| Pennsylvania Republican Defends 'Right-To-Work' Laws Before Vote In Union-Heavy District Posted: 10 Mar 2018 09:19 AM PST  PITTSBURGH ― Republican Rick Saccone defended so-called "right-to-work" laws three days before a special election in a Western Pennsylvania district with a high rate of union membership. Saccone, the GOP nominee in Pennsylvania's 18th Congressional District, took reporters' questions at a small campaign event in the offices of the Republican Committee of Allegheny County on Friday evening. Asked whether he would support a national right-to-work law, Saccone would not answer directly.
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| Ex-police Officer Charged in Beating of Unarmed Black Man Accused of Jaywalking Posted: 08 Mar 2018 09:00 PM PST  It took six months and a leaked video before charges were filed in North Carolina.
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| West Virginia teachers end strike victorious, may serve as model Posted: 09 Mar 2018 01:33 PM PST  Rachel Maddow reports on the teachers of West Virginia ending their record-setting strike after winning the raise they were demanding, and points out that West Virginia isn't the only state with teachers who are overdue raises.
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| Michael Cohen May Have Used Trump Org Email For Stormy Daniels Arrangement: Report Posted: 09 Mar 2018 11:44 AM PST  Michael Cohen, personal attorney for President Donald Trump, used his Trump Organization email to arrange to have money transferred to former adult film actress Stephanie Clifford, NBC News reported on Friday. A source familiar with the negotiations said Cohen used the Trump-affiliated email address to arrange the 2016 transfer of $130,000 to Clifford, who goes by the stage name Stormy Daniels. The lawyer used the same email in other negotiations with Clifford, who signed a nondisclosure agreement not to speak publicly about an alleged 2006 affair she had with Trump.
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| Ferry Boat Explosion Sparks Mexico Travel Warning Ahead of Spring Break Posted: 09 Mar 2018 10:29 AM PST  Tourists are urged to use "extreme caution" when visiting the Playa Del Carmen area.
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| Former George W. Bush White House ethics lawyer eyes run for Senate Posted: 08 Mar 2018 07:30 PM PST  Richard Painter served as chief ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, and has since become a high-profile critic of the Trump White House and potential conflicts of interest. Painter announced this week that he's forming an exploratory committee for a possible campaign to represent Minnesota in the U.S. Senate. Painter joins "Red and Blue."
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| 4 Dead As Hostage Standoff Ends At California Veterans Home Posted: 09 Mar 2018 11:36 AM PST  A standoff at a veterans home in Yountville, California, ended Friday night with the deaths of three female employees and the gunman who took them hostage, the California Highway Patrol said. Police identified the shooter as Albert Wong, a military veteran they said was armed with a high-powered rifle. The gunman stormed the Veterans Home of California-Yountville in Napa County midmorning Friday during a farewell party for an employee.
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| Police Officer Takes on Phone Scammer: 'Can I Send a Check?' Posted: 08 Mar 2018 09:00 PM PST  The scammer, posing as an IRS agent, called Daniel Stief of Midland, Texas.
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| Turkey's war on Kurds unsettles fronts in northern Syria Posted: 09 Mar 2018 12:34 AM PST  BEIRUT (AP) — Turkey's war on a Syrian Kurdish militia that is closely aligned with the United States is forcing the group to give up positions against Islamic State militants in the Syrian desert to defend against the advancing Turkish troops.
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| North Korea Experts Stunned Yet Cautiously Optimistic About Trump-Kim Meeting Posted: 08 Mar 2018 09:26 PM PST  North Korea policy analysts reacted with a mixture of cautious optimism and outright disbelief after South Korean officials announced Thursday that U.S. President Donald Trump would meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un sometime over the next few months. As the news broke on Thursday evening, some foreign policy experts reacted with stunned missives posted to social media and immediately began contemplating just what the North Koreans hoped to gain from the meeting, and why now. Trump has long pledged to wage a campaign of maximum pressure on North Korea in an effort to convince the regime to abandon its rapidly developing nuclear weapon program.
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| Missing Teen Girl Told School Older Man Was Her Stepdad, Police Say Posted: 10 Mar 2018 11:38 AM PST  A man who repeatedly signed a girl out of school before the two went missing was listed as her stepfather on documents.
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| 11 Questions You Should Be Able To Answer Before You Get Married Posted: 09 Mar 2018 06:01 AM PST  "If money wasn't a factor and the options were limitless, what would your partner be doing with their life? Do you know what excites them and lights a fire in their heart and soul? Knowing the answer to this question can help you encourage your partner to dabble in things that you know interest them.
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| Stash house operator pleads guilty in deadly smuggling run Posted: 08 Mar 2018 06:43 PM PST ![Stash house operator pleads guilty in deadly smuggling run]( "Stash house operator pleads guilty in deadly smuggling run") SAN ANTONIO (AP) — The operator of an immigrant stash house in Laredo, Texas, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy in the case of a deadly smuggling run last July that left 10 immigrants dead or dying in a semitrailer in San Antonio.
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| Oakland coffee shop Hasta Muerte bans uniformed police offers for 'emotional health' of customers Posted: 09 Mar 2018 02:09 PM PST  A coffee shop has banned police officers dressed in uniform in an effort to prevent their customers from becoming upset by their presence. The ban began when Hasta Muerte in Oakland, California, denied a police officer's request to buy a drink last month over fears for the "emotional safety" of other customers.
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| Guns, Trump and steel: Next week's Pennsylvania special election a referendum on 2018's hot-button issues Posted: 09 Mar 2018 11:39 AM PST  The March 13 election has the potential to upend expectations about how safe even the reddest of Republican congressional districts will be in the 2018 midterms.
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| Police Look for Motive After 3 Hostages Killed at Veterans Home Posted: 09 Mar 2018 11:50 AM PST  Three hostages and the suspected gunman were found dead at a California veterans home on Friday.
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| Ageing Japanese towns overrun by wild boars Posted: 10 Mar 2018 08:36 AM PST  Less than 20 years ago, the only challenges for the 100 residents of the tiny island of Kakara, off southwest Japan, were the elements and ensuring the fishermen's catch could get to market on time. Today, the islanders are outnumbered three to one by wild boar who feast on their gardens and are becoming increasingly aggressive and territorial. The problems facing the residents of Kakara are being repeated across Japan, with boar numbers exploding as rural populations decline. Japan's rapidly ageing and shrinking population is part of the reason behind the increase in wild boar, as older rural populations die out, leaving towns and villages empty. Meanwhile, young people are also moving to the cities in search of work. The number of people with shotgun licenses has also fallen sharply in recent years. And as the people leave, the boar are moving in. The first boars apparently swam to Kakara, which covers a mere 1 square mile and sits between Fukuoka and Saga prefectures, but have been in hog heaven ever since. They have found a place with no natural predators and plenty of crops, such as pumpkins and sweet potatoes, that the local people grow in their back gardens. Other than farming and fishing, the island's only other industries were small-scale tourism and growing camellia for use in cosmetics, Kyodo News reported, but the famously aggressive boar have chased the tourists away and eaten the camellia plants. Local children cannot play outdoors for fear of being attacked and residents have stopped walking even relatively short distances for fear of encountering one of the aggressive creatures. Desperate islanders have set countless traps and catch around 50 of their tormentors every year, but that figure is far outstripped by the rapidly breeding boar population – a sow can give birth to as many as six piglets a years. Some residents are even suggesting that they should evacuate the island, abandoning it to the wild pigs. Across Japan, confrontations between boar and man are inevitable as the hog population rises, and rural media are frequently reporting incidents in which humans have come face-to-face with large beasts. In October, a large specimen barrelled into a suburban shopping mall on the island of Shikoku, biting five staff and causing mayhem before it was captured. In December, two boars managed to get into a high school in Kyoto and panicked students had to be evacuated. Elsewhere, they are finding their way out of the forests and fields and into train stations, gardens and school sports grounds. And with few checks on the boars' territory, they are growing larger as well as more numerous. In February, farmers in north-east Japan caught a male that weighed in at 280 pounds, well over the average 220 pounds of boars in Europe. They are also expanding their range into areas that were previously considered too inhospitable, taking over villages with shrinking populations. They are being given even greater licence to roam in areas close to the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, abandoned in March 2011 in the aftermath of the destruction of three of the plant's reactors and the release of radiation across the surrounding countryside. Local people fled to safety; the wildlife remained and thrived.
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| Kenya's president and opposition leader pledge to heal divisions Posted: 09 Mar 2018 02:44 AM PST ![Kenya's president and opposition leader pledge to heal divisions]( "Kenya's president and opposition leader pledge to heal divisions") By George Obulutsa NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta called opposition leader Raila Odinga "his brother" on Friday and promised they would both start the process of bringing the people together after last year's contentious elections. In a live television address jointly with Kenyatta on the steps of the president's office, Odinga said time had come to resolve "our" differences. It was the first public appearance by the two politicians together since a repeat presidential election last Oct. 26.
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| I Am Dying From Terminal Cancer. Here's What It's Taught Me About Living. Posted: 09 Mar 2018 06:16 AM PST  Sparkling bright and eight months pregnant, my French-speaking surgeon in Montreal, Quebec, was perhaps more direct than she would have been in her native language. She'd just removed my uterus and everything else that I could spare from my abdomen, but she was reporting on what she hadn't been able to remove of the sarcoma that had, in just the weeks waiting for surgery, spread beyond hope in my belly.
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| Kentucky man pleads guilty to attacking US Sen. Rand Paul Posted: 09 Mar 2018 12:14 PM PST  U.S. Sen. Rand Paul's neighbor pleaded guilty Friday to a federal charge for tackling the lawmaker in an attack his attorney says was triggered by a dispute over lawn maintenance.
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| Equifax Wins In Latest Version Of Senate Bank Bill Posted: 09 Mar 2018 11:53 AM PST  WASHINGTON ― Companies that are notorious for mistreating U.S. consumers could benefit from a bipartisan Senate bill that is supposed to protect those consumers. Legislation by Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and supported by more than a dozen Democrats would give credit monitoring companies like Equifax a chance to expand their role in the mortgage industry. The bill would require government-backed mortgage companies to solicit applications for credit scoring models for evaluating the creditworthiness of people seeking home loans.
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| U.S. bans govt. employees from travel to Mexican beach resort Posted: 09 Mar 2018 05:01 AM PST  Citing a new security threat in Mexico's Caribbean beach resort of Playa del Carmen, the U.S. government is prohibiting its employees from traveling there, marking another blow to the battered reputations of the country's most popular tourist hubs. Rough Cut (no reporter narration).
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| Turkey's top court says journalist should get stiffer sentence Posted: 09 Mar 2018 10:37 AM PST ![Turkey's top court says journalist should get stiffer sentence]( "Turkey's top court says journalist should get stiffer sentence") Turkey's highest court overruled a five-year jail sentence against prominent journalist Can Dundar on Friday, saying he should instead face up to 20 years in prison on espionage charges, the state-run Anadolu agency said. Dundar and a colleague from the Cumhuriyet newspaper, Erdem Gul, were both sentenced in 2016 to five years in prison for publishing a video purporting to show Turkey's intelligence agency trucking weapons into Syria. On Friday, the Supreme Court ruled that the lower court should have sentenced Dundar on espionage-related charges, which carry a 15-20 year sentence, rather than the lesser charge of disclosing confidential information, Anadolu said.
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| Trevor Noah Blasts Trump Claim That Video Games Inspire Shootings Posted: 09 Mar 2018 08:30 AM PST  President Donald Trump would have taken no joystick in Trevor Noah's mockery of his suggestion that video games share blame for gun violence like the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida. The president convened a meeting of video game industry leaders on Thursday to explore the possibility, prompting "The Daily Show" host to imagine the conversation. "Why isn't Mario here?" says an imitation Trump, who is reminded that video game characters aren't real.
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| With little suspense, Xi to secure lifetime presidency Posted: 10 Mar 2018 01:07 PM PST  China's rubber-stamp parliament is set Sunday to hand President Xi Jinping free rein to rule the rising Asian superpower indefinitely, with potential abstentions offering the only suspense in the historic vote. The National People's Congress is all but certain to approve a constitutional amendment that has stunned many in China, sparking an unusual bout of criticism that censors have scrambled to extinguish. The move reverses the era of "collective" leadership and orderly succession that was promoted by late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping to ensure stability following the turbulent one-man rule of Communist China's founder Mao Zedong.
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| Lloyd Blankfein, Wall Street’s brash survivor, to call time on his leadership of Goldman Sachs Posted: 09 Mar 2018 10:24 AM PST  Goldman Sachs boss Lloyd Blankfein, one of the industry's great survivors, and the institution's longest-serving boss in nearly half a century, is reportedly preparing to step down after 12 years at the top. Rejected by the big names, including Goldman, he found a job with a small trading firm that came to be bought by Goldman where it, and its staff, were seen as the poor relations. The trading business exploded and Blankfein the gambler, who had a fondness for Las Vegas casinos in his legal days, was swept all the way up to the top as a result, assisted by his skill as a salesman, and his ability as a manager of traders.
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| Suicide bomber kills 9 in Kabul; Taliban kill 16 in province Posted: 09 Mar 2018 04:19 AM PST  KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — An Islamic State suicide bomber targeted Afghanistan's ethnic Hazaras on Friday, blowing himself up at a police checkpoint near a gathering of the minority Shiites in western Kabul, killing nine people and wounding 18, officials said.
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| 2019 Bentley Bentayga V-8 Posted: 09 Mar 2018 12:51 PM PST  Making reductions to produce more.
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| RuPaul’s Drag Race and What People Get Wrong About the History of Drag Posted: 09 Mar 2018 08:18 AM PST  Historian Joe E. Jeffreys explains the history of the form, the influence of RuPaul and what most people get wrong about the meaning of drag
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| Kris Kobach Begins To Show Why He Thinks There's Widespread Voter Fraud In Kansas Posted: 08 Mar 2018 06:39 PM PST  KANSAS CITY, Kan. ― Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) on Thursday offered his first evidence of noncitizens trying to register to vote in a trial challenging a Kansas requirement that people prove their U.S. citizenship to get on the voter rolls. The evidence was a spreadsheet of 38 instances of alleged illegal voter activity in Sedgwick County that Kobach's office had compiled over 18 years, from 1999 to 2017. As of 2016, there were more than 293,000 registered voters in Sedgwick County and over 1.8 million in Kansas.
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| The Latest: Al-Qaida fighters in Syria want to go to Idlib Posted: 09 Mar 2018 11:07 AM PST  BEIRUT (AP) — The Latest on the conflict in Syria (all times local):
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| Cops Search for Alleged Arsonist Seen Dousing SUV in Accelerant, Setting It on Fire Posted: 09 Mar 2018 07:22 AM PST  The Stockton, Calif., police are asking for help identifying the alleged firebug.
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| Shooter takes hostages at Yountville veterans home Posted: 09 Mar 2018 06:18 PM PST  Police are responding to an active shooting situation at a veterans home in Yountville where officials say at least three hostages are being held.
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| Geneva Motor Show: Star supercars unveiled at the 2018 edition Posted: 09 Mar 2018 07:34 AM PST  Alongside star cars from the likes of Koenigsegg and Pagani, who brought previously proven models to the Swiss show, some new supercars (and hypercars for those over 1,000 horsepower) with astounding performances broke cover at the Geneva Motor Show. Bugatti unveiled its new Chiron Sport -- the latest version of its famous supercar -- at the Geneva Motor Show. Bugatti has boosted performance by trimming 18kg off the car, thanks to the increased use of carbon fiber, as well as modifying the chassis and suspension.
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| Black Girl Magic Is Written In The Pages Of ‘A Wrinkle In Time’ Posted: 10 Mar 2018 06:01 AM PST  Fifty-six years after it's publication, Madeleine L'Engle's beloved children's book A Wrinkle In Time came to the big screen under the direction of Ava DuVernay, the Oscar-nominated black woman filmmaker from Compton. DuVernay's version of the classic story comes with many changes, the most obvious being that the main protagonist Meg looks a lot different than how many readers may have imagined her. DuVernay's creation is a representation of multifaceted black girlhood where positive traits, like love, hope and determination exist alongside anger, stubbornness and impatience.
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| Syrian troops cut major roads in suburbs of Damascus Posted: 10 Mar 2018 09:21 AM PST  BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian government forces succeeded Saturday in their deepest push yet into the eastern suburbs of the capital Damascus, cutting off a major highway that made it hard to move between three parts of the rebel-held area, and inflicting a major blow to opposition fighters who have vowed not to surrender.
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| Teen charged with manslaughter in Alabama school shooting Posted: 09 Mar 2018 03:48 PM PST  BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — A 17-year-old high school junior was charged Friday with manslaughter and illegal firearms possession in a classroom shooting that killed a fellow student at an Alabama high school.
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| Trump says he has 'a feeling' his outgoing economic adviser Gary Cohn will be back after tariffs disagreement Posted: 08 Mar 2018 06:25 PM PST  Donald Trump has said he has "a feeling" that his top economic adviser Gary Cohn will one day return to the White House. Mr Cohn announced that he would resign this week, the latest in a string of high-profile departures from the Trump administration. The announcement came after a reported disagreement between him and Mr Trump over the President's proposed aluminium and steel tariffs.
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