| White House tells Democrats it will not cooperate with impeachment inquiry Posted: 08 Oct 2019 03:00 PM PDT  In a letter to House Democrats, White House counsel Pat Cipollone calls the impeachment inquiry "constitutionally invalid" and indicates the White House won't cooperate with it.
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| Polish politician rescues child and father from burning car Posted: 08 Oct 2019 04:45 AM PDT  A left-wing party leader in Poland has rescued a 2-year-old boy and his father from a burning car, winning praise across the political spectrum days before a national election. The car collided with a truck and began to burn Monday evening in Tabor, south of Warsaw. Robert Biedron witnessed the crash and helped the father and child until rescue officials arrived, fire officials reported.
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| Germany holds Syrian crash truck hijacker for attempted murder Posted: 08 Oct 2019 11:34 AM PDT  German authorities Tuesday held on suspicion of attempted murder a Syrian man who hijacked an articulated lorry and smashed it into cars stopped at a traffic light in the city of Limburg, injuring several people. The 32-year-old will remain in custody, suspected of attempted murder and bodily harm as well as a traffic offence, Frankfurt prosecutors told AFP. Unconfirmed media reports said the Syrian national arrived with the massive migrant influx to Germany in 2015 and that his residency permit had expired on October 1.
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| Conor McGregor's entourage have been accused of forcing a nightclub bottle service girl into their car after a booze-fueled evening in LA Posted: 08 Oct 2019 05:06 PM PDT  Insider uncovered the story while investigating Los Angeles nightlife company The H.wood Group, which is popular among celebrities.
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| Ex-U.S. envoy Huntsman urges rethink of Russia sanctions in WSJ op-ed Posted: 08 Oct 2019 04:51 AM PDT  Days after ending his term in Moscow, former United States ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman has urged Washington to review its sanctions-dominated approach to Russia, questioning its efficiency and calling for dialogue. The U.S. has placed multiple layers of sanctions on Russia, its senior officials and largest companies, as well as businessmen it views as connected to the Kremlin, the bulk of them linked to Moscow's role in the Ukrainian crisis which began in 2014 and has yet to be resolved. In a column https://www.wsj.com/articles/america-needs-dialogue-with-moscow-11570488054 for the Wall Street Journal published on Monday, Huntsman argued that "sanctions have become our go-to foreign policy tool to admonish misbehavior" but not all of them are having the desired effect.
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| Pastor: I hope Supreme Court agrees LGBTQ people should be free from job discrimination Posted: 07 Oct 2019 12:11 PM PDT  When we talk about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all, there should be no ambiguity in what the word "all" means.
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| Diplomat's Wife Suspected in Fatal U.K. Car Crash Returned to the U.S. After Telling Authorities She Would Stay. Here's What to Know Posted: 07 Oct 2019 03:42 PM PDT  U.K. officials are asking that diplomatic immunity be waived
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| China Knows It Can't Protect Every Island It Builds (Think South China Sea) Posted: 07 Oct 2019 08:15 PM PDT  But Beijing is building them anyway.
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| 2020 Subaru Legacy vs. 2019 Honda Accord in Photos Posted: 07 Oct 2019 04:59 AM PDT |
| GOP senator: Trump wrong to ask Ukraine to investigate Biden but it's not 'an impeachable offense' Posted: 07 Oct 2019 05:42 PM PDT  Portman said he doesn't see what Trump did as "an impeachable offense" and said Democrats are rushing to impeachment.
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| Hong Kong 'won't rule out' Chinese help over protests: leader Posted: 08 Oct 2019 11:43 AM PDT  Hong Kong's under-fire leader Carrie Lam on Tuesday said China intervening to end months of pro-democracy protests is an option following a particularly violent week of unrest that paralysed the city. Hong Kong was virtually locked down over the three-day holiday weekend, with the majority of subway stops closed. It is also the position of the central government (in Beijing) that Hong Kong should tackle the problem on her own.
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| Climate activists block roads, camp out in global protests Posted: 08 Oct 2019 08:10 AM PDT  Hundreds of climate change activists camped out in central London on Tuesday during a second day of world protests by the Extinction Rebellion movement to demand more urgent actions to counter global warming. Determined activists glued themselves to the British government's Department of Transport building as police working to keep streets clear appealed to protesters to move to Trafalgar Square. Cities in Australia, elsewhere in Europe and other parts of the world also had climate change protests for a second day.
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| Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio weren't convinced by reports of a pullback in Syria. The reports are based off a White House statement. Posted: 07 Oct 2019 07:58 AM PDT ![Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio weren't convinced by reports of a pullback in Syria. The reports are based off a White House statement.]( "Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio weren't convinced by reports of a pullback in Syria. The reports are based off a White House statement.") An official White House statement apparently isn't enough proof for some people in this day and age.Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) are clearly not thrilled with the White House's decision to pull troops from northern Syria and subsequently allow Turkey to launch an invasion in the region. The move potentially gives Ankara an opening to battle with Kurdish-led forces there, who were long the U.S.'s strongest ally in the battle against the Islamic State. Rubio called the announcement a "grave mistake" and Graham said it was a "disaster in the making."Except both senators were still speaking in hypotheticals when criticizing the decision Monday morning. They both wanted to know if reporting on the situation is accurate, with Graham adding that he was going to talk to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, before officially pushing back against the White House. That generally seems fair, but in this instance the reports on the decision came directly from a White House press release, so it's tough to figure out how the reporting might have missed the mark. Graham, for his part, did continue to criticize the move as the morning went on. > I guess it's politically safer for Republican senators to question the accuracy of media reports than to criticize the presidential statements they're based on. pic.twitter.com/tQKBlZXA08> > -- Chris Megerian (@ChrisMegerian) October 7, 2019
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| A new study reveals how the last woolly mammoths died out 4,000 years ago. That's after the Egyptians had built the pyramids. Posted: 08 Oct 2019 01:11 PM PDT  The last of the woolly mammoths died on an Arctic island 4,000 years ago, meaning these animals went extinct much later than scientists once thought.
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| Police bust multi-billion pound drug smuggling gang after 50 tonnes of product are brought into the UK Posted: 08 Oct 2019 11:37 AM PDT  Britain's biggest ever drug smuggling gang has been smashed after billions of pounds worth of narcotics was brought into the UK, the National Crime Agency believes. Officers arrested 13 men aged between 24 and 59 on Tuesday across the country in dawn raids. The NCA seized 351 kilos of cocaine, 92 kilos of heroin, 250 kilos of cannabis and 1,850 kilos of hemp/hashish, with a total street value of more than £38 million, in three consignments in September 2018. Investigators believe more than 50 tonnes of drugs worth billions of pounds were imported from the Netherlands, between February 2017 and October 2018, hidden in lorries carrying vegetables and juice. Jayne Lloyd, NCA Regional Head of Investigations, said: "We suspect these men were involved in an industrial-scale operation - the biggest ever uncovered in the UK - bringing in tonnes of deadly drugs that were distributed to crime groups throughout the country. "By working closely with partners here and overseas, in particular the Dutch National Police, we believe we have dismantled a well-established drug supply route." The gang are believed to have imported billions of pounds worth of drugs Credit: AFP The arrests were made in London, Manchester, Stockport, St Helens, Warrington, Bolton, Dewsbury, and Leeds. Four men and two women from the Netherlands, who were arrested in April this year as part of the same investigation, are awaiting extradition to the UK. "We have got the top people in the group," said Ms Lloyd. "We believe it's probably the biggest conspiracy that's been seen in the UK." Investigators believe the arrests have disrupted the flow of drugs into the UK to be sold on by "county lines" gangs, who often use children as dealers. "Taking out this suspected organised crime group... will make, hopefully, a huge impact in relation to protecting the public and the economy," said Ms Lloyd. "You can see from where they've been arrested that the potential was that significant amounts of drugs coming into the UK would go to various areas in the UK. "We would be looking at vulnerable individuals who would then supply the commodity on behalf of other organised crime groups." The investigation is linked to an earlier NCA operation where 13 people were jailed after the seizure of more than 100kg of heroin in 2015.
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| Fat is fabulous for bears in Alaska's Katmai National Park Posted: 07 Oct 2019 12:50 PM PDT  Alaska grizzly bears packing on pounds (kilos) for the winter are competing for more than the season's last salmon. Fat Bear Week has become a national internet sensation, pitting individual bears against each other in an online voting contest. At Katmai, a park in southwestern Alaska known for its bountiful salmon runs and the huge grizzlies - Alaskans call them "brown bears" - that feed on them, Fat Bear Week is an annual highlight.
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| The United States Almost Bombed Iran in the 1990s Posted: 07 Oct 2019 01:39 PM PDT  "The Pentagon drew up military plans which ranged from launching cruise missiles at Iranian targets to undertaking a full-blown ground invasion of Iran."
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| Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower: Google Boss’ Daughter Scrubbed From Guardian Exposé Posted: 07 Oct 2019 12:18 PM PDT  Fairfax Media/GettyLONDON—Christopher Wylie, the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower, claims that Sophie Schmidt, the daughter of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, successfully campaigned for The Guardian to scrub her name from one of their bombshell data-abuse stories.In a memoir that will be published Tuesday, he says that The Guardian's willingness to back down in the face of Schmidt's legal threats—and "water down" a story that had already been published—convinced him that he could no longer trust the British newspaper alone to publish his allegations about Cambridge Analytica.Wylie had helped The Guardian report on Cambridge Analytica anonymously for months, but he said he was shocked when the newspaper amended a May 2017 story. That story originally claimed it was Sophie Schmidt who suggested to Alexander Nix, the former director of Cambridge Analytica's parent company SCL, that he should get in touch with Peter Thiel's Palantir and look into using data mining techniques to bolster their political operations."Any trust I had in The Guardian was wrecked when the paper failed to stand by its own reporting," he wrote, according to an excerpt of Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America seen by The Daily Beast.A Guardian news & media spokesperson said, "We are disappointed that this book appears to contain factual inaccuracies about the Guardian which were not put to us prior to publication."We have raised a number of concerns with the publishers and are talking to them about how they plan to rectify this."The reporter who wrote the story, Carole Cadwalladr, said it was incredibly difficult for British media organizations to stand up to well-resourced legal threats. "Schmidt bullied a British newspaper using British privacy laws. It's extraordinary that the daughter of Eric Schmidt—the man who says that privacy is dead—would be using U.K. privacy laws to get herself taken out of the piece," she told The Daily Beast."News organizations have difficult choices to make, don't have an endless pot of money, and have to make hard choices. It's a measure of the difficulty of publishing this work that The Guardian decided they couldn't defend that one."Schmidt was an intern at SCL when Wylie writes that she "introduced Alexander to some of the executives at Palantir." The New York Times later reported on Schmidt's alleged suggestion. Palantir, a secretive tech company, was co-founded by Thiel, a Silicon Valley billionaire and major Trump donor, who also sits on the board of Facebook."The idea that Cambridge Analytica had dealings with Palantir suggested by the daughter of Eric Schmidt the chairman of Google just seemed like a really massive deal because the whole piece was about the power of these Silicon Valley tech companies," Cadwalladr said.Wylie wrote that he was not one of the sources who had spoken to Cadwalladr about Schmidt, but he said he did know of Schmidt's role in the history of the company."The story wasn't remotely libelous. Schmidt threw a battalion of lawyers at The Guardian, with the threat of a time-consuming and expansive legal battle. Instead of fighting an obviously spurious lawsuit, the paper agreed to remove Schmidt's name several weeks after publication," he said. Cadwalladr emphasized that it was privacy concerns rather than libel that were raised. "Then Cambridge Analytica threatened to sue over the same article," Wylie writes. "And even though The Guardian had documents, emails, and files that confirmed everything I had told them, they backed down again. Editors agreed to flag certain paragraphs as 'disputed,' to appease Cambridge Analytica and mitigate the paper's liability. They took Cadwalladr's well-sourced story and watered it down. At this point, my heart sank. I thought, All right, I've just moved back to London, I haven't got a job, and I'm being asked to put my neck on the line for a newspaper that won't even defend its own journalism."Wylie had been in discussions about going public with his full story but now began to re-think.He said he was put in touch with Gavin Millar, a well-known London lawyer who had worked on the Edward Snowden case. Wylie said the lawyer suggested he give the story to a U.S. newspaper because the First Amendment provided a stronger defense against accusations of libel and "The New York Times was far less likely to back down than The Guardian had been, and it would never delete parts of articles after the fact."Wylie said he then gave The Guardian an ultimatum. "I reiterated to the paper's editors that I would not be cooperating or handing over documents until there was an agreement with The New York Times."Cadwalladr said: "He's right to say that it did dent his confidence in publishing in Britain but it was actually The Guardian's Katharine Viner who reached out to Dean Baquet at the New York Times to help set up the partnership."Wylie's revelations were published jointly by The Guardian and The New York Times. It eventually emerged that more than 87 million Facebook profiles had been compromised as part of a vast data collection operation. Cambridge Analytica, which worked for the Trump campaign in 2016, was bankrupted and Facebook was fined a record $5 billion by the Federal Trade Commission.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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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| View 2020 BMW M8 Gran Coupe Photos Posted: 08 Oct 2019 04:01 PM PDT |
| Mystery oil spills blot more than 130 Brazilian beaches Posted: 08 Oct 2019 11:05 AM PDT  The source of large blots of oil staining more than 130 beaches in northeastern Brazil remained a mystery Tuesday despite President Jair Bolsonaro's assertions they came from outside the country and were possibly the work of criminals. Tamar, a group dedicated to the protection of sea turtles, said the oil spill was "the worst environmental tragedy" it has encountered since its formation in 1980. The patches of oil began appearing in early September and have now turned up along a 2,000 kilometer (1,200 mile) stretch of Atlantic coastline.
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| Malaysia fines 80 people, groups for alleged 1MDB payments Posted: 06 Oct 2019 10:26 PM PDT  Malaysia's anti-graft agency on Monday ordered 80 people and groups to pay fines totaling about $100 million for allegedly receiving funds from the 1MDB state investment fund. Former Prime Minister Najib Razak's brother Nazir Razak, who heads the country's second-largest bank, was among those listed. Branches of Najib's party and others in the former ruling coalition were also listed, as were 23 companies.
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| America’s Good Intentions in Syria Have Led to This Dismal Outcome Posted: 08 Oct 2019 03:30 AM PDT  Recent U.S. policy in Syria, from the moment that former U.S. ambassador Robert Ford showed support for Syrian protesters in 2011, has been one of good intentions that were mismanaged through conflicting policies. This week it led to the decision to withdraw. A new crisis will unfold in eastern Syria, an area that, liberated from ISIS, has seen too much war and where the people are just beginning to reconstruct their lives. Many are expressing feelings that the U.S. betrayed its partners, the Syrian Democratic Forces, who are mostly Kurdish. The larger context is that the U.S. has been seen as abandoning one group after another in Syria, reducing American influence in Syria and the region.It is at least the third time that President Donald Trump has sought to leave Syria. In March 2018, he said that the U.S. was leaving "very soon." In December 2018, he wrote that the U.S. was bringing the troops home after defeating ISIS. In fact, ISIS was not defeated on the ground until March 23, 2019, in its last pocket near the Euphrates river. ISIS sleeper cells are still active, and there are thousands of ISIS detainees in eastern Syria. However, Trump now says that Turkey or other countries will need to deal with the remnants of ISIS and the detainees in Syria.How did the U.S. get here? In 2011, Americans were outraged by scenes of Bashar al-Assad's regime cracking down on protests. There was bipartisan support for backing the Syrian protesters and then the Syrian rebels. At the time, the Obama administration had a vast spectrum of options, from giving them anti-tank missiles to carrying out airstrikes against Assad and punishing him for using chemical weapons. But Obama walked back from his 2012 red line on the use of chemical weapons.Washington shifted from directly opposing Assad to training and equipping Syrian rebels, a program that cost up to $1 billion and was largely seen as a failure by 2015. By this time, the U.S. was working on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or the "Iran deal," and the overthrow of Assad, who is backed by Iran, was no longer a priority. ISIS had exploited the Syrian conflict to take over a third of Syria and Iraq, controlling the lives of 12 million people and committing genocide. The U.S. began anti-ISIS operations in Syria in September 2014 and helped the Kurdish fighters in Kobane resist ISIS. From there grew a unique partnership between the U.S. and these leftist Kurdish fighters, whom Turkey accused of being linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which the U.S. views as terrorists. The U.S. supported the creation of the Syrian Democratic Forces in 2015 in eastern Syria, as a way to rebrand the Kurdish fighters and distance them from the PKK, so that Washington could train and equip them without appearing to support the party.The Obama administration had moved from opposing Assad, to arming rebel fighters, to fighting ISIS and signing the Iran deal. At each juncture it narrowed its goals. By the time Trump was elected, the U.S. mission in eastern Syria, encapsulated in Operation Inherent Resolve, was to defeat ISIS on the ground and diplomatically oppose Assad through lip service in Geneva.Trump vowed during his campaign to defeat ISIS, but he also wanted to show that there was a red line with respect to Assad's crimes. He ordered airstrikes against the regime in April 2017 and April 2018 but was reluctant to do more. He ended support for the rebels in July 2017, and a year later Damascus took back rebel areas that had previously enjoyed some U.S. support. By this time, Russia and Iran were deeply involved in Syria, supporting Assad, and Turkey had launched an operation in northern Syria to prevent the U.S.-backed SDF from expanding its areas of control.At each juncture, the U.S. found its choices narrowed in Syria, and America was isolated from having a say in the future of Syria as Russia, Turkey, and Iran excluded Washington from peace discussions they held at Astana. Nevertheless, by 2018, the U.S. and its SDF partners controlled a huge area in eastern Syria. National-security adviser John Bolton sought to push a strategy whereby America would hold on to eastern Syria until Iran left. The goal was to roll back Iranian influence and reduce Israel's fears about Iran using Syria to attack. Bolton never got his way.Trump's decision in December 2018 to leave Syria led to the resignation of defense secretary James Mattis and anti-ISIS envoy Brett McGurk. Bolton was gone by September 2019. Jettisoning these key officials, the White House narrowed its role in Syria even more, no longer seeing a way to use it as leverage against Iran. Since Trump didn't want to do nation-building in Syria, and wanted Europe or the Gulf states to foot the bill to keep ISIS detainees locked up, he saw the area as a sunk cost. As for Iran, he said the U.S. would use Iraq to "watch" it.All that was left of U.S. policy in Syria was the question of what to do about the U.S. partners, the mostly Kurdish forces that had been trained and that had done a phenomenal job defeating ISIS. The problem was that Turkey, sensing that Trump wanted to leave, kept threatening to launch an invasion of eastern Syria to attack the SDF. Turkey says it will resettle 2 million Syrians, mostly Arabs from elsewhere in Syria, in the Kurdish areas of eastern Syria.U.S. policy in Syria has been one of shutting one door after another to close off U.S. influence, at the same time that Iran, Russia, and Turkey are opening those doors to partition Syria for their own interests. The risks of U.S. withdrawal are clear. Not only will ISIS make some inroads, but Washington will lose influence in Syria, and America's image will be tarnished for appearing to abandon friends and being bullied into leaving. Iran is already calling the US an "irrelevant occupier" and saying that it's ready to help take over eastern Syria.Unfortunately, as the U.S. seeks to narrow its footprint and get out of the nation-building-humanitarian-intervention business that was a hallmark of the 1990s and early 2000s, Washington has chosen such a narrow goal that its allies are wondering whether there is a future for the U.S. in the Middle East. The U.S. had good intentions — the road to hell is paved with them — in Syria but badly mismanaged them. The result is that Iran, Russia, and Turkey got something and that all the U.S. got was a damaged reputation. It's a far cry from 2011 when Syrian protesters all across the country, including Kurds and Arabs, looked to Washington for leadership and support.
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| The US blacklisted some of China's most valuable AI startups over human rights issues in a dramatic trade war escalation Posted: 08 Oct 2019 02:49 AM PDT  The US placed 28 Chinese companies on a trade blacklist on Monday, including three AI startups valued at over $1 billion.
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| Convicted killer Samuel Little, who claims 93 murders, is 'most prolific serial killer' in US history, FBI says Posted: 08 Oct 2019 06:47 AM PDT  Samuel Little has confessed to 93 murders, with authorities matching him to 50 cases. Forty-three confessions are pending confirmation.
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| EU tells British PM Johnson to stop playing 'stupid' Brexit blame game Posted: 08 Oct 2019 12:17 AM PDT  LONDON/BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union accused Britain of playing a "stupid blame game" over Brexit on Tuesday after a Downing Street source said a deal was essentially impossible because German Chancellor Angela Merkel had made unacceptable demands. With just 23 days before the United Kingdom is due to leave the bloc, the future of Brexit remains deeply uncertain as both London and Brussels position themselves to avoid blame for a delay or a disorderly no-deal Brexit.
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| In a Conflict, Iran Would Wage a Missile War Against America Posted: 07 Oct 2019 01:00 PM PDT  So many missiles.
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| Sexual abuse of slaves by students at Founding Father’s university revealed by historians Posted: 07 Oct 2019 04:59 AM PDT  The two young, white University of Virginia students had a secret.It was September 1826, and the men, both scions of wealthy southern slaveholding families, were suffering from the same sexually transmitted disease.
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| 'They told me that I was going to die': The US says El Salvador is safe for migrants, but transgender women living there fear for their lives Posted: 08 Oct 2019 06:35 AM PDT  A transgender woman living in El Salvador says MS-13 killed her friends and went after her next. She's been waiting for the US to grant her asylum.
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| Doomed Kiribati ferry crew drunk, victims died horribly: official report Posted: 08 Oct 2019 12:33 AM PDT  Crew members of an overloaded Kiribati ferry which sank in the Pacific claiming 95 lives were drunk, leaving passengers to die slow deaths from starvation and hypothermia, a damning report has found. "Most, if not all, victims died from hunger, dehydration and hypothermia," it found. The deaths of 84 passengers and 11 crew was the worst maritime disaster ever in Kiribati, a collection of 33 atolls and reefs scattered over an area the size of the continental United States.
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| Trafficker: Honduran president sought money for campaign Posted: 08 Oct 2019 03:03 PM PDT  A Honduran former drug trafficker and mayor testified Tuesday that Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández wanted thousands of dollars in bribes from him for his re-election campaign in 2017. On the witness stand on the fifth day of the drug trial against Hernández's brother Tony Hernández, Amílcar Alexander Ardón said that in return he would receive protection for his smuggling activities. Ardón, who was mayor of the Honduran city of El Paraiso, also alleged that Juan Orlando Hernández asked him to bribe mayors in two departments, or provinces, "because their polls had low numbers." He said he paid $500,000 in Lempira department and about $60,000 in Copan.
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| Israel unveils the remains of 5,000-year-old city Posted: 08 Oct 2019 01:25 PM PDT  Israeli archaeologists on Sunday unveiled the remains of a 5,000-year-old city they said was one of the biggest from its era in the region, including fortifications, a ritual temple and a cemetery.
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| White House Says It Won’t Cooperate With Impeachment Inquiry Citing ‘Lasting Institutional Harm’ Posted: 08 Oct 2019 03:37 PM PDT  The White House on Tuesday wrote a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the chairmen of three Democratic committees informing House Democrats that the Trump administration does not intend to cooperate with the "unconstitutional" impeachment inquiry against President Trump."You have designed and implemented your inquiry in a manner that violates fundamental fairness and constitutionally mandated due process," White House counsel Pat Cipollone wrote in the eight-page letter.The White House lawyer launched a slew of accusations at Democrats, saying they have violated due process by denying Trump access to witnesses for cross-examining and the right to have counsel present and have withheld evidence and transcripts of testimony from the executive branch."Given that your inquiry lacks any legitimate constitutional foundation, any pretense of fairness, or even the most elementary due process protections, the Executive Branch cannot be expected to participate in it," Cipollone wrote. "Because participating in this inquiry under the current unconstitutional posture would inflict lasting institutional harm on the Executive Branch and lasting damage to the separation of powers, you have left the President no choice."The president also "cannot permit" the rest of his administration to participate in such a "partisan inquiry," Cipollone said.Democrats have also violated the separation of powers and led the country in an "unprecedented" and "dangerous" direction, Cipollone charged, by attempting to use impeachment to overturn the results of the 2016 election.The letter comes the same day Trump blocked Gordon Sondland, the U.S. European Union ambassador and a key witness in the impeachment probe, from testifying behind closed doors to the House Intelligence Committee, riling Democratic lawmakers.Trump has been criticized by both sides of the aisle over his July phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, during which Trump asked Zelensky to help his administration investigate allegations that the former vice president used his position to help a Ukrainian natural-gas company avoid a corruption probe soon after his son was appointed to its board of directors.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last month announced the opening of a formal impeachment inquiry into allegations that President Trump withheld Ukrainian military aid unless Ukraine investigated Biden.
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| Chicago teens stage 'die-in' to demand action on climate change; one man arrested Posted: 07 Oct 2019 07:24 PM PDT  Dozens of Chicago teens gathered across from Trump International Hotel and marched to City Hall Monday to demand action on climate change.
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| U.S. lawyer Michael Avenatti gets trial date on charges of stealing from ex-client Posted: 08 Oct 2019 01:33 PM PDT  Lawyer Michael Avenatti, who became nationally known as an outspoken critic of U.S. President Donald Trump before his arrest earlier this year, will stand trial in April on charges that he stole from his former client Stormy Daniels, a federal judge ruled Tuesday. U.S. District Judge Deborah Batts set the April 21 trial date at a brief hearing in Manhattan federal court. Avenatti, 48, was arrested in New York in March.
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| Syria Wanted a Nuclear Bomb, but in 2007 Israel's Air Force Destroyed Their Reactor Posted: 08 Oct 2019 12:50 AM PDT  And this is the story of how they did it.
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| Elon Musk paid convicted fraudster to spread false paedophile claims about British cave rescue hero, court documents allege Posted: 08 Oct 2019 09:33 AM PDT  Elon Musk paid a convicted fraudster to smear a British diving hero who he baselessly called a paedophile, according to court documents.The billionaire technology entrepreneur allegedly orchestrated a "malicious, false, and anonymous leak campaign" in a bid to trash the reputation of Vernon Unsworth, who helped to rescue a schoolboy football team trapped in a cave in Thailand last year.
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| UFO seekers are flocking to a huge Buddha statue in Thailand saying it is home to a wormhole that aliens use to travel to different dimensions Posted: 08 Oct 2019 02:19 AM PDT  A group of Buddhist worshippers on a remote hilltop in Thailand believe that aliens from Pluto communicate with people in the area.
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| Popovich lauds Silver's response to China over tweet rift Posted: 08 Oct 2019 03:59 PM PDT  Gregg Popovich, the NBA's longest-tenured coach, lauded NBA Commissioner Adam Silver on Tuesday for his stance supporting freedom of speech amid the ongoing rift with China. Popovich, speaking before his San Antonio Spurs faced the Miami Heat in a preseason game, said he recognized that Silver is in a difficult situation following the Chinese dismay over a tweet posted last week by Houston general manager Daryl Morey that showed support for anti-government protesters in Hong Kong.
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| Russian Operative Said ‘We Made America Great’ After Trump’s Win Posted: 08 Oct 2019 01:07 PM PDT ![Russian Operative Said 'We Made America Great' After Trump's Win]( "Russian Operative Said 'We Made America Great' After Trump's Win") (Bloomberg) -- Kremlin-directed operatives opened champagne when Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, according to a communication disclosed in a new Senate Intelligence Committee report outlining Russia's sweeping social media efforts to help him win."We uncorked a tiny bottle of champagne ... took one gulp each and looked into each other's eyes .... We uttered almost in unison: 'We made America great,'" one operative at the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency said in the message obtained by the Republican-led committee.The long-pending report by the Intelligence panel concluded that Russia directed an aggressive social media campaign to hurt Democrat Hillary Clinton and help Trump in the 2016 presidential election and warns similar efforts to interfere in U.S. politics are still under way. It was a bipartisan endorsement of the finding made by U.S. intelligence agencies and often questioned by Trump.The report, two years in the making, found that the Internet Research Agency "was overtly and almost invariably supportive of then-candidate Trump to the detriment of Secretary Clinton's campaign." As part of that effort, it targeted African-Americans through social media more than any other group.Chairman Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican, said the Russian interference campaign hasn't ended and other adversaries are engaged in similar attacks."Russia is waging an information warfare campaign against the U.S. that didn't start and didn't end with the 2016 election," he said. "Their goal is broader: to sow societal discord and erode public confidence in the machinery of government."Burr said Russia floods social media with false reports, conspiracy theories and trolls to breed distrust. "While Russia may have been the first to hone the modern disinformation tactics outlined in this report, other adversaries, including China, North Korea, and Iran, are following suit."Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the committee's top Democrat, warned of more interference to come in next year's election. "There's no doubt that bad actors will continue to try to weaponize the scale and reach of social media platforms to erode public confidence and foster chaos," he said.Transparency UrgedWarner said Congress should act to require transparency from social media companies and disclosure of political ads online.The committee had previously released portions of its analysis. The findings parallel the intelligence agencies' conclusions as well as parts of the report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.Among the findings were efforts by the Kremlin-directed IRA to convert social media into real-world actions. Operatives posing as U.S. political activists also "sought help from the Trump campaign to procure campaign materials and to organize and promote rallies."Trump has at times cited Russian President Vladimir Putin's assurances that Russia didn't meddle in the 2016 election, and the president has pursued in recent months a fringe theory that Ukraine conspired with Democrats to trigger an FBI investigation of election meddling that he's often called a "witch hunt."Committee RecommendationsAmong the report's recommendations is for the Trump administration to "publicly reinforce the danger of attempted foreign interference in the 2020 election." The committee suggested creating a task force to monitor other nations' social media interference efforts and develop a framework for deterrence.The committee also recommended that social media companies share more information about election interference with each other, as they have with extremist content, as well as providing it to government agencies and researchers. It also called for more publicity about the existence of influence operations.The panel urged that lawmakers consider expanding to social media the existing transparency requirements for political advertising on TV or the radio. Facebook, Google and Twitter have all put together ad transparency databases, but differences between them persist and legislative vehicles, such as the "Honest Ads Act" that Warner supports, have stalled.Senator Kamala Harris, a member of the Intelligence Committee who's running for the Democratic presidential nomination, said in a statement that the Russian tactics were "designed to suppress the votes of black Americans in particular" and that social media companies must step up their efforts to fight disinformation. She said they need to "ensure their workforces are diverse enough to identify and understand the cultural nuances that foreign actors exploit to divide and harm Americans."To contact the reporters on this story: Steven T. Dennis in Washington at sdennis17@bloomberg.net;Ben Brody in Washington, D.C. at btenerellabr@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Larry LiebertFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Passenger forcibly removed from American Airlines plane by police at Miami airport Posted: 07 Oct 2019 01:18 PM PDT  On Monday morning, a man was removed from an American Airlines plane by Miami-Dade Police using force.
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| The Latest: Police called to bar 2 hours before shootings Posted: 07 Oct 2019 02:23 PM PDT  The Kansas City, Kansas, police chief says officers responded to reports of a disturbance at a bar two hours before a shooting left four people dead and five wounded. Interim police Chief Michael York said Monday that officers could not find the man suspected of causing the disturbance and had no information that he planned return to the Tequila KC bar. Police said Javier Alatorre, 23, and Hugo Villanueva-Morales, 29, were each charged with four counts of first-degree murder.
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| 12 Power Strips and Surge Protectors to Keep You Organized and Powered Up Posted: 08 Oct 2019 10:37 AM PDT |
| US restricts visas for Chinese officials over internment of Muslim minorities Posted: 08 Oct 2019 03:36 PM PDT  * More than 1 million Uighurs and other minorities detained * Move is seen as victory for Pompeo and Pence over MnuchinParamilitary policemen stand in formation as they take part in an anti-terrorism oath-taking rally, in Kashgar, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, China, in 2017. Photograph: China Stringer Network/ReutersThe US has imposed visa restrictions on Chinese government and Communist party officials accused of being involved in the mass internment of more than a million Uighurs and other Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang province.The restrictions, announced by the state department on Tuesday, come a day after the US commerce department imposed export restrictions on US companies preventing them from selling their products – particularly face recognition and other surveillance technology – to 28 Chinese entities, including the Public Security Bureau and firms involved in surveillance in Xinjiang."China has forcibly detained over one million Muslims in a brutal, systematic campaign to erase religion and culture in Xinjiang. China must end its draconian surveillance and repression, release all those arbitrarily detained, and cease its coercion of Chinese Muslims abroad, the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, said in a statement.The US punitive measures mark the first time China has been held to account internationally for its programme of mass incarceration and persecution of religious minorities.The sanctions prompted a furious response from Beijing's embassy in Washington, which said that the US was using "the excuse of human rights" to interfere in the China's internal affairs.In a string of tweets the embassy said the move "seriously violates the basic norms governing international relations, interferes in China's internal affairs and undermines China's interests".The embassy said: "The counter-terrorism and de-radicalization measures in Xinjiang are aimed to eradicate the breeding soil of extremism and terrorism. They are in line with Chinese laws and international practices, and are supported by all 25 million people of various ethnic groups in Xinjiang."Inside the administration, the sanctions mark a victory for Pompeo, Vice-President Mike Pence, the administration's ambassador at large for international religious freedom, Sam Brownback, and the new deputy national security adviser, Matthew Pottinger, over the treasury secretary, Stephen Mnuchin.Mnuchin reportedly argued against sanctions that would further derail difficult trade talks. News of the sanctions drove stock prices lower on the assumption that it would make a trade deal less likely.Donald Trump himself has sought to avoid direct criticism of the Chinese government for its treatment of the country's Muslims, as well as its attempts to crush pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, so as to avoid a breakdown in his personal relations with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.At a meeting on religious freedom last month at the start of the UN general assembly, scheduled at the same time as a global climate action summit, Trump gave the keynote speech but did not mention China or the events in Xinjiang, leaving it to Pence, Pompeo and Brownback.The fact that these long-planned measures have been taken may reflect Trump's awareness of his reliance on the religious wing of the Republican party for his re-election bid next year.The state department announcement did not name the Chinese officials that had been targeted, but officials had previously pointed to the Xinjiang party secretary, Chen Quanguo, a member of the politburo.
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| Harley falters with electric bike debut, struggles to attract new generation Posted: 07 Oct 2019 01:49 PM PDT  Harley-Davidson is betting on electric motorcycles to attract the next generation of younger and more environmentally conscious riders to reverse declining U.S. sales.
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| UPDATE 2-Ethiopian Airlines flight makes emergency landing in Dakar, no casualties Posted: 08 Oct 2019 10:37 AM PDT ![UPDATE 2-Ethiopian Airlines flight makes emergency landing in Dakar, no casualties]( "UPDATE 2-Ethiopian Airlines flight makes emergency landing in Dakar, no casualties") An Ethiopian Airlines plane was forced to make an emergency landing minutes after taking off in Senegal on Tuesday because an engine had caught fire, an airport spokesman said. None of the 90 passengers or crew were injured, spokesman Tidiane Tamba told Reuters. The airline confirmed on Twitter that its Boeing 767 aircraft had to land unexpectedly at Senegal's Blaise Diagne International Airport near the capital Dakar because of "a technical problem" without providing more detail on the cause.
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| One U.S. Battleship Fired Nearly 6,000 Massive 16-Inch Shells During Vietnam War Posted: 08 Oct 2019 01:43 AM PDT  Over the course of her relatively short Vietnam patrol New Jersey fired 5,688 16-inch gun rounds and 14,891 five-inch gun rounds, far more than she fired during World War II and the Korean War combined.
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