police Department Officials said in a press release that 'significant damage' was found from south of Bunnell to the Gamble Rogers area of Flagler Beach."A cold front pushing south and east across northern Florida early this morning helped initiate a squall line during the pre-dawn hours, and one of these thunderstorms was able to take advantage of strong winds in the upper atmosphere to produce a tornado," AccuWeather Meteorologist Randy Adkins said.> We found EF1 damage consistent with 110 mph winds from the tornado this morning in Flagler County. Read more in our Public Information Statement below. https://t.co/nXgmFSfJK2> > -- NWS Jacksonville (@NWSJacksonville) December 14, 2019The Flagler Beach Police Department posted photos of tornado damage on social media, including one that appeared to show a camper overturned. A camper was blown on its side during the tornado. Image via The Flagler Beach Police Department Tornado damage of a road sign that was knocked over in the tornado. Image via The Flagler Beach Police Department
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| 'Wild week' as Washington works amid impeachment Posted: 13 Dec 2019 09:50 PM PST  President Donald Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi don't see eye-to-eye on much these days, but in the throes of impeachment, they're in lockstep on the desire to close out the year by checking off items on their to-do lists. As the uncertain politics of the effort to remove Trump from office collide with critical year-end legislative deadlines, Washington, for the first time in recent memory, appears intent on demonstrating its capacity to multitask. Lawmakers and White House officials are eager to project the image that they've been focused on anything but the polarizing proceedings that are increasingly consuming their days and nights.
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| No, China Is Not as Strong as It Seems Posted: 13 Dec 2019 12:06 PM PST  Despite commentary to the contrary, Beijing's success isn't perfect or unstoppable.
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| Joe Biden warns Democrats that UK election shows what happens when candidates 'move so far to the left' Posted: 14 Dec 2019 08:26 AM PST  Joe Biden and other centrist US Democrats have warned against their party moving too far to the left ahead of 2020, following the historic defeat of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in the UK general election.The former vice president suggested Mr Corbyn's liberal platform and having taken the Labour party "so far to the left" ultimately contributed to Boris Johnson's landslide victory this week.
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| U.S. sanctions on Iran violate international law: Mahathir Posted: 13 Dec 2019 10:52 PM PST  The American sanctions imposed on Iran violate the United Nations charter and international law, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad told a conference in Qatar on Saturday. ''Malaysia does not support the reimposition of the unilateral sanctions by the US against Iran,'' he told the Doha Forum, also attended by Qatar Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani.
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| An Oakland City Council member wants to use cruise ships to house homeless people — but her plan faces a big obstacle Posted: 13 Dec 2019 07:16 AM PST  Oakland's homeless population grew 47% between 2017 and 2019. The city's per-capita homelessness rate is now higher than San Francisco's.
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| Naive Brazil to Rethink Relations With U.S., Bolsonaro Ally Says Posted: 13 Dec 2019 02:00 AM PST ![Naive Brazil to Rethink Relations With U.S., Bolsonaro Ally Says]( "Naive Brazil to Rethink Relations With U.S., Bolsonaro Ally Says") (Bloomberg) -- Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was "naive" to align fully with the U.S. and should change course, the head of the powerful agribusiness caucus in Brazilian Congress said.Alceu Moreira, a Bolsonaro ally and the president of the Parliamentary Agriculture Front, said two developments have prompted a review of Brazilian foreign policy: The continuation of a U.S. ban on Brazilian raw meat; as well as President Donald Trump's decision to prioritize Argentina's bid to join the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development after publicly endorsing Brazil's membership."That's when we stopped being naive," Moreira said in an interview at Bloomberg's office in Brasilia. "Being naive is when I think that, just because I like you, you should like me back in the same way. Now I see that I like you but you don't actually like me that much."Read more: All-In Trump Bet Backfires for Bolsonaro Amid Tariff ThreatsSince taking office in January, Bolsonaro has abandoned Brazil's longstanding diplomatic tradition of multilateralism in favor of full-throated alignment with the U.S. and Israel. To date, however, the policy has yielded few gains for Brazil, prompting unease among some prominent supporters of the administration.New ApproachAs a top lobbyist for Brazil's thriving agribusiness sector, Moreira said he is assisting the government in setting a new approach, without providing details.In October, the U.S. told Brazil that it would maintain a ban on fresh-beef imports from Latin America's largest economy. The U.S. suspended imports in 2017 after finding meat containing blood clots and lymph nodes. Brazil said the findings were abscesses stemming from a reaction to components of a vaccine against foot-and-mouth disease. After the U.S. measure, Brazil reduced the vaccine dose and changed the feed stock in an effort to see the ban overturned.Last month, an official from the agriculture ministry said Brazil was "100% confident" that the U.S. would remove the ban. But Trump's decision last month to reinstate tariffs on Brazilian steel and aluminum, which took the Bolsonaro's government by surprise, poured cold water on Brazilian expectations that the U.S. would soon resume fresh beef imports.According to Moreira, Trump's tough stance is a response to pressure from American farmers, who compete with Brazilian exporters in global markets."The Americans are losing market share on a daily basis and have no room to really increase production," the lawmaker said. Meanwhile, he added, Brazil has the technology and land to dramatically increase productivity and attend to the world's growing demand for food, especially from China."It used to take three years and two months to produce 240 kilos of beef," he said. "Now it takes only one year and eight months."European RelationsBrazil's agricultural potential also affects its relation with Europe, Moreira said.Countries like France and Ireland are blocking the implementation of a trade deal between the European Union and the South American trade bloc Mercosur by blaming Bolsonaro for Amazon fires as cover for their fear of competitors, according to him.Read more: Tears of Joy as Mercosur Leaders Celebrate Historic EU DealBut on the other hand, European countries need to put the deal into practice to guarantee access to abundant, affordable agricultural products. "It's a matter of food security," Moreira said.He added Brazilian farmers will likely benefit from a recent government-backed bill that seeks to ease restrictions on foreign land ownership to stimulate agriculture. The bill, currently in Brazil's Senate, would lift current restrictions, but set limits on the size of property foreigners could buy. It would also block land purchases in border areas.Senator Iraja Abreu, author of the project, says that approval of the bill would attract 50 billion reais ($12.2 billion) per year in investments for agribusiness and encourage job creation.To contact the reporters on this story: Samy Adghirni in Brasilia Newsroom at sadghirni@bloomberg.net;Simone Iglesias in Brasília at spiglesias@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Walter Brandimarte at wbrandimarte@bloomberg.net, Bruce DouglasFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| A woman who works with sexual misconduct survivors says Harvey Weinstein's tentative $25 million settlement isn't surprising because victims are used to settling for 'less than what we deserve' Posted: 14 Dec 2019 08:42 AM PST  Laura Palumbo, communications director for the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, spoke to Insider about Weinstein's tentative $25 million settlement.
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| Judge: 234K Wisconsin voter registrations should be tossed; victory for conservatives Posted: 13 Dec 2019 04:36 PM PST  A Wisconsin judge on Friday ordered that the registration of up to 234,000 voters be tossed out because they may have moved, a victory for conservatives that could make it more difficult for people to vote next year in the key swing state.
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| Challenge to immigration law is tossed on eve of enactment Posted: 13 Dec 2019 12:47 PM PST  A law that will allow New Yorkers to get driver's licenses without having to prove they are in the country legally weathered a second court challenge Friday, days before its enactment. A federal district judge ruled against Rensselaer County Clerk Frank Merola, saying he lacked the legal capacity to bring the lawsuit. Merola, a Republican, had argued that the state law conflicts with federal immigration law.
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| Salvadoran man murdered in Mexico waiting U.S. asylum hearing Posted: 12 Dec 2019 07:49 PM PST ![Salvadoran man murdered in Mexico waiting U.S. asylum hearing]( "Salvadoran man murdered in Mexico waiting U.S. asylum hearing") A Salvadoran man seeking asylum in the United States was kidnapped and murdered in the Mexican border city of Tijuana where he was sent to wait for his asylum court hearing under a migrant protection program instated by President Donald Trump. Critics of the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) have argued that the migrants affected by the initiative, mostly from the impoverished and violence-plagued countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, are at risk in Mexico. The 35-year-old Salvadoran man, father of two, had waited for four months in Tijuana where he had found a job at a pizzeria, said his widow.
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| America's Lethal F-15, Meet Russia's Su-35, PAK-FA and China's J-20 Posted: 13 Dec 2019 08:30 PM PST  Will the battle-tested Cold War veteran fighter become obsolete?
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