| ICE ups ante in standoff with NYC: 'This is not a request' Posted: 18 Jan 2020 04:23 PM PST  Federal authorities are turning to a new tactic in the escalating conflict over New York City's so-called sanctuary policies, issuing four "immigration subpoenas" to the city for information about inmates wanted for deportation. "This is not a request — it's a demand," Henry Lucero, a senior U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official, told The Associated Press. Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration said Saturday the city would review the subpoenas.
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| Why Russia Doesn't Like (Or Have) Many Aircraft Carriers Posted: 18 Jan 2020 04:00 AM PST  Not enough money?
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| Off-duty Hong Kong police officer arrested for supporting protests Posted: 17 Jan 2020 10:41 AM PST  An off-duty Hong Kong police officer was arrested along with seven other people on Friday as they tried to put pro-democracy posters on a footbridge, police said. It's the first known case of a police officer being apprehended for supporting the massive demonstrations that have led to more than 6,500 arrests in the past seven months. The officer, 31, and the seven other people aged 14 to 61, were arrested at 3:00 am on Friday in Tuen Mun, a district in northwest Hong Kong.
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| Spain's Balearic Islands crack down on alcohol-fuelled holidays Posted: 17 Jan 2020 09:07 AM PST  Spain's Balearic Islands passed a bill Friday aimed at clamping down on alcohol-fuelled holidays in the Mediterranean archipelago which bans happy hours when drinks are offered a discount and open bars. "This is the first law adopted in Europe which restricts the sale and promotion of alcohol in certain touristic areas," the regional government of the Balearic Islands which have long been a magnet for young German and British tourists, who often drink heavily and enjoy rowdy late-night clubbing. The restrictions will apply to three areas with a reputation for excess: San Antoni on the island of Ibiza and El Arenal and Magaluf -- which has been nicknamed "Shagaluf" because of its reputation for drunken casual sex -- on Mallorca, the largest of the Balearic's four islands.
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| U.S. sanctions Iranian commander over Mahshahr killings Posted: 18 Jan 2020 11:59 AM PST  The U.S. State Department said on Saturday it had imposed sanctions on a general of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who commanded units blamed for a massacre of protesters in November. The U.S. State Department has said previously it had received videos of the Revolutionary Guards opening fire without warning on protesters in Mahshahr county in southwest Iran.
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| Meghan and Harry will need taxpayer funded security 'for years to come' Posted: 18 Jan 2020 11:30 AM PST  The Duke and Duchess of Sussex will need to be protected at taxpayers' expense against the threat of terror attacks and kidnap for years to come, security experts have said. Police and former security chiefs fear the couple will continue to be at risk from organised terror groups, political fanatics and lone obsessives long after they separate from the Royal family. Talks are understood to be taking place at senior levels over the best way of providing protection for Meghan and Prince Harry as they divide their time between Britain and their new life in North America. But there are fears among some experts that palace and government officials may be underestimating both the potential threat and what is required to protect the couple against it. Dai Davies, who was Head of Royal Protection from 1994 to 1998 and former Chief Superintendent (Divisional Commander) Metropolitan Police Service, said: "We have to learn the lessons of history and act on them. Anyone in charge of security has to think the impossible and then think it again and I fear there is not enough of that going on by the experts currently in charge. "One thing you can be sure of is that terrorists and others who pose a threat are thinking about it all the time." Mr Davies said the three main threats come from jihadist terrorists targeting Prince Harry, who also served in Afghanistan; lone 'fixateds' and royal obsessives; and right wing extremists with an hatred of Meghan as a woman of colour marrying into the royal family. Minister and senior police officers are thought to be determined to avoid the mistakes made over Diana, Princess of Wales, who in 1993 turned down publicly funded police protection except when she was with her sons William and Harry or staying at Kensington Palace. That left her relying on private security at other times, leading to her being in the hands of the Ritz Hotel's head of security Herni Paul on the night she died when their car crashed in the Pont de l'Alma underpass as he tried to evade photographers following Diana. Her bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones was badly injured in the crash, on 31 August 1997. Ken Wharfe, who served as Diana's royal protection officer for six years, resigned from the position in 1993, has since said that if he and his team were working with the Princess in 1997, they may have been able to prevent her death. Mr Davies, who said there have been far more plots against the Royals than publicly acknowledged, added: "We don't want the situation where Harry and Meghan are being followed, without protection, by paparazzi or people with a fixation and we need to be sure that protection is of the highest level." But he added that the high cost of providing security may cause resentment among British taxpayers if the Sussexes begin to earn large sums of private income outside of any Royal duties they continue to carry out. "The question is whether the British public will wear the cost of security, even if it is miniscule in real terms, over a long period," said Mr Davies, who was in charge of protection for the Queen and the Royal family throughout the UK and worldwide. Lord West of Spithead, who was a security minister from 2007 to 2010, said that Harry and Meghan would be expected to make a contribution towards the cost of their security should they start earning a large amount of private income. But he said there was no question that high levels of police protection would have to be provided by the British government into the future. "We have got an obligation to provide security for one of the Queen's sons and his family and that's a long term obligation," he said. "It would be nice to work out an arrangement with the Canadians, but we can't not provide that protection ourselves, regardless. Mike Penning MP, who was police minister from 2014 to 2016 and went on to serve as justice and Armed Forces minister, said: "It doesn't matter who they are, if they are at risk we have a duty to protect them, it's as simple as that. That requirement should be based on any risk assessment made by our intelligence services and by the Canadians."
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| Parnas: 'I'm scared,' speaking out because of William Barr Posted: 17 Jan 2020 03:21 AM PST  Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas said he was giving media interviews about his role in President Trump's attempts to convince Ukrainian officials to announce an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden because he wanted to protect himself from Attorney General William Barr.
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| Alan Dershowitz and Ken Starr join Trump impeachment defense team Posted: 17 Jan 2020 08:24 AM PST  The legal team representing President Trump in his Senate impeachment trial will include some familiar faces, especially for regular viewers of Fox News.
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| SUV on grounds of Beijing's Forbidden City sparks outrage Posted: 17 Jan 2020 11:43 PM PST  A Chinese woman sparked social media outrage in her country by posting photos of herself and a friend with a Mercedes-Benz on the grounds of Beijing's Forbidden City. The reaction prompted an apology from the management of China's 600-year-old former imperial palace. Vehicles have been banned since 2013 to protect the cultural dignity of the vast site and its hundreds of historic buildings, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
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| Revealed: The Secrets Behind Russia's Crazy 100-Megaton Nuclear Torpedo Posted: 17 Jan 2020 09:00 PM PST  From fiction to reality.
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| Kidnapped US teen rescued by police thanks to Snapchat Posted: 17 Jan 2020 12:46 PM PST  A California teen who had been drugged and kidnapped was rescued by police this week after using Snapchat to alert her friends to her abduction. One man was arrested as he left the motel in San Jose, in northern California, where the girl was being held and two other suspects were taken into custody on Wednesday, police said in a statement.
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| TSA issues apology to Native American woman who had braids pulled by agent Posted: 18 Jan 2020 11:11 AM PST  Tara Houska 'humiliated' by TSA agent who 'snapped my braids like reins' during screening at Minneapolis-St Paul airportThe federal Transportation Security Administration has apologized to a Native American woman who said an agent at Minneapolis-St Paul international airport "pulled her braids" and said "giddy up!" when she took a flight from there this week."The agent said she needed to pat down my braids," tweeted Tara Houska, an indigenous rights advocate and attorney. "She pulled them behind my shoulders, laughed and said 'giddyup!' as she snapped my braids like reins. My hair is part of my spirit. I am a Native woman. I am angry, humiliated. Your 'fun' hurt."Houska, who is Ojibwe, added: "When I informed the middle-aged blonde woman who had casually used her authority to dehumanize and disrespect me, she said, 'Well it was just in fun, I'm sorry. Your hair is lovely.'"That is NOT an apology and it is NOT OK."According to the Washington Post, women of color have long experienced problems at TSA checkpoints, because natural, braided or twisted hair prompt "flags" on security devices, spurring "more invasive screenings".Bring Me The News, a Minnesota website, appeared to have been first to report Houska's experience.In a statement to the Guardian, the TSA said it had been "made aware of allegations made by a traveler about her screening experience at Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport [on] Monday morning."TSA officials investigated the incident and on Tuesday afternoon, TSA's federal security director for Minnesota, Cliff Van Leuven, spoke with the traveler. He apologized for actions and a comment that were insensitive and made by a TSA officer to the traveler during the screening experience."Van Leuven also wrote to airport staff."In the news last night and today," he said, "you've likely seen – or heard - of a TSA officer at MSP who was insensitive in screening the long braided hair of a Native American passenger Monday morning. Did it actually happen? Yes. Exactly as described? Yes."This morning, I reached out to the passenger via email. She called me back early this afternoon. I apologized for how she was treated during the screening of her braids – and we had a very pleasant conversation."She reiterated that she doesn't want the officer to get in trouble, but she is hoping we'll take the chance to continue to educate our staff about the many Native American Tribes/Bands in our state and region to better understand their culture."The airport apologized on Twitter.Houska could not immediately be reached for comment.
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| Rand Paul Slams the Bidens over Alleged Corruption: ‘It Smells to High Heaven’ Posted: 17 Jan 2020 12:39 PM PST  Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) said Thursday that Joe and Hunter Biden's activity in Ukraine "goes to the heart of the matter" surrounding the upcoming impeachment trial in the Senate, and argued that GOP senators must be willing to call President Trump's preferred witnesses, or "all hell is going to break lose."Appearing on Hannity, Paul stated that he believed the alleged corruption perpetrated by Hunter Biden in his role on the board of a Ukrainian gas company Burisma — while his father was overseeing official U.S. relations with Kyiv —needed to be explored."If the president is being accused of withholding foreign aid, and his argument is, 'Well, we were studying corruption, and we wanted to know about corruption in Ukraine,' and I think the Bidens are as corrupt as the day is long," Paul argued. "No young man who is the son of a politician gets $50,000 a month who has no experience, working for a Ukrainian oligarch. You know, for goodness sakes — it smells to high heaven. It smells like corruption."Paul pointed to bias in the media as the reason why the issue has not been more thoroughly explored. In its Friday release of an interview with Joe Biden, The New York Times editorial board opened by saying "There is no indication that you or your son did anything wrong or were part of any corruption in Ukraine.""Every day on the mainstream media, they say, 'Oh, there's no there there. This has been investigated. There is no corruption.' I think the American people don't buy it," Paul told Hannity. "Here's the thing: Fair is fair. If they're going to put the president through this, they're going to have to have witnesses on both sides."The Kentucky Republican, who earlier this week threatened fellow Republican senators with consequences if they did not bring forward Trump-favored witnesses, reiterated his point Thursday night, saying his "fear" is that "if people play games with the witnesses . . . I think all hell is going to break lose.""If it turns out and the Republican base sees that this only looks like Democrat witnesses and no presidential witnesses, I guarantee that the Republican base will punish those people who set up that kind of scenario," Paul stated.
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| Ten charred bodies found in vehicle in violence-plagued Mexican state Posted: 18 Jan 2020 10:08 AM PST ![Ten charred bodies found in vehicle in violence-plagued Mexican state]( "Ten charred bodies found in vehicle in violence-plagued Mexican state") Mexican prosecutors are investigating the discovery of a burned-out vehicle containing the charred bodies of 10 people in the southwestern state of Guerrero, authorities said late on Friday. Police made the grisly discovery on a country road in the municipality of Chilapa de Alvarez after locals saw the vehicle on fire and alerted authorities, state security spokesman Roberto Alvarez said in a statement published on Facebook.
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| Was the Taal Volcano eruption large enough to influence the climate? Posted: 17 Jan 2020 11:56 AM PST  The Taal volcano roared to life last weekend for the first time in more than 40 years, sending a massive plume of volcanic ash towering over the Philippines.This was the first time that Taal has erupted since 1977, an event that marked the end of an active period for the volcano that had begun in 1965. Taal did show signs of unrest periodically throughout the 1990s, but it did not erupt during that period, according to the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology.The eruption, which began on Jan. 12, 2020, has forced more than 125,000 people to evacuate the Philippine province of Batangas, where the volcano is located. A state of calamity has been declared for the zone surrounding the volcano, according to The Associated Press. People watch as Taal Volcano erupts Sunday Jan. 12, 2020, in Tagaytay, Cavite province, outside Manila, Philippines (AP Photo/Aaron Favila) During the height of the eruption, a large plume of searing hot volcanic ash blossomed approximately 50,000 feet, about 9.5 miles, into the atmosphere, with some materials making it into the stratosphere, according to observations from NASA. The eruption was accompanied by incredible displays of volcanic lightning, which made for breathtaking video footage, fountains of scalding lava and more than 400 earthquakes.The aftermath of the eruption had the country's president, Rodrigo Duterte, using no uncertain terms to describe the impact on the surrounding communities."It is now a no man's land," Duterte declared, according to Al Jazeera. "It's like heaven and earth fell on it."The fallout downwind of the eruption has blanketed areas dozens of miles away from the volcano itself, including Metro Manila, located about 101 km (63 miles) north of the eruption."Ash fallout to the ground can pose significant disruption and damage to buildings, transportation, water and wastewater, power supply, communications equipment, agriculture, and primary production leading to potentially substantial societal impacts and costs, even at thicknesses of only a few millimeters or inches," the USGS explains on its volcano hazards website. "Additionally, fine-grained ash, when ingested can cause health impacts to humans and animals. "The deteriorating air quality due to the ash has caused at least six people to be sent to a hospital in Tagaytay City in Cavite due to respiratory ailments, The Associated Press reported. One death has also been reported after a vehicle crashed on a slippery, ash-covered road.The abundance of ash in the atmosphere surrounding Taal snarled air traffic, causing more than 600 flights across the region to be canceled. If the fine volcanic ash enters the engines of an airplane, it can have disastrous results, endangering the lives of all those aboard the flight."Volcanoes do affect the weather, and some major ones affect the climate if you define climate as anything beyond a year or two," Dr. Joel Myers, Founder, President and Chairman of AccuWeather, said.In extremely powerful volcanic eruptions, the ash and aerosols released in the eruption can pass through the troposphere, the lowest layer of Earth's atmosphere, and penetrate into the stratosphere, the second layer of the atmosphere. If enough of the ash and other pollutants released in the eruption make it into the stratosphere, they can influence the climate around the globe. The boundary between the troposphere and stratosphere is about 6 miles (10 km) above the ground, a little higher than where commercial jets typically fly."The most significant climate impacts from volcanic injections into the stratosphere come from the conversion of sulfur dioxide to sulfuric acid, which condenses rapidly in the stratosphere to form fine sulfate aerosols," the USGS explained.These aerosols high in the atmosphere reflect light from the sun back into space, resulting in a cooling effect in Earth's lower atmosphere."There is no question that very large volcanic eruptions can inject significant amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere," scientists at the USGS say, but they also note that "the carbon dioxide released in contemporary volcanic eruptions has never caused detectable global warming of the atmosphere."Significant volcanic eruptions in the tropics can also have more of an influence on the global climate than those closer to the poles."Because of atmospheric circulation patterns, eruptions in the tropics can have an effect on the climate in both hemispheres while eruptions at mid or high latitudes only have an impact the hemisphere they are within," the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research explained. The time-series animation above shows the growth and spread of the volcanic plume from January 12-13, as observed by Japan's Himawari-8 satellite. (NOAA) The most powerful volcanic eruption in recorded history directly influenced temperatures around the globe for years and was responsible for what became known as the 'Year Without a Summer.'"One of the most dramatic examples" of this phenomenon over the last few 100 years was the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815, Myers said. That eruption "caused a few years of cold weather, some of it extraordinary," he explained. "This includes 1816, the Year Without a Summer, when frost occurred in New England in every month of the year - affecting crops and on one July day when snow flurries were reported in Long Island Sound."AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Dan Kottlowski said that scientists are also unsure that the Tambora eruption was the sole factor behind the Year Without a Summer. Kottlowski, who is also AccuWeather's chief hurricane expert, said, "There are potentially other factors that couldn't be measured at the time or weren't understood at the time that could've been contributing factors to the unusual weather in the Northeast that year. "A more recent example of a volcano having a direct correlation with a decrease in the global temperature took place in the early 1990s following the cataclysmic eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines.The eruption of Mount Pinatubo was more powerful than that of Mount St. Helens, sending an enormous plume of volcanic ash and aerosols as high as 28 miles (40 km)."Nearly 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide were injected into the stratosphere in Pinatubo's 1991 eruptions, and dispersal of this gas cloud around the world caused global temperatures to drop temporarily (1991 through 1993) by about 1°F (0.5°C)," according to the USGS.Pinatubo's eruption was orders of magnitude larger than that of Taal's eruption earlier this year, so any impacts on the global climate through the balance of 2020 and into 2021 from the eruption are likely to be minimal or negligible.However, if the early January eruption of Taal is followed up by a series of larger eruptions that disperse large quantities of aerosols into the stratosphere, then the probability of the volcano influencing the global climate would increase.Taal has spewed smaller ash and steam explosions throughout the week, and as of Friday, it was still under alert for a hazardous eruption, The Associated Press reported. Officials have warned that "life-threatening" subsequent eruptions remain a real possibility.
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| Unhappy and Preoccupied, the President Tries in Vain to Change the Subject Posted: 17 Jan 2020 05:18 AM PST  WASHINGTON -- Shortly after 2 p.m. Thursday, Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa administered the oath to Chief Justice John Roberts in the well of the Senate, asking him to swear "that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of Donald John Trump, president of the United States," he would deliver impartial justice.At the White House at that precise moment, President Donald Trump was scheduled to host an event promoting the administration's attempt to empower religious students to exercise their rights to pray at school. But for the next hour as, one by one, 99 senators signed the oath book, the president kept the students waiting. Finally, he allowed reporters into the Oval Office, where he sat behind the Resolute Desk and took their questions.The day before, Trump had presided over a celebration of a trade deal with China, calling out some of the nation's biggest corporate leaders as if they were his golf buddies. Earlier Thursday, the Senate had given final approval to the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. Now he had to talk about the attempt to remove him from office."I did the biggest deal ever done in the history of our country yesterday in terms of trade," he said, referring to (and exaggerating the size of) the China deal, "and that was the second story to a total hoax. Today, we just had passed the USMCA. It's going to take the place of NAFTA, which was a terrible deal, and the USMCA will probably be second to this witch hunt hoax, which hopefully everyone knows is not going anywhere."The president claimed that he did not know Lev Parnas, an associate of his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani who in interviews this week said the president knew everything about the effort to push Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, as well as the 2016 election, the reason for his impeachment.He described Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the Intelligence Committee chairman who had read the articles of impeachment to the assembled Senate, as "a corrupt person. He's a corrupt politician."He said the entire impeachment inquiry was "a hoax," adding, "Everybody knows that."Referring to a July phone call he had with the president of Ukraine that helped touch off the impeachment inquiry, he said Democrats "picked up a phone call that was perfect, but they didn't know it was perfect."And then, minutes after dismissing the reporters from the Oval Office, Trump issued the Twitter version of a shout."I JUST GOT IMPEACHED FOR MAKING A PERFECT PHONE CALL!" he wrote.The all-caps tweet only underscored how Trump has become increasingly unnerved by the prospect of a Senate trial, even one in which his Republican allies are widely expected to acquit him. And by the few times the president did anything in public on Thursday, it was clear he was looking for ways to do something about it.On Twitter, he gave an unusual plug to Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who is retiring at the end of the year and has said he may vote to hear from more witnesses during the Senate impeachment trial.Trump appeared to offer his conditional support for a bill introduced by Alexander that would award the Congressional Gold Medal to a Tennessee native, Master Sgt. Roddie Edmonds, an American prisoner of war who helped save Jewish lives during World War II. "Looking at this strongly!" Trump tweeted.Democrats need four Republican votes to force the Senate to subpoena witnesses like John Bolton, the former White House national security adviser, to testify, and Alexander is one of four who have signaled a potential openness to breaking ranks.The president's school prayer event appeared to be a direct appeal to the evangelical Christians who are an important part of his political base.There was very little new to announce, and the American Civil Liberties Union called the guidance issued Thursday a "copycat document" almost identical to one released by the George W. Bush administration in 2003, which reinforces existing legal parameters for schools that receive federal funding to allow students to pray individually and in groups. But Trump framed the new guidelines as a landmark, saying that there was a "growing totalitarian impulse on the far left that seeks to punish, restrict and even prohibit religious expression" and said that the new guidance ensures the "right to pray."The president capped his day with a meeting with several campaign aides, where he grilled them on how voters were receiving impeachment.In his conversations with advisers Thursday, Trump repeated once again that he could not believe he was facing such a predicament as impeachment. He said he wanted people to be prepared for a motion to dismiss and has hoped for one, even though Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, has said the Senate will have to take up the matter.At different times, Trump has also told aides he wants the opportunity to call witnesses he thinks could help him politically, like Hunter Biden, Biden's son, as well as the whistleblower -- the CIA officer who first alerted the Intelligence Committee to Trump's pressure campaign on the Ukrainian government.Trump, always concerned about optics and how things play, has also expressed reservations about whether his lawyers will be aggressive enough during the televised Senate trial. McConnell has advised the president that the best trial is a short one and that witnesses can only create more unknowns.On a conference call with reporters Wednesday, senior Trump officials said it would be extraordinarily unlikely for a trial to take longer than a few weeks, calling theirs an easy case, even as new details about Trump's efforts to pressure Ukraine have continued to come out.In a meeting with conservative leaders at the White House the same day, two officials who have become the public face of the White House impeachment response, Tony Sayegh and Pam Bondi, said much the same thing.Trump's reelection campaign, meanwhile, used the events of the day as a fundraising opportunity, directing voters through targeted digital ads to an "official impeachment defense fund," which acted as a portal to the campaign's website.The message delivered from Trump online was simple: "FIGHT BACK."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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| Huawei exec set to fight Canada court battle against US extradition Posted: 16 Jan 2020 06:05 PM PST  A Canadian court on Monday will consider a US request to hand over Chinese tech executive Meng Wanzhou, whose arrest 13 months ago on fraud charges plunged Canada-China relations into a deep freeze. The extradition hearing comes after Beijing detained two Canadians and blocked billions of dollars worth of Canadian agricultural shipments in apparent retaliation for Meng's arrest. Taking her into custody also stuck Canada in the middle of a row between China and the US, which views Huawei as a security risk.
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| Watch live: SpaceX is about to blow up a rocket in a crucial test to show NASA that its spaceship ready to launch astronauts Posted: 18 Jan 2020 04:20 AM PST  Elon Musk's SpaceX is going to make one of its own rocket boosters explode to prove that its Crew Dragon spaceship is ready to send people to space.
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| Discovery of unused disaster supplies angers Puerto Rico Posted: 18 Jan 2020 01:56 PM PST  People in a southern Puerto Rico city discovered a warehouse filled with water, cots and other unused emergency supplies, then set off a social media uproar Saturday when they broke in to retrieve goods as the area struggles to recover from a strong earthquake. With anger spreading in the U.S. territory after video of the event in Ponce appeared on Facebook, Gov. Wanda Vázquez quickly fired the director of the island's emergency management agency. The governor said she had ordered an investigation after learning the emergency supplies had been piled in the warehouse since Hurricane Maria battered Puerto Rico in September 2017.
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| Russia: Iran was spooked by reports of U.S. F-35s when it downed airliner Posted: 17 Jan 2020 06:18 AM PST  Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday that Iran's accidental shooting down of a Ukrainian airliner last week occurred at a time when Tehran was spooked by reports of advanced U.S. stealth fighters in the area. Iran's downing of Ukraine International Airlines flight 752, which killed all 176 people aboard, has created a crisis for the Islamic Republic's clerical rulers who have faced days of protests after the Iranian military admitted it had shot down the plane accidentally. Lavrov, speaking at his annual news conference in Moscow, called the incident a human error and said he was not trying to excuse anyone for what happened.
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| Fires, then floods: How much can a koala bear? Posted: 16 Jan 2020 09:53 PM PST  A week ago, koalas at an Australian wildlife park were in the path of raging bushfires. On Friday, they were soaking wet and being carried to safety from flash floods. Months of drought that have contributed to Australia's catastrophic bushfire season have this week given way to huge downpours in some of the blaze-ravaged areas.
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| Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow knew about Ukraine scheme, 'didn't want to be involved,' Lev Parnas says Posted: 16 Jan 2020 08:17 PM PST  President Trump's personal White House lawyer Jay Sekulow knew about Rudy Giuliani's efforts to get Ukraine to announce an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, but "didn't agree with what Rudy was doing," Lev Parnas told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow.In an interview that aired Thursday night, Parnas, an associate of Giuliani, said Sekulow was "in the loop" but "didn't want to be involved in the Ukraine stuff." He said he heard Sekulow and Giuliani talk about the matter, and Sekulow "didn't agree with what Rudy was doing, but he knew what he was doing."Parnas and his business partner Igor Fruman were arrested in October and charged with campaign finance violations. John Dowd, Trump's former attorney, was briefly Parnas' lawyer, and Parnas told Maddow that during a visit to the jail, Dowd told him to "be a good boy." Maddow asked if Dowd was "telling you to sacrifice yourself to protect Trump," and Parnas responded, "Yes ... they tried to keep me quiet." Parnas said soon after, he fired Dowd.New evidence Parnas submitted to House impeachment investigators was released this week, including an email from Sekulow dated Oct. 2, 2019. It states, "The president consents to allowing your representation of Mr. Parnas and Mr. Furman [sic]." Trump has claimed multiple times that he does not know Parnas; Parnas has promised to release photos of the two together every time he makes a denial.More stories from theweek.com Trump is getting the band back together The Patriots only have one option French officials warn of violence from subgroups in protest movement
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| Woman pleads guilty to killing husband by putting eye drops in his water Posted: 17 Jan 2020 04:23 AM PST  A South Carolina woman pleaded guilty to fatally poisoning her husband by putting eye drops in his water for days. She was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
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| Lawmakers condemn conditions faced by asylum-seekers in Mexico Posted: 18 Jan 2020 12:50 AM PST  Members of a congressional delegation described the squalid conditions faced by the asylum-seeking families and children they met in Matamoros, Mexico.
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| A startup company took billions of photos from Facebook and other websites to create a facial-recognition database, and hundreds of law-enforcement agencies are using it Posted: 18 Jan 2020 01:54 PM PST  Law enforcement is using a database of billions of photos scraped from social media sites, likely against policy, by an unknown startup company.
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| Town on edge in Colombia after 5 killed, 2 vehicles burned Posted: 17 Jan 2020 09:45 AM PST  A remote town was on edge Friday after at least five people were found shot to death, highlighting Colombia's struggle to bring peace to rural areas where drug crops are abundant and illegal armed groups are active. The killings happened overnight in an isolated part of the Jamundi municipality in southwestern Colombia and also left two vehicles incinerated, officials said. It was the third massacre in Jamundi in the past year.
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| Remains of fallen US soldier returned to Fort Bragg Posted: 18 Jan 2020 04:08 PM PST  The remains of a paratrooper who was killed a week ago in Afghanistan have been returned to his family in the U.S. The family of Staff Sgt. Ian McLaughlin greeted his flag-draped casket at Pope Army Airfield at Fort Bragg on Saturday, The Fayetteville Observer reported. The 29-year-old from Newport News, Virginia, was killed Jan. 11 by an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan.
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| 'You have not seen anything yet,' climate activist Greta says ahead of Davos Posted: 17 Jan 2020 08:10 AM PST  Swedish activist Greta Thunberg marched with 10,000 protesters in the Swiss city of Lausanne on Friday and said "you have not seen anything yet" before some head to Davos next week to challenge the global financial elite to fight climate change. "So, we are now in a new year and we have entered a new decade and so far, during this decade, we have seen no sign whatsoever that real climate action is coming and that has to change," Thunberg said in a speech in Lausanne. Hundreds will take trains over the weekend and then march to Klosters near Davos, the annual gathering of world political and business leaders that Thunberg is attending for the second year in a row and will take part in two panel events.
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| The Hole in the Impeachment Case Posted: 18 Jan 2020 03:30 AM PST  Thought experiment No. 1: Suppose Bob Mueller's probe actually proves that Donald Trump is under Vladimir Putin's thumb. Fill in the rest of the blanks with your favorite corruption fantasy: The Kremlin has video of the mogul-turned-president debauching himself in a Moscow hotel; the Kremlin has a bulging file of real-estate transfers through which Trump laundered racketeering proceeds for Putin's favored mobsters and oligarchs; or Trump is recorded cutting a deal to drop Obama-era sanctions against Putin's regime if Russian spies hack Democratic accounts.Thought experiment No. 2: Adam Schiff is not a demagogue. (Remember, this is fantasy.) At the very first televised hearing, when he alleged that President Trump told Ukrainian president Zelensky, "I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent . . . lots of it," Schiff was not defrauding the public. Instead, impeachment's Inspector Clouseau can actually prove that Trump was asking a foreign government to manufacture out of whole cloth evidence that Vice President Biden and his son were cashing in on the former's political influence (as opposed to asking that Ukraine look into an arrangement so objectively sleazy that the Obama administration itself agitated over what to do about it).What do these two scenarios have in common, besides being fictional? Answer: If either of them were real, we'd already be talking about President Pence's upcoming State of the Union address.This is the point that gets lost in all the endless chatter over impeachment strategy and procedure. Everything that is happening owes to the fact that we do not have an offense sufficiently grave for invocation of the Constitution's nuclear option. If we had one, the machinations and the posturing would be unnecessary — even ridiculous.Why are we talking about how Chairman Schiff, Speaker Pelosi, and House Democrats rushed through the impeachment inquiry without making a real effort to interview key witnesses?Why was the Democrats' impeachment gambit driven by the election calendar rather than the nature of the president's offense? Why were the timing of hearings and the unreasonable limits imposed on Republicans' ability to call witnesses dictated by the frantic rush to get done before Christmas recess -- to the point that Democrats cynically vacated a subpoena they'd served on a relevant administration witness, fearing a few weeks of court battles that they might lose?Why did Democrats grope from week to week in a struggle over what to call the misconduct they accused the president of committing – campaign finance, extortion, quid pro quo, bribery? How did they end up with an amorphous "abuse of power" case? How did they conclude that an administration that goes to court rather than instantly surrendering potentially privileged information commits obstruction?Why such tedious recriminations over adoption of Senate procedures that were approved by a 100–0 vote the last time there was an impeachment trial? Why all the kvetching over whether witnesses will be called when those procedures provide for the calling of witnesses in the likely event that 51 senators — after hearing nearly two weeks of presentation and argument from both sides -- want to hear from one or two of them?Why, with Election Day only ten months away, would Speaker Pelosi stoke an impeachment vote that could be perilous for many of her members, on the insistence that Trump was such a clear and present danger she could brook no delay, but then . . . sit on the impeachment articles for a month, accomplishing nothing in the interim except to undermine the presidential bids of several Senate Democrats, who will be trapped in Washington when they should be out campaigning with Iowa's caucuses just two weeks away?None of this would have happened if there had been a truly impeachable offense.Adam Schiff is a smart guy. He did not idly dream up a "make up dirt" parody. He framed it because he knows that's the kind of misconduct you would need to prove to warrant impeachment and removal of a president. In fact, Schiff could never prove that, but he figured parody is good enough for 2020 campaign purposes — and that's what this exercise is all about.If collusion with Russia had been fact rather than farce, Trump would never have made it to an impeachment trial. He'd have had to resign, Prior to November 8, 2016, Republicans were not the ones in need of convincing that Russia was a dangerous geopolitical threat. If it had been real collusion that brought Democrats around to that conclusion, the votes to impeach and remove would have been overwhelming.And the timing would have been irrelevant. If Americans had been seized by a truly impeachable offense, it would not matter whether Election Day was two years, two months, or two weeks away. The public and the political class would not tolerate an agent of the Kremlin in the Oval Office.If there were such egregious misconduct that the public was convinced of the need to remove Trump, such that two-thirds of the Senate would ignore partisan ties and do just that, there would be no partisan stunts. Democratic leaders would have worked cooperatively with their GOP counterparts, as was done in prior impeachments. They would have told the president: "Sure, you can have your lawyers here, and call whatever witnesses you want." There would be a bipartisan sense that the president had done profound wrong. There would be a sense of history, not contest. Congressional leaders would want to be remembered as statesmen, not apparatchiks.If there were a real impeachable offense, there would be no fretting about witnesses at the trial. Senate leaders would be contemplating that, after hearing the case extensively presented by both sides, there might well be enough votes to convict without witnesses. But if there were an appetite for witnesses, witnesses would be called . . . as they were in Watergate. And just as in Watergate, if the president withheld vital evidence of appalling lawlessness, the public would not be broadly indifferent to administration stonewalling.If there were an obviously impeachable offense, the garrisons of Fort Knox could not have stopped Nancy Pelosi from personally marching impeachment articles into the Senate the second the House had adopted them -- in what would have been an overwhelming bipartisan vote (of the kind that Pelosi, not long ago, said would be imperative for a legitimate impeachment effort).The Framers expected presidents to abuse their powers from time to time. And not just presidents. Our Constitution's theory of the human condition, and thus of governance, is that power is apt to corrupt anyone. It needs to be divided, and the peer components need to be incentivized to check each other. The operating assumption is that, otherwise, one component would accumulate too much power and inevitably fall prey to the tyrannical temptation. But as Madison observed, men are not angels. Separation of powers arms us against inevitable abuse, it does not prevent abuse from happening. Abuse is a given: Congress uses lawmaking power to encroach on the other branches' prerogatives; judges legislate from the bench, presidents leverage their awesome powers for political advantage. The expectation is not that government officials will never overreach; it is that when one branch does overreach, the others will bring it into line.That is the norm: corrective action or inaction, political pressure, naming and shaming, power of the purse, and so on. We expect to criticize, inveigh, even censure. We don't leap from abuse to expulsion. We don't expect routinely to expel members of Congress or impeach presidents and judges. That is reserved for historically extraordinary wrongs.On Ukraine, nothing of consequence came of President Trump's bull-in-a-china-shop excesses. Sure, they ought to be a 2020 campaign issue. Democrats, instead, would have us exaggerate them into historically extraordinary wrongs. For that, you need gamesmanship. If there were real impeachable misconduct, there would be no time or place for games.
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| Inside India's Large and Deadly Nuclear Weapons Program Posted: 17 Jan 2020 03:30 PM PST  All you want to know.
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| Susan Collins surpasses Mitch McConnell as the most unpopular senator in a new poll Posted: 17 Jan 2020 11:00 AM PST  The Maine Senator's net approval rating has dropped 10 points since the end of September, leaving her with a 52 percent disapproval rating
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| A Delta pilot may have dumped jet fuel on schoolkids because of poor communication with air traffic control Posted: 16 Jan 2020 06:25 PM PST  FAA investigators are looking into why the Delta flight crew dumped fuel even though they told air traffic control at LAX that they wouldn't.
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| Why Did The U.S. Navy Surface 3 Submarines At The Same Time In Asia? Posted: 18 Jan 2020 07:42 AM PST  A stern message to China.
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| After India's Amazon snub, Modi's party slams Bezos-owned Washington Post Posted: 16 Jan 2020 10:34 PM PST  Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling party on Friday slammed editorial policies of billionaire Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post, even as his e-commerce firm Amazon announced plans to create a million jobs in the country by 2025. Vijay Chauthaiwale, chief of the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) foreign affairs department, said there was "a lot of problem" with the newspaper's coverage of India, but gave no examples. The swipe at the Post came a day after a cabinet minister gave short shrift to Amazon's investment plans for India.
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| Liberia souring on George Weah at two-year mark Posted: 17 Jan 2020 06:25 PM PST  Dominic Kpadeh heaves a hammer over his head to crack a half-tonne rock in a northern suburb of Liberia's capital Monrovia, knowing his hard labour earns him far less than a year ago. Stories such as Kpadeh's are common in Liberia, where rampant inflation has left many people struggling and increasingly turning their anger on President George Weah. A former football icon whose goals for AC Milan and Paris St Germain dazzled fans, Weah came to power in January 2018, promising to invest in education and create jobs.
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| Republicans Melt Down as Evidence of Trump’s Guilt Piles Up Posted: 17 Jan 2020 01:39 AM PST  If you doubt Republicans are facing immense pressure these days, consider Sen. Martha McSally's behavior. Asked by respected, mild-mannered CNN reporter Manu Raju if she would consider new evidence during the impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump, the vulnerable senator from Arizona snapped back: "You're a liberal hack—I'm not talking to you. You're a liberal hack."Regardless of whether new post-House impeachment revelations are introduced in the Senate trial, the drip-drip-drip has created a lose-lose proposition for Republicans who face tough electoral crosswinds in 2020. They can defend the indefensible, or they can risk invoking the wrath of their president. (Clearly, McSally has decided her best bet is to avoid the latter.)But as evidence mounts, McSally also risks alienating Arizonans who elected a maverick named John McCain and aren't looking to send a Trump toady to Washington. Kellyanne Conway Melts Down Under Grilling by Fox NewsAs the Senate heads toward the formal impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump on Tuesday, text messages and documents provided by Lev Parnas, as well as a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report showing that the White House broke the law by withholding funds from Ukraine, cast a pall over Republican efforts to pretend this is merely a witch hunt. Of course, Republicans who do not face these crosswinds have different incentives. Trump can lose the popular vote and still win the Electoral College, by narrowly holding Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin by the skin of his teeth. He does that, potentially, by holding his base. But that would be cold comfort for Republicans trying to hold Senate seats in places like Maine (Collins) and Arizona (McSally), and also states like Colorado and North Carolina. With a different leader, these vulnerable senators might be afforded the opportunity to subtly distance themselves from this president. But Donald Trump demands complete loyalty and attempts to walk the line between appeasing the Trump-loyal GOP base and wooing suburban swing voters are being made impossible by fellow Republican senators like Rand Paul, who, in the words of Politico, is "vowing to squeeze vulnerable GOP incumbents" if they support procedural motions to allow for the calling of witnesses during Trump's impeachment trial. "If you vote against Hunter Biden, you're voting to lose your election, basically. Seriously. That's what it is," Paul said Wednesday. "If you don't want to vote and you think you're going to have to vote against Hunter Biden, you should just vote against witnesses, period." With friends like these...For now, at least, the pressure campaign seems to be working. Partisanship is a powerful drug, and when the heat is turned up, more often than not, politicians revert to the safe confines of their base for protection. This explains why McSally, a vulnerable Republican who can't afford to be seen as a Trump quisling, is suddenly acting… like Trump! It also explains why, presented with revelations of what might be rightly seen as blockbuster evidence that Marie Yovanovitch was under surveillance by Trump and Rudy Giuliani's henchmen in Ukraine, moderate Maine Sen. Susan Collins' first reaction was to... blame Congress!Neither McSally nor Collins have, in the past, been considered particularly Trumpy. That's why their defensive behavior is especially revealing. Despite the constant revelation of new, damning evidence as the impeachment trial kicks off, Republicans have cast their lot with this president and his base. This was recently driven home to me by the analysis of a man I once considered to be a straight-shooting, center-right journalist. Though largely subsumed by an avalanche of news about Rudy Giuliani and Lev Parnas, the arrest of Michael Avenatti, and the final Democratic primary debate before the Iowa caucuses, a comment made by Fox News' Brit Hume deserves more attention: "Let's assume… just for the sake of discussion, that John Bolton comes in and he says, 'Yeah, the president wanted the Bidens investigated and he withheld the aid for a time to try to get that done.' I don't think very many Republican senators are going to say that they think Trump did that or that he's guilty of that."This, of course, was an amazing admission. Put aside the fact that Hume doesn't seem outraged by any of this. His analysis (correct, I think), is that even if John Bolton (John Bolton!) testifies that Trump used the power and prestige of the presidency (not to mention our tax dollars) to extort the president of Ukraine into announcing an investigation into the Bidens, that most Republican senators wouldn't believe it—or wouldn't care. Now ask yourself, how does that analysis comport with the oath that senators took on Thursday, which states that "in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of Donald John Trump, president of the United States, now pending, I will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws: So help me God"?Yeah...I suppose it's possible that at least four Republicans will, in fact, vote to allow witnesses, and that one of those witnesses will reveal something that is so explosive that 20 Republicans, having taken that oath, are forced to finally, reluctantly, cut Trump loose. It just seems hard—almost impossible—to imagine what in the world could be so horrible. Martha McSally and Susan Collins are proof positive that even the "thoughtful" Republicans are so desperate to defend this president that they are taking a page out of his playbook of projection and prevarication. Trump corrupts! Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| U.K. monarchy will look smaller in future with Prince Charles Posted: 17 Jan 2020 06:29 AM PST  Prince Charles, the future king, has long been seen as a potential modernizer who wants a more modest monarchy in line with other European royal households — and the streamlining process has already begun with the astounding developments of recent months.
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| Joe Biden says 'you can keep' your private insurance 'if your employer doesn't take it away from you' Posted: 17 Jan 2020 11:35 AM PST  Former Vice President Joe Biden is still promising "If you like your insurance, you can keep it" — with a twist.In his endorsement interview with The New York Times published Friday, Biden is asked about that phrase both he and former President Barack Obama have said in the past. And after accepting that he actually did say it, Biden promised that "if you like your plan, you can keep it," provided "your employer doesn't take it away from you."While the ObamaCare mantra of keeping the insurance you like ended up not exactly being true, Biden still modified it in a July 2019 primary debate to say under his presidency, "If you like your health care plan, your employer-based plan, you can keep it. If in fact you have private insurance, you can keep it." There's video proof of Biden saying that but, when confronted with it in his Times interview, Biden replied with "I didn't say that, by the way."The interview moved on, and Biden was asked about how if there was a public health insurance option, employers may stop offering insurance altogether.> The new Biden pitch: 'If you like your private insurance, you can keep it, assuming your employer doesn't take it away from you' pic.twitter.com/65Xtvw2gNr> > — Andrew Perez (@andrewperezdc) January 17, 2020That all devolved into what Biden saying something that would look perfect on a campaign coffee mug as long as it fits: "If you like your plan, you can keep it, assuming — I should add the obvious — if your employer doesn't take it away from you. Okay?"More stories from theweek.com Trump is getting the band back together The Patriots only have one option French officials warn of violence from subgroups in protest movement
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| Democrats announce new criteria to qualify for Feb. 7 debate Posted: 17 Jan 2020 02:51 PM PST  The Democratic National Committee on Friday announced its criteria for the first debate to be held after voting begins in the 2020 presidential campaign, including a new pathway to the stage based off delegate pledges. As they have before, qualifiers will need to meet polling and grassroots funding thresholds to participate in the Feb. 7 debate in Manchester, New Hampshire. Party officials are relying on the same polling and grassroots thresholds as for the January debate in Des Moines, Iowa: either receiving 5% in at least four national or early-state surveys approved by the party, or receiving 7% in two polls in early voting states.
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