| Former FDA commissioner sees 'a lot of risk' of 2nd coronavirus wave Posted: 07 Jun 2020 04:58 PM PDT  Dr. Scott Gottlieb told Yahoo News' "Skullduggery" podcast that he is worried Americans are on track to confront a second wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
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| Cities Ask if It's Time to Defund Police and 'Reimagine' Public Safety Posted: 06 Jun 2020 07:07 AM PDT  After more than a week of protests against police brutality and unrest that left parts of the city burned, a growing chorus of elected officials, civic leaders and residents in Minneapolis are urging the city to break up the Police Department and reimagine the way policing works."We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department," Jeremiah Ellison, a member of the City Council, said on Twitter this week. "And when we're done, we're not simply gonna glue it back together," he added. "We are going to dramatically rethink how we approach public safety and emergency response."At least three others, including the City Council president, Lisa Bender, have also called for taking the Police Department apart.Minneapolis is not the only city asking the question. Across the country, calls to defund, downsize or abolish police departments are gaining new traction after national unrest following the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after a white police officer pressed a knee into his neck for nearly nine minutes on a busy Minneapolis street.On Wednesday, Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles announced that he would cut as much as $150 million from a planned increase in the Police Department's budget. And in New York, Corey Johnson, the City Council speaker, and Daniel Dromm, a council member from Queens, vowed even before the latest protests to cut the Police Department's $6 billion budget, which they noted had been left almost untouched even as education and youth programs faced steep cuts.The calls to redirect money away from the police come as cities face steep budget shortfalls because of the economic fallout from the coronavirus, and as public anger against police brutality has roiled the country. Redirecting funding is one of the few levers that elected officials have over the police, who are frequently shielded by powerful unions and labor arbitrators who reinstate officers fired for misconduct.Dromm, chair of the city's finance committee, said that in order to restore some funding to youth programs he was considering a delay in the next class of police cadets and scrutinizing the $700 million in police overtime that has been budgeted for this year. He said the events of recent days -- including police officers' treatment of peaceful protesters -- had shown that years of efforts to reform the department had not succeeded."The culture in the New York City Police Department has not changed," he said. "The white shirts, the commanding officers, they kind of get it and talk the talk, but the average beat cop doesn't believe in it and we've seen this over and over again."In Minneapolis, calls to dismantle the police are likely to further demoralize a force that already is reeling from the killing of Floyd, the criminal charges filed against four former officers, looting in the city and the burning of a police precinct."That's not the answer," said Gwen Gunter, a retired lieutenant of the Minneapolis Police Department who is also a member of a black police officers association."There's a part of me that hopes they do succeed," she said, "because I want to see how long it takes before they say, 'Oh, no we do need a Police Department.'"The Minneapolis police chief, Medaria Arradondo, pledged Friday to "continue to work on efforts to improve public trust, public safety and transformational culture change of the MPD." His statement did not address the recent calls to dismantle the department.Those who support the movement to scale back the responsibilities of the police say officers frequently abuse their power and instigate violence rather than prevent it. They say many social welfare tasks that currently fall to armed police officers -- responding to drug overdoses and working with people who have a mental illness or are homeless -- would be better carried out by nurses or social workers.One model that members of the Minneapolis City Council cite is Cahoots, a nonprofit mobile crisis intervention program that has handled mental health calls in Eugene, Oregon, since 1989. Cahoots employees responded to more than 24,000 calls for service last year -- about 20% of the area's 911 calls -- on a budget of about $2 million, probably far less than what it would have cost the Police Department to do the work, said Tim Black, the program's operations coordinator."There's a strong argument to be made from a fiscally conservative perspective," Black said. "Public safety institutions generally have these massive budgets and there's questions about what they are doing."But handing over one aspect of police work is not a panacea. Eugene has had at least two officers shoot people in the past year.Last year, after a campaign by a group called Durham Beyond Policing, the City Council in Durham, North Carolina, voted against hiring 18 new police officers and began discussing a "community safety and wellness task force" instead.Minneapolis took a step in that direction last year when it redirected funding for eight new police officers into a new office for violence prevention."We have an opportunity to reimagine what the future of public safety looks like," said Steve Fletcher, a City Council member who pushed that effort. But he acknowledged that the effort to build a viable alternative to the police on social and mental health issues would take years and that no one could be sure what it would look like in the end."It's very easy as an activist to call for the abolishment of the police," said Fletcher, himself a former activist who protested a 2015 police shooting. "It is a heavier decision when you realize that it's your constituents that are going to be the victims of crime you can't respond to if you dismantle that without an alternative."Black activists in the city have been calling for the police to be dismantled for years, issuing a report in 2018 that argued that the oppression of poor people and black people was baked into the very founding of the department in 1867. Police reform has roiled politics in the city for years, and politicians who have been seen as slow to reform have been defeated. But only recently have calls to dismantle the police been widely embraced by white leaders in the city.In Linden Hills, a predominantly white Minneapolis neighborhood near a golf course and two lakes that has not seen very many of the overly aggressive police tactics that the city's black residents complain about, residents acknowledge that the department needs to be significantly reformed. But they have been leery of pledges to abolish the police."What does that even mean?" asked Steve Birch, the chair of the Linden Hills Neighborhood Council. "Then who provides the public service of policing? I don't even know how to answer that."But in Kingfield, a neighborhood in South Minneapolis not far from where Floyd died, Chris DesRoches, the president of the neighborhood association, said he supported defunding the department."The killing of George Floyd has opened the eyes of people to the worst case scenario of police," he said, adding that the case has created an opportunity "for white people to start hearing what communities of color and community leaders have been saying all along, which is that the police are an organization which has been actively harmful to our communities."Mayor Jacob Frey has said he does not support calls to dismantle the department. On Friday, City Council members voted to accept a civil rights investigation by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights and to adopt updates to the Police Department's use of force policy that include a ban on chokeholds. The topic of eliminating some of the department's functions was not discussed.Still, council members acknowledged during their debate that something had changed fundamentally in the way that city residents view the police. The University of Minnesota, as well as the school board and the parks department in Minneapolis, decided in recent days to cut ties with the Police Department.Many in Minneapolis have said that Floyd's death provided a stark illustration of how far efforts to institute reforms in the wake of the 2015 police shooting of Jamar Clark, a 24-year-old African American man, had fallen short.After that shooting, police officers received implicit bias training and body cameras. The department appointed its first black police chief. Community policing was emphasized. Policies were rewritten to include a "duty to intervene" if an officer saw a colleague endangering a member of the public -- a policy that was key to the swift firing and arrest of the four officers involved in Floyd's death.But those reforms were not sufficient to prevent Floyd's death."The fact that none of the officers took the initiative to follow the policy to intervene, it just became really clear to me that this system wasn't going to work, no matter how much we threw at it," said Alondra Cano, who heads the City Council's public safety committee.Cano, who says she was part of a "prosecute the police" campaign while she was a college student, acknowledged that it might take years to build viable alternatives. But she said many city residents, some of whom have formed mutual protection neighborhood groups in the wake of the unrest, were ready to try."There's a moment of deep commitment that I've never seen before, and that gives me leave as an elected official to start experimenting with other systems," she said.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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| Palestinian Islamic Jihad group buries ex-leader in Damascus Posted: 07 Jun 2020 10:22 AM PDT  Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad buried its former leader Ramadan Shalah in Syria Sunday, an AFP correspondent said, a day after he died in neighbouring Lebanon. The 62-year-old died in a Beirut hospital before his body was transported across the border to Syria, a Palestinian source said. Shalah led Iran-backed Islamic Jihad from 1995 until 2018 when he was replaced by his deputy Ziad al-Nakhala.
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| Portuguese prosecutors to trawl German suspect's records in McCann case Posted: 06 Jun 2020 04:42 AM PDT  Portugal's prosecutor's office said on Saturday it would pore over its files to see if a German man suspected of murdering British girl Madeleine McCann, who disappeared in the southern Algarve region in 2007, has a criminal record there. Germany is investigating a 43-year-old German national on suspicion of murder, the Braunschweig state prosecutor said on Thursday.. Lawyer Jan-Christian Hochmann confirmed to Reuters on Saturday he was representing the suspect, Christian B., but declined to comment.
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| Democrats' legislation would overhaul police accountability Posted: 07 Jun 2020 12:24 PM PDT  Democrats are proposing to overhaul legal protections for police, create a national database of excessive-force episodes and ban police choke holds in legislation coming Monday in response to the deaths of black Americans at the hands of law enforcement, according to a draft outline obtained by The Associated Press. "We're in a real moment in our country," Rep. Karen Bass, D-Ca., chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union," speaking after days of massive protests set off by the death of George Floyd and other African Americans involving the police. The Justice in Policing Act confronts several aspects of law enforcement accountability and practices that have come under criticism, especially as more and more police violence is captured on cell phone video and shared widely across the nation, and the world.
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| A majority of voters are uncomfortable attending large gatherings, dining out Posted: 07 Jun 2020 06:01 AM PDT  As states continue to ease restrictions, Americans remain wary about the pandemic's spread according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
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| Overnight curfew declared for NYC Posted: 07 Jun 2020 12:07 PM PDT  The curfew will be in effect from 11 p.m. Monday night until 5 a.m. Tuesday morning.
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| Coronavirus: The misinformation circulating in Africa about Covid-19 Posted: 07 Jun 2020 01:24 AM PDT  We examine claims of bribes and poison, a positive virus test that was not and anti-virus "badges".
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| Coronavirus: Factory discards Covid-19 swab tests after Trump visit Posted: 06 Jun 2020 11:44 AM PDT  A medical swab manufacturer was forced to discard coronavirus tests following Donald Trump's visit to its Maine facility, according to USA Today.While workers in lab coats and personal protective equipment worked on the factory floor during the president's visit to Puritan Medical Products on Friday, Mr Trump — who did not wear a mask — walked through the facility and visited with workers.
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| The New York Times Made A Really Bad Call Publishing Tom Cotton's 'Send in the Troops' Op-Ed Posted: 07 Jun 2020 08:45 AM PDT  On June 3 the Times published in its opinion section an essay by a Republican senator from Arkansas, Tom Cotton, headlined "Send in the troops".
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| 10-foot great white shark kills surfer in Australia Posted: 07 Jun 2020 08:09 AM PDT  A 60-year-old surfer was attacked and killed by a 10-foot great white shark off the coast of New South Wales state on Sunday, according to officials.
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| Venezuela's Guaido reappears after claim he hid in French embassy Posted: 06 Jun 2020 08:59 PM PDT  Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido reappeared in the street in videos distributed Saturday by his team and parliamentary allies, after foreign minister Jorge Arreaza claimed he had taken refuge in the French embassy in Caracas. Guaido, the parliamentary speaker who is recognized as interim president of Venezuela by 50 countries, was referring to the accusation by the United States of "narcoterrorism" against the socialist government of Nicolas Maduro. The videos -- which did not specify the date or location they were filmed -- were released after Arreaza on Thursday said Guaido was hiding in the French embassy, and demanded he be handed over to "Venezuelan justice."
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| Floyd's death spurs 'Gen Z' activists to set up new D.C. rights group Posted: 07 Jun 2020 02:40 PM PDT  Jacqueline LaBayne and Kerrigan Williams met for the very first time in person on Wednesday, at a sit-in they organized in front of the U.S. Capitol over the death of George Floyd. Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American man, died after a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes. "We spotted each other via a mutual friend's thread on Twitter immediately following yet another police-executed murder," said Williams, a 22-year-old black woman who moved to Washington from Houston, Texas and is pursuing a master's degree in criminology at Georgetown University.
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| 'It’s Obvious There’s a Cultural Rot': Activists Collect Hundreds of Examples of Alleged Police Misconduct in One Public Spreadsheet Posted: 07 Jun 2020 03:26 PM PDT  So far, it includes over 300 videos of alleged police misconduct, as well as a some incidents researchers found troubling
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| 'It's a Little Conflicting:' Guard Troops Hold the Line on Fellow Citizens in DC Posted: 06 Jun 2020 02:07 AM PDT  So far, approximately 41,500 Guard troops have been activated in 32 states and D.C. to support the civil unrest response.
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| Treasure chest hidden in Rocky Mountains finally found Posted: 07 Jun 2020 11:58 AM PDT  A bronze chest filled with gold, jewels, and other valuables worth more than $1 million and hidden a decade ago somewhere in the Rocky Mountain wilderness has been found, according to a famed art and antiquities collector who created the treasure hunt. Forrest Fenn, 89, told the Santa Fe New Mexican on Sunday that a man who did not want his name released — but was from "back East" — located the chest a few days ago and the discovery was confirmed by a photograph the man sent him. "It was under a canopy of stars in the lush, forested vegetation of the Rocky Mountains and had not moved from the spot where I hid it more than 10 years ago," Fenn said in a statement on his website Sunday that still did not reveal the exact location.
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| Coronavirus: US-China virus row flares with senator's comments Posted: 07 Jun 2020 04:18 AM PDT  Rick Scott tells the BBC, without evidence, China is trying to "slow down" vaccine development in the West.
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| Coronavirus news and updates: Global deaths top 400K; US officials urge demonstrators to get tested; New York to allow in-person graduations Posted: 07 Jun 2020 03:33 PM PDT  Global deaths top 400,000. U.S. officials urge demonstrators to get tested. NY to allow in-person graduations. The latest coronavirus news.
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| The president of the Chicago Police Board said he was struck five times by officers with batons after trying to defuse tensions at a protest Posted: 05 Jun 2020 11:42 PM PDT  "This is the duality I live with as a black man in America, even one who is privileged to be part of systems of power," Ghian Foreman said.
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| 'Clinics will be forced to close': Abortion rights backers fearful of upcoming Supreme Court ruling Posted: 07 Jun 2020 03:55 PM PDT  A Louisiana law in question requires clinic doctors to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles.
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| Iran says it is ready for more prisoner exchanges with U.S. Posted: 07 Jun 2020 10:44 AM PDT  Michael White, a U.S. Navy veteran detained in Iran since 2018, was freed last Thursday as part of a deal in which the United States allowed Iranian-American physician Majid Taheri to visit Iran - a rare instance of U.S.-Iranian cooperation. White's release came two days after the United States deported Sirous Asgari, an Iranian professor imprisoned in the United States despite having being acquitted of stealing trade secrets.
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| 65% of Americans Believe Racial Profiling is Commonly Used: Study Posted: 06 Jun 2020 07:00 PM PDT  Want to know what Americans really think about the police? One study has some important clues.
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| Maryland sheriff reacts to DC mayor calling on Trump to pull troops from city Posted: 06 Jun 2020 06:05 AM PDT  Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser calls on Trump to withdraw federal law enforcement and evict our national guardsmen amid protests; Frederick County Sheriff Chuck Jenkins weighs in.
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| Anger as Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro removes surging coronavirus death toll from official websites Posted: 07 Jun 2020 02:57 AM PDT  Brazil's government was accused of trying to cover up the scale of its catastrophic coronavirus epidemic after it stopped publishing its total rates of deaths and infections. The Federal Health Ministry closed the webpage showing daily, weekly and monthly figures on infections and deaths in Brazilian states on its Website on Friday. The move came as president Jair Bolsonaro, who has previously dismissed the deadly virus as "a little flu," claimed that the official count was "not representative" of the country's situation and threatened to pull Brazil out of the World Health Organisation. The last figures released before counting stopped showed Brazil had recorded over 34,000 deaths from Covid-19, the third highest in the world after the United States and the United Kingdom. It had 615,000 infections, the second-highest behind the United States. The webpage reappeared on Saturday, but only showing the numbers of infections for states and the nation recorded over the previous 24 hours - not cumulative totals.
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| Mike Huckabee ‘Livid’ at Republicans Who Won’t Bow Down to Trump Posted: 07 Jun 2020 09:16 AM PDT  Former Governor Mike Huckabee (R-AR) expressed his shock and dismay Sunday morning that several prominent Republicans will reportedly not support President Donald Trump in the 2020 election."Well I don't know if it's true because it's in The New York Times," Huckabee snarked on Fox & Friends Weekend, claiming that the paper is "wrong more than they're right." "But if that's true and if you have people who were nominated, and in the case of President Bush actually elected to be president by Republicans, and they will no longer support the Republican nominee who went through the process and got elected," Huckabee said, "then I'm going to be not just unhappy, I'm going to be livid." He went on to say that he and his fellow conservatives "didn't all agree on some of the policies of Bush or McCain or Romney" but "when it came down to it" they knew they could either "choose a far-left liberal or we could choose somebody that was closer to our views."Huckabee admitted that Trump might not have the best "bedside manner," but still, he added, "Here's what I just don't understand with these never-Trumpers." "This president is more pro-life than we've ever had, period," he said. "He's more pro-Israel. He has deregulated so much government so that the businesses of America can thrive and they have until this COVID stuff happened." He notably neglected to mention that the president's inaction on COVID-19 made that situation much worse.LeBron James Calls Out Fox News Host Laura Ingraham Over Drew Brees HypocrisyAfter baselessly claiming that Trump has "done more for minorities than any president in my lifetime in actually helping people to have good, decent jobs and a future," Huckabee told Republicans who don't like Trump's "personality" to "get over it!" "This is not about electing a personality," Huckabee said. "This isn't Hollywood. This is the rough, tumble world of politics. And maybe he's not as genteel as some of us would like. But, by gosh, he's getting the job done, and it's time Republicans rally because if they don't, they're going to get Joe Biden, who isn't pro-life, who is for higher taxes, open borders, he's going to succumb to China. Everything that we find disgusting he's going to embrace it, including the socialists out here. That's why we have to realize this is a simple choice and we better make the right move." After Huckabee delivered his fear-based rant Sunday morning on Fox, yet another prominent Republican, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, officially endorsed Joe Biden on CNN. Calling Trump's rhetoric "dangerous for our democracy" and "dangerous for our country," Powell said he believes "the country is getting wise to this and we're not going to put up with it anymore." Joe Biden Gets Super Unhelpful Defense from Mike HuckabeeRead 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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| China defends its coronavirus response in new report Posted: 06 Jun 2020 11:18 PM PDT  Senior Chinese officials released a lengthy report Sunday on the nation's response to the coronavirus pandemic, defending their government's actions and saying that China had provided information in a timely and transparent manner. China "wasted no time" in sharing information such as the genome sequence for the new virus with the World Health Organization as well as relevant countries and regional organizations, according to the report. An Associated Press investigation found that government labs sat on releasing the genetic map of the virus for more than a week in January, delaying its identification in a third country and the sharing of information needed to develop tests, drugs and a vaccine.
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| Cuomo: "We have a moment here where we can make change" Posted: 06 Jun 2020 09:24 AM PDT  Cuomo spoke as protests against police brutality and the death of George Floyd stretch into a second weekend.
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| Migrant worker virus exodus plunges India's factories into crisis Posted: 07 Jun 2020 12:40 AM PDT  An acute shortage of workers has turned the roar of machines to a soft hum at a footwear factory near New Delhi, just one of thousands in India struggling to restart after an exodus of migrant workers during the virus lockdown. India is slowly emerging from strict containment measures imposed in late March as leaders look to revive the battered economy, but manufacturers don't have enough workers to man the machinery. Kharbanda said the company's sports shoe unit had been sitting idle as there were no skilled workers to operate the high-tech machines.
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| Tropical Storm Cristobal makes landfall along southeast Louisiana coast Posted: 07 Jun 2020 05:48 PM PDT  Tropical Storm Cristobal was expected to make landfall Sunday along the Louisiana coast with flooding rain, dangerous storm surge and blustery winds.
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| Rotterdam police seize 151 million euros worth of cocaine Posted: 07 Jun 2020 06:28 AM PDT |
| George Floyd death: Australians defy virus in mass anti-racism rallies Posted: 06 Jun 2020 04:10 AM PDT  Protesters march in support of George Floyd and indigenous Australians despite coronavirus warnings.
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| ICE special agents detain Floyd protester in NYC Posted: 06 Jun 2020 01:01 PM PDT  "The fact that he's a man of Puerto Rican descent is really concerning because it raises questions about racial profiling," said Terry Lawson, of the Immigrant Defense Project.
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| Is the Confederate Flag Unconstitutional? Posted: 07 Jun 2020 04:30 AM PDT  For those who want the flag to come down, the message is a reminder of white supremacy and the war fought to maintain slavery.
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| Hillary Clinton questions how 'anybody with a beating heart and a working mind' can still support Trump after disastrous coronavirus and protest response Posted: 07 Jun 2020 11:46 AM PDT  Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke out about her 2016 presidential rival Donald Trump, calling his time in office a "failure" and questioning how anyone could continue to support him.Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, Ms Clinton lashed out at President Donald Trump, criticising his leadership and characterising him as uncaring and incompetent.
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| Thousands march in NYC as curfew ends and peace prevails Posted: 07 Jun 2020 04:36 AM PDT  Police moved barricades Sunday so protesters could approach the Trump International Hotel and Tower in midtown Manhattan as thousands continued to march against police brutality — this time without a curfew looming in the night. Mayor Bill de Blasio lifted the city's 8 p.m. curfew ahead of schedule Sunday after a peaceful night Saturday, free of the clashes or ransacking of stores that rocked the city days earlier. "I want to thank everybody who has expressed their views peacefully," de Blasio said Sunday morning.
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| Dispatch: 'A bad officer can just laugh' - George Floyd's killing and Minneapolis police failures Posted: 07 Jun 2020 09:20 AM PDT  On Sept 9, 2010 David Cornelius Smith, 28, an unarmed black man, died face down on a YMCA basketball court in Minneapolis as a white officer knelt on him for four minutes. Police had been called because Mr Smith was "throwing a basketball aggressively". No criminal charges were brought, and the officer was not disciplined. No one on the court had a smartphone and there was little coverage of the incident, even locally. America has not heard the name of David Cornelius Smith. A decade later, two miles away, and in remarkably similar circumstances - they both suffocated - George Floyd, an unarmed black man, died on a street corner beneath the knee of Derek Chauvin, a white officer. Bystanders filmed it, and America erupted in protest. But, shocking as it was, Mr Floyd's death was no isolated case.
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| Irene Triplett, last person to collect an American civil war pension, dies at 90 Posted: 07 Jun 2020 03:00 AM PDT  Daughter of private who fought for both sides and had children in his 80s lived for years in a North Carolina nursing homeThe last person to receive a US government pension from the American civil war has died.Irene Triplett was 90 when she died last Sunday in Wilkesboro, North Carolina. Her father, Mose Triplett, fought for the Confederacy and the Union in the civil war, which began in 1861 and ended with the defeat of the slave power in 1865. He applied for his Union pension 20 years after the war and in 1930, when his daughter was born, he was 83.The Wall Street Journal, which spoke to Irene Triplett for a story in 2014, reported that she died "from complications following surgery for injuries from a fall, according to the nursing home where she lived".Dennis St Andrew, a commander of the North Carolina Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, told the Journal Triplett was "a part of history"."You're talking to somebody whose father was in the civil war," he said. "Which is mind-bending."But to Stephanie McCurry, a historian of the civil war and Reconstruction era at Columbia University in New York, Triplett's death acquired a deeper resonance by occurring in the midst of national civil unrest over the killing by Minneapolis police of George Floyd, an African American man."Just like the Confederate monuments issue, which is blowing up right now, I think this is a reminder of the long reach of slavery, secession and the civil war," she told the Washington Post. "It reminds you of the battle over slavery and its legitimacy in the United States."Each month, Triplett collected $73.13 from the Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA), a total of $877.56 a year. Her father earned the sum by defecting north in 1863 after missing the battle of Gettysburg, the turning point of the war."Pvt Triplett enlisted in the 53rd North Carolina Infantry Regiment in May 1862," the Journal reported, citing Confederate records which showed he was then 16.And Triplett "transferred to the 26th North Carolina Infantry Regiment early the following year", "fell ill as his regiment marched north" then "ran away from the hospital … while his unit suffered devastating losses at Gettysburg".A deserter, Triplett "made his way to Tennessee and, in 1864, enlisted in … the 3rd North Carolina Mounted Infantry", Kirk's Raiders, which "carried out a campaign of sabotage against Confederate targets".Mose Triplett was unsurprisingly not popular in post-war North Carolina but eventually, in 1924, still childless, he married a second time. He was nearly 80. His new wife, Elida Hall, was 34. As the Journal put it, "such an age difference wasn't rare, especially during the Great Depression when civil war veterans found themselves with both a pension and a growing need for care."Triplett and Hall had five children but only two survived: Irene, who like her mother suffered from mental disabilities, and Everette, a son born when Mose Triplett was 87. As the Journal wrote in 2014, "Irene and Everette Triplett were born in tough country during tough times. The forested hills ran with white lightning from illegal stills. Ms Triplett said she didn't drink moonshine, but she got hooked on tobacco in first grade.""I dipped snuff in school, and I chewed tobacco in school," Triplett said then. "I raised homemade tobacco. I chewed that, too. I chewed it all."In 1938, aged 92, Mose Triplett attended a reunion at Gettysburg. In his remarks, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt referred to the Gettysburg Address, delivered in November 1863: "Lincoln spoke in solace for all who fought upon this field; and the years have laid their balm upon their wounds. Men who wore the blue and men who wore the gray are here together, a fragment spared by time."Newsreel footage posted to YouTube by CSPAN tells of "2,500 veterans, north and south", black and white, marking "the 75th anniversary of America's Armageddon".Housed in the Confederate camp, Triplett reportedly kept quiet about the double service that placed him in rarefied company. The Victorian journalist and explorer Henry Morton Stanley, for example, also fought for both sides.Triplett died shortly afterwards. His gravestone, in Wilkes county, says only: "He was a civil war soldier."In 1943, Irene and her mother moved to the Wilkes county poor house. In 1960, they moved to a care home. Elida Hall died in 1967. Everette Triplett died in 1996. Irene lived on, her care paid for by Medicaid and the civil war pension.The Journal reported that though Irene "saw little of her relatives … a pair of civil war buffs visited and sent her money to spend on Dr Pepper and chewing tobacco".Jamie Phillips, the home's activities director, told the Post Triplett liked gospel music, cream cheese cheeseballs and laughing."A lot of people were interested in her story," Phillips said, "but she'd always deflect the conversation to something different going on in the news."
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| Storm Cristobal slows advance, dropping heavy rains on Louisiana Posted: 07 Jun 2020 11:31 AM PDT  Tropical Storm Cristobal on Sunday slowed its advance through the Gulf of Mexico, bringing a coastal storm surge, high winds and rain to southeast Louisiana, where it is expected make landfall later today. The storm was about 30 miles (48 km) southeast of Grand Isle, Louisiana, at 1 p.m. on Sunday and moving at north at about 5 miles per hour. It is not expected to become a hurricane but will drop up to 12 inches (30 cm) of rain in some areas as bands move through the central and eastern Gulf Coast, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
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| China imports plunge, exports fall on virus hit to global growth Posted: 06 Jun 2020 10:47 PM PDT  China's exports and imports fell in May as the economic slowdown abroad started to take its toll, and after a surprise jump driven by increased demand for anti-epidemic supplies, official data showed Sunday. Analysts have warned of signs that a larger downturn awaits. Part of the plunge in the value of imports could be explained by falling commodity prices worldwide, said Rajiv Biswas of IHS Markit.
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| Amid pandemic, Iran doubles down on social media 'modesty,' arrests hundreds Posted: 07 Jun 2020 11:42 AM PDT  As authorities in Iran crack down on social media users, young people are mired not only in a pandemic but also a growing cultural battle.
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| Marines order Confederate flags removed in ban that includes bumper stickers and clothing Posted: 06 Jun 2020 06:30 PM PDT  The order directs Marine Corps commanders to find and remove displays of the Confederate flag in public areas, including bumper stickers and clothing.
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| 'We know what we have to lose now': Pandemic, protests have Michigan tilting Biden's way Posted: 07 Jun 2020 03:07 AM PDT  Still, the presumptive Democratic nominee can't afford to take the African American vote for granted, voters and Democratic strategists said.
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| ISIS Is the Cockroach Caliphate That Just Keeps Coming Back Posted: 06 Jun 2020 01:56 AM PDT  Early this past March, a team of U.S. Marine Raiders—the Corps' Special Operations forces—found itself locked in a firefight with well-entrenched jihadist insurgents in the mountains near the town of Makhmur in northern Iraq. The Marines were attached to an Iraqi counterterrorism task force at the time. Their mission was to clear the insurgents out of a tunnel complex at the base of the mountains. Before the last shots were fired that day, more than two dozen jihadists had been killed, and their redoubt was captured. Two Marines, Captain Moises A. Navas and Gunnery Sergeant Diego D. Pago, lost their lives in savage, close-in fighting. They are among the last few American service members to be killed in Iraq, a country the United States hoped to transform into a pro-Western bulwark against terrorism and instability in the Middle East, but failed to do so.The Marines were killed in action against soldiers of the most feared and successful jihadist organization in history—the Islamic State, also known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and Daesh. ISIS has distinguished itself in a crowded field through acts of ghastly, unspeakable violence against all "infidels and apostates," and its establishment in northern Iraq and Syria of a short-lived, rigidly intolerant proto-state, "purified" of all concessions to modernity and religious toleration. The caliphate was methodically destroyed by a U.S.-led multinational coalition between 2014 and 2019.Now, just a bit more than a year after the fall of ISIS's last redoubt in Syria, there is a strong consensus among Middle East experts and military analysts that ISIS is on the rebound, taking full advantage of the weakness of the Iraqi government and the swirling chaos that prevails throughout the region. Meanwhile, ISIS's affiliates in North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Arabian Peninsula are gaining in numbers and capability.What Baghdadi's Death Means for al Qaeda—and Why It MattersAccording to a recent report submitted to the U.N. Security Council by a panel of international experts, ISIS has been "mounting increasingly bold insurgent attacks in [Iraq and Syria], calling and planning for the breakout of ISIS fighters in detention facilities, and exploiting weaknesses in the security environment of both countries."Despite the October 2019 death of ISIS's supreme leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi at the hands of a Delta Force squadron, the group remains well-funded and organized. At least 20,000 of the estimated 30,000 foreign fighters who participated in its earlier conquest remain alive and committed to the cause.A week after the Marine Raiders' battle in the cave complex in March, ISIS released another in a long line of propaganda videos, depicting graphic scenes of recent beheadings of Iraqi soldiers and a savage ISIS attack on ordinary Iraqis in Kirkuk Province, whose only offense seems to have been they were enjoying playing a pickup soccer game. The narrator in the film intones, "America thinks that victory is killing one or more leaders… or losing control of a city or land. No, defeat is the loss of the will to fight. Your armies do not scare us." According to Hassan Hassan, an ISIS expert at the Center for Global Policy in Washington, D.C., Islamic State fighters in early April "conducted several attacks in Kirkuk, Diyala, and Saladin [provinces in Iraq]. Such attacks included the attempted storming of the counterterrorism and intelligence directorate in Kirkuk, and several coordinated attacks in Saladin. The attacks were among the most sophisticated in years."Experts agree that President Donald Trump's decision to pull most of America's military forces out of Syria last October has been an important factor in opening the door for ISIS's resurgence. The decision effectively greenlighted a Turkish attack on the Kurds of the Syrian Democratic Forces, key U.S. allies in the fight against ISIS. These troops had been guarding about 10,000 captured ISIS fighters in various detention centers and prisons. The Turkish incursion forced a significant percentage of the Kurdish guards to withdraw from the detention centers and redeploy elsewhere. Hundreds of ISIS fighters, including a number of senior members of the organization, have escaped, and others may well do so in the coming months, with the help of their brothers on the outside. One of Baghdadi's last public acts was to call on his brothers and sisters to rise up and free those who remained detained. At the Hasaka prison in northeastern Syria, which holds between 4,000 and 5,000 captives, ISIS militants began breaking down doors and digging holes in walls between cells in late March. A riot broke out, and a number of ISIS fighters escaped before order was restored. Five weeks later, in early May, ISIS fighters briefly took control of the same prison.Jailbreaks, of course, played a crucial role in Baghdadi's successful strategy for establishing the caliphate in the first place. After American combat forces left Iraq in late 2011, ISIS fighters freed many hundreds of detained al Qaeda in Iraq (ISIS's precursor) combatants from prisons in Tikrit, Kirkuk, and even the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.According to the U.N. report, Syrian Democratic Forces in the region have been unable "to maintain adequate control over a restive population of detained ISIL fighters, as well as family members, numbering more than 100,000."Most of the captured family members remain at the al-Hol refugee camp in Syria near the Iraq border, where they live in appalling squalor with inadequate food and sanitation—a recipe for despair and radicalization of the young adult males. Idlib Province in Syria, the site of the last caliphate stronghold, remains dominated by ISIS fighters and those friendly to them. Anbar Province of Iraq, near the Syrian border, also remains a hotbed of ISIS activity, according to the report.The U.N. report is bad news, of course, but to serious students of the War on Terror, it is hardly surprising. Way back in December 2017, as ISIS's last toehold in Iraq fell, President Trump declared that ISIS had been "100 percent defeated." The statement was one in a long line of naïve and wildly over-optimistic pronouncements by American war leaders engaged in counterinsurgencies, including, most famously, George W. Bush's May 1, 2003 triumphal declaration aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended," and General William Westmoreland's claim that he "had the enemy on the ropes" in Vietnam, two months before the Tet Offensive of January 1968 forced Washington to admit it couldn't win in Southeast Asia by force of arms.In Vietnam, American soldiers and Marines often had the demoralizing experience of engaging Viet Cong and North Vietnamese regiments and divisions their superiors had declared vanquished or destroyed. Like corks floating in the ocean surf, these phoenix-like fighting organizations would reappear again and again after being "defeated."So it is in the Global War on Terror, where America's adversaries, ISIS included, have an inconvenient habit of resurrecting themselves from defeat. Not long after the Taliban and al Qaeda had been routed in Afghanistan, both organizations resurfaced with a vengeance. Today, the Taliban is a much more powerful organization than it was before the United States launched its October 2001 unconventional assault with the help of the Northern Alliance. Indeed, most experts on the War in Afghanistan believe the Taliban has a very good chance of reestablishing control over vast swaths of that nation's countryside as soon as American forces depart.Under the leadership of an uneducated Jordanian thug named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) became the dominant force in the hydra-headed insurgency against the Americans in Iraq by 2005. By late 2007, Zarqawi's organization had been severely degraded by a bold new American counterinsurgency strategy, a surge in U.S. combat power, and an alliance with the militias of a group of Sunni tribal sheikhs who had become disillusioned with AQI's shockingly violent tactics.Taken together, these developments resulted in a considerable diminution of sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiites in Anbar Province and in Baghdad, and they broke al Qaeda's hold over a number of other insurgent groups. Civilian casualties dropped off markedly.Military analysts praised the surge and the Americans' new counterinsurgency strategy effusively, seeing it as a major turning point in the conflict that might well bring order and security to the entire country.Sadly, the success of that strategy proved to be fleeting. Once U.S. combat troops left, writes defense analyst Carter Malkasian, the sheikhs "were too divided and isolated to mount an effective resistance" against a resurgent ISIS, and "almost everything the United States fought for between 2003 and 2007 was lost."The new American strategy tamped down the violence, but did little to enhance the effectiveness of the Iraqi security forces, or the legitimacy of the government in Baghdad in the eyes of its own people, especially the disenfranchised Sunni minority. That government remains deeply corrupt, faction-ridden, and criminally unresponsive to its citizens, even today. Back in 2008 historian Thomas Powers called Iraq "a seething cockpit of warring religions, political movements, social classes and ethnic groups, many influenced by Iran." And so it remains today.The loss of the new caliphate in 2019 has done little to damage the highly sophisticated social media-driven propaganda campaign of the Islamic State, with its celebration of extreme violence against unbelievers, and its alluring promise of eternal salvation for martyrs. The dream of re-establishing that caliphate remains strong in the hearts of the believers, while the fecklessness of the government in Iraq, and its failure to address the grievances of Sunni Muslims, who constitute about 20 percent of its population, only lend credence to predictions that ISIS will rise again in the very heart of the Middle East.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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