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22,200 | Conservatives Bashed Obama For ‘Bowing’ To Saudis, Trump Just…Curtsied??? (VIDEO) | Long before presidential scandals were as serious as conflicts of interest and obstruction of justice, conservatives had to content themselves with bashing President Obama over every small thing however silly. Naturally, those criticisms have come back to haunt them as their own new president s bull in a china shop approach to governance means he does every single thing conservatives once accused Obama of doing but worse.It s exposed the conservative media as a clown car overflowing with hypocrites. Before FBI investigations and Russian collusion, this is the sort of thing conservative reporters spent weeks endlessly covering:Even nearly a decade later, the comment section on sites like Breitbart and InfoWars feature commenters who love to attack President Obama for this supposed bow. Ironically, the fact that they can t think up anything better to criticize him for inadvertently highlights how relatively scandal-free Obama s presidency was.That hasn t stopped Fox News. The network seemed eager to smear Obama during its coverage of Trump s visit to the Middle East. In an hilariously half-baked report on foreign policy, Fox ran with this headline early into Trump s Saudi Arabian visit. Ugh.That headline becomes extremely awkward when the latest video from Trump s visit emerged: The man conservatives say is an alpha male leader gave a small curtsy after he was presented with a medal in Saudi Arabia.Unlike Obama, tRump didn't bow, he curtsied. ??? pic.twitter.com/TH50aJlGW6 BluePixie (@BluePixie3) May 20, 2017What a bold presidential gesture! I m sure Fox News will cover it with just as much seriousness as they had Obama s trip to Saudi Arabia, right?Here s another angle. That s definitely a curtsy.Trump once criticized Obama for bowing to foreign leaders (as is customary).Trump CURTSIES instead. pic.twitter.com/SOEZy7IqGx Mikel Jollett (@Mikel_Jollett) May 20, 2017In Trump s defense, he is uniquely susceptible to flattery. Giving Trump a medal or praising him are extremely easy ways to get him to do what you want. In Saudi Arabia s case, the small gold token seems to have been enough to compel Trump to rubber-stamp a $110 billion arms deal (including weapons Obama had withheld from the Saudis for fear they would be used in war crimes) and an additional $200+ billion investment deal.And Trump got to get a shiny medal! A win-win.Featured image via Twitter | 0 |
22,201 | FBI likely to interview Clinton soon in emails probe: CNN | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Federal Bureau of Investigation is likely to interview Hillary Clinton in the next few weeks about her use of a private email server while she was U.S. secretary of state and have already interviewed some of her aides, CNN reported on Thursday. The nine-month investigation into whether laws were broken as a result of the server kept in her New York home has overshadowed Clinton’s campaign to become the Democratic Party’s candidate in November’s presidential election. With only a few states left to vote in primary elections, she retains a commanding lead over her rival, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. More than 2,000 emails sent and received by Clinton while working as President Barack Obama’s top diplomat include classified information, which the government bans from being handled outside secure, government-controlled channels. Clinton has said she did not send or receive any information that was marked as classified and has accused the State Department and other government agencies of “over-classifying” her emails after a judge ordered them released to the public. She has said she expects to be exonerated by the FBI, a point her campaign staff echoed on Thursday. “We are confident the review will conclude that nothing inappropriate took place,” the campaign told CNN. David Kendall, Clinton’s lawyer, and Melanie Newman, a spokesperson for the U.S. Justice Department, which oversees the FBI, both declined to comment. CNN said those interviewed included Huma Abedin, a senior aide to Clinton and the vice chairwoman of Clinton’s presidential campaign. Lawyers for Abedin and other Clinton aides did not respond to questions. The timeline in the CNN report appeared to contradict answers Clinton gave in an interview on Tuesday, in which she told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell that neither she nor her representatives had yet been contacted by the FBI. Asked about this, Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon suggested the definition of words Mitchell used in her question were open to interpretation. “What does representatives mean to you, sir?” he said in an email, but declined to elaborate. Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, and other Republicans have used the FBI inquiry to attack Clinton’s integrity. “These FBI interviews are another reminder of the gross negligence Hillary Clinton displayed as Secretary of State,” Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman, said in a statement. | 1 |
22,202 | life finding common ground this white man and this muslim woman both have trump painted on their garages | email jane goodall has dedicated her life to studying primates and the insights she has gained into our evolutionary ancestors are truly powerful prepare to have your breath taken away by dr goodalls words
chimps will betray their own to get their hands on italian food as with all chimps the ones i studied in gombe were absolutely obsessed with italian food and would go to extraordinary lengths to get their hands on some one day the troops alpha male whom i called goliath managed to acquire a plate of linguine humphrey a younger male saw goliaths linguine and became incredibly jealous he offered to give goliath his most prized possessiona vacant hornet nest that he enjoyed having sex within exchange for the linguine but goliath declined as he already had a hornet nest of his own desperate to eat the linguine humphrey threw some pebbles to divert goliaths attention then snuck up behind him and ripped his head off allowing him to take the italian food from his superior it was a gruesome yet utterly fascinating scene
when chimpanzee communities encounter a japanese researcher they will try to put them in jail my colleague dr kiyoshi yamamoto discovered this when chimps dragged him from his tent in the middle of the night down to the local prison the apes would then approach the towns sheriff with their hands out expecting a food reward it was truly shocking to learn that chimpanzees are capable of such things nature is not always pretty
most chimps can vocalize the phrase oh no they like to yell it while they defecate chimps dont like it when you blow up one of their family members with a grenade one of my young researchers sofia manfredi discovered this after rolling an active grenade into a ditch where several male siblings were sharing a lunch of termites and soup the grenade exploded the youngest one into a red mist of viscera and bone and curiously the other brothers seemed to become rather disheartened
chimps revere hippos when they become aware of a hippo in the vicinity chimps stop whatever theyre doing and take turns honoring the beast they bring offerings of plump salamanders crushed soda cans and other treasures theyve found in the dirt and they join together in an angelic chorus of growls to soothe the hippo new mothers will rub their infants against the hippos groin to bless them with his virility the troops elders will break off their incisors with a rock and fashion a crude crown of teeth for the hippo to wear if the hippo becomes aggressive towards them they do not resist in fact it is an honor for them to be crushed by the hippo and they will often place their heads on the ground next to his hooves in hopes that he might accidentally stomp their skulls flat
if a chimp dunks its head into a bucket of horchata for an hour it will die whenever chimps discover a large pail of horchata in the forest the eldest female of the group will approach it and slowly lower her head into the liquid remaining there for an hour or more until another chimp yanks her out of it it was fascinating to observe the way their social structure altered afterwards with the next eldest female unfailingly rising up to lead the groups children in licking the sweet rice milk from their deceased matriarchs body | 0 |
22,203 | Sixteen killed in attacks on remote Mozambique port: media | MAPUTO (Reuters) - Gun battles last week between police and attackers in a remote northern Mozambican port killed 16 people, including two police officers, local media reported. The attacks in the Indian Ocean port of Mocimboa da Praia, near the border with Tanzania and offshore gas fields, took place last Thursday and police have since regained control of the town, the official AIM news agency said. The motive for the attacks were not clear and the government has not blamed the opposition group Renamo, against which it fought a civil war for almost two decades that ended in 1992. Fighting has periodically erupted since but a ceasefire has been in place since earlier this year. We need to know who they are, what their motives are, and where they came from, Celmira da Silva, the governor of the northern Mozambican province of Cabo Delgado, told Radio Mozambique. Local media have reported that the attack was carried out by Islamists but the government has not confirmed this. Mozambique has not been a focal point of Islamist militant activity. Mozambique police were expected to hold a press briefing in the capital Maputo on Tuesday about the attacks. | 1 |
22,204 | AWESOME! Reporter Ruins Trump Protester’s Day With This Shocking News [Video] | These Trump protesters are so out of control with their hate and violence yet it s Trump who s being blamed for hateful rhetoric. The truth is that these protesters don t want free speech unless it s theirs. They have no respect for anyone else and certainly not for authority. Reality hit this anti-Trump gal on the head when mid-interview he shocked her when he told her Trump had made it into the building to speak. The look of shock on her face was priceless: | 0 |
22,205 | WATCH: Bernie Sanders Makes MAJOR Announcement At Rally and Thousands Go Crazy | The mood at Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders rallies is always electrifying. Whether he s in big cities like Chicago or in small town America, Sanders has taken the nation by storm. This was all on display on Saturday in Wisconsin when Bernie Sanders made a major announcement and the crowd erupted.Sanders was talking about his victory in Alaska to a crowd of thousands when he received a private message. Sanders then said: Alright, are you ready for a news alert? We just won the state of Washington! That is what momentum is about. That s when the crowd went nuts. Sanders not only won Washington, but he won resoundingly in a record turnout where he picked up 73% of the vote. He also won big in Hawaii and received a whopping 83% of the vote in Alaska.Sanders is clearly poised to beat Republican candidate and frontrunner Donald Trump in a general election as polls show him not only winning but landsliding the bombastic billionaire should the two face off in a general election. In fact, Sanders easily defeats all of the remaining Republican candidates head to head.The electrifying support and enthusiasm Bernie Sanders has received all over the country just increased after his resounding and convincing victories in three states, making the race closer and his pursuit of the Democratic nomination more likely.Watch video here:Featured image via video screenshot. | 0 |
22,206 | U.S. aid chief says no sign Yemen port blockade easing to allow aid in | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - There are no signs that a blockade of Yemen s ports by a Saudi-led military coalition has eased to allow aid to reach communities increasingly at risk of starvation, the head of the U.S. government s aid agency said on Tuesday. USAID administrator Mark Green called on the Saudi-led military coalition to open Yemen s ports and for Yemen s Houthis to cease firing to allow food and medical supplies to flow to tens of thousands of Yemenis caught in the fighting. Green was speaking after the U.S. announced another $130 million in emergency food aid for Yemen, bringing U.S. assistance to nearly $768 million since October 2016. The new funds includes nearly $84 million in U.S. food aid and $46 million in emergency disaster assistance. Unfortunately I can t tell you there has been an easing of the blockade, Green told Reuters. We re trying to signal with this announcement that we re ready to respond to this humanitarian catastrophe. Green said he was deeply concerned on so many fronts about the crisis in Yemen, but in particular the failure to get fuel into the country so people have access to clean water. That means a number of communities are either without clean water or will be very shortly, and in both cases that is a terrible concern from the cholera perspective and the survival perspective, he added. The U.N. s coordinator for Yemen, Jamie McGoldrick, said on Monday the blockade has been eased but the situation remained dire with some 8.4 million people a step away from famine in Yemen. A Saudi-led military coalition fighting the Iran-aligned Houthi movement blockaded ports last month after a missile was fired toward Riyadh. Washington last week warned Saudi Arabia that concern in Congress over the humanitarian situation in Yemen could affect U.S. assistance to allies in the Saudi-led coalition, including the U.S. refueling of coalition jets and some intelligence sharing. | 1 |
22,207 | COLLEGE PROF Creates Firestorm: Calls White People “Inhuman a-holes”…”Let Them F*cking Die” | A Connecticut college professor has created a firestorm for calling white people inhuman a-holes who need to die following last week s shooting attack on congressional Republicans. Professor Johnny Eric Williams is a sociology professor! Who wants to send their child to Trinity College at $61,000 a year to have this jackwagon teach them? This is exactly how college kids are indoctrinated into hating their own race. This is sick and twisted!Trinity College s Johnny Eric Williams social media feed (his twitter feed is now set on private) after the June 14 shooting of Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise included racial tirades and commentary calling on minorities to confront white people and end this now, a reference to an alleged system of white supremacy. It is past time for the racially oppressed to do what people who believe themselves to be white will not do, put end to the vectors of their destructive mythology of whiteness and their white supremacy system. #LetThemF ingDie, the associate professor of sociology said June 18 in a series of Facebook posts. The time is now to confront these inhuman assholes and end this now. The educational watchdog Campus Reform and The Blaze both reached out to the professor for comment Tuesday to no avail. Trinity College offered no statement regarding the professor s action. Instead, the Hartford institution reiterated its right on Facebook to remove comments that are deemed inappropriate, profane, defamatory, or disrespectful to users of the page and/or members of the greater Trinity College community. Mr. Williams Facebook page also featured an anonymous article on Medium accusing Mr. Scalise of being a racist and one of the most anti-LGBTQ politicians in Washington. If you see [white people] drowning. If you see them in a burning building. If they are bleeding out in an emergency room. If the ground is crumbling beneath them. If they are in a park and they turn their weapons on each other: do nothing, a June 16 article by Son of Baldwin says. Let. Them. F-ing. Die. And smile a bit when you do. We included the link to Mr. Willians Facebook page but it appears as though he s set his page on private. He is in groups like Black Lives Matter on Facebook we re not surprised by that!Read more: Campus Reform | 0 |
22,208 | Uh Oh! Obama Returns From Vacation ‘Fired Up’ For His Last Year In Office | This last year could be the most devastating year for America with Obama s attempt at tackling unfinished business . Gun control, closing GITMO and so many other things Obama s got in store for us. While Congress does absolutely nothing! Please remember this and vote accordingly!HONOLULU (AP) President Barack Obama is returning to the rancor of the nation s capital after two weeks of fun and sun in his native Hawaii, saying he s fired up for his final year in office and ready to tackle unfinished business.At the top of Obama s priority list is executive action that is expected to expand when background checks are required for gun purchases. Obama is meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Monday to discuss a three-month review of what actions he could take to help reduce gun violence.The actions, which are staunchly opposed by Republicans and likely to spark a legal fight, underscore Obama s desire to keep up an aggressive agenda in 2016, even as the public s attention shifts to the presidential election.Obama spent much of his vacation out of the public eye, playing golf with friends and dining out on the island of Oahu with his family. He also worked on his final State of the Union address, scheduled for Jan. 12.The address to Congress is a high-profile opportunity for the president to try to reassure the public about his national security stewardship after the terrorism attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California. Advisers say Obama will also look for other opportunities to keep security issues at the forefront as he tries to ease Americans concerns.Despite his deep differences with Republicans, Obama has cited two agenda items for 2016 that have bipartisan support: a free trade agreement with 11 other nations called the Trans-Pacific Partnership and changes in the criminal justice system that would reduce incarceration rates for nonviolent offenders. He often points out that the U.S. accounts for 5 percent of the world s population and 25 percent of its inmates.Read more: AP | 0 |
22,209 | Losses, looting as Philippine war's fortunate few return home | MARAWI CITY, Philippines (Reuters) - Khaliluddin Ismail returned home on Sunday after five months of war in the southern Philippines to find his house ransacked. But he s still smiling. At least we have something left, he said, standing in a room with clothes, toys, ornaments and damaged pictures strewn across the floor. Others have nothing. They lost their homes, they lost their lives. Ismail, 44, the Imam of a nearby mosque, considers himself one of the luckiest people in Marawi. The city was devastated by more than 150 days of battles between government forces and pro-Islamic State militants that killed more than 1,100 people and displaced some 350,000. His house is in Marawi s safe zone, an area long abandoned by residents but untouched by unrelenting shelling and military air strikes that have all but flattened the city s commercial heart, destroying thousands of homes, shops and vehicles. Six days after troops killed the last remaining rebels, Ismail was among about 4,000 people allowed to return to their homes on Sunday in Marawi s Basak Malutlot area. Many like him have discovered their houses were looted and left in disarray. I opened the door and I was shocked, but I m still happy to be home, he said. Ismail fled with his family on May 24 during a fierce three-day firefight that erupted just 50 meters away, when security forces tried to raid the hideout of notorious militant leader Isnilon Hapilon, Islamic State s anointed emir in Southeast Asia. Hapilon escaped, then issued a call to arms to hundreds of insurgents to initiate their planned takeover of Marawi. It sparked the Philippines biggest urban battle in recent history, and fears that Islamic State s extremist agenda had gained a foothold in the south of the mainly Catholic country. There were scenes of joy and chaos as a convoy of returning residents poured in to Marawi to a cacophony of horns and whistles, jamming what only a few hours earlier were deserted streets. Armed police at checkpoints cross-checked documents and pictures of each passengers from the 712 families, to guard against possible infiltration by militants. Babies cried as officials at a public hall shouted on megaphones to try to establish order as hundreds jostled to register for the sack of rice and 5,000 pesos ($97) allocated to each household. With a stern face, the district s elderly chairwoman, Jamellah Indol Saro, yelled in the local Maranao dialect at anxious residents to calm down. I told them we have to thank Allah we re still alive, she said, smiling. Some 6,500 families are due to return this week in a phased repatriation, a fraction of the 77,000 that fled to evacuation camps or nearby towns. Many face a lengthy wait for vast swathes of Marawi to be rebuilt. Retired government employee Mitormar Goling, 72, came home to find jewellery, money, furniture and antiques had been stolen. He said he feared he would have starved or been killed had he stayed behind. We felt the ground trembling from the air strikes. We didn t know if the army could protect us, said Goling, wearing sunglasses and a white skull cap. If you don t believe in their ideology, ISIS sees you as the enemy, he said, referring to Islamic State. He was among many people who said they understood that the military had to destroy the city to save it. Norida Manna s three-storey house was levelled by an air strike, but she s thankful she s alive. The office clerk and single mother of six will now live at her sister s home, from which she fled in May as troops outside battled hooded, black-clad gunmen who helped the escape of Hapilon. The rebel commander was subsequently killed in a military operation 13 days ago. My home was destroyed, but I don t blame the military. They had a job to do, she said. I have nothing left, but to us, every day is a happy one now. | 1 |
22,210 | Kurdish leader Barzani's dream of independence led to downfall | ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) - Masoud Barzani, who spent decades leading the long-oppressed Kurds, confirmed on Sunday he was stepping down as president of the Kurdistan Regional Government after his drive for independence backfired. After decades of struggle, critics say Barzani made one of his biggest mistakes by pushing hard for a Sept. 25 referendum. Kurds voted overwhelmingly for independence, but won little sympathy outside their region. As well as the Iraqi government, Turkey and Iran threatened to take tough action against any move towards secession, fearing it would encourage their own restive Kurdish populations to follow suit. The United States and other Western powers joined the chorus of opposition to the vote. The Baghdad government rejected it as illegal and sent troops to seize the oil city of Kirkuk, which the Kurds regard as the heart of any future homeland. In just a few hours, the city the Kurds regard as sacred was gone, along with other Kurdish-held territory across the north. Some accused Barzani of having led his people to disaster. For many years, he had used cunning and patience to help the Kurds survive long years of brutality under Saddam Hussein. After the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam in 2003, Barzani became a central figure in the drive to create an autonomous Kurdish state in northern Iraq. Kurdish leaders kept their territory relatively free of the sectarian bloodshed that plagued most of Iraq. Western oil executives flocked to the region seeking deals. Kurds showed their military capability by joining Iraqi government troops and Iranian-backed paramilitary forces to drive Islamic State militants out of Mosul. Confident that the time was right for an independent homeland, Barzani pursued the referendum. It resulted in overwhelming support for secession. But the joy was short-lived as Iraqi government forces and Shi ite paramilitaries shattered the Kurds dreams with a series of lightning military advances. Barzani was born in 1946, soon after his legendary father founded a party to fight for the rights of Iraqi Kurds. Deeply influenced by his father, Mulla Mustafa Barzani, known as the Lion of Kurdistan, Masoud Barzani joined the Kurdish guerrilla forces known as the Peshmerga at the age of 16 and gained fighting experience in the mountains. The younger Barzani would become familiar with one of the popular themes in Kurdish history - betrayal by regional and Western powers. Exiled and dying of cancer in a Washington hospital in 1976, Mulla Mustafa lamented that he had ever trusted the United States. A year earlier, Mulla Mustafa had been fighting a guerrilla war against Baghdad backed by Iran s pro-Western shah, but he was left high and dry when then-U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger brokered a deal that allowed Saddam to crush the Kurds. During the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, Masoud Barzani allied the Kurdistan Democratic Party that he had inherited from his father with Tehran once more. It did not go well. Some 8,000 Barzani tribesmen were rounded up and paraded through Baghdad before being executed. In Saddam s words: They went to hell. Despite the massacres, and Iraqi chemical attacks, Barzani retained enough of a fighting force to respond to President George Bush s appeal for an uprising during the 1991 Gulf War. Taking Bush at his word, the Kurds rose up against Saddam, and Barzani and his Peshmerga - known as those who face death - came down from the mountains to join the uprising and capture several cities in the north. But the victorious allies balked at the prospect of a Kurdish split from Baghdad and did nothing to stop Saddam s troops and helicopter gunships from crushing the rebellion. While more than a million Kurds fled to Turkey and Iran, many dying of hunger and exposure on the way, Barzani stayed to fight on. He was saved by a U.S. and British no-fly zone established over the north in 1991 which allowed him and his Kurdish rival, Jalal Talabani, to retake the area. This was followed by the longest period of Kurdish autonomy in modern history, but it was scarred by civil war between Barzani and Talabani s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan in the mid-1990s. Barzani invited Iraqi government tanks into the region in 1996 to seize the regional capital Erbil, sending not only Talabani, but dozens of CIA personnel and their local employees fleeing before them. Talabani died barely a week after last month s referendum. Barzani s exit will leave the Kurds lacking direction, with their two main leaders gone. | 1 |
22,211 | Ululations, tears as white Zimbabwean farmer returns to seized land | RUSAPE, Zimbabwe (Reuters) - The last time white Zimbabwean farmer Rob Smart left his land it was at gunpoint, forced out in June by riot police armed with tear gas and AK-47 assault rifles. He returned on Thursday to ululations and tears of joy from former workers and their families who were also kicked out - a jubilant return and the first sign that the president who has replaced Robert Mugabe is making good on a vow to stop illegal land seizures and restore property rights. Scores of jubilant black Zimbabweans nearly knocked the 71-year-old off his feet as he and his two children stepped out of their car and onto their land for the first time in six months. Smart s case was taken up by Emmerson Mnangagwa, Zimbabwe s then vice-president who heard of Smart s violent eviction while at an investment conference in Johannesburg. Mnangagwa became president last month following a de facto coup that ended 93-year-old Mugabe s rule. In the latter half of his 37 years in power, Zimbabwe s economy collapsed, especially after the seizure of thousands of white-owned commercial farms under the banner of post-colonial land reform. Land ownership is one of Zimbabwe s most sensitive political topics. Colonialists seized some of the best agricultural land and much of it remained in the hands of white farmers after independence in 1980 leaving many blacks effectively landless. Twenty years later, Mugabe authorized the violent invasion of many white-owned farms and justified it on the grounds that it was redressing imbalances from the colonial era. White farmers complained that well connected people used state security forces to force them off their farms, sometimes in the middle of harvesting, even after the Mugabe government indicated, some four years ago, that land seizures were over. We are overjoyed, over the moon. We thought we would never see this day coming, Smart s son, Darryn, told Reuters. Getting back to the farm has given not just us, but the whole community hope that it s a new Zimbabwe, a new country. Rob Smart, whose father said he started the farm from virgin bush in 1932, expressed confidence in the new government s pledge to protect the commercial farming sector, a mainstay of the struggling economy. It s early days but so far what they (the new government) said they are going to do they are doing, he told Reuters. We just hope this whole incident will give hope to other farmers, who ve had the same situation. Mnangagwa, who is under pressure to revive the economy ahead of elections next year, said on Thursday that he was resolute about the changes he was introducing. There is no business as usual. Things have changed, it s a new era, he said at a meeting with business leaders in South Africa. I m from the military. If it s left turn then it s left turn . If it s right turn it s right turn . No confusion. Mnangagwa s new agriculture minister, Perrance Shiri, last week ordered illegal occupiers of farms to vacate the land immediately, a move that could ultimately see some white farmers who say they were unfairly evicted return to farming. Shiri, a military hardliner who was head of the air force before being picked for the crucial ministry this month, called for unquestionable sanity on the farms . For 83-year-old Anna Matemani, whose late husband worked on the farm, Smart s return was long overdue. I m so happy he is finally back. He always helped us and the farm provides jobs for many of our young people, said the grandmother of 15, who grew up and raised her children on the farm and witnessed Rob s birth, wiping away tears. Some of the Smarts joy subsided as they walked into their ransacked farmhouses. The occupiers had looted property, including clothes, the children s toys, three guns, bottles of 100-year-old wine and Smart s late father Roy s medals from when he served with the Police Reserve Air Wing in the former Rhodesia. I m sad about my grandfather s medals, Darryn Smart said, surveying a ransacked room. You can buy tables and chairs, you can t buy that family history. But thank goodness we re here. | 1 |
22,212 | Trump explained U.S. position on THAAD to Xi: South Korea | SEOUL (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump told South Korea on Saturday he had explained to China’s President Xi Jinping America’s position on the deployment of an anti-missile defense system to South Korea, according to a statement from South Korea’s acting leader. Trump informed South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn in a Saturday telephone call of his summit discussion with Xi. China has opposed the deployment of the U.S.-supplied High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) in South Korea, arguing it could threaten its security, but South Korea and the United States say it is aimed at countering North Korea’s missile threat. China has increased pressure and imposed restrictions on some South Korean companies doing business in China, which led many in the South to believe Beijing was retaliating against the deployment of the missile system. “President Trump said he and President Xi held in-depth discussions on the seriousness of North Korea’s nuclear problem and how to respond to it, and also said he had conveyed the U.S. position on the THAAD deployment,” the statement said. Trump pressed Xi to do more to curb North Korea’s nuclear programme in their summit meeting at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said. The U.S. military began deployment of the THAAD system in March, a day after the North test-fired four ballistic missiles. China has not directly said it is targeting South Korean companies. | 1 |
22,213 | Bank lobby presses for commission to lead consumer watchdog agency | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bank lobbying groups are pressing the U.S. Senate to once again work on reforming the country’s consumer financial watchdog agency - but this time around they may see those changes become reality. In a letter to Senate leaders released on Wednesday the groups, including the Consumer Bankers Association and the Credit Union National Association, called for legislation to change the leadership of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from a single director to a five-member commission, which they say would make the agency more accountable. They also asked Congress to void the CFPB’s recent rule on prepaid cards and halt work on regulations for mandatory arbitration, payday lending, and third-party debt collection using a law known as the Congressional Review Act. The CFPB’s sole director has “unprecedented authority over financial institutions, with minimal oversight,” they wrote in the letter, which was also signed by the Independent Community Bankers of America and the National Association of Federal Credit Unions. The director’s power to both create regulations and carry out enforcements, including levying million-dollar fines, can “have sweeping and longlasting effects,” the groups wrote. Many have supported commission leadership since the CFPB was first created in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law to protect everyday consumers from bad actors in the areas of mortgages, student loans, credit cards and banks. Recently, the CFPB and other agencies fined Wells Fargo & Co $185 million for creating fake accounts. Republicans drafted the first Senate bill to change the CFPB, currently headed by Richard Cordray, in 2012 and then introduced similar legislation in the following three years. In the House of Representatives, the Financial Services Committee recently approved a sweeping bill to also create a commission to run the agency. Democratic President Barack Obama has stood in the way of establishing a commission with his veto pen. President-elect Donald Trump, a Republican, is expected to support changes. The single-director structure allows the CFPB to move quickly and eliminates the risk of protracted fights among commission members, proponents say. A three-judge panel in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia recently agreed the director has too much power, although it ruled that could be remedied by allowing the president to fire the director without cause. The government petitioned the entire court for a review of the decision. The court has signaled it will vote on the petition before Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, and many expect it will go ahead with the review. In an unusual step revealing the case’s importance, it asked the solicitor general to file a separate brief. Lawyers say the separate brief may be a form of due diligence, showing the court has heard all sides. Or, it could be a way to “lock in” the current administration’s opinion to create consistency with the next one. The solicitor general under Trump would represent the CFPB if the case goes to the Supreme Court. | 1 |
22,214 | ‘THE DUCK MAN’ Has Spoken: DUCK DYNASTY’S Patriarch Announces His Choice For President In This Great Video | Don t underestimate the value of securing the Christian vote in this election. The Robertson family endorsement goes a long way towards that goal The patriarch of the Robertson Family, famous for their TV reality show Duck Dynasty, has a lot of sway with his viewers. He has a list of criteria he used to determine who he would endorse for the next President of the United States.Here is the list:First question: Is he or she Godly? Second question: Does he or she love us? Third question: Can he or she do the job? Final question: Would they kill a duck and put him in a pot and make him a good duck gumbo? I ve looked at the candidates, Ted Cruz fits the bill. Ted Cruz is my man, I m voting for him. | 0 |
22,215 | MUSLIMS OUTRAGED: MUNICH ARTIST DISPLAYS “Funny” Racy Bare-Legged “Burka Barbies” [Video] | A German artist is in a whole heap of trouble. Is this artist so oblivious to how Muslims feel about this? She says it s funny . Yikes! Run for the hills lady!Despite describing her latest work as being apolitical, Munich-based artist Beate Passow was busy courting controversy in Berlin, Tuesday, displaying her bare-legged Burka-Barbies .The dolls are robed in vibrant, rainbow coloured burkas, but Passow has chosen to remove the modesty of the full body veil, and show her figurines in mini-skirts with uncovered legs.Yeah, real funny OUR PREVIOUS REPORT ON BURKA S IN GERMANY: ANGELA MERKEL Running For Re-Election Makes Stunning Announcement To BAN BURKAS, After Flooding Nation With 2 Million (Mostly Muslim) MigrantsANGELA Merkel today completed an astonishing U-turn as she formally endorsed a full burka ban following a backlash over her open-door migration policies.The German chancellor made the comments at a Christian Democratic Union (CDU) conference having recently declared she will seek re-election.She told the annual congress that it was legitimate to expect integration from newcomers, underlining her party s bid to ban the full face veil. The full veil must be banned wherever it is legally possible, she said to a large round of applause.Merkel also stressed her determination to ensure that there s no repeat of last year s huge migrant influx as she seeks a new two-year term in charge of her conservative party. Sun UKAn official within the ruling CDU/CSU coalition said regional states have to obey the law and warned those who didn t would lose funding.This comes in spite of German Chancellor Angela Merkel s long-standing open-door migrant policy, which began last year and has seen more than one million migrants enter the country since.The country is now home to more than 200,000 failed asylum seekers, who continue to live in Germany despite officials confirming they would be at no risk if they were forced to go back to their home countries. Express UK | 0 |
22,216 | Xi and Trump discuss sanctions pressure on North Korea: White House | BEIJING/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump spoke about keeping pressure on North Korea with economic sanctions imposed through the United Nations, the White House said in a statement on Monday. The United States and South Korea and separately Russia together with China, carried out military drills in a show of force against North Korea, which has defied U.N. Security Council resolutions to conduct nuclear tests and ballistic missile tests. Trump and Xi spoke on the phone days after Trump and his aides publicly discussed potential military action against North Korea. On Friday, while delivering an address at a military base outside of Washington, Trump said he was more confident than ever that our options in addressing this threat are both effective and overwhelming. Trump is attending the annual United Nations General Assembly in New York this week, while Xi is not. North Korea s nuclear threat is likely to loom large on the agenda. The two leaders also discussed Trump s coming China visit, the Xinhua News Agency said. Xi said China and the United States share extensive common interests and have seen sound momentum of exchanges and cooperation in various areas at present, Xinhua said. Xi called on both sides to work closely to ensure a fruitful trip and inject new impetus into the development of Sino-U.S. relations, the report said. The Chinese leader said he is happy to maintain communications with the U.S. leader on a regular basis over topics of mutual concern, it said. Trump will likely visit China in November as part of a trip that will take him to an ASEAN summit in the Philippines and an APEC summit in Vietnam. | 1 |
22,217 | Time to move on from Algeria's colonial past, says France's Macron | ALGIERS/PARIS (Reuters) - President Emmanuel Macron, visiting Algeria, said on Wednesday he would not be held hostage by France s colonial involvement there and urged young Algerians to build for the future and not dwell on past crimes . The relationship is scarred by the trauma of the 1954-1962 independence war in which the North Africa country broke with France. Hundreds of thousands of Algerians were killed and both sides used torture. Macron was in the capital Algiers for talks with President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and senior officials, a rite of passage for all new French presidents. Many in Algeria had wondered whether Macron would offer an official apology for the past given his statement earlier this year when he described France s colonial rule as a crime against humanity . But he did not go any further than his predecessor, Francois Hollande, who sought a more conciliatory tone but stopped short of saying sorry. Instead, Macron s message to young Algerians was not to harbor grudges from the past but look to the future. I ve already said we need to recognize what we did, but Algeria s youth can t just look to its past. It needs to look forward and see how it will create jobs, Macron said, answering questions from people as he walked through downtown Algiers. I m not here to judge those in the past. There have been crimes and there were people that also did good things. Your generation must not allow this. It s not an excuse (to blame the past) for what is happening today, he said. When asked by reporters about the past, a visibly annoyed Macron, said it was time to stop asking questions from 20 years ago. These benchmarks block our bilateral relationship. They don t interest me because the ambition I have for the relationship between Algeria and France has nothing to do with what was done for decades. It s a new story that s being written, he told a news conference. Facing high unemployment, low oil prices, austerity and political uncertainty, Algeria s youth is likely to warm to Macron s call to look to the future more than the war veterans. An inter-governmental forum presided by the countries prime ministers will take place in Paris on Thursday to discuss how to develop an economic roadmap. Economic ties between the two countries have marginally progressed since 2012 and France is now behind China as the main partner. Annual trade stands at about 8 billion euros compared with 6.36 billion five years ago. More than 400,000 Algerians are given visas for France annually, almost twice as many as in 2012. While walking near the university, young Algerians came out in force, calling out: Visas, Please! Highlighting just how divided opinion remains some others called out: Go home! We don t want you here. This morning I saw too many people simply asking me for visas. That s not a life project, Macron told reporters. Franco-Algerian relations are also a sensitive subject in France. Macron past condemnation of France s colonial rule angered many at home. There must be no taboos between us. But there has to a be a project for the future and I think the Algerians must build their future from Algeria, Macron said responding to more questions in the streets. But the thorny issues are unlikely to disappear just yet. Excuse me but France will have to apologize for the martyrs we lost, said a woman who gave her name as Nadia. | 1 |
22,218 | SHAME! SENATE QUIETLY RELEASES New Report Revealing Tax Dollars Spent Settling Harassment Claims | The Senate waited until Christmas to quietly release a report on how much was dolled out to settle workplace harassment claims. Remember that you never approved this and they used YOUR money to make the payments to accusers. The amount is $1.5 million. This needs to end. The Senators should pay for this on their own. It s just too easy to settle using someone else s money YOUR money!Via Daily Caller: As the Christmas holiday weekend set in, the Senate Rules and Administration Committee released a report revealing the Senate has spent $1.5 million on workplace harassment settlements since 1998.The data, provided by the Office of Compliance, a little known administrative body that has quietly settled dozens of complaints against congressional offices, provides little by way of details, beyond an itemized list of violations and the corresponding settlement.GOP Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, who chairs the Rules Committee, said further particulars cannot be made public, in order to respect the confidentiality afforded to victims.Because we paid for these settlements, should we not have a right to know? What do you think? | 0 |
22,219 | “SNEAKY” School Caught Red Handed Recruiting Kids To Work For The Clinton Campaign | Recruiting kids is what Obama s campaign did so well. This must be a loony lefty tactic to train the kids early to accept socialism. Remember this creepy video from the Obama campaign: WE RE GONNA CHANGE THE WORLD Could you imagine the national media firestorm had the school been recruiting for Donald Trump s campaign?Students at Marshwood High School in South Berwick received an email from the Clinton campaign urging them to sign up for positions as unpaid fellows . Hillary for New Hampshire is looking for smart, energetic winter fellows who are committed to winning the New Hampshire primary for Hillary Clinton, read the email from a campaign staffer. Everyone working on the campaign now started off as a fellow at some point so it is a great way of getting a different skill set whilst helping an important cause. Tim and Elita Galvin were furious that their teenage son had received the solicitation calling it disingenuous and sneaky. My son didn t appreciate being targeted by anybody via his school email for a political campaign, Mrs. Galvin told me. I ll be honest he s not a fan of Hillary Clinton to begin with. He s done his homework and he doesn t like her. The Galvins reached out to Paul Mehlhorn, the principal of the high school. They provided me with a copy of his emailed response. We often receive information from outside sources regarding opportunities for students to get involved in their communities, he wrote. We pass on this information to provide students with ways they may meet the requirement to perform 50 hours of community service to graduate. Mehlhorn went on to explain that students are not obligated to volunteer for Clinton s campaign, nor does it suggest the school supports a particular political candidate, religious doctrine or branch of military. If other campaigns were to seek volunteers, we would pass that on also, he noted.The principal went to say that the email solicitation sounded like a great way to have a conversation with their children about understanding their choices in getting involved or not.As you might imagine, Mr. and Mrs. Galvin were not all that thrilled with the principal s explanation. Politics doesn t belong there Republican, Democrat, green, purple, white, whatever, Mrs. Galvin told me.Read more: FOX | 0 |
22,220 | LOL! Charlotte #BlackLivesMatter Rioters Post “Things We Need List”: Includes “White folks to give money for bail” | I wish this was a joke!#BlackLivesMatter protesters, loot stores, stop traffic for thousands of commuters, throw molotov cocktails, rocks and bricks at innocent police officers assigned to keeping the protesters and innocent civilians safe, discriminately beat up White people well just because they re White (see video below) But if they get arrested they re asking WHITE people to bail them out? You can t make this up Here is a list of things the Black Lives Matter protesters rioters need from their Charlotte SURJ Facebook page: #CharlotteProtest Beating man begging for mercy in parking garage. @AC360 @seanhannity @BretBaier Credit:Lenard Bennett (facebook) @ncnaacp pic.twitter.com/YWHEU2UV1n Queenie (@LibertarianQn) September 22, 2016h/t to Allison for sharing this with 100% FED UP! | 0 |
22,221 | Philippines arrests Indonesian wife of slain Islamist militant leader | MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine security forces on Sunday arrested the Indonesian wife of the slain pro-Islamic State militant leader who planned and led the attack on Marawi City, authorities said. President Rodrigo Duterte declared last month the liberation of Marawi City from the Maute group, a pro-Islamic State militant group which held the lakeside town after the death of two top leaders, including the woman s husband Omarkhayam. The army announced the termination of combat operations a week later, ending a five-month battle that killed more than 1,100 people, including 165 soldiers. Close to 400,000 people were also displaced as fighting destroyed the city. National Police Chief Ronald dela Rosa said bomb-making materials were seized from Minhati Madrais, who was with her six children when security forces raided her home in Iligan City. Her children, who are all minors, will be turned over to the social welfare department, he said, adding that rebellion and illegal possession of explosive devices charges were now being prepared against her. He said Madrais, alias Baby, was among more than 100 people ordered arrested by Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana after martial law was declared by Duterte on May 23. Madrais passport is also expired, another violation of Philippine laws, he added. Sporadic gunfire were still heard in Marawi City on Sunday, almost two weeks after combat operations were formally terminated, Colonel Romeo Brawner, deputy commander of Task Force Ranao, told reporters. We are still hunting down stragglers, he said, adding there could be as many as 39 militants hiding in the ruined city based on information from captured Indonesian militants. We do not have information how many militants are still there. But, we will hunt them down. The new army commander, Lieutenant-General Rey Leonardo Guerrero, said he would work closely with Indonesia and Malaysia to step up coordinated sea and air patrols along the borders where kidnappings and attacks on shipping are happening. We intend to increase the frequency of our coordinated patrols with our ASEAN neighbors to stop piracy and militant attacks in these dangerous seas, he said. | 1 |
22,222 | White House says to have Supreme Court nominee in next couple of weeks | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will announce a nominee in the next couple of weeks to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court, the White House said on Monday. “I think we’ll have a nomination within the next couple of weeks. He continues to make that a priority of his,” White House spokesman Sean Spicer said at a news briefing. Earlier this month Trump said he would pick from among 20 candidates suggested by conservative legal groups to fill the vacancy caused by the death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia in February last year. | 1 |
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22,224 | The Wind Revealed An Unknown Creature Atop Trump’s Head And People CANNOT Stop Watching (VIRAL VIDEO) | With all the absolutely horrific and unhinged things that Donald Trump has been doing and saying since he took office, many have stopped talking about one of the most bizarre things about him.No, not the fact that he eats pizza and KFC with a fork, but his hair. Or rather, what we can only assume is his hair. Let s call it hair-ish or hair-like.And while many will think that going after someone s hair is petty (because it is) it s still something that many people are extremely curious about, because it seems to have a life of its own.Case in point, while Trump was climbing aboard Air Force One, the wind caught Trump s hair from behind and seemingly revealed to the entire world what goes into making that dreadful coif.Brace yourself, because you will never be the same after seeing this. Here s the video:If anyone knows what that might be, they are encouraged to come forward.Trump still seems to pride himself on this signature hairdon t, still not realizing that he could look a million times better, or dare one say, *presidential (barf), if he gave himself a haircut that actually suited his head.Nonetheless, people can t stop watching this video because as horrible as it is, it s absolutely mesmerizing.Featured image via video screen capture | 0 |
22,225 | Criminal Complaint Shows Tie Between Alex Jones And ‘Pizzagate’ Shooter – Jones TERRIFIED | Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones isn t known for having a solid grasp of the truth. He takes ordinary news items and turns them into something completely bizarre, and he promotes things that have already been changed into something completely bizarre. Such was his involvement in perpetuating the lie that Comet Ping Pong, in D.C., was the site of a massive child trafficking operation involving Hillary Clinton.Now that that conspiracy theory has led to near-tragedy, Jones seems to be desperately trying to scrub any evidence he might have influenced Edgar Maddison Welch to fire his assault rifle in the restaurant in an insane attempt to investigate the place, and free the children allegedly being kept there. He thought he was doing a public service based in part on what Jones had been saying on the matter.Instead, he put innocent customers and restaurant staff in danger because he believed a conspiracy theory that Jones actively and openly promoted.The criminal complaint against Welch actually mentions a video carrying a headline from InfoWars called, Watch PIZZAGATE: The Bigger Picture, which Welch sent to a friend on Dec. 1. He had been watching YouTube videos in an attempt to research Pizzagate and he said it was making him sick, because why try and actually look for the truth when you d rather believe in conspiracy nonsense?Alex Jones site, InfoWars, heavily promoted the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. Jones posted a video called Pizzagate is Real: Something Is Going On, But What? to his YouTube channel in late November, but now that video has been removed by the user, although nobody really knows when that happened.Jones has also deleted the video from his Facebook account, and InfoWars deleted an article that promoted Jones Pizzagate video. Some things remain, but who knows for how long. It certainly seems like Jones wants to at least look innocent in the whole thing. When you peddle baseless conspiracy theories, though, this is what can happen. Jones needs to own up to his part in this near-tragedy.Featured image by Ben Jackson via Getty Images for SiriusXM | 0 |
22,226 | Mitch McConnell Freezes GOP Donors Into Loudest Silence EVER With One Question About Trump | It s become a weekly ritual: Trump goes through each day, doing his Trumpian thing, and at the end of the week, various media outlets are recapping Trump s bad week. This week, though, seems to have been especially bad for Trump, because Republicans are frightened. They re frustrated. They re confused. And they don t think he ll win the election.At a private fundraiser for Rep. Joseph Heck (R-NV), Mitch McConnell asked the room of Republican supporters whether they think Trump can win. Maybe half raised their hands. When he asked whether they think Trump will win, however, the room fell silent, and not one person was able to raise their hand.Not. One. Person. In that room. Thinks Trump will win in November.The silence in that room had to deafening. It s certainly telling. When your own party s donors don t believe you will win your election, you ve got a huge problem.For his part, McConnell refuses to talk about Trump to the press. When they caught up with him, he was curt, saying, This is not something I am going to discuss today, and then, Because I choose not to, when they pressed him on why.Even one of Trump s staunchest allies, Newt Gingrich, thinks his 3am tweetstorm about the dishonest press was wholly inappropriate to someone who wants to be president:.@newtgingrich said @realDonaldTrump has got to become much more disciplined. Do you agree? #Hannity pic.twitter.com/rKLuqhpHIA Fox News (@FoxNews) October 1, 2016For his part and this is probably one of the most maddening things for Republicans Trump sees his behavior as exactly what s needed in a president. But when the rest of the country doesn t, when even his own party doesn t, then he s in a lot of trouble.Too bad. November 8th could end up being very humiliating for Trump. Featured image by Alex Wong/Getty Images | 0 |
22,227 | In bid for history, Clinton fails to reach the mountaintop | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hillary Clinton came closer than any other woman to winning the White House on Tuesday but fell short for a second time, a bitter disappointment for a pioneering but polarizing American political figure. Seeking to win election to the office her husband Bill Clinton held from 1993 to 2001, Clinton, 69, lost her battle for the Democratic presidential nomination to Barack Obama in 2008 and lost on Tuesday to Republican Donald Trump, 70. Trump told supporters at a rally early on Wednesday that Clinton had phoned to congratulate him on his victory. A Clinton campaign aide confirmed the phone call. In 2000, Clinton became the only first lady to win elected office, as a U.S. senator from New York. In 2009, she became the third female secretary of state. In July, she became the first woman to claim a major U.S. party’s presidential nomination. The presidency turned out to be a bridge too far. Accepting her party’s nomination in July, she embraced the historic nature of her candidacy, saying that “when any barrier falls in America it clears the way for everyone. After all, when there are no ceilings, the sky’s the limit. So let’s keep going. Let’s keep going until every one of the 161 million women and girls across America has the opportunity she deserves to have.” During four decades in public life, Clinton withstood such controversies as an FBI investigation of her use of a private email server as secretary of state, probes into past business dealings, her husband’s infidelity and an unsuccessful Republican effort to remove him from office. Two American women, Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 and Sarah Palin in 2008, were nominated by major parties as their vice presidential nominees, but fell short in the general election. After losing to Obama in the 2008 race, Clinton deferred her White House ambitions, and served as his secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. Clinton’s admirers consider her a tough, capable and sometimes inspirational leader who endured unrelenting efforts by political enemies to chop her down. Campaigning for her on Monday in Michigan, Obama called Clinton “a candidate who is smart, a candidate who’s steady, a candidate who’s tested - probably the most qualified person ever to run for this office.” Her detractors consider her an unscrupulous and power-hungry opportunist. She was detested by many Republicans and conservatives, and in 1998 during her husband’s presidency bemoaned a “vast right-wing conspiracy.” Against Trump, she portrayed herself as guarding the country from the threat she said he posed to American democracy. “As I’ve told people, I’m the last thing standing between you and the apocalypse,” Clinton told The New York Times in October. When she entered the race last year for the Democratic presidential nomination, she was considered such a prohibitive favorite that others in her party shied away from challenging her. But she was an establishment figure and a Washington insider at a time when voters were smitten with outsiders. She secured the Democratic nomination in July only after beating back a surprisingly stout challenge from U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, who appealed to young voters and mustered the kind of excitement that Clinton sometimes failed to generate. As secretary of state, she dealt with civil wars in Syria and Libya, Iran’s nuclear program, China’s growing clout, Russian assertiveness, ending the Iraq war, winding down the Afghanistan war, and an unsuccessful bid to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Congressional Republicans spent years investigating allegations of State Department security lapses related to a 2012 attack by militants in the Libyan city of Benghazi that killed the U.S. ambassador. She testified during marathon congressional hearings in January 2013 at the end of her tenure at the State Department and in October 2015, while already a candidate for president, facing Republican criticism of her handling of the incident. Another politically damaging issue came to light during the lengthy congressional investigation into the Benghazi attack: accusations that she broke the law in her handling of classified information while corresponding through the private email server for her government work as secretary of state. The U.S. Justice Department in July accepted FBI Director James Comey’s recommendation not to bring criminal charges against her, although he faulted her “extremely careless” handling of classified information. Comey announced 11 days before the election that the FBI was investigating a new collection of emails as part of its probe, but said two days before the election that a review of those emails produced nothing that would change the decision not to bring charges. Trump called her “Crooked Hillary,” said he would seek to put her behind bars if elected and encouraged his supporters to chant “lock her up.” Clinton called Trump as a racist hate-monger, a sexist and a tax-dodger enamored with Russian President Vladimir Putin. She defended her lengthy service in government, dismissing Trump’s contention that she had produced no real accomplishments. Born in Chicago on Oct. 26, 1947, Hillary Rodham Clinton was the eldest of three children of a small-business owner father she called a “rock-ribbed, up-by-your-bootstraps, conservative Republican” and a mother who was a closet Democrat. She attended public schools, then enrolled in 1965 at all-female Wellesley College in Massachusetts, where she headed the Young Republicans Club. Her political views changed during the 1960s civil rights struggles and Vietnam War escalation and she switched parties. At Yale Law School, she met a similarly ambitious fellow student from Arkansas, Bill Clinton, and they became a couple. She moved to Washington to work for a congressional panel in the impeachment drive against Nixon, who resigned as president in 1974 during the Watergate scandal. She moved to Arkansas to be with Bill, married him in 1975, and was hired by a top law firm. He jumped into politics, eventually being elected governor, at age 32, in 1978. She gave birth to the couple’s only child, daughter Chelsea, in 1980. As Arkansas’ first lady, she was a high-powered lawyer in the capital Little Rock and a Wal-Mart corporate board member. Most Americans were introduced to her during her husband’s bid for the 1992 Democratic presidential nomination. Bill Clinton said voters would get “two for the price of one” if they elected him. She unapologetically said she was not a woman who “stayed home and baked cookies.” After a woman named Gennifer Flowers accused Bill Clinton during the campaign of a sexual affair, Hillary Clinton appeared on TV with her husband and referred to singer Tammy Wynette’s song, “Stand by Your Man.” “You know, I’m not sitting here, some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette,” she said, adding that she loved and respected her husband. “And you know, if that’s not enough for people, then heck, don’t vote for him,” she added. Conservative critics painted her as a radical feminist and a threat to traditional family values. Bill Clinton defeated incumbent Republican President George H.W. Bush in November 1992. As first lady from 1993 to 2001, unlike many of her predecessors, she was an active part of policymaking. Critics assailed her unsuccessful effort to win congressional passage of healthcare reform, deriding it as “Hillarycare.” She and her husband faced a long investigation into past business dealings but ultimately no criminal charges were brought. A real estate venture known as Whitewater faced scrutiny, spawning an independent counsel investigation that later encompassed Bill Clinton’s sexual relationship with a White House intern named Monica Lewinsky. Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster, a figure in the Whitewater controversy and a close friend of the Clintons from Arkansas, was found dead of a gunshot in 1993. His death was ruled a suicide. In a 2003 memoir, Hillary Clinton blasted “conspiracy theorists and investigators trying to prove that Vince was murdered to cover up what he ‘knew about Whitewater.’” In 2000, the independent counsel investigation concluded there was insufficient evidence to show the Clintons had been involved in any criminal behavior related to Whitewater. In December 1998, the Republican-led House of Representatives voted to impeach a president for only the second time in U.S. history, charging Bill Clinton with “high crimes and misdemeanors” for allegedly lying under oath and obstructing justice to cover up his relationship with Lewinsky. The Republican-led Senate acquitted Clinton in February 1999. Hillary Clinton called the impeachment an abuse of power by Republicans with a “Soviet-style show trial” and condemned what she called “an attempted congressional coup d’etat.” She also said she “wanted to wring Bill’s neck” for the affair and upbraided him privately. Ultimately, she said, she decided she still loved him and remained after they went through counseling. She launched her own bid for elected office and won election in 2000 as a U.S. senator. The 2008 race for the Democratic presidential nomination pitted America’s foremost woman politician against the son of a black Kenyan father and a white Kansan mother. After vanquishing Clinton, Obama made history when he defeated Republican John McCain to become the first black U.S. president. | 1 |
22,228 | Denny’s Serves Up A Grand Slam Of Racism By Forcing Black Family To Pre-Pay For Meal | America s Diner Denny s, has lived up to that title if you are looking at it in the context of how much racism exists in the nation. Henry Williams and Renee Hebert settled in a lawsuit against the company, that stemmed from an incident in 2014 when an L.A. Denny s forced them to prepay for their meal because they were ordering food while black.Williams was told by employees that he would have to hand over the cash in full to cover the meal before his group would be served. Clearly, a group of black individuals going to a restaurant is suspicious enough to assume a conspiracy to do the dine and dash is in the works. Surprisingly, Williams decided to actually hand over the money rather than take his business elsewhere. Maybe he really likes the Moons Over My Hammy meal.The ridiculousness of this was so bad, that even the Denny s manager eventually realized how bad his people screwed up and tried to return the money. The manager was so desperate to give the money back that Williams actually had to tell him to stop repeatedly coming over to their table to grovel and hand over the cash because he was being a nuisance. The manager kicked it up a notch by offering free dessert, to which Williams said he wanted to box his food and leave.Williams and Hebert said that nobody else was asked to pre-pay for their meal. In court, a customer that was seated nearby at the time testified that Williams and Hebert handled the situation well: They were black. I m white. I ve never been asked to prepay. I thought it was appalling for someone in that year and time to be discriminated against like that. Denny s tried to argue against the lawsuit because the customers order was a large one, and the location had other problems with people walking out on checks before. It got pretty damning, though, when the other customer testifying on behalf of Williams said that they had seen the restaurant targeting other black patrons to pre-pay in weeks prior. I bet not every case of these was a huge order. Denny s already had a bad reputation in this area, because it had to pay $54 million in 1994 for a case of similar discrimination against black customers.The details of the settlement were not disclosed, but it would be a safe bet that it was more than the cost of a dine-and-dash.Featured image from wikicommons | 0 |
22,229 | U.S. House Democratic leader Pelosi says Conyers should resign | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday that Representative John Conyers should resign after sexual harassment allegations were brought against him, saying “zero tolerance means consequences for everyone.” Pelosi said the situation with Conyers, the longest-serving member in the U.S. House of Representatives, was “very sad” but the allegations against him were “serious, disappointing and very credible” and “the brave women who came forward are owed justice.” “Congressman Conyers should resign,” Pelosi said. | 1 |
22,230 | Trump blasts Republican senator on 'moral equivalency' after Virginia attack | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Donald Trump on Thursday fired back at a critic in his own party who had denounced the president’s response to the Charlottesville, Virginia, attack, saying he had not drawn a “moral equivalency” between white hate groups and counter-protesters. Trump, on Twitter, called fellow Republican U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham’s statement a day earlier “a disgusting lie.” On Wednesday, Graham had said Trump’s statements after the weekend attack had suggested “moral equivalency” between the two sides and urged him to instead use his words to heal Americans instead. | 1 |
22,231 | Actress Rose McGowan Takes On Trump And His ‘Enablers’ In BRUTAL Op-Ed | Best known for her roll in the TV show Charmed, actress Rose McGowan is a patriot, but not in the sleeps-with-an-AR-15 sense. McGowan loves our country and when she sees a danger, like Donald Trump, she speaks out, and when she speaks out, she doesn t mince words.In a Facebook post she emailed to all the major TV networks and to the Trump campaign, McGowan accused Trump of poisoning us, and the networks of being complicit in allowing Trump to do so. She also called Trump a murderer in the making, after his controversial comments in which he begged his 2nd Amendment followers to do something about Hillary Clinton.She called Trump a disease :After the Republican National Convention I wrote an open letter to a rabid Trump supporter. I realize now the letter was for you, Donald and media men. It s you I ve been wanting to talk to. You who have been stressing me and most of the nation out to the point of a diagnosable sickness. WE ARE BEING POISONED. We, the public, are being sickened by an ever expanding assault on our right to live a healthy and free life. Donald & you ratings driven colluders, are holding us the public hostage and exposing us to disease. A massive DISease.Our symptoms are knots in our shoulders, sick feelings in the pit of our vaginas, stomach tightness, shortness of breath, wildly elevated stress levels- we are now chronically experiencing a true mass illness.McGowan is genuinely frightened of Trump and his followers, calling his campaign a daily reign of terror. She also begged the media not to cover the billionaire, which will never happen because he does bring in ratings.Here s the entire Facebook post:Her Twitter feed has been no less brutal:You are a criminal, Donald Trump. Well played, Republicans, well played. You are endorsing a home grown terrorist. rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) August 10, 2016 You disgusting creep Trump s Assassination Dog Whistle Was Even Scarier Than You Think https://t.co/Gfniw6aPHX via @RollingStone rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) August 10, 2016Donald Trump called for the ultimate violence against a woman.Who are these brainwashed women that want to https://t.co/5VD9X3QMXY rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) August 9, 2016This isn t the first time McGowan has dipped her foot into this year s presidential election. Last month, she famously got into a twitter war with has-been actor and Trump supporter, Scott Baio. She wrote him an open letter too, calling him below average and full of fear. Featured image via Michael Loccisano at Getty Images. | 0 |
22,232 | Britain calls on Myanmar leader to show lead in ending violence | NEW YORK (Reuters) - Britain s Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson on Monday urged Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi to show a lead in ending violence against the country s Rohingya Muslims, which the United Nations has branded ethnic cleansing. What we are trying to get everyone to agree is that, number one, the killings have got to stop, and the violence has got to stop. And we look not just to the military but also to Daw Suu to show a lead on that, Johnson told Reuters ahead of hosting a ministerial meeting on the crisis on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. | 1 |
22,233 | Poland's PM designate says will continue fighting tax evasion | WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland will continue fighting tax evasion, allowing the government to keep public debt in check and finance its public spending agenda, Prime Minister-designate Mateusz Morawiecki said on Friday. He also told the Catholic Trwam television that value added tax revenue would most likely increase by 30 billion zlotys ($8.41 billion) this year and the nominal increase in public debt in 2017 would be lowest in more than two decades. We are taking money away from mafias and tax criminals and giving it to the people, Morawiecki said. | 1 |
22,234 | DEVASTATING 30 SECOND Commercial Shows Scary Truth About TARGET’S Dangerous Open Door Bathroom Policy [VIDEO] | First it was the FLUSH TARGET campaign, where a truck will travel to every store in MN delivering a serious message to Target management: I don t feel safe at Target Click HERE for [VIDEO]Now a new campaign has been launched with an ad targeted at Target shoppers. The ad was produced by Minnesota-based activist group Flush Target . It s a simple ad with a powerful message.WATCH: | 0 |
22,235 | Carly's croon sparks bewilderment, criticism on social media | (Reuters) - Carly Fiorina was so happy to be named U.S. presidential hopeful Ted Cruz’s running mate, she broke into song during her acceptance speech. But the chorus that greeted her on social media was anything but complimentary. Cruz announced at a rally on Wednesday in Indianapolis that the former Chief Executive Officer of Hewlett-Packard would join his ticket. But the unveiling faced scorn on social media after she started to sing while addressing the crowd. "I know two girls that I just adore," crooned Fiorina, in reference to Cruz's two daughters, Caroline and Catherine. "I'm so happy I can see them more. 'Cuz we travel on the bus all day; we get to play." (here) Twitter users reacted with bewilderment, mocking Fiorina over her singing. “Carly Fiorina started singing at a rally where she’s named VP by a candidate who ain’t getting the nod,” tweeted writer and Ebony columnist Michael Arceneaux (@youngsinick). “This election is hilarious.” “Fiorina is singing and it’s extremely creepy,” tweeted Donie O’Sullivan (@donie), the politics lead with news agency Storyful. “You know this was a joke but then she literally went and sang at the event,” tweeted joseito (@go_oat). After suffering a series of crushing losses to Trump in nominating contests on Tuesday, Cruz praised Fiorina as a principled fighter for conservative values who knew how to create jobs and would be a valuable ally on the campaign trail. | 1 |
22,236 | Zimbabweans wait to see whether Mnangagwa's VPs will add new blood | HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe takes its next step into the post-Mugabe era soon, when its new president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, names two vice presidents - appointments that will signal whether he is breaking with the country s old guard. Mnangagwa, whose sacking as vice-president triggered the removal of Robert Mugabe, made no comments to the media on Wednesday before the first meeting of the ruling ZANU-PF party s bosses. Party spokesman Simon Khaya-Moyo has said he will choose his deputies either this week or later. Khaya-Moyo told reporters after the meeting that Mnangagwa assured senior party officials they would serve their full terms, comments that allayed concerns of a purge of the G40 faction loyal to Mugabe and his wife, Grace. Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko, who was considered an ally of the G40, has already been sacked from the party and his post, and some Mnangagwa supporters have called for unspecified action against G40. But the president has urged citizens not to undertake any form of vengeful retribution . Party and government officials have refused to comment on speculation in privately owned newspapers and on social media that Mnangagwa is likely to make military chief General Constantine Chiwenga one of his deputies, as a reward for spearheading the de facto coup that ended Mugabe s rule. The new president has been criticized by some Zimbabweans and opposition parties for appointing Air Marshall Perrance Shiri as lands, agriculture and rural resettlement minister and Major-General Sibusiso Moyo as foreign and international trade minister, rather than bringing in younger candidates less associated with the Mugabe era. Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa, who is the party s legal affairs secretary, presented a report on the economy at Wednesday s meeting, where he reiterated that the new dispensation in the country had brought hope and confidence in the economy, Khaya-Moyo said. Chinamasa promised in a budget speech last week to re-engage with international lenders, curb spending and attract investors to revive the economy. Mnangagwa is under pressure to reverse the economic decline before elections next year and has vowed to focus on rejuvenating the struggling economy and creating jobs. Once seen among Africa s most promising economies, Zimbabwe now has an unemployment rate exceeding 80 percent. | 1 |
22,237 | Republicans meet late into night as Trump demands new U.S. healthcare plan | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans struggling to agree on healthcare legislation to overhaul Obamacare obeyed U.S. President Donald Trump’s orders to try to swiftly reach a deal but were unable to resolve their differences in a long, late-night meeting. Earlier on Wednesday, Trump took Senate Republicans to task for failing to agree on how to dismantle Obamacare, as a new report showed 32 million Americans would lose health insurance if senators opt to repeal the law without a replacement. Trump gathered 49 Republican senators for a White House lunch after a bill to repeal and replace the 2010 Affordable Care Act collapsed on Monday amid dissent from a handful of the party’s conservatives and moderates. After Trump’s exhortation to keep trying, party members met with Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price behind closed doors on Wednesday night to try to finally come together on a major Republican promise of the past seven years - undoing former Democratic President Barack Obama’s signature legislation, popularly known as Obamacare. There was no immediate breakthrough. “We still have some issues that divide us,” said Senator Ted Cruz, a conservative who has proposed letting insurers offer cheaper bare-bones plans that do not comply with Obamacare regulations. Republicans attending the late meeting sent their staff away in order to talk frankly and Senator John Kennedy said everyone was negotiating in good faith but he added he did not know if they would reach agreement. Almost all the other senators rushed off after the meeting without comment. As it was getting underway, the nearly two dozen Republican senators were shaken by news that their colleague, veteran Senator John McCain, had been diagnosed with brain cancer. McCain’s absence from the Senate makes the job of passing a healthcare bill more difficult because leaders need every Republican vote they can get. “Obviously, I think more people are worried about his health than thinking about the math. You understand the math. Obviously it makes things difficult,” Senator Bob Corker said as he left the meeting. Trump had taken a hands-off approach to the healthcare debate last week and suggested on Tuesday that he was fine with letting Obamacare fail. Then on Wednesday he switched course and demanded senators stay in Washington through their planned August recess until they find common ground on healthcare. “We can repeal, but we should repeal and replace, and we shouldn’t leave town until this is complete,” Trump said at the meeting. Trump made the repeal and replacement of Obamacare, which he has called a “disaster,” a central promise of his 2016 campaign. Even with Trump’s new push, Republican leaders in the Senate face a difficult task getting moderates and conservatives to agree on an overhaul that can pass. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had planned to hold a straight repeal vote next week, but several Republican senators have already said they oppose that approach. Thirty-two million Americans would lose their health insurance by 2026 if Obamacare is scrapped without an alternative in place, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported on Wednesday, while 17 million would become uninsured next year alone. At the same time, premiums on individual insurance plans would rise 25 percent next year and double by 2026. The CBO’s estimates were unchanged from a previous report that assessed the impact of a 2015 bill to repeal Obamacare that passed the House of Representatives and Senate and was vetoed by Obama. Democrats were swift to highlight the CBO’s assessment, while Republicans remained silent. “President Trump and Republicans have repeatedly promised to lower premiums and increase coverage, yet each proposal they offer would do the opposite,” Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer said in a statement. Insurers and hospitals have lobbied against straight repeal, saying the limbo would increase uncertainty and their costs. “CBO projects half the country would have no insurers in the individual market by 2020 under the new repeal bill. That’s a true death spiral,” tweeted Larry Levitt, vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a healthcare research group. Republicans say Obamacare is a costly intrusion into the healthcare system. But the party is divided between moderates concerned the Senate bill would eliminate insurance for millions of low-income Americans and conservatives who want to see even deeper cuts to Obamacare, which boosted the number of Americans with health insurance by 20 million through mandates on individuals and employers, and income-based subsidies. Moderate Republican Senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Shelley Moore Capito said they opposed McConnell’s plan for a repeal that would take effect in two years. All three attended the lunch with Trump. With Democrats united in opposition to repeal, McConnell can only lose two votes from the Republicans’ 52-48 majority in the 100-seat Senate to pass healthcare legislation. Opponents of repeal protested throughout Senate buildings on Wednesday afternoon, leading to 155 arrests, police said. Demonstrators returned in the evening to yell as senators arrived for the meeting. Party fractures also emerged in the House of Representatives. The chamber passed a plan to repeal and replace Obamacare in May. But on Wednesday, the House Freedom Caucus, the Republican Party’s conservative wing, filed a petition to vote on a straight repeal. House Speaker Paul Ryan’s spokeswoman, AshLee Strong, said: “The House passed an Obamacare repeal-and-replace bill we are proud of and we hope the Senate will take similar action.” | 1 |
22,238 | U.S. would slash EPA vehicle testing budget under Trump plan | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration would virtually eliminate federal funding for the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget for vehicle emissions and fuel economy testing but will seek to raise fees on industry to pay for some testing, a government document shows. The cuts would slash by more than half the staff of the EPA department that conducts vehicle, engine, and fuel testing to verify emissions standards are met and mileage stickers are accurate. Its work helped lead to Volkswagen AG’s (VOWG_p.DE) 2015 admission that it violated vehicle emissions rules for years. In a March 21 budget document posted online by the Washington Post, the Trump administration proposed eliminating $48 million in federal funding for EPA vehicle and fuel testing and certification. It represents a 99 percent federal cut to the vehicle testing budget and would require “pretty much shutting down the testing lab,” said Margo Oge, who headed the EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality under President Barack Obama. The proposal, which would also cut 168 out of 304 full-time jobs, seeks to partially fund current operations by boosting fees automakers and engine manufacturers pay for testing. An EPA official confirmed the document’s authenticity. The Trump administration has proposed cutting the EPA’s budget by 31 percent and eliminating more than 50 programs. EPA spokesman John Konkus declined to answer questions about how the cuts could affect vehicle testing. “We know we can effectively serve the taxpayers and protect the environment. While many in Washington insist on greater spending, EPA is focused on greater value and real results,” Konkus said. Gloria Bergquist, a spokeswoman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, an auto trade association, said automakers were concerned the proposed cuts could delay certification of new vehicles “and getting products to consumers.” Janet McCabe, a former EPA official in the Obama administration, said Monday that companies that take care to comply with the rules can be at a disadvantage without strong enforcement of the rules. “We know that a little bit of cheating can mean a lot of air pollution,” McCabe said. The administration plans to release a detailed budget plan in May. In March, Trump ordered a review of tough U.S. vehicle fuel-efficiency standards put in place by the Obama administration. The EPA stepped up scrutiny of automakers after Volkswagen admitted to cheating diesel emissions tests in 580,000 U.S. vehicles. VW agreed to pay up to $25 billion in penalties and buyback costs and pleaded guilty in March to felony charges. In September 2015, EPA said it would review emissions from all U.S. diesel vehicles after Volkswagen’s admission it used secret software to emit up to 40 times allowable emissions. That review prompted the allegation by the EPA in January that Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV used undisclosed software to allow excess diesel emissions from 104,000 U.S. trucks and SUVs. Fiat Chrysler denies wrongdoing. The EPA is also scrutinizing emissions from Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz vehicles. It has not approved Daimler or Fiat Chrysler’s request to sell 2017 model diesels. The EPA has also investigated cases of several automakers overstating mileage on window stickers in recent years. In 2014, the EPA hit Korean automakers Hyundai Motor Co and affiliate Kia Motors Corp with $350 million in penalties for overstating fuel economy ratings. | 1 |
22,239 | Republicans Dine With Trump, Then Try To Railroad Comey Into Clearing Him (VIDEO) | Republicans are once again putting their party before their country. Just before the highly anticipated testimony from fired FBI Director James Comey, GOP Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Tom Cotton (R-AL) went scurrying down to the White House like good little Republican sycophants to have dinner with Donald Trump.Nevermind the optics of this, nevermind the fact that it is at best highly inappropriate to put themselves into a situation where Trump might try to lean on them to go in a certain direction with their questioning of Comey none of that mattered to these two sniveling weasels. All they cared about was currying favor with their so-called president, and trying to cast him in as decent a light as possible.These slimy tactics showed in their lines of questioning of Comey on Thursday as well. Instead of focusing on Comey s conversations with Trump, and on Trump s inappropriate, unethical, and possibly illegal behavior, Rubio decided to focus instead on leaks, saying to Comey: You know, this investigation is full of leaks, left and right. Do you ever wonder why of all the things in this investigation the only thing that s never been leaked is the fact that the president was not personally under investigation, despite the fact that both Democrats and Republicans in the leadership of Congress knew that and have known that for weeks? Comey, unfazed by Rubio s clear attempt to force him to make Trump look good, simply said, I don t know. Here is video of that exchange:Cotton s tactics were even slimier. He went after Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) regarding statements she had made regarding the Russia matter during television appearances months ago. He reminded Comey and America that at the time, Senator Feinstein had said on national television that she saw no evidence of Team Trump having worked with the Russians. Cotton then asked Comey how he felt about those statements. Again, Comey didn t take the bait, and said: I don t doubt that Sen. Feinstein was saying what she understood. Here is video of that exchange:Considering what we know about Trump s penchant for pressuring people, it is entirely possible that at that dinner, Rubio and Cotton made some kind of loyalty pledge. It was clear from the questioning that these two Senators had one goal and one goal only: to clear Trump of any wrongdoing be it legally or for political benefit in the minds of the American public.So, there you have it, folks. The GOP cares more about their party than they do their country. They don t care if there are Russian stooges in the White House just since those stooges are members of their party.Featured image via Mark Wilson/Getty Images | 0 |
22,240 | IRAN MAY HAVE RECEIVED Over $33 Billion In Cash AND Gold From Obama | Iran may have received an additional $33.6 billion in secret cash and gold payments facilitated by the Obama administration between 2014 and 2016, according to testimony provided before Congress by an expert on last summer s nuclear agreement with Iran.Between January 2014 and July 2015, when the Obama administration was hammering out the final details of the nuclear accord, Iran was paid $700 million every month from funds that had previously been frozen by U.S. sanctions.A total of $11.9 billion was ultimately paid to Iran, but the details surrounding these payments remain shrouded in mystery, according to Mark Dubowitz, executive director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.In total, Iran may have received as much as $33.6 billion in cash or in gold and other precious metals, Dubowitz disclosed.New questions about these payments are emerging following confirmation from top Obama administration officials on Thursday that it was forced to pay Iran $1.7 billion in cash prior to the release of several U.S. hostages earlier this year. The administration insisted that cash had to be used for this payment.Read more: WFB | 0 |
22,241 | FALSE NARRATIVE EXPOSED: CASTILE WAS ARMED ROBBERY SUSPECT…Video Surfaces Of Girlfriend [Not Exactly Mother Of The Year] Days Before His Death | Nothing ever is as it appears. There is usually more to the story than one side. Of course, the media isn t interested in the cops side of the story, because it won t help the Left and their war on cops. There is more than one tragedy in this story, and that is the tragedy of Reynold s 4 year old girl. What this little girl has had to endure with a mother who openly used drugs in front of her and videotaped her crotch and various other body parts while listening to explicit music (see video below) is beyond the pale. We aren t saying the cop in this case is innocent or guilty. We ll do what most Americans should do in any criminal case We ll wait for all of the facts to come out before we make any judgements. The question is, Is it possible for the Black Lives Matter rioters to take a deep breath until the truth is discovered in this case, or is there some sense of urgency to punish/kill cops and police forces across the country before this case ever goes to court? The Falcon Heights, Minnesota police shooting of Philando Castile is based around an entirely false narrative. Castile and Ms. Diamond Reynolds (Facebook video uploader) were pulled over by police because Castile matched a BOLO Alert for an armed robbery suspect from four days prior.In addition, Mr. Castile also matched the physical description of the suspect as given by eye witnesses:Unfortunately, the false statements in the video which have gone viral, and are being pushed by the mainstream media have created a backlash against police officers.Police officers in: Dallas (link), Tennessee (link), Missouri (link) and Georgia (link) have been Shot or killed in the past 24 hours as a result of a false narrative driven by the Black Lives Matter movement. It is important to get the truth out quickly.Saint Anthony, MN, Police Officers Jeronimo Yanez and Joseph Kauser pulled over Mr. Castile and Ms. Reynolds because the driver, Philando Castile, matched the suspect profile in an armed robbery which occurred on July 2nd, at a convenience store, only a few blocks from where their car was pulled over.The armed robbery occurred on July 2nd 7:30pm (Sat). The CCTV images were given to media and LEO by detectives on July 5th (Tuesday). A BOLO (Be On Look Out) alert was issued the same day, Tuesday July 5th. Philando Castile was pulled over on July 6th.From the radio dispatch of Officer Jeronimo Yanez: I m going to stop a car. I m going to check IDs. I have reason to pull it over. The two occupants just look like people that were involved in a robbery. The driver looks more like one of our suspects, just cause of the wide set nose. A minute and a half later, the recording captures the first report that there was a shooting. (link)Ms. Diamond Reynolds narrates the now viral Facebook video with several false statements.Reynolds claimed they were pulled over for a broken tail light, false.Ms. Reynolds also claims her boyfriend, Castile, was holding a concealed carry permit for a firearm that was resting on his left thigh. This also appears to be false.According to a question presented to the local county sheriff who oversees the Concealed Carry Permit process, Mr. Castile had never requested a concealed carry permit from their office:It is possible a CCP was obtained in another county, however the media are conflating permit to purchase with concealed carry permit . For some reason the CCP ownership is being amplified; it really has no bearing and is largely irrelevant for the context of the situation. That said, there is no factual evidence Mr. Philando Castile had a CCP.Due to the rear facing camera option on the phone Ms. Reynolds was using, the uploaded video everyone has seen is a reversed mirror image making it appear she was in the drivers side, and Castile was on the passenger side. However, that impression is incorrect, Castile was driving the vehicle. The uploaded image is reversed by Facebook Livestream Video.However, correcting the mirror image, in part of the video it is possible to see a hand gun located on the thigh of Philando Castile. This also appears to be why Officer Yanez repeats to Ms. Reynolds not to reach toward her boyfriend:This hand gun also appears to be the same type of hand gun used in the Convenience Store Armed robbery four days earlier (7/2/16)In addition, Mr. Castile also matched the physical description of the suspect as given by eye witnesses:[ ] The other suspect was described as a black man with shoulder-length dreadlocks, who wore tan pants, tan shoes with white soles, a green jacket, a green baseball cap and glasses, the release says. He also had some of his hair pulled into a bun through the strap on the back of his hat and had a small mustache and facial hair on his chin. (link)Similar clothes as noted on the robbery suspect are also noted in the Facebook images of Mr. Castile. However, whether Mr. Castile is actually the person who committed the armed robbery is -again- essentially a moot point. Officer Geronimo Yanez gave the reason for the stop over the radio to his dispatcher as a possible ID on an armed robbery suspect Via: Conservative TreehouseDennis Michael Lynch From what we can see in the video, Castile is hunched over in the passenger seat of a car driven by Castile s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds. His shirt is blood soaked and he is barely alive. Reynolds talks to her Facebook Live audience as a cop is outside the car calling for backup, and her young daughter sits in the back seat.Here is the video of the shooting. ***WARNING***This video is VERY GRAPHIC and DISTURBING:In the video, Reynolds claims Castile did nothing wrong. She says the police officer asked for Castile s license, and that Castile told the officer he was legally carrying a firearm before he reached for his identification. According to Reynolds, it was when Castile reached for his license that the cop shot him in the arm four times. After Reynolds makes her claim, she points the camera at the police officer who is standing outside the passenger window with his gun pointed at a wounded Castile. The police officer counters Reynolds claim by stating he told Castile not to reach for his gun.Because the video was captured after the shooting, it all comes down to Reynolds word versus the word of the police officer. But can we take Reynolds word as being credible?This uncovered, disturbing video shows Castile and Reynolds in car with Reynolds young daughter in the back seat only days before confrontation with police:Three days before his death, Castile took part in another one of Reynolds Facebook Live videos. In this video Diamond Reynolds sits in the driver s seat and films herself smoking pot. At one point she passes the joint to Castile. This all takes place while Reynolds daughter watches from the back seat.In addition to showcasing her own drug use, the majority of the video is Reynolds filming her body parts for the world to see, including her breasts and crotch. Castile just sits back and says nothing while Reynolds makes her video. Meanwhile, Reynolds daughter is in the background watching her mother. She appears disturbed by the situation and asks her mother if they can leave to watch fireworks. | 0 |
22,242 | WATCH: FORMER DNC CHAIR Suggests President Trump Will Be Taken Out Before 2020 Election | Former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean hinted that President Donald Trump would not make it through his first term Friday on MSNBC s Morning Joe. Discussing Sen. Jeff Flake s (R., Ariz.) remarks that Trump could be inviting a 2020 Republican primary challenger with his conduct in office, Dean suggested Trump could no longer be president by then anyway.Watch: Who knows if Trump is going to be around in 2020? Of his own volition, I think it s unlikely he ll be impeached, even if the Democrats take over [the House], although [Robert] Mueller could unearth some stuff that could lead to that, Dean said. I think this is unpredictable. WFB | 0 |
22,243 | WATCH: Scottie Nell Hughes Calls Clinton A Bigot For Speaking Out Against Racism | On Sunday, Scottie Nell Hughes joined a panel discussion on CNN s Reliable Sources where the Trump campaign surrogate defended Donald Trump s characterization of his Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton as a bigot. The justification for the label? Clinton is prejudiced against the racist faction of Trump s base.Most of the conversation surrounded the Trump campaigns hiring of Steve Bannon as his campaign CEO. Bannon is officially on a temporary leave from his position as the executive chairman for the reactionary (often dubbed as the alt-right ) right-wing media site, Breitbart. The site caters to an audience that would probably consider Fox News to be a liberal propaganda network.MTV News host, Jamil Smith said during the panel discussion that he considers Breitbart to support white supremacy and racism. I would say that [Breitbart is] part of the white supremacist machine. They are trying to make sure these views become mainstream. And I think, through Trump, they are finding a way to do that. Trump has faced waves of criticism for the move to hire Bannon from Clinton, the left, and even some members of the right. To which Trump referred to Clinton as a bigot for doing so. Here s Hughes justification for the use of the term: Bigotry, if you look at the definition, it s about someone who s small-minded and sits there and directs hate towards a certain group. Hillary Clinton s speech was all about hate towards a group that, while my fellow counterpart might consider them to be very racist, it s the exact opposite. At that point, Hughes dives hot-head first into one of her just this side of unhinged rants, claiming that just because a section of Breitbart s readers are white supremacists, doesn t mean they all are.Smith, apparently noticing that Hughes doesn t understand what he said at all clarifies his position: What they present is the view of the white supremacist mentality through their coverage. It s not necessarily saying, Well, everyone who works there is a white supremacist. I don t know that. Smith continues, finalizing his thoughts, The point is to say, what kind of viewpoint did they reflect? And it s undeniable that they reflect a white supremacist view if you looked over their coverage over the last several years. I would consider being called a bigot against white supremacists and those who promote it a badge of honor, as I m sure most people would. In the mind of a Trump campaign surrogate, that s a valid line of attack.You can watch the segment below.Featured image from video screenshot | 0 |
22,244 | BLACK TV HOST HAMMERS RACIST MOOCH: ‘The only hope you have Michelle Obama, is that everybody will be as miserable as you” | SPOT ON RACHEL ZONATION The Obamas pride themselves on being staples in the black community who can do no wrong in the eyes of African Americans. Unfortunately for them, however, more and more black people are turning on the Obamas and seeing them for what they really are.After seeing Michelle Obama s graduation speech at the predominantly black Tuskegee University, TV show host Alfonso Rachel knew that he could stay silent no longer. He took to his internet talk show to slam the first lady in a video that has gotten over 25,000 views in just 3 days.Here s an excerpt of what he said: If knowledge is power and you are graduating with the power of knowledge then how are you going to tolerate this agitator coming in to convince you, that you re a victim, despite the power you re graduating with. You are the first freaking lady of the United States and you re still a spoiled butt-hurt victim, whining about unfairness. You re not interested in representing the United States, you re not interested in representing ALL the people, your interest is in representing the black community and as the first lady you have represented us as bitter and spoiled. The only hope that people like you have, Michelle Obama is that people will be as miserable as you. Via: MrConservative.com | 0 |
22,245 | Japan calls North Korea's behavior 'absolutely unacceptable' | TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said on Friday that North Korea’s remarks and behavior were “absolutely unacceptable” and provocative to regional and international security. Suga was speaking after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un vowed to make U.S. President Donald Trump pay dearly for threatening to destroy his country, and after North Korea’s foreign minister was quoted as saying he believes the North could consider a hydrogen bomb test in the Pacific Ocean. Japanese Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera said the comment by North Korean foreign minister Ri Yong Ho was utterly unacceptable. | 1 |
22,246 | U.S. hikes tensions in NAFTA talks with call for 'sunset clause' | ARLINGTON, Va. (Reuters) - Washington has dramatically increased tensions in talks to renew the North American Free Trade Agreement by proposing that the lifespan of any new deal be limited to five years, people familiar with the negotiations said on Thursday. The proposal for a so-called sunset clause - just one of a series of U.S. initiatives that are opposed by NAFTA partners Canada and Mexico - only served to increase uncertainty about the future of the deal. Two sources with direct knowledge of the talks described the atmosphere as “horrible” and highly charged. The U.S. side proposed the sunset clause late on Wednesday during the fourth of seven scheduled rounds to update the rules governing one of the world’s biggest trade blocs, said two officials, who asked not to be identified because the talks are confidential. The Trump administration says the clause, causing NAFTA to expire every five years unless all three countries agree it should continue, is to ensure the pact stays up to date. But Mexico and Canada insist there is no point updating the pact with such a threat hanging over it, arguing the clause would stunt investment by sowing too much uncertainty about the future of the agreement. “It’s a source of total uncertainty,” said one of the NAFTA government officials. Speaking in Mexico City, Finance Minister Jose Antonio Meade said the government was working on plans to alter tariffs and identify substitute markets in case the NAFTA talks failed. His remarks and the tension around NAFTA helped push the peso down 1 percent against the U.S. dollar to a five-month low. U.S. President Donald Trump says NAFTA, originally signed in 1994, has been a disaster for the United States and has frequently threatened to scrap it unless major changes are made. Business and farm groups say abandoning the 23-year-old pact would wreak economic havoc, disrupting cross-border manufacturing supply chains and slapping high tariffs on agricultural products. Trade between the United States, Canada and Mexico has quadrupled under NAFTA, now topping $1.2 trillion a year. In addition to the sunset clause, the United States wants to boost how much North American content autos must contain to qualify for tax-free status and eliminate a dispute settlement mechanisms that Canada insists must stay. Some trade observers said it is difficult to see how negotiators could reach an agreement given U.S. demands that many see as non-starters. The head of Unifor, Canada’s largest private sector labor union, said it was clear the United States did not want a deal. “NAFTA is not going anywhere. This thing is going into the toilet,” Jerry Dias told reporters on Thursday. Despite clear signs of impatience from Canada in particular, U.S. negotiators have yet to submit their proposal on rules of origin for the auto sector. That looked unlikely to come before Friday, another official familiar with the talks said. Trump on Wednesday repeated his warnings that he might terminate the pact and said he was open to doing a bilateral deal with either Canada or Mexico. He was speaking alongside Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who later said Canada was “braced” for Trump’s unpredictability. Negotiators were also set to cover the difficult issue of government procurement on Thursday. Canada and Mexico want their companies to be able to bid on more U.S. federal and state government contracts, but this is at odds with Trump’s “Buy American” agenda. U.S. negotiators have countered with a proposal that would effectively grant the other countries less access, people familiar with the talks say. On automotive rules of origin, NAFTA negotiators face tough new U.S. demands to increase regional vehicle content to 85 percent from 62.5 percent, with 50 percent required from the United States, according to people briefed on the plan. The rules of origin demands are among several conditions that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has labeled “poison pill proposals” that threaten to torpedo the talks. | 1 |
22,247 | BREAKING NEWS: Facebook Killer Dead…Here Are The Details [VIDEO] | MI, PA, OH and NY residents were all warned he could be anywhere in their state. Thank God he was caught and is no longer a danger to innocent people who may have encountered him Kudos to the PA State Police Department!The man who posted a Facebook Live video showing him fatally shooting an elderly man in Cleveland died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound Tuesday morning, authorities in Pennsylvania said.Steve Stephens had been on the run since Sunday. State police found Stephens s body in a white Ford Fusion after a brief pursuit in Erie, Pa., Tuesday morning.Steve Stephens was spotted this morning by PSP members in Erie County. After a brief pursuit, Stephens shot and killed himself. PA State Police (@PAStatePolice) April 18, 2017In a Facebook Live video, Stephens, 37, could be seen fatally shooting Robert Godwin, 74, in Cleveland. The episode sparked a nationwide search for Stephens, who fled soon after the shooting.In the video, Stephens claimed that he had killed 15 people that same day, though only Godwin s murder could be confirmed. The HillStephens mom, Maggie Green, told Fox News on Tuesday she heard the news of her son s death on the radio. She said she believed he would commit suicide because he visited her house before the murder to say goodbye. Momma this will be the last time you see me I just wanted to see you for the last time,' Green said that Stephens told her.Green said Stephens had an issue with gambling. Steve was a good Christian person he just snapped he had a gambling problem, she said.At a press conference earlier this morning, Cleveland police said they did not know where Stephens was. FOX News | 0 |
22,248 | Mnangagwa vows to rebuild Zimbabwe and serve all citizens | HARARE (Reuters) - New President Emmerson Mnangagwa laid out a grand vision on Friday to revitalise Zimbabwe s ravaged economy and vowed to rule on behalf of all the country s citizens. Sworn in days after the overthrow of Robert Mugabe, the 75-year-old former security chief promised to guarantee the rights of foreign investors and to re-engage with the West, and said elections would go ahead next year as scheduled. In a 30-minute speech to tens of thousands of supporters in Harare s national stadium, Mnangagwa extended an olive branch to opponents, apparently aiming to bridge the ethnic and political divides exploited by his predecessor during his 37 years in charge. I intend, nay, am required, to serve our country as the president of all citizens, regardless of color, creed, religion, tribe or political affiliation, he said, in a speech that also hailed the voice of the people as the voice of god . Behind the rhetoric, some Zimbabweans wonder whether a man who loyally served Mugabe for decades can bring change to a ruling establishment accused of systematic human rights abuses and disastrous economic policies. He made clear that the land reforms that sparked the violent seizure of thousands of white-owned farms from 2000 would not be reversed, but promised that those who lost property would receive compensation. To some political opponents, the speech was a welcome contrast with the habitual belligerence of Mugabe and appeared to be drawing on Mnangagwa s knowledge and understanding of China as a model for running an economy. His model has been the Chinese, said David Coltart, a former education minister and MP from the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. He will drive to make Zimbabwe a more attractive investment location, and more efficient, but like China will not tolerate dissent. If you behave , you will be secure. Those skeptical about the new president s commitment to change question his role in the so-called Gukurahundi massacres in Matabeleland in 1983, when an estimated 20,000 people were killed in a crackdown on Mugabe s opponents by the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade. Mnangagwa was in charge of internal security at the time, but has denied any part in the atrocities. Many Zimbabweans, especially the ethnic Ndebele who bore the brunt of the Gukurahundi slaughter, will see his appeal on Friday to let bygones be bygones as an attempt to gloss over his nation s darkest chapter. Some critics have alleged harsh treatment by soldiers of opponents of the military intervention last week - a de facto coup against Mugabe, 93, and his 52-year-old wife Grace. Axed finance minister Ignatius Chombo was in hospital with injuries sustained from beatings during a week in military custody, his lawyer told Reuters. He was blindfolded throughout his time in detention, Lovemore Madhuku said. It was a very brutal and draconian way of dealing with opponents, he added. Asked to comment, police spokeswoman Charity Charamba said she had no information about Chombo. Separately, High Court Judge President George Chiweshe ruled that the military intervention last week was legal, following an application brought by two citizens who petitioned the court to confirm the military had been right to do what they did. Since his return to Zimbabwe this month after fleeing a Mugabe-led purge, Mnangagwa has been preaching democracy, tolerance and respect for the rule of law. Along with Mugabe, Grace - Mnangagwa s sworn enemy - has been granted immunity from prosecution and had her safety guaranteed, part of a deal that led to Mugabe s resignation on Tuesday, sources close to the negotiations said. For decades Mnangagwa was a faithful aide to Mugabe, who was widely accused of repression of dissent and election-rigging and under whose rule one of Africa s once most prosperous economies was wrecked by hyperinflation and mass emigration. Mnangagwa earned the nickname Ngwena , Shona for crocodile, an animal famed and feared in Zimbabwean lore for stealth and ruthlessness. In his speech, Mnangagwa called for the removal of Western sanctions and said he wanted to hit the ground running . He appeared to have initial support from neighboring states. South African President Jacob Zuma said he hoped he would steer Zimbabwe successfully through the transition from Mugabe s rule. The Southern African Development Community, an intergovernmental organization, said it was ready to work closely with Mnangagwa s government. Zimbabweans listening to his speech said they were prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt, but were also realistic about the chances of injecting life into an economy with 90 percent unemployment and banks devoid of cash. In the last 15 years, an estimated 3 million have emigrated to neighboring South Africa in search of a better life. I wanted to see for myself that Mugabe has really gone. He is the only president I ve known, said 33-year-old Lenin Tongoona. We have a new president who may try something a little different to improve the economy. I m excited today but tomorrow is uncertain because we don t know how he will turn out. He talks about creating jobs. How does he plan to do that? | 1 |
22,249 | Farah breaks Moorcroft's 3,000m British record | (Reuters) - Double Olympic champion Mo Farah continued his build-up to the Rio Games by breaking David Moorcroft’s 34-year-old British record in the 3,000 meters at a Diamond League meeting in Birmingham on Sunday. Farah, the 5,000 and 10,000m gold medalist at the 2012 London Olympics, won in seven minutes 32.62 seconds after striding out at the front in a determined effort to beat Moorcroft’s 1982 time of 7:32.79. “Did I get it?,” the 33-year-old, who pulled out of the meet last year after being angered by allegations surrounding his coach Alberto Salazar, who denied violating anti-doping rules, asked a BBC interviewer. “That’s incredible... I thought I’d just missed it. It was a bit tight on the last lap, I had to dig in,” added Farah, who paid tribute to his boyhood hero Muhammad Ali before the race by striking a boxing stance. Former Olympic and world heavyweight champion Ali died on Friday aged 74 and Sunday’s meeting held a minute’s applause for the man known as ‘The Greatest’. “He was a big hero of mine and I send all my condolences to his family and friends,” said Somali-born Farah, who will defend his titles in Rio in August. Kenya’s Mathew Kiptanui was second in 7:44.16 with compatriot Hillary Maiyo third. Kenyan David Rudisha, the Olympic 800m champion and world record holder, ran the second fastest 600m ever with his time of 1:13.10, not far off the world best of 1:12.81 in the little-run distance. He felt he could have gone faster. “I think I lost it in the last 100 meters,” he said. Apart from Farah and Rudisha, there were four other world leading times at the meet including for Conseslus Kipruto of Kenya in winning the men’s steeplechase in 8:00.12 and for his compatriot Asbel Kiprop who took the 1,500 in 3:29.33. Qatar’s Mutaz Barshim won the men’s high jump with a world leading leap of 2.37 meters, while Cuba’s Yarisley Silva produced a year’s best of 4.84 in the women’s pole vault. Britain’s Greg Rutherford, another 2012 Olympic champion, was beaten in the long jump for the first time since last July. He said after his jump of 8.17 left him fifth, with American Marquise Goodwin winning comfortably with a mark of 8.42, that he was struggling with a “mild neck injury” from the previous round in Rome last week. “We have tried to get it 100 percent ready in time. Sadly I have made it worse on the first landing and I am currently unable to move my neck,” he said. “The doctor thinks it is a bad whiplash but it won’t affect my Olympic bid. I am positive the British Athletics medical staff will be able to fix it over the next week.” Australia’s Sally Pearson, the Olympic 100 meters hurdles champion, made her competitive return a year after shattering her wrist in a fall in Rome but finished seventh in a race won by American Kendra Harrison in 12.46 seconds. | 1 |
22,250 | China, Taiwan spar over Chinese diplomat's invasion threat | BEIJING/TAIPEI (Reuters) - A threat by a senior Chinese diplomat to invade Taiwan the instant any U.S. warship visits the self-ruled island has sparked a war of words, with Taipei accusing Beijing of failing to understand what democracy means. China considers Taiwan to be a wayward province and has never renounced the use of force to bring it under its control. The United States has no formal ties with Taiwan but is bound by law to help it defend itself and is its main source of arms. Beijing regularly calls Taiwan the most sensitive and important issue between it and the United States. In September, the U.S. Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act for the 2018 fiscal year, which authorises mutual visits by navy vessels between Taiwan and the United States. At a Chinese embassy event in Washington on Friday, diplomat Li Kexin said he had told U.S. officials that China would activate its Anti-Secession Law, which allows it to use force on Taiwan if deemed necessary to prevent the island from seceding, if the United States sent navy ships to Taiwan. The day that a U.S. Navy vessel arrives in Kaohsiung is the day that our People s Liberation Army unifies Taiwan with military force, Chinese media at the weekend quoted Li as saying, referring to Taiwan s main port. Taiwan s Foreign Ministry said late on Saturday that, while Chinese officials seemed to want to try and win over hearts and minds in Taiwan, they also had been repeatedly using threats that hurt the feelings of Taiwan s people. These methods show a lack of knowledge about the real meaning of the democratic system and how a democratic society works, the ministry said. China suspects Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, who leads the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party, wants to declare the island s formal independence. Tsai says she wants to maintain peace with China but will defend Taiwan s security. Relations between China and Taiwan were becoming even more complex and severe, Zhang Zhijun, head of China s policy-making Taiwan Affairs Office, told a visiting delegation of the New Party, a small pro-China Taiwan opposition party on Monday. Taiwan independence forces are trying to root out Chinese culture in Taiwan and are the gravest threat to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, the official Xinhua news agency cited Zhang as saying. China will never back down over Taiwan, influential Chinese tabloid the Global Times, published by the ruling Communist Party s official People s Daily, said earlier on Monday. Li s words have sent a warning to Taiwan and drew a clear red line, it said in an editorial. If Taiwan attempts to hold an independence referendum or other activities in pursuit of de jure Taiwan independence , the PLA will undoubtedly take action. China would continue to maintain the principle of peaceful unification, foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said on Monday. At the same time, we will resolutely safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity, he told reporters. | 1 |
22,251 | U.S. Senate confirms Acosta to head Labor Department | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - R. Alexander Acosta was confirmed on Thursday by the U.S. Senate to head the Labor Department, making him the first Hispanic member of President Donald Trump’s cabinet. Acosta, a former member of the National Labor Relations Board and dean of the Florida International University College of Law in Miami, was nominated as labor secretary by Trump in mid-February. The Senate confirmed Acosta by a 60-38 vote. Acosta was expected to have a smooth confirmation process despite objections from some Democrats and workers groups that he is too friendly to business. Acosta has had a decades-long career in the public sector, including multiple Senate vettings for past appointments, making it unlikely any surprises in his background would derail his nomination. Acosta served on the NLRB under former Republican President George W. Bush, who also appointed him to be assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. He was then appointed U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, where he went after high-profile defendants such as Jack Abramoff and UBS (UBSG.S)(UBS.N), resulting in the Swiss bank paying more than $750 million in fines for a tax-avoidance scheme. Acosta had served as a law clerk to Samuel Alito from 1994 to 1995, when the conservative Supreme Court justice was a judge at the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Acosta told the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions during his confirmation hearing that he had reservations about key Obama-era labor regulations. Acosta supported the recent 60-day delay of the Labor Department’s fiduciary rule, originally slated to take effect on April 10, which requires brokers offering retirement investment advice to put their clients’ interest first. Trump had directed the Labor Department to review the rule to determine whether it is burdensome and out of step with current White House policies. Also during the confirmation hearing, Acosta expressed reservations about another Obama administration rule issued last year that more than doubled the salary ceiling under which employees would be eligible for overtime pay, from $23,660 to $47,476 a year. The rule, which extended overtime pay to more than 4 million salaried workers, was blocked by a federal judge in November. Acosta said he had “serious questions as to whether the secretary of labor had the power to enact this in the first place.” | 1 |
22,252 | Irish parliament committee backs referendum on abortion up to 12 weeks | DUBLIN (Reuters) - An Irish parliamentary committee on Wednesday recommended that an abortion referendum due next year should offer the choice of allowing terminations with no restrictions up to 12 weeks into a pregnancy, a more liberal position than some had anticipated. The cross-party committee s recommendations are not binding and the final wording of the planned referendum to change some of the world s strictest abortion laws will be down to the government and require the support of parliament. Abortion remains an acutely divisive issue in Ireland, where the once all-pervasive political influence of the Roman Catholic church has lessened in the past 20 years. Legislation was changed only in 2013 to allow terminations in cases where the mother s life was in danger, after a woman who was having a miscarriage died of sepsis in a hospital where her medical team refused her pleas to end the failed pregnancy. The government last year began a lengthy process to consider further changes and Prime Minister Leo Varadkar reiterated on Wednesday that he would like to call a referendum for next May once parliament has considered the committee s recommendations. A IPSOS/MRBI poll in October showed that 57 percent of voters would support abortion in cases of rape, fatal foetal abnormality or a real risk to the life of the mother. This was widely seen as a likely option to be offered to voters. Just 24 percent in the same poll said they would support a right to abortion in all circumstances up to the 22nd week of pregnancy. In supporting a recommendation to legalize the termination of pregnancy with no restriction as to reason up to 12 weeks, the committee cited the complexities of legislating for the termination of pregnancy for reasons of rape and incest. The measure was passed by 12 votes to five with four abstentions. The committee, which has been holding hearings on the matter for the past three months, voted against a recommendation to allow abortion up to the 22nd week of pregnancy. The committee s proposals will be included in a report due to be handed to government on Dec. 20. Some pro-choice activists have campaigned for a more liberal regime, closer to that of England, which allows terminations to be carried out up to 24 weeks after conception, while anti-abortion supporters demand no further changes to the law. | 1 |
22,253 | Brigitte Gabriel Reveals Muslim Brotherhood “Plan For The Destruction Of The United States”…Left Goes Nuts Over Possibility Of Trump Declaring Them A “Terror Group” [VIDEO] | Brigitte Gabriel is a Christian who, after being terrorized by Muslim extremists in her homeland of Lebanon, fled to the US with her family. Gabriel, the president and founder of ACT for America, travels around the nation delivering a message to everyday Americans about the radical infiltration of Muslim extremists in America. She explains in easy to understand terms how the Muslim Brotherhood has one goal: to sabotage America from within, and to make Islam the dominant religion of the country.Watch Brigitte Gabriel explain the Muslim Brotherhood s plan for the destruction of the United States: The most important page of this document is the last page. Because in the last past, they list 29 Islamic organizations set up in the United States with the specific goal of sabotaging America from within, and destroying America by our own hands. The MSA is listed as one of the Islam organizations whose goal it is to destroy America. The MSA, or Muslim Student Association has more chapters on American college campuses than the Republican and Democrat Party combined. Watch here:The tolerance for the funding of terror groups by Americans is about to come to end under President Donald J. Trump. One of the first actions he may take is to designate what many experts have been calling a terror group for years. The Trump administration could soon declare the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, a move that would greatly restrict the controversial group s global reach and would come despite its insistence that it has peaceful intentions.Trump himself was often critical of President Obama s outreach to the Muslim Brotherhood, and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has proposed a bill to call for declaring the Brotherhood a terror organization. In the past, it has been accused of supporting terrorist groups around the world, and several countries, including Muslim nations, have banned them.If the U.S. declares the Brotherhood a terrorist organization, it would make it a criminal act for Americans to fund the group, ban banks from processing money for it, bar people with ties to the group from coming to the United States and make it easier to deport immigrants who have worked with the organization. It is time to call this enemy by its name and speak with clarity and moral authority, Cruz said in a statement introducing the bill. Watch Brigitte Gabriel destroy this Imam on Judge Jeanine s FOX News show: FOX NewsThe Left doesn t think Trump should designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization and here s why:The New York Times editorial board thinks President Trump shouldn t designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization because it could make Trump the enemy of all Muslims.The liberal paper published Thursday an editorial Thursday titled All of Islam Isn t the Enemy arguing against the move, which the Trump administration is reportedly considering as a possible option. CIA Director Mike Pompeo has said he supports designating the group, which is open about its goal of creating a state ruled by Islamic law, as a terrorist organization. Is President Trump trying to make enemies of the entire Muslim world? That could well happen if he follows up his primitive ban on refugees and visa holders from seven Muslim nations with an order designating the Muslim Brotherhood perhaps the most influential Islamist group in the Middle East as a terrorist organization, the editors charged. Daily Caller | 0 |
22,254 | Merkel, Trump call for tougher U.N. sanctions against North Korea | BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.S. President Donald Trump condemned North Korea s nuclear test during on Monday and urged the United Nations to quickly agree on tougher sanctions against Pyongyang, a German government spokesman said. Both agreed that the test of a hydrogen bomb means a new and unacceptable escalation by the North Korean regime, Steffen Seibert said in a statement after they spoke by telephone. The German chancellor and the American president expressed the view that the international community must continue to exert pressure on the regime in North Korea and that the United Nations Security Council has to quickly adopt further and stricter sanctions, Seibert added. For her part, Merkel told Trump that Germany would push for tougher sanctions against North Korea by the European Union, Seibert said, adding: The aim is to dissuade North Korea from its violations of international law and to achieve a peaceful solution to the conflict. | 1 |
22,255 | NY mayor criticizes Trump's closing public atrium for campaign events | NEW YORK (Reuters) - A showdown between New York City and Donald Trump over one of the most potent symbols of Trump’s candidacy, the glitzy atrium of Trump Tower, intensified on Wednesday as the mayor’s office criticized his closing of the tower’s public space for campaign events. Lined with pink marble and indoor waterfalls and a popular tourist attraction, the atrium has become a favorite event backdrop for Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for the U.S. presidency, who frequently boasts to voters of his wealthy lifestyle and his success as a building developer. City officials are now investigating whether Trump’s using the atrium for private campaign events without permission is in breach of a long-standing agreement between Trump and the city’s planners. Trump had agreed to maintain it as a public space as a zoning concession when the tower was built. A spokesman for Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, weighed in on Wednesday to register City Hall’s displeasure, which may yet force Trump to find an alternative setting for his events for the five months remaining before the November presidential election. “Despite what he may think, the rules and laws of this city apply to everybody, including Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump should honor his agreement with the city to keep the space open to the public,” Austin Finan, the spokesman, said in a statement. In order to build his flagship Fifth Avenue skyscraper taller than zoning rules would have otherwise allowed, including the penthouse where Trump lives, Trump agreed to keep the atrium open to the public from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day. The atrium, opened in 1983, is one of scores of “privately owned public spaces” across the city, an effort to balance the wishes of developers to build taller while preserving pockets of space for New Yorkers in crowded neighborhoods. Since launching his campaign by descending an escalator into the atrium last June, Trump has held at least half a dozen campaign events where Reuters reporters have seen his security staff prevent anyone but a few pre-approved journalists from entering parts or all of the atrium. City officials, whose investigation was first reported by Reuters on Tuesday, say they have no evidence of Trump seeking or getting permission to close the space for a private event, which is allowed to happen up to four times a year. Michael Cohen, an executive vice president for the Trump Organization, said on Tuesday he could neither confirm nor deny if there had been a violation of the agreement while his staff tried to locate the paperwork. He did not respond to questions on Wednesday. | 1 |
22,256 | BRAVO! WATCH TED CRUZ SLAM The Lies Of Leftists Attacking Senator Jeff Sessions [Video] | Watch Ted Cruz completely annihilate the Leftist false attacks on Jeff Sessions character! #confirmationhearing pic.twitter.com/tBaz5rdRoI John Binder (@JxhnBinder) January 10, 2017 | 0 |
22,257 | Bernie Sanders Just Got A HUGE Native American Endorsement (VIDEO) | Bernie Sanders just received a major endorsement from the legendary activist, environmentalist, economist, and, in my opinion, one of coolest people ever Winona LaDuke.LaDuke s endorsement of Bernie Sanders came in the form of a video where she praised Sanders vision for a fossil-free future: Our lands as indigenous lands are the place where most of the oil and gas, and a good portion of the uranium and coal comes from. The easiest answer for the future generations is to keep it in the ground. And we are thankful for Bernie Sanders for saying Let s #keepitintheground. Don t make a mess we can t clean up, LaDuke said.Here is the video:https://www.facebook.com/MidwestForBernie/videos/343098512481172/?fref=nfFor those not familiar with LaDuke s history, she is an indigenous American who has worked tirelessly fighting for tribal rights and sustainable development. Winona LaDuke is an Anishinaabekwe (Ojibwe) enrolled member of the Mississippi Band Anishinaabeg. After graduating from Harvard, LaDuke has spent her career writing about issues that hurt indigenous groups and the environment. LaDuke currently works as the Director of Honor the Earth.It is not surprising that LaDuke has decided to endorse Sanders for president. Sanders has an ambitious plan to completely transform the United States energy infrastructure. What s really great about Sanders keep it in the ground strategy, is that so much of it can be accomplished without the approval of Congress.The president of the United States has the authority to prevent the State Department from granting leases to fossil fuel companies if they want to extract dirty fuels from federal land. President Obama recently used this power to put a quasi-moratorium on leases for coal mines. As president, Sanders would also be able to not give leases to companies who wish to build pipelines across international borders.One aspect of Sanders energy plan should be of particular interest to both racial justice groups, environmentalists, and those who work in their intersection. Sanders recognizes the disparity of the impact fossil fuel extraction and usage has on indigenous peoples and communities of color. That s why he supports legislation that would work to halt the devastation fossil fuels are causing while creating millions of new jobs. Sanders co-sponsored the Keep It in the Ground Act last year. When he did he released a video explain why we need to transform our nation s energy system.You can watch the video below. Featured image from video screenshot via Facebook | 0 |
22,258 | Two-Thirds Of Mayors In America Support Raising The Minimum Wage | Republicans in Congress may not support raising the minimum wage, but most mayors in America say they want to do exactly that.A Politico survey reached out to 73 mayors in cities across the country asking them if they would consider raising the minimum wage like had been done in Seattle, Los Angeles, and New York City, all three of which approved a $15 minimum wage over the last two years.In a stunning result, 65 percent of the mayors surveyed said they would definitely consider raising the minimum wage. 37 percent said they would consider raising wages as high as $15 an hour while 28 percent said they consider raising wages but not quite as high as $15, suggesting they would support President Obama s call to raise the minimum wage to at least $10 an hour.29 percent of the mayors are like the Republicans who control Congress, in that they refuse to consider the idea of raising the minimum wage at all.Income inequality and poverty ranked as serious issues among the mayors with 80 percent identifying both as great challenges to overcome.Of course, raising the minimum wage would do a lot to close the income gap and provide families with more resources. And because families would spend that extra money, it would be a huge boost to the local economy. It would also help Americans pay for housing, which is getting much more difficult now. In addition, it would save the federal government millions of dollars because higher wages would mean less people needing federal aid such as food stamps to get by.Sadly, efforts to raise the minimum wage have been largely left to cities as Republicans in control of state legislatures and Congress refuse to take up the issue so as not to anger their corporate masters, despite the fact that studies from both sides of the aisle support wage hikes.Indeed, Republicans would rather eliminate the minimum wage all together so that corporate CEOs can pay their employees slave wages that would make America look more like it did during the Gilded Age, when workers were kept in poverty due to low wages, and the top 2 percent controlled more than a third of the nation s wealth.And once again, unless the issue of low wages and income inequality is addressed in a meaningful way, America will be repeating history, which means that the middle class will cease to exist and workers will struggle to keep their families and themselves afloat as the wealthy use their money to buy politicians to ensure that nothing ever changes.Raising the minimum wage and tying it to the rate of inflation has never been more important to achieve. And as Seattle, Los Angeles, and New York City have demonstrated, it can be done. But if we want it to happen across the entire nation, the 2016 Election would be a great place to start. Republicans think they can keep forcing Americans to work longer and harder with inadequate pay while they continue to make $174,000 a year working only for 110 days out of 365.Clearly, there is something terribly wrong when lawmakers can raise their own taxpayer paid salaries at will while they continue to reject the pleas of working people across the country to have their own efforts rewarded with a much needed wage increase.Featured Image: PR Watch | 0 |
22,259 | U.N. sees 'textbook example of ethnic cleansing' in Myanmar | GENEVA (Reuters) - The top U.N. human rights official on Monday denounced Myanmar s brutal security operation against Muslim Rohingyas in Rakhine state, saying it was disproportionate to insurgent attacks carried out last month. Communal tensions appeared to be rising across Myanmar on Monday after two weeks of violence in Rakhine state that have triggered an exodus of about 300,000 Rohingya Muslims, prompting the government to tighten security at Buddhist pagodas. Zeid Ra ad al-Hussein, addressing the United Nations Human Rights Council, said that more than 270,000 people had fled to Bangladesh, with more trapped on the border, amid reports of the burning of villages and extrajudicial killings. We have received multiple reports and satellite imagery of security forces and local militia burning Rohingya villages, and consistent accounts of extrajudicial killings, including shooting fleeing civilians, Zeid told the Geneva forum. He cited reports that Myanmar authorities had begun to lay landmines along the border with Bangladesh and would require returnees to provide proof of citizenship . Rohingya have been stripped of civil and political rights including citizenship rights for decades, he added. I call on the government to end its current cruel military operation, with accountability for all violations that have occurred, and to reverse the pattern of severe and widespread discrimination against the Rohingya population, Zeid said. The situation seems a textbook example of ethnic cleansing. Last year Zeid s office issued a report, based on interviews with Rohingya who fled to Bangladesh after a previous military assault, which he said on Monday had suggested a widespread or systematic attack against the community, possibly amounting to crimes against humanity . I deplore current measures in India to deport Rohingyas at a time of such violence against them in their country, Zeid said, noting that some 40,000 Rohingyas had settled in India, including 16,000 who have received refugee documentation. Noting India s obligations under international law, he said: India cannot carry out collective expulsions, or return people to a place where they risk torture or other serious violations. | 1 |
22,260 | Trump Demands Queen Of Britain Pick Him Up In Gold-Plated Carriage, Organize Parade During Visit | Trump ran on fiscal responsibility, but has since made it clear that it doesn t apply to him.In yet another intentional embarrassment, details have leaked regarding Trump s demands for his upcoming state visit to England. They are petty and childish, and have infuriated much of England.Trump is said to have asked the Queen of England to pick him up in a gold-plated horse-drawn carriage and be given a parade as he makes his way to Buckingham Palace for an official visit.Donald Trump waving from the Queen s royal carriage is not a scenario many would have foreseen a year ago, but it has become a very real prospect, forcing security services to plan an unprecedented lockdown.The White House has made clear it regards the carriage procession down the Mall as an essential element of the itinerary for the visit currently planned for the second week of October, according to officials.This may be another petty attempt by Trump to appear better than his predecessor, President Obama. The former president had repeatedly told the English government that it was not expected to drive him around in a gold chariot, citing cost and security.Trump, who views appearances as everything, has a different perspective. Who would have thought?Their living room Trump tower. Gold leaf walls-that's normal pic.twitter.com/uZqPKRXg4Q Debra Kamin (@ubucky) July 30, 2016For the English government, Trump s request is said to be a financial, security and logistical nightmare. The Times again:One source said that Mr Trump s decision to opt for the carriage, rather than the bullet and bomb-proof car that was used by his predecessor presented a range of fresh headaches.The source said: The vehicle which carries the president of the United States is a spectacular vehicle. It is designed to withstand a massive attack like a low-level rocket grenade. If he s in that vehicle he is incredibly well protected and on top of that it can travel at enormous speed. If he is in a golden coach being dragged up the Mall by a couple of horses, the risk factor is dramatically increased. The result is that London will go into lockdown mode not seen since the Olympics. The crushing financial burden will, of course, be footed by the English taxpayer. Trump, who makes his Secret Service detail rent their own golf courses when he plays golf at his own course, is not expected to chip in any money.Trump s expectations to be treated as nobility is a further insult to the British people, 1.8 million of whom recently signed a petition asking that Trump be banned from the country entirely. At several times, Parliament has debated whether to forbid Trump from entering England due to his history of racism and sexism. During the fiesty debate, two British PMs got into a heated exchange which culminated in this epic zinger:Carmichael: Having offered a state visit [to Trump] this time, what will we offer the next time we want to get a favorable response? Salmond: The crown jewels. Sadly, watching Trump prance around London in gold, the joke doesn t seem like much of a joke any longer.Featured image via Stefan Wermuth WPA Pool/Getty Images | 0 |
22,261 | Trump Once Laughed About Being More Worried About A Marble Floor Than A ‘Dying’ Man | Trump, sometimes, is honest about who and what he is a miserable excuse for a human being. Many of these instances of honesty come from interviews on The Howard Stern Show, which he often visited when he never thought he d actually run for president. One such instance, which can be listened to below, includes him laughing about his refusal to help a man who may have been dying, being more worried, in his words, about the marble. In a video published by Now This on Facebook, you can hear Trump saying,I was at Mar-A-Lago and we had this incredible ball the Red Cross Ball. You have all these really rich people. And a man, about 80 years old, a very wealthy man, a lot of people didn t like him he fell off the stage. This guy falls off, right on his face, hits his head, and I thought he died. And you know what I did? I said Oh my god, that s disgusting, and I turned away. I couldn t, you know, he was right in front of me. I turned away. I didn t want to touch him. I felt terrible. You know, beautiful marble floor, didn t look so good. It changed color. It became very red. And you have this poor guy, 80 years old, lying on the floor unconscious, and all of the rich people are turning away, Oh my god, this is terrible! This is disgusting! Who the hell brags about not having basic human decency? You can watch the video of Trump s outrageous comments below:Featured image via Mark Wilson/Getty Images | 0 |
22,262 | 40% Of Floridians Believe This Republican Candidate May Be A Serial Killer | This CANNOT be a good thing if you are running for president, but it sure is damn hilarious.Republican presidential wannabe Ted Cruz has run smack dab into a serious image problem that threatens to sink his already sinking campaign permanently.Not too long ago, an Internet rumor began circulating that Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer, a serial killer who terrorized Northern California in the 1960s and 1970s.And even though it is impossible for Ted Cruz to be this serial killer since he was born in 1970, apparently a growing number of people are beginning to believe it anyway.The issue is even important enough that Public Policy Polling asked Florida voters in a survey if they think Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer or not. And here s where the hilarity begins.According to the PPP poll, nearly 40 percent of Florida voters think Ted Cruz might be the Zodiac Killer,with 10 percent actually saying he is the Zodiac Killer and 28 percent saying they aren t sure.Here s a screenshot of the question and results.Yes, Floridians actually believe it is possible that Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer, and thus far, the Texas Senator has neither confirmed nor denied that he is the infamous murderer.But presents Cruz with an enigma to solve. With the Florida Republican Primary scheduled for March 15th, Cruz has to figure out how to convince nearly 40 percent of voters in the state that he isn t a creepy guy who stabs canoodling young couples to death.However, there is another good thing coming out of this Ted Cruz conspiracy theory beyond making us laugh out loud.As it turns out, Texas man is selling Ted Cruz Was The Zodiac Killer t-shirts to help women pay for abortions in the state, and so far, he is selling them fast which is allowing him to donate $35,000 to West Fund, which helps low-income women get the abortion they need.This is a story that really does keep on giving.Featured Image: Flickr | 0 |
22,263 | France's Macron says not offering Hariri exile | BONN, Germany (Reuters) - President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday said his invitation on Wednesday to Lebanon s prime minister Saad al-Hariri to come to France was not an offer of political exile. No, not at all, Macron told reporters in Bonn when asked if he was handing Hariri exile. I hope that Lebanon will be stable, and that political choices should be in accordance with institutional rule. We need a strong Lebanon with her territorial integrity respected. We need leaders who are free to make their own choices and speak freely. | 1 |
22,264 | Colombia's Golfo crime gang willing to surrender, president says | BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia s notorious Golfo Clan crime gang, one of the country s most violent, has told the government it is willing to surrender, President Juan Manuel Santos said on Tuesday. The group, also known the Usuga Clan, is accused of operating profitable drug trafficking routes in partnership with Mexican cartels and taking part in illegal gold mining. We received an expression of willingness by the head of the Golfo Clan to turn themselves in, to submit to justice, President Juan Manuel Santos said at an event in Bogota. I have asked the justice minister and the attorney general to evaluate it. The government is not going to negotiate with the gang, Santos said, because members are criminals, and not politically motivated rebels like the FARC and ELN guerrilla groups. The group formerly known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, who have kept their FARC acronym for their new political party, signed a peace deal with the government last year, while the National Liberation Army (ELN) is in peace talks. If they surrender to justice, the law could give them some benefits, depending on the surrender conditions, Santos said. What are they handing over, what is its value to society, for Colombians. The United States has offered a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to the capture of Golfo gang leader Dario Antonio Usuga, known by his alias Otoniel. Second-in-command Roberto Vargas, alias Gavilan, was killed by the army in a shoot-out last week. The group is infamous for a series of police officer assassinations in the Andean country. | 1 |
22,265 | SICK OF HOLLYWOOD LIBERALS and PERVERTS? Here’s Your Chance To Support Hollywood CONSERVATIVES In NEW Movie “Let There Be Light” That President Trump Just Tweeted About [VIDEO] | Actor Kevin Sorbo and his wife, actress Sam Sorbo, are an anomaly in Hollywood. Both of them are committed conservatives who are dedicated to raising their children with values and morals, and most importantly, they put their faith first in all aspects of their lives. Kevin and Sam Sorbo are the real deal. If you re sick and tired of reading about the rampant sexual abuse that appears to be the norm in Hollywood, and watching leftist actors and comedians using severed heads of President Trump to get a laugh, perhaps their new movie Let Their Be Light , that opens in theaters tomorrow, is the movie you ve been waiting for. At a time when Harvey Weinstein and other Hollywood elites face growing accusations of sexual impropriety, Sean Hannity has emerged as a film producer eager to see more family-friendly films that don t shy from upholding Judeo-Christian values. In fact, for Mr. Hannity, the timing couldn t be better. I think the old paradigm of Hollywood is crumbling right in front of our eyes, Mr. Hannity said during a phone interview with The Washington Times. We re on the cutting edge of getting ahead of this because the demand has been there, and [producers] have had no desire to fulfill it. That is, except for most independent filmmakers like Mr. Hannity, who agreed to become an executive producer and fund most of the $3 million budget for Let There Be Light, a faith-based drama opening in theaters Thursday that stars Kevin Sorbo, known for Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. He s the best executive producer anybody could ever ask for, Mr. Sorbo said of Mr. Hannity. He said, Here s the money. Go make the movie and show me when you re done.In the film, which Mr. Sorbo also directed, he plays Dr. Sol Harkens, a famous book-writing atheist who, while living for the crowd s roars of approval while skewering Christians in packed debates, also struggles with loneliness, the death of his young son and the leery attitudes of his two remaining sons, who are being raised by his Christian ex-wife, Katy, who is portrayed by Mr. Sorbo s own wife, Sam Sorbo.The executive producer of the Let Their Be Light movie, Sean Hannity tweeted about the Sorbo s movie: Let There Be Light opens THIS FRIDAY! Locations listed at https://t.co/9hkyEX1UVi https://t.co/NxlxjswYJG Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) October 26, 2017President Trump retweeted Sean Hannity s tweet about the Let Their Be Light movie, and said that Hannity s movie will be another Sean success! Will be another Sean success! https://t.co/SlNTENvJLA Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 26, 2017The couple s two sons also feature in Let There Be Light. Sean Hannity interviewed the very talented Sorbo family recently, and asked them what it was like for their family to work together to make the movie:After Miss Sorbo first came up with the idea for the film, she approached veteran screenwriter Dan Gordon ( The Hurricane, Wyatt Earp ), who agreed to co-write the script with her. A random contact from Mr. Hannity led to his immediately bankrolling the film. Sean Hannity, kind of out of the blue, called my husband and said, I want to do a faith-based movie, and I want to work with you, Miss Sorbo recalled.Not long after, Mr. Hannity, who juggles two full-time jobs in radio and TV, found himself in a pitch meeting in New York with the Sorbos and Mr. Gordon. Twenty minutes later, he cut them a check.Here s a sneak peek at the movie Let There Be Light : It s better than I ever dreamed it could be in terms of the quality, the acting and the cinematic value, Mr. Hannity said. I think with all that s happening out in Hollywood, there might be an opportunity here to make more of these independent films that people will go see, and that s why I wanted to lend my name to it. For entire story: Washington Times Sam Sorbo is an awesome actress, a loving wife, an amazing mom who homeschools her children and we re proud to call her our friend. If you d like to know more about homeschooling your kids, Sam has written one of the best books on the market on the subject of how to be a successful homeschooling mom or dad. The book is available for purchase at this Christian bookstore link or at Amazon here. | 0 |
22,266 | SPEAKER SCHEDULED TO Praise Hillary Totally Trashes Her…Taken Off Stage By Security [Video] | A Bernie Sanders supporter who slammed Hillary Clinton at her own rally in Iowa was kicked off stage after urging attendees not to vote for Clinton because you can t trust her.Kaleb Vanfosson, president of Iowa State University s Students for Bernie chapter, trashed Clinton s ties to Wall Street and lack of empathy for the average American. She is so trapped in the world of the elite that she has completely lost grip on what it s like to be an average person, Vanfosson said, as cheers erupted from the audience. She doesn t care. He s no Trump fan but this was supposed to be a glowing endorsement of Hillary Clinton Read more: BPR | 0 |
22,267 | Overcrowded Greek refugee camps ill-prepared for winter: UNHCR | ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece must speed up winter preparations at refugee camps on islands in the Aegean Sea where there has been a sharp rise in arrivals, the United Nations refugee agency said on Friday. Nearly 5,000 refugees, mostly Syrian or Iraqi families, crossed from Turkey in September - a quarter of all arrivals this year, UNHCR data shows. While that is a fraction of the nearly 1 million who arrived in 2015 - due to a European Union deal with Turkey to block that route - four of the five island camps are hosting two or three times as many people as they were designed for. UNHCR urges action on the islands to ease overcrowding, improve shelter, and stock and distribute appropriate and sufficient aid items, said Philippe Leclerc, UNHCR representative in Greece. In the Moria camp on the island of Lesbos, one of the main entry points, more than 1,500 people are in makeshift shelters or tents without insulation, flooring or heating, UNHCR said. They include pregnant women, people with disabilities, and very young children. On nearby Samos, about 400 people are living in very difficult conditions and another 300, including families and lone children, are sleeping in tents in the woods due to a lack of space in the camp, UNHCR said. More than 3,000 people on Samos are crammed into facilities designed to hold 700. In January, refugees in Greece suffered sub-zero temperatures when an icy spell gripped parts of the country and scores of summer tents were weighed down by snow. More than 60,000 refugees and migrants have been trapped in Greece since Balkan countries along the northward overland route to western Europe sealed their borders in March 2016. UNHCR has been gradually reducing its involvement on the islands since national institutions took over most services in August. | 1 |
22,268 | Iran, Lebanon's Hariri differ on key meeting | BEIRUT (Reuters) - A top Iranian official and Lebanon s Saad al-Hariri gave conflicting accounts on Tuesday of a key meeting they had held right before Hariri quit as prime minister, a move he attributed to regional meddling by Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah. The shock resignation has thrust Lebanon back onto the front line of a power struggle between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shi ite Iran - a rivalry that has also buffeted Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Bahrain. Hariri flew to Riyadh on Nov. 3, after meeting in Beirut Ali Akbar Velayati, the top foreign policy adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Hariri claims that in our meeting he asked Iran to stop interfering in the Lebanese affairs, but he did not say such a thing, Velayati was quoted as saying by Iranian state television s website on Tuesday. Our meeting was not tense or violent at all. These are all lies, he said. Velayati said Iran hoped Hariri would return to Lebanon, accusing Riyadh of fanning the flames of tension as it could not tolerate the strategic friendship between Tehran and Beirut. Hariri denied Velayati s account that the Lebanese leader had offered to mediate between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Prime Minister Hariri did not offer mediation between any countries, a statement from his press office said. He presented to Velayati his point of view about the need to stop Iranian interventions in Yemen as a gateway and a precondition for any improvement in ties between (Iran) and the kingdom, it said. A long-time Saudi ally, Hariri had first mentioned the Velayati meeting in a television interview on Sunday night, his first public comments since quitting. He warned Lebanon was at risk of Gulf Arab sanctions because of regional meddling by Shi ite Hezbollah and said he would return to Lebanon within days. In his resignation speech in a broadcast from Saudi Arabia on Nov. 4, Hariri said he feared assassination and accused Iran along with Hezbollah of sowing strife in the Arab world. Top Lebanese government officials and senior politicians close to Hariri believe Saudi Arabia coerced him into quitting and has been holding him against his will since, though Hariri and Riyadh have denied this. | 1 |
22,269 | Trump says to call UK's May on Friday following train blast | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday he was preparing to call British Prime Minister Theresa May after a home-made bomb on a London train injured 22 people. Trump, who spoke briefly with reporters before going into the Oval Office, said he had been briefed on the attack, which police called a terror incident, calling it a terrible thing. Asked about a Friday morning tweet in which Trump said the U.S. ban on travelers from certain countries should be more specific, Trump said: We have to be tougher and we have to be smarter. (This story corrects third paragraph to show Trump was referring to the U.S. travel ban in his quote, not the London attack.) | 1 |
22,270 | Kremlin hits at Twitter's 'prejudiced' move against two Russian media outlets | MOSCOW (Reuters) - Twitter s ban on adverts from Russian media was motivated by Washington s deep prejudices against Moscow and was setting a worrying precedent for the company to treat its clients unequally, the Kremlin said on Friday. Twitter Inc on Thursday accused Russian media outlets Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik of interfering in the 2016 U.S. election and banned them from buying ads on its network, after criticism in the United States that the social network had not done enough to deter international meddling. We regret this. We regret that, first and foremost, this company (Twitter) is most probably falling victim to deep prejudices about our mass media, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with reporters. We also regret that the company is actually creating a precedent of unequal treatment of its clients which ... is likely to alarm and worry other users of this network. In April, Reuters reported that RT and Sputnik were part of a plan by Russian President Vladimir Putin to swing the U.S. presidential election to Donald Trump and undermine voters faith in the American electoral system, according to three current and four former U.S. officials. The Kremlin has strongly denied U.S. accusations of meddling in the polls. We still hope that in the end the company will deem it necessary to analyze this situation in detail and in the end will come to a conclusion that the work of free mass media, which RT and Sputnik are certainly part of, should in no way be qualified as meddling in the electoral process of the U.S.A. or any other country, Peskov said. He also said that possible new U.S. sanctions against Russia were a cause for concern and a reflection of Washington s unfriendly and even hostile attitude towards our country . The U.S. State Department said on Thursday it had belatedly begun informing Congress and others about groups associated with the Russian intelligence and defense sectors as required under a 2017 law tightening sanctions on Russia. | 1 |
22,271 | EU's Juncker says ready to act over new U.S. sanctions on Russia | BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said on Wednesday the European Union was ready to act “within a matter of days” if proposed new U.S. sanctions on Russia undermined the bloc’s energy security. The U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to slap new sanctions on Russia, which could affect European firms. “The U.S. bill could have unintended unilateral effects that impact the EU’s energy security interests,” Juncker said in a statement after a meeting of European Commissioners. “This is why the Commission concluded today that if our concerns are not taken into account sufficiently, we stand ready to act appropriately within a matter of days. America first cannot mean that Europe’s interests come last.” | 1 |
22,272 | Egypt defends NGO law U.S. senators call a draconian rights crackdown | WASHINGTON/CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt defended on Thursday a new law on non-governmental organizations that three U.S. Republican senators have called “draconian” and a sign of “a growing crackdown on human rights and peaceful dissent”. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein also criticized the law, saying it “effectively hands administration of NGOs to the government”. The law, issued on Monday after being ratified by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, restricts NGO activity to developmental and social work and introduces jail terms of up to five years for non-compliance. Egyptian lawmakers said the law was necessary to protect national security. The government has long accused human rights groups of taking foreign funds to sow chaos and several are facing investigation over their funding. Cairo’s foreign ministry denied the law aimed to restrict NGOs and said some of them “have gotten used to working outside the law ... to defame the image of civil society in Egypt”. In Washington on Wednesday, Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham said in a joint statement: “President al-Sisi’s decision to ratify the draconian legislation ... that regulates the work of non-governmental organizations is the latest sign of a growing crackdown on human rights and peaceful dissent in Egypt.” McCain, who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Graham said the U.S. Congress should in response “strengthen democratic benchmarks and human rights conditions on U.S. assistance for Egypt.” That sentiment was echoed by Senator Marco Rubio, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who said the law would have a “terrible impact” on Egypt’s ability to make reforms and would have implications for U.S.-Egypt relations. “This law is a direct attack on independent civil society in Egypt,” Rubio said in a statement. The UN human rights chief Zeid said on Thursday that the new law makes rights defenders even more vulnerable than before. “The crucial function of these NGOs – to hold the state accountable for its human rights obligations – has been severely hampered already through asset freezes, travel bans, smear campaigns and prosecutions. This new law further tightens the noose,” he said in a statement. In Egypt’s response, foreign ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid said: “It is important to be vigilant about the intention of some civil society entities that have gotten used to working outside the law, and that were harmed by the issuing of the new law, to defame the image of civil society in Egypt.” Egypt is one of Washington’s closest allies in the Middle East, receiving $1.3 billion in U.S. military aid annually. U.S. President Donald Trump praised Sisi after a meeting in Saudi Arabia last week, saying the Egyptian leader had “done a tremendous job under trying circumstance.” | 1 |
22,273 | Republican defends border-adjustment tax after Trump criticism | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A top Republican in Congress on Wednesday defended his border-adjustable tax provision against criticism from President-elect Donald Trump, warning that U.S. jobs and companies will continue to move abroad unless the controversial measure is included in tax reform. Representative Kevin Brady, chairman of the House of Representatives tax-writing committee that produced the proposal, said the reform measure to tax imports but not exports remains part of the discussions between Republican lawmakers and Trump’s presidential transition team. “I’m absolutely confident that we can move this provision forward,” Brady said in an interview with CNBC. “Without it, America will continue to have incentives for jobs and manufacturing to leave the country. None of us want that.” Brady, who already faces mounting criticism from import-dependent industries that oppose the measure, was speaking a day after the Wall Street Journal published a Trump interview in which the Republican president-elect unexpectedly branded border adjustment as “too complicated.” “Anytime I hear border adjustment, I don’t love it,” Trump told the newspaper. “Because usually it means we’re going to get adjusted into a bad deal.” Trump’s comments surprised business lobbyists who believed he would support the provision as a way to increase the number of U.S. blue-collar jobs. In response, Goldman Sachs lowered from 30 percent to 20 percent its “subjective probability” that border adjustment would be adopted as part of a tax reform legislative package. Trump appeared to step back from his criticism in an interview published on Wednesday on the news website Axios, saying border adjustability was still on the table. Without border adjustment, lawmakers could have to scale back the House Republican “Better Way” tax reform blueprint. The measure would raise more than $1 trillion in revenues over 10 years, according to independent analysts. Its loss would limit the size of tax cuts and jeopardize a related provision to end taxation on the foreign profits of U.S. corporations. Advocates say border adjustment would encourage companies to establish manufacturing plants on American soil, because it would make U.S. export sales tax-exempt while preventing companies from deducting the cost of imports from their taxable income. But a top Trump lieutenant failed to name border adjustment as a way to entice foreign companies to the United States during a Senate confirmation hearing. Wilbur Ross, Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary, said instead that lowering the corporate tax rate is “probably the biggest single tool that we could use.” | 1 |
22,274 | MUSLIM MEN WIN BIG DISCRIMINATION SUIT Against Employer For Violating Religious Beliefs, While Nuns, Christian Bakers And City Clerks All Lose Cases | Religious rights in Obama s America don t apply to Christians or Jews they only apply to Muslims.The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission won $240,000 in damages for two Muslim truck drivers after it sued their former employer for religious discrimination for firing the drivers for refusing to make beer deliveries.The EEOC said that Star Transport Inc., a trucking company based in Morton, Ill., violated their religious rights by refusing to accommodate their objections to delivering alcoholic beverages. EEOC is proud to support the rights of workers to equal treatment in the workplace without having to sacrifice their religious beliefs or practices, EEOC General Counsel David Lopez announced Thursday. This is fundamental to the American principles of religious freedom and tolerance. The case involved Star Transport s firing of drivers Mahad Abass Mohamed and Abdkiarim Hassan Bulshale, both of Somali heritage, in 2009 after they refused to make beer deliveries for the company, citing their adherence to Islamic law. For devout Muslims, consuming or even being in contact with any alcoholic beverage is prohibited.The EEOC argued that the company could have easily reassigned the drivers but did not and sued it for religious discrimination. Star Transport admitted liability in March. The jury awarded Mohamed and Bulshale $20,000 each in compensatory damages and $100,000 each in punitive damages. The judge awarded each about $1,500 in back pay. Via: Washington ExaminerThe Catholic nuns beliefs are being violated by forcing them to pay for contraception and drugs that may cause abortions:A Catholic religious order, the Little Sisters of the Poor, has filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration asking the courts to protect them from being forced to comply with the HHS abortion mandate. The mandate compels religious groups to pay for birth control and drugs that may cause abortions.Yesterday, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Little Sisters of the Poor, a religious order of Sisters dedicated to caring for the elderly poor. Without relief, the Little Sisters face millions of dollars in IRS fines because they cannot comply with the government s mandate that they give their employees free access to contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs.The Christian couple who owned Sweet Cakes by Melissa was forced to pay $135,000 after refusing to bake a cake for a lesbian couple, as they explained it would violate their Christian beliefs.A complaint against Sweet Cakes By Melissa was filed after the owners, Aaron and Melissa Klein, turned away a lesbian couple who requested a wedding cake in 2013.The state ruled that the owners were discriminating against the couple based on their sexual orientation.Fox News reported that the state has now ordered the Kleins to pay $135,000 in damages to the lesbian couple and issued a gag order, which bans them from speaking publicly about their refusal to participate in or bake wedding cakes for same-sex unions. The couple told Sean Hannity tonight that they think the state of Oregon has violated their First Amendment rights.Christian City Clerk is jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples:Kim Davis, Rowan County, KY City Clerk refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. The judge determined Davis should be held in contempt and felt that a fine was not a harsh enough punishment for her. She was jailed on September 3 and spent 5 days in jail.Under the threat of more jail time, Rowan County (Ky.) Clerk Kim Davis remained out of sight Monday as one of her deputy clerks issued a marriage licence to yet another lesbian couple, drawing heckles from some anti-gay protesters who questioned Davis decision to not interfere.Shannon and Carmen Wampler-Collins were the first couple to obtain a license since Davis returned to work after her high-profile release from the Carter County Detention Center last week. Davis has been at the center of the dispute about gay marriage and religious liberty.Davis said earlier in the day that, while she still refuses to authorize marriage licenses, she will not stand in the way of a deputy clerk who began providing them more than a week ago. The clerk had been jailed for six days on a contempt of court charge. | 0 |
22,275 | Russia PM: new U.S. sanctions amount to 'full-scale trade war' | MOSCOW (Reuters) - New sanctions on Russia which U.S. President Donald Trump has signed into law are tantamount to a “full-scale trade war”, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Wednesday. Medvedev also said in a Facebook post that the sanctions showed the Trump administration was utterly powerless. “The hope that our relations with the new American administration would improve is finished,” he wrote. | 1 |
22,276 | Prosecutor links suspect arrested last week near Paris to ISIS | PARIS (Reuters) - A French prosecutor said on Sunday that a man arrested last week after a police raid on a flat near Paris had a direct connection with Islamic State. Police discovered a stash of explosives in the raid last Wednesday in Villejuif, south of Paris, and found TATP, a product often used by suicide bombers. A second cache of explosive materials was discovered in a nearby town the following day. Two men who were arrested were put into formal investigation on Sunday and placed in detention, the Paris prosecutor, Francois Molins, told a news conference. A third suspect was released with no charges. Analysis from the material seized showed one of the suspects had been in direct contact in August 2016 with Rachid Kassim via Facebook, Molins said. Kassim, believed to be a senior Islamic State militant, was targeted by the U.S. military in a strike near the city of Mosul, Iraq, earlier this year. TATP has been used by militants in several attacks in Western Europe in recent years, including Manchester in May, Brussels in 2016 and Paris in 2015. More than 230 people have been killed by Islamist-inspired attackers in the past three years in France, which along with the United States and other countries are bombing Islamic State bases in Iraq and Syria. | 1 |
22,277 | Spain's constitutional court starts review of Catalan independence vote | MADRID (Reuters) - Spain s constitutional court on Friday said it had started a review of the vote held in Catalonia s parliament to declare independence from Spain. The state prosecutor and other parties have three days to make allegations, the court said. | 1 |
22,278 | British scientists find sarin used in Syria: U.N. envoy | UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Samples taken from the site of a deadly toxic gas attack in Syria and analyzed by British scientists have tested positive for sarin or a sarin-like substance, Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Matthew Rycroft told the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday. “The United Kingdom therefore shares the U.S. assessment that it is highly likely that the regime was responsible for a sarin attack on Khan Sheikhoun on 4 April,” Rycroft said. | 1 |
22,279 | Obama highlights five priorities in meeting with Republican leaders | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama highlighted five legislative priorities in a meeting on Tuesday with Republican congressional leaders, including the financial crisis in Puerto Rico and passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the White House said. The White House said Obama also discussed the opioid epidemic, cancer research and criminal justice reform with Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “The president is eager to see Congress take that action as soon as possible this year,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said of the sweeping trade pact. | 1 |
22,280 | Libyans swap jewelry for medical treatment as crisis bites | TRIPOLI (Reuters) - In a square behind Libya s central bank, black market dealers, some of them armed, carry small plastic bags filled with dollars and larger ones with dinars in and out of one of many informal exchanges. Traders buy food and other goods from abroad at the official rate and sell them at the unofficial one, pocketing vast profits; others make equally large sums by smuggling out heavily subsidized fuel. In the back streets of the old city meanwhile, ordinary people have resorted to selling jewelry or dollars hidden at home as six years of post-dictatorship chaos take their toll. I haven t been paid for four months, said Fatima, 40, from the southern city of Sabha as she sold three small gold charms to pay for diabetes treatment for her sister, Hasina, who added: We re helpless, there s nothing else we can do. In other signs of rising poverty, elderly women beg motorists for cash on Tripoli s streets and families queue for charity food handouts. The U.N. estimated that about 1.3 million people in Libya need humanitarian assistance this year. Their situation took another turn for the worse in the past two weeks after the black market rate of the dinar, which has long languished at record lows, slid again, fuelling inflation that is already around 25-30 percent. The central bank blamed the audit bureau and the U.N.-backed government for restricting letters of credit that fund basic supplies to a divided country where a security vacuum and smuggling networks have destabilized the wider region. Officials had come across suspect requests - one to import tuna worth $120,000, more than the country consumes in a year, according to a Libyan entrepreneur who declined to be named, fearing retribution from Libya s powerful armed groups. Just $2.5 billion of an expected $7.4 billion of credit has been allocated, the trader said, helping knock the dinar from around 8.5 to 9.25 against the dollar on the black market. Its value has fallen by more than 600 percent since early 2014. The economy ministry was not immediately available for comment on a complex credit system that passes through commercial banks and where the audit bureau had documented earlier abuses and lack of oversight. We re talking about an extremely bad economic and financial situation, Central Bank Governor Sadiq al-Kabir said in a rare news conference on Tuesday. Everyone, whether legislative or executive, holds responsibility equally. Traders and economists say political uncertainty is a major factor weakening the currency, with U.N. talks to broker a deal between rival factions currently suspended. Libya is struggling to fund food imports and defend its foreign reserves, which the World Bank estimates will stand at $67.5 billion at the end of this year, compared to $123.5 billion in 2012. International experts say the only way to resolve the issue is to devalue the dinar from the official exchange rate of 1.37 to the dollar, but agreeing an economic strategy in a country dominated by armed factions with rival governments and no budgets is no simple task. A powerful or well-connected minority who are profiting from a flourishing shadow economy have little interest in change. The central bank did not comment on devaluation, but economists and diplomats say the bank is reluctant to devalue without a policy plan in place to deal with the resulting shock. Libya managed this year to lift oil production to about 1 million barrels a day, but output is stuck well below the levels before the 2011 uprising that toppled Muammar Gaddafi. Revenues that normally account for about 80 percent of gross domestic product are largely used to pay salaries, including those of armed factions added to the state payroll for their role in the uprising. Subsidies include a $4 billion-plus annual fuel subsidy that is among the most generous in the world. Premiums on the official exchange rate and subsidized fuel make Libya a criminal and terrorist cross-border funding paradise , said Husni Bey, chairman of HB Group, one of Libya s biggest private firms. Most instability in Libya today is of a criminal nature... due to the lack of equitable exchange rate for the Libyan dinar and the subsidies that must be changed from goods to direct cash contributions. Last year Libya spent around $26 billion, but earned just $6 billion. This year we estimate that revenues should increase to around $14 billion, but spending will likely be more than double this, said Mark Griffiths, Libya Mission Chief for the International Monetary Fund. This is not sustainable. The government has sought to reduce the public salary bill by 5 billion dinars annually, clamping down on abuse by removing some 100,000 people who had been claiming several salaries, according to a finance ministry report. Libyans became used to plentiful public jobs and state handouts as Gaddafi sought to buy loyalty like other Middle Eastern oil producers. Migrant workers used to do the manual work, now Libyans without contacts have taken their place. Salman Rashid, a public servant, said he had received just three months-worth of pay in the past year. It s not enough for basic needs, he said. Now I work on construction sites and in buildings maintenance. Entrepreneurs have withdrawn deposits from banks for fear of employees leaking word of them to kidnappers and others also prefer to keep money at home. In a second shop in the old city, a woman who gave her name as Karima was changing 500 euros. I need to go to Tunis for surgery and am selling my foreign currency holdings, she said. Times are very difficult now. Shop owner Salahedin Zarti, 52, said up to 10 people come in daily to sell necklaces, bracelets and rings. In the beginning it was every day, but now I think people are starting to run out of jewelry, he said. | 1 |
22,281 | Twitter bans ads from two Russian media outlets, cites election meddling | SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Twitter Inc on Thursday accused Russian media outlets Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik of interfering in the 2016 U.S. election and banned them from buying ads on its network, after criticism the social network had not done enough to deter international meddling. RT and Sputnik condemned the decision, saying Twitter had encouraged ad spending with its sales tactics, while Russia’s foreign ministry said the ban was due to U.S. government pressure and that it planned to retaliate. San Francisco-based Twitter said in an unsigned statement on its website that election meddling is “not something we want” on the social network. It cited a report this year from U.S. intelligence agencies and said it had also done its own investigations of RT and Sputnik. “We did not come to this decision lightly, and are taking this step now as part of our ongoing commitment to help protect the integrity of the user experience on Twitter,” the company said. Twitter, Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google have all recently detected that suspected Russian operatives used their platforms last year to purchase ads and post content that was politically divisive. Russia has denied interfering in the election. Twitter said it would take the estimated $1.9 million it had earned from RT global advertising since 2011 and donate the money “to support external research into the use of Twitter in civic engagement and elections.” The company said it would allow RT and Sputnik to maintain regular, non-ad Twitter accounts in accordance with its rules. RT, an English-language news channel, accused Twitter’s sales staff of pressuring it to spend big on advertising in 2016 ahead of the election. “The more money RT spent, the bigger the reach to American voters that Twitter would provide,” RT said, describing the Twitter sales pitch. It said it never “pursued an agenda of influencing the U.S. election through any platforms, including Twitter.” Twitter declined to comment on any discussions with advertisers. A former Twitter employee said the sales pitch to RT is similar to what the company uses to lure advertisers to Twitter, which has struggled to turn a profit. On Thursday, Twitter said it may become profitable for the first time next quarter after slashing expenses and ramping up deals to sell its data to other companies, which could help to break its reliance on advertising for revenue. Facebook and Google did not immediately respond to questions about whether they would limit Russia media ad spending. In April, Reuters reported that RT and Sputnik were part of a plan by Russian President Vladimir Putin to swing the U.S. presidential election to Donald Trump and undermine voters’ faith in the American electoral system, according to three current and four former U.S. officials. On Oct. 19, U.S. lawmakers, alarmed that foreign entities used the internet to influence last year’s election, introduced legislation to extend rules governing political advertising on broadcast television, radio and satellite to also cover social media. General counsels for Twitter, Facebook and Google will testify on Nov. 1 before public hearings of the Senate and House intelligence committees on alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. “Twitter is wisely positioning itself to be able to tell the committees that the company has taken steps to address the issues raised,” Adam Sharp, a former Twitter executive, told Reuters on Thursday. The Russian foreign ministry said the ban was a “gross violation” by the United States of the guarantees of free speech. “Retaliatory measures, naturally, will follow,” ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, according to the RIA news agency. Sputnik, a news agency, said on its website that Twitter’s move was regrettable, “especially now that Russia had vowed retaliatory measures against the U.S. media.” Some analysts said transparency, rather than a ban, would have been a better approach. Unlike Facebook, Twitter allows anonymous accounts and automated accounts, or bots, making the service more difficult to police. “Banning any particular person, group or country is just bad policy - in other parts of the world, platforms will come to be viewed as a tool of U.S. or other foreign policy and it will give authoritarian regimes more excuses to ban speech,” Albert Gidari, who as a lawyer has represented tech companies, said in an email. Gidari is now privacy director at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society. A U.S. lawmaker, Representative Adam Schiff, applauded Twitter’s move. “Serving as a platform for free expression does not require assisting foreign powers in their efforts to push propaganda, whether by promoted tweets or other means,” Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement. | 1 |
22,282 | Zimbabwe's Mugabe: Beware of death on road to presidency | HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s President Robert Mugabe said on Wednesday the route to leadership was long and full of pitfalls and death , as he accused his fired deputy and former protege of showing impatience in his bid to succeed him. Addressing supporters at the headquarters of his ZANU-PF party in Harare, 93-year-old Mugabe accused Emmerson Mnangagwa of consulting witchdoctors and prophets as part of a campaign to secure the presidency. Mnangagwa, who was sacked by Mugabe on Monday and expelled from the ruling Zanu-PF party on Wednesday, said he had fled Zimbabwe because of death threats and was safe. My sudden departure was caused by incessant threats on my person, life and family by those who have attempted before through various forms of elimination including poisoning, he said in a statement on Wednesday. The head of the influential war veterans association, Chris Mutsvangwa, said that Mnangagwa, 75, would travel to Johannesburg in neighboring South Africa very soon . Mugabe said Mnangagwa, nicknamed Crocodile , had made the same mistakes as Joice Mujuru, who was the president s deputy for 10 years until she was fired in 2014. You should not try to say because the journey is long, then I should take a short cut to arrive quickly. The road has lions. There are pitfalls. There is death, beware, he said. There is no short cut to being the leader of the people. Just as there was no short cut to our independence. ZANU-PF would move to discipline Mnangagwa s co-conspirators , Mugabe added. Mnangagwa has not been seen in public since his dismissal from government but his ally Mutsvangwa said he was safe and beyond the reach of the assassins . Mutsvangwa ruled out trying to remove Mugabe by force and said war veterans, who had publicly backed Mnangagwa and broke ranks with the president last year, would form a broad front with the opposition in elections next year. We don t want to abuse the military to resolve a political problem. We don t want them to become the arbiter of political power, Mutsvangwa said. He was critical of Mugabe s wife Grace, who looks set to become vice president after a special ZANU-PF congress in December. This is a coup by marriage certificate ....and it will be resisted, he said. | 1 |
22,283 | OBAMA INCITING A SECOND COLD WAR? 35 Russian Diplomats Expelled For False Flag Of Hacking | Reuters reports:The United States expelled 35 Russian diplomats and closed two Russian compounds in New York and Maryland in response to a campaign of harassment against American diplomats in Moscow, a senior U.S. official said on Thursday.The move against the diplomats from the Russian embassy in Washington and consulate in San Francisco is part of a series of actions announced on Thursday to punish Russia for a campaign of intimidation of American diplomats in Moscow and interference in the U.S. election.In fact, this morning The Hill wrote that the Obama administration is under intense pressure to release evidence confirming Russian interference in the presidential election before leaving office. The administration has provided exactly zero documentation, but that has not stopped the media machine from parroting the claims and repeating it ad nauseam, in hopes the emotional appeals through repetition will make it factual.Just as bad, the Hill also writes that nor has Obama corroborated subsequent leaks from anonymous officials contending that the CIA believes the campaign was an attempt by Russian President Vladimir Putin to ensure Donald Trump s victory. | 0 |
22,284 | Spanish markets gain as investor nerves ease over Catalonia | LONDON (Reuters) - Spanish stocks were set for their biggest day of gains in more than five months on Thursday as nerves over an imminent declaration of Catalan independence eased. Spain s Constitutional Court suspended a session of the Catalan parliament scheduled for Monday in which local leaders were expected to declare secession. Traders also cited a Bloomberg report of a rift between pro-independence leaders. Spain s 10-year bond yield fell to as low as 1.68 percent, and at 1540 GMT was down 8 basis points and set for its biggest daily fall since April. There is the sentiment Catalan separatists are maybe a bit less die-hard than they were previously, said Jerome Legras, head of research at Axiom Alternative Investments. Spanish markets were already recovering earlier in the day, but traders said the main share index and banking stocks jumped after the Bloomberg report which, citing sources, said moderate separatists were pushing for further negotiations with the central government. The decision to suspend Monday s parliamentary session, which the court said was because it had agreed to consider a legal challenge filed by the anti-secessionist Catalan Socialist Party, had already thrown the independence bid into doubt. Spain s main share index jumped as much as 2.7 percent, boosted by financial stocks which together added 120 points to the index, with Santander the biggest contributor. Catalonia-headquartered Banco Sabadell and Caixabank jumped higher, last up 6.2 percent and 4.9 percent respectively. Caixabank joined Sabadell in saying it was considering moving its base outside Catalonia as a result of the crisis. Trading activity in Spanish government debt has rocketed this week as the crisis deepened. Around 7.8 billion euros of Spanish government debt changed hands on Wednesday, 75 percent higher than the daily trading average since January 2016, according to Trax, a subsidiary of trading platform MarketAxess. On Thursday, Spain s 10-year government bond was the most traded euro government security, the data firm said. | 1 |
22,285 | Pakistan's top diplomat pushes back on U.S. claims of militant support | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Pakistan s foreign minister on Thursday described as hollow allegations comments by senior U.S. officials and lawmakers during his visit to Washington this week that questioned Islamabad s resolve in fighting militancy. President Donald Trump s administration is seeking to implement its regional strategy. While U.S. officials have long been critical of the role Pakistan has played in Afghanistan, senior officials have been more pointed in recent days about Islamabad s alleged support for militant groups. Earlier this week, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said the United States would try one more time to work with Pakistan in Afghanistan before Trump would take whatever steps are necessary to change Pakistan s behavior. On Tuesday, the top U.S. military officer said he believed Pakistan s main spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate, had ties to the militant group. You want us to sniff them out, we will do that. You want us to take action against them, whatever action you propose, we will do that... (but) these hollow allegations are not acceptable, Pakistan s Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif told a group of reporters. In August, Trump outlined a new strategy for the war in Afghanistan, chastising Pakistan over its alleged support for Afghan militants. Reuters first reported that possible Trump administration responses being discussed include expanding U.S. drone strikes and perhaps eventually downgrading Pakistan s status as a major non-NATO ally. Asif singled out Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Service Committee, saying the senator was playing to his constituents when he criticized Pakistan. We are not saying we are saints. Perhaps in the past, we made some mistakes. But since the last three, four years, we are wholeheartedly, single mindedly, we are targeting these terrorists, Asif said. Asif said that Pakistan had less influence over the Taliban than in previous years, which could impact any efforts for peace talks to bring an end to the war in Afghanistan. He added that U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson would be visiting Pakistan later this month. | 1 |
22,286 | Trump Held A Signing. The Only Problem Is, He Had Nothing To Sign | Back in February, Donald Trump described his administration as running like a fine-tuned machine and that mind-numbingly stupid remark will come back to haunt him as much as his We re going to win so much. You re going to get tired of winning promise to his supporters. Case in point: The alleged president held a signing today but had nothing to sign.On Monday, Trump announced his goal to privatize the nation s Air Traffic Control System, but that proposal was actually based on legislation introduced by Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA), the Chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. That bill never came to fruition on the House floor for a vote as it faced bipartisan opposition in the Senate.But anyway, Trump sat down at a desk and signed two documents.Time reports:There was only one problem: He wasn t actually signing something that would have any tangible impact on what he had just proposed.A White House aide told reporters Trump had signed a decision memo and letter transmitting legislative principles to Congress, surrounding the privatization of the Air Traffic Control system, which he had just spent the last few minutes advocating for. But in order for his goal to come to fruition, Congress would need to pass legislation implementing it. Before Trump gave remarks Monday, White House officials had told reporters that the President is only dictating his legislative goals of separating air traffic controls from the FAA. Congress is not required to follow through on these goals.Still yet, while Trump fake-signed a bill which doesn t exist (yet, if ever), his team was behind him applauding the signing.This isn t the first time Trump did something like this but previously it was even worse. During a press conference, he said in mid-January, These papers are just some of the many documents I ve signed turning over complete and total control to my sons They are not going to discuss [the business] with me. Again, I don t have to do this. They re not going to discuss it with me. The pages appear to be blank.The pages are blank. pic.twitter.com/agLqnBTjrg Mikey Neumann (@mikeyface) January 12, 2017Trump s signing event was as fake as his presidency.Photo by Andrew Harrer-Pool/Getty Images | 0 |
22,287 | Incoming New Zealand prime minister to discuss cabinet on Friday | SYDNEY (Reuters) - New Zealand Labour Party leader and incoming prime minister Jacinda Ardern said on Thursday cabinet positions in the her new government would be discussed with her party caucus on Friday. Ardern confirmed that the position of deputy prime minister had been offered to Winston Peters after the leader of the small nationalist New Zealand First party threw his support behind Labour to form government. The deal marks the end of nearly a decade of center-right National governments. The minor Green Party is expected to confirm later on Thursday its support for a three-way coalition with Labour and New Zealand First. | 1 |
22,288 | ACCUSED RAPIST BILL CLINTON Has 4 NEW Accusers…Claim He Sexually Assaulted Them While Flying Around On ‘Air F**k One’ | Who didn t see this coming? Four more women have come forward to charge Bill Clinton sexually assaulted them This could get interesting You know, with Hillary coming out last week with a lecture on standing up for women Will she stand by her man or not?Edward Klein is the former editor in chief of the New York Times Magazine and the author of numerous bestsellers including his fourth book on the Clintons, Guilty as Sin, in 2016. His latest book is All Out War: The Plot to Destroy Trump was released on October 30, 2017. Bill Clinton is facing explosive new charges of sexual assault from four women, according to highly placed Democratic Party sources and an official who served in both the Clinton and Obama administrations.The current accusations against the 71-year-old former president whose past is littered with charges of sexual misconduct stem from the period after he left the White House in 2001, say the sources.Attorneys representing the women, who are coordinating their efforts, have notified Clinton they are preparing to file four separate lawsuits against him.As part of the ongoing negotiations, the attorneys for the women are asking for substantial payouts in return for their clients silence.A member of Clinton s legal team has confirmed the existence of the new allegations.Back in the late 1990s, Clinton paid $850,000 to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit by Paula Jones, a former Arkansas state employee whose case led to Clinton s impeachment in the House of Representatives and his subsequent acquittal by the Senate in 1999. The negotiations in the new lawsuits are said to have reached a critical stage. If they fail, according to sources in Clinton s inner circle, the four women are said to be ready to air their accusations of sexual assault at a press conference, making Clinton the latest and most famous figure in a long list of men from Harvey Weinstein to Kevin Spacey who have recently been accused of sexual assault.The new allegations refer to incidents that took place more than 10 years ago, in the early 2000s, when Clinton was hired by Ron Burkle, the playboy billionaire investor, to work at his Yucaipa companies. Clinton helped Burkle generate business and flew around the world with a flock of beautiful young women on Burkle s private jet, which was nicknamed Air F**k One. The four women, who have not yet revealed their identities, were employed in low-level positions at the Burkle organization when they were in their late teens and claim they were sexually assaulted by the former president.Read more: Daily Mail | 0 |
22,289 | Trump Just FAILED Hundreds Of Manufacturing Workers And Blamed Obama For It | Last year, Trump claimed he was succeeding at saving manufacturing jobs by making individual deals with individual companies, like Carrier in Indiana. At the time, people pointed out that he was boasting about the Carrier deal while totally ignoring another Indiana company, Rexnord, that was likewise shipping its jobs to Mexico.And now, Rexnord has done so. NBC News did a report on the plant s closure, which Trump must have watched because he felt the need to lay the blame for this on Obama shortly after it aired:Rexnord of Indiana made a deal during the Obama Administration to move to Mexico. Fired their employees. Tax product big that s sold in U.S. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 7, 2017The funny thing is that if he hadn t been bragging about how great he was at saving manufacturing jobs the instant he won the election, and threatening companies who were trying to outsource, he might actually have a case to make. But he promised to save these kinds of jobs and implied that he would do it company by company if he had to.All he did with Rexnord was tweet at them, which did nothing to sway their decision. And their employees feel as though Trump failed them. As one employee said: In the long run, he s done forgot about us cause he s moved on to bigger and better things. Perhaps this little plant was just too little for Trump to bother with. The move will save Rexnord tens of millions of dollars, because they can pay Mexican workers $3 per hour vs. the $25 per hour they were paying their American workers. Regardless, this is what Trump said back in December, shortly after claiming victory with both Ford and Carrier:Rexnord of Indiana is moving to Mexico and rather viciously firing all of its 300 workers. This is happening all over our country. No more! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2016To our knowledge, Trump never even tried to save these jobs despite calling this company out and threatening them with huge tariffs should they actually do this. This is on his head, not Obama s. You can t brag about how you ll save all these jobs and then blame your predecessor when it doesn t happen.Watch NBC News report below:Featured image by Olivier Douliery-Pool via Getty Images | 0 |
22,290 | Expect more ‘terror busts’ as FBI steps up its use of “ISIS stings” | 21st Century Wire says If there is no real terrorist threat, then the thing to do is to create one. Such is the received wisdom of today s Federal Bureau of Investigation.According to its latest public relations release by the FBI s counter terrorism department, the agency plans to significantly increased its use of stings in order to catch would-be terrorists. In other words, it s planning to ramp-up its policy of using entrapment in order to organize, recruit, train and even supply materials to budding neophyte terrorists in the US.This should come as no surprise to anyone who has been following these incidents. In spite the grand announcement, in reality all the FBI has been doing for the last 25 years are just that: stings, stings and more stings FBI Direct: James Comey has spend a lot of time in front of Congress this year. The logic is astounding, if not insane, but for some reason, this type of antiquated thinking still dominated US federal law enforcement institutions: We re not going to wait for the person to mobilize on his own time line, said Michael B. Steinbach, who leads the F.B.I. s national security branch. He added that the F.B.I. could not afford to just sit and wait knowing the individual is actively plotting. Since before 9/11, FBI agents have relied on the practice of using informants to pose as jihadi radicals or small arms dealers, in order to excite and recruit fringe members of society into constructive pursuits such as bomb-making, and will often bring them to the scene of a mock terrorists crime before agents leap out from behind the shadows to make a high-profile arrest of the unwitting dupe/suspect.In 2016, most of the recruitment required to assemble these theatrical, state-managed scenarios is done online via friends on social media, as FBI cyber agents look for individuals who appear to be supporting ISIS or Al-Qaeda. If successful, online grooming transitions to real world meeting, and with any luck blossoms into a contrived terror plot courtesy of the FBI confidential informant. 1993 WTC BOMBER: Ramzi Yousef.Perhaps the best-ever example of a FBI sting resulting in a real terrorist attack is an event which the mindless US mainstream media still wrongly attribute to real terrorists the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing.In this all-FBI-hatched plot, the agency used at least one known informant, a man named Emad Salem, a former Egyptian army officer. Salem later demonstrated on secret recording he made how the FBI originally asked him to supply the conspirators with harmless powder instead of actual explosive to construct their bomb, but for reasons still (officially) unknown, the FBI chose to allow a real bomb to be deployed at the WTC on the day of the supposed sting .Author Tom Secker at Global Research explains it in the simplest terms: this relatively ragtag group who were inspired by CIA asset the Blind Sheikh and trained by triple agent Ali Mohamed managed to pull off the bombing. The result was a bomb detonating underneath the WTC and putting thousands of innocent Americans at risk.Still, ever single major US television and newspaper outlet still moronically refers to the 1993 WTC event as a terrorist attack on American soil. Team America: Fabricated TerrorAccording to the FBI s own records, nearly 70% of (reported) ISIS-linked terrorist prosecutions (not convictions) are being cooked-up via the use of informants and stings/entrapment: Undercover operations, once seen as a last resort, are now used in about two of every three prosecutions involving people suspected of supporting the Islamic State, a sharp rise in the span of just two years, according to a New York Times analysis. Charges have been brought against nearly 90 Americans believed to be linked to the group. Back in May, the FBI arrested a man, James Medina, for allegedly for planning an attack on a Miami-area Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center synagogue with an explosive device. As it turns out, the synagogue was never actually in any real danger as the bomb was a fake sold to him by an FBI undercover agent, before the man was stopped before the man was stopped by FBI agents posing as fellow terrorists who set up a sting operation. FBI chat-up lines: Are you a Muslim? Which Mosque do you go to? Do you know al-Qaeda? In 2015, one classic exhibit was the frame-up of 20 year old Christopher Lee Cornell, snared in one of the most bogus fake terror plot ever, and yet the US mainstream media couldn t stop gushing over the event as if it were an ISIS-inspired attack , only no attack actually took place.According to David Steele, a 20-year Marine Corps intelligence officer and former-CIA case officer, most US terror plots are cooked by by US authorities: Most terrorists are false flag terrorists, or are created by our own security services. In the United States, every single terrorist incident we have had has been a false flag, or has been an informant pushed on by the FBI. In fact, we now have citizens taking out restraining orders against FBI informants that are trying to incite terrorism. We ve become a lunatic asylum. Some other similar would-be high-profile terror icons and patsies include: Paris Shooter Amedi Coulibaby (see his incredible informant case here), Ottawa Shooter Zehaf-Bibeau (see his patsy story here), Boston Bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev (see his informant story here), The Underwear Bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (see his patsy story here), Buford Rogers (read his informant story here), Jerad Miller (read his informant story here), Naji Mansour (read his entrapment story here), Quazi Mohammad Nafis (read his patsy story here), Mohamed Osman Mohamud (read his entrapment story here), and even the infamous OKC Bomber Timothy McVeigh (read his sheep-dipped, patsy story here).In reality, it is the covert culture of Washington DC which does more to promote genuine terrorism, at home and internationally much more than any other single nation state outside of Saudi Arabia and Israel. Until the major of people realize thisREAD MORE ZANY FBI PLOTS AT: 21st Century Wire Daily Shooter FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK & BECOME A 21WIRE.TV MEMBER HERE | 0 |
22,291 | Venezuela may ban main opposition parties from presidential vote | CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela s pro-government legislative superbody ruled on Wednesday that parties who boycotted this month s local elections had lost legitimacy, potentially eliminating the main opposition groups from the 2018 presidential race. The decree by the Constituent Assembly - created in a controversial July vote boycotted by the opposition and widely condemned abroad - infuriated Venezuela s opposition and drew criticism from the United States. The Venezuelan government and its illegitimate Constituent Assembly are inventing rules as they go along. This is not democracy, the U.S. Embassy said on Twitter. The Justice First, Democratic Action and Popular Will parties did not run candidates in this month s mayoral polls in protest against what they said was a biased election system designed to perpetuate leftist President Nicolas Maduro s dictatorship. Maduro had warned that could cost them participation in future votes and the Constituent Assembly echoed that position on Wednesday, saying the parties had lost their legal status and should re-apply to the National Election Board. Given that the board is pro-Maduro and authorities are constantly throwing up obstacles to the opposition, that could well mean those parties are now effectively unable to run in the presidential election due before the end of 2018. Maduro, 55, is expected to run for re-election despite the disastrous state of the economy in Venezuela, where millions are skipping meals and struggling to survive amid one of the world s highest inflation rates and widespread shortages of basics. Two of his potentially biggest rivals already cannot run against him: Popular Will leader Leopoldo Lopez is under house arrest, while Justice First leader Henrique Capriles is prohibited from holding political office. We alert the world and all democratic governments that banning opposition political parties is yet another measure by the dictatorship that deserves rejection and condemnation, said Capriles party colleague Tomas Guanipa. Maduro and his allies say the Constituent Assembly has brought peace to the OPEC nation after months of opposition protests earlier this year in which more than 125 people were killed. Demonstrators said they were fighting for freedom, but the government condemned them as violent subversives. It s time for the coupsters to face the constitution. Let no one undermine the people s participation and the democratic system, Constituent Assembly head Delcy Rodriguez said after the passage of Wednesday s measure. | 1 |
22,292 | it turns out trump put off investigators for months while he destroyed emails | interviews syria should be able to choose its allies in the battle against daesh says american political analyst james petras
the pentagons plan to launch an offensive against the daesh isil terrorist group in syria is only aimed at undermining a successful attempt by the syrian government and its allies to defeat the terror group says james petras an american political commentator
us defense secretary ashton carter told nbc news on wednesday that the pentagon is planning a ground offensive to oust daesh from the syrian city of raqqah the terror groups stronghold in the country
carter who was in iraq earlier this week amid the ongoing battle to retake the city of mosul from daesh said the raqqah offensive would begin when iraqs second largest city is cleared
he claimed that us forces wont be directly involved in any of the operations
this is a ploy to have the us in northern syria petras said arguing that the us was seeking to undermine international efforts to defeat daesh in a bid to reinforce its own foothold in the conflictridden country
i dont believe that the attack on raqqah is a positive move because i think it brings the us closer to its policy of establishing a nofly zone in northern syria which will directly affect the efforts of the syrian government and its alliesiran and russiato defend the country
the analyst noted that raqqah is a problem for the syrian people and damascus should be allowed to choose its allies in the battle
petras went on to note that carters remarks bear similarities to us democratic presidential candidate hillary clintons plans for a conflagration in the middle east
the ongoing western efforts in syria have a different nature washington and its allies have come under fire for openly seeking to remove president bashar alassad from power
carters claim that us ground forces will have no part in the fight against daesh came at a time when more than american soldiers were stationed in iraq tasked with providing training and intelligence to iraqi forces loading | 1 |
22,293 | LEADING N. CAROLINA NEWSPAPER: Girls Need To Attempt “Overcoming Discomfort” At Sight Of “Male Genitalia” In Locker Rooms | The Leftist agenda in action blurring the lines of sexuality, while stripping humanity of any sense of individuality or morality A leading North Carolina newspaper issued an editorial last week telling girls to attempt overcoming discomfort at the sight of male genitalia, should transgender bathroom laws be enacted.In a defense of President Obama s order compelling schools to allow access to restrooms on the basis of gender identity, the Charlotte Observer editorial board compared the discomfort of school-aged girls seeing male genitalia in locker rooms to the discomfort of white people being around black people in post-segregation America. This is what the Obama administration nudged the rest of the country toward Friday, the editorial said. Yes, the thought of male genitalia in girls locker rooms and vice versa might be distressing to some. But the battle for equality has always been in part about overcoming discomfort with blacks sharing facilities, with gays sharing marriage then realizing it was not nearly so awful as some people imagined. While admitting that exposure to male genitalia is a possible outcome of transgender bathroom laws, the editorial said the notion that such laws constitute a threat to the privacy and safety of women and children is a political fiction pushed by Republicans. Those safety issues are political fiction non-transgender men wouldn t have been allowed in women s bathrooms under the Charlotte ordinance that HB 2 killed, and the 200 or so cities with similar ordinances have had no incidents involving bathroom predators, the editorial said. Via: Washington Times | 0 |
22,294 | President Obama Uses Presidential Powers To Do One More AWESOME Last-Minute Thing | On Monday Obama used his clemency powers to grant 78 pardons and 158 commutations according to the White House, which was the most individual acts of clemency in a single day by a president in US history.Today Obama doubled the amount of pardons he s given, but he still has pardoned less prisoners than any other modern president. However, he s still used his powers of clemency over 1,000 times. Just a less powerful version: commutations. Including those that were done today, Obama has now commuted the sentences of 1,176 people, including 395 life sentences. Most of the sentences he shortened were federal prison inmates with lengthy, mandatory-minimum drug sentences convicted during the war on drugs that s been happening over the last three decades. Now Obama s completed more acts of clemency since any other president of the US since President Truman.Last year Obama granted 95 pardons and commutations around the same time of year, which at the time was the largest single day use of his clemency power. He s continued this pattern of granting holiday pardons, and has received criticism for it, with critics calling it a broken process. According to Obama, it s another step forward in upholding our fundamental ideals of justice and fairness. Besides the Iranian Nuclear Deal, the last four rounds of pardons Obama s granted it s been this time of year.However, there may possibly more pardons coming. In August Obama said By the time I leave office, the number of pardons that we grant will be roughly in line with what other Presidents have done, With only 32 days left in Obama s term, and 40 pardon s short of being in roughly in line it s quite possible we ll see more pardons before Obama leaves.Featured image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images | 0 |
22,295 | biggest election fraud in history discovered in the united states | by jack burns wikileaks is helping president obama keep his campaign promise to be the most transparent administration in us history whether he likes | 0 |
22,296 | TROLL CONGRESSWOMAN WANTS YOU TO SELL YOUR GUNS TO THE GOVERNMENT | It s not for her to decide! We have the Second Amendment and that s enough for any American. DeLauro doesn t get to decide for us what s a gun that s ok to own. It might be a good idea to pick up the phone and voice your objection to this bill.Gun owners would receive tax breaks for voluntarily turning in high-powered assault rifles under new legislation proposed Monday.The Support Assault Firearm Elimination and Education of our (SAFER) Streets Act expected to be reintroduced next week by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) would provide gun owners with an incentive to turn in their firearms to local police departments. Assault weapons are not about hunting, or even self-defense, DeLauro said. There is no reason on earth, other than to kill as many people as possible in as short a time as possible, that anyone needs a gun designed for a battlefield. Though DeLauro is in favor of stronger guns laws that would completely ban assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition, she emphasized this bill would not force gun owners to turn in their firearms. The legislation would provide up to $2,000 in tax credits for gun owners who voluntarily hand over assault weapons to their local police departments.The assault weapons legislation comes in response to the horrific mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., DeLauro s home state, in December 2012.Via: The Hill | 0 |
22,297 | Former President George H.W. Bush watched inaugural from hospital room | AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Former U.S. President George H.W. Bush, who has spent nearly a week at a Houston hospital where he is being treated for pneumonia, watched the inauguration of President Donald Trump from the intensive care unit, a family spokesman said. Bush, who at 92 is the nation’s oldest living ex-president, was breathing on his own after a breathing tube was removed on Friday, spokesman Jim McGrath said in a statement. He is in stable condition in the intensive care unit of Houston Methodist Hospital, he added. “He was extubated this morning, and is breathing well on his own with minimal supplemental oxygen,” McGrath said. Former first lady Barbara Bush, 91, was admitted to the same hospital on Wednesday as a precaution after experiencing fatigue and coughing, McGrath has said. She is being treated for bronchitis and is expected to remain in the hospital over the weekend as a precaution, he said. “Mrs. Bush, meanwhile, continues to feel better and is focusing on spending time with her husband,” the spokesman said. The Bushes marked their 72nd wedding anniversary on Jan. 6. Prior to being hospitalized, they had said they would not attend the inauguration of Republican Trump due to health concerns. He was the only living former president who did not attend the inauguration in Washington, DC. In a letter to the then president-elect, Bush said he and his wife would be with Trump in spirit at the inauguration and wished him the best. Bush, a Republican, did not endorse Trump in his race against Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. | 1 |
22,298 | Hezbollah leader says U.S. actions aiding Islamic State in Syria | BEIRUT (Reuters) - Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said on Sunday that the United States was serving the interests of Islamic State by preventing the Syrian army and its allies advancing in some areas of eastern Syria. American jets have this year targeted pro-government militias in eastern Syria that were advancing towards Washington s local allies. Nasrallah said the United States was delaying the Syrian military in its battle to retake territory from Islamic State. The American air force in some areas prevents the Syrian army and its allies from advancing in areas controlled by Islamic State, said the leader of Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shi ite movement designated by Washington as a terrorist group. The Americans are working to hinder the battle against Islamic State, he said in a speech, part of a commemoration for Hezbollah fighters killed in clashes against Islamic State. His comments came after a senior U.S. official said President Donald Trump was considering putting sanctions on Iran for its support of Hezbollah, and as the U.S. Congress prepares to consider tighter sanctions on Hezbollah itself. The battlefield situation in Syrian is complex, comprising both a civil war that pits Syrian President Bashar al-Assad s government against rebels, as well as two separate campaigns against Islamic State. The Syrian army, backed by Russia, Iran and Shi ite militias including Hezbollah, has advanced against Islamic State in an offensive across the central Syrian desert in recent months. The United States is meanwhile leading a rival international coalition against the Sunni jihadists that includes an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias. Russia and the United States have put in place measures to prevent outright conflict between the two offensives against Islamic State, but there have been times when they fired on each other. Security sources in Lebanon have said that Hezbollah has lost hundreds of fighters in Syria since it entered the conflict in support of Assad in 2013 against rebel groups. Last week Islamic State counter attacks against the Syrian army and its allies killed a number of Hezbollah fighters including a senior commander, Ali al-Hadi al-Asheq. | 1 |
22,299 | Saudi says Iranian talk of rapprochement is laughable | LONDON (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia said on Tuesday that Iran s talk of a possible rapprochement with the kingdom was laughable. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told reporters in London that Iran would have to change its policies for any rapprochement. Iran s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, last month said the Islamic Republic would soon exchange diplomatic visits after the regional rivals severed diplomatic ties last year. The comments of the foreign minister are laughable, al-Jubeir said. If Iran wants to have good relations with Saudi Arabia, it has to change its policies. It has to respect international law. At this time, we do not see... that they re serious about wanting to be a good neighbor, al-Jubeir said Iran s Zarif was quoted by the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) that diplomatic visits could take place after the haj pilgrimage ends in the first week of September. But al-Jubeir said that diplomatic exchanges with Iran over arrangements for the haj did not represent a normalization of relations and that such contacts had nothing to do with politics. We had the haj season, and when we have the haj, we try not to politicize it... But this is not normalization, he said. The meetings around the haj, have nothing to do with the politics. It s a religious issue. Relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia are at their worst in years, with each accusing the other of subverting regional security and supporting opposite sides in conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Al-Jubeir also said that if the rift with Qatar continued for two years then so be it. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) severed ties with Qatar in June over Doha s alleged support for militants. | 1 |
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