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3,500 | Somali lawmakers seek to impeach president amid political crisis | MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Some Somali lawmakers said on Wednesday they plan to impeach the president in a mounting political crisis that could put the fledgling government on a violent collision course with one of the country s most powerful clans. The political turmoil endangers fragile gains against the Islamist al Shabaab insurgency and could derail the government of President Mohamed Abdullahi. Universally known by his nickname Farmajo , the dual U.S.-Somali citizen took power earlier this year in a U.N.-backed process. The Horn of Africa state s parliament adjourned last week until the end of February, but some legislators want it to reconvene on an emergency basis, lawmaker Mahad Salad told Reuters. Ninety-six lawmakers have asked the speaker to reopen the session so that the impeachment against the president kicks off. The president is accused of violation of the constitution, treason, destruction of the federal states and so on, he said. The letter had not yet been delivered to the speaker. There are 275 lawmakers and two-thirds would have to vote against the president to impeach him. The motion follows a deadly raid on Sunday on the home of an opposition leader, Abdirahman Abdishakur Warsame, who ran for the presidency against Farmajo. Somali security agents arrived at his house around midnight and engaged his guards in a firefight, killing five people. The minister of security said Warsame resisted arrest and he would be charged with treason. He appeared in court on Tuesday but no warrant was shown for his arrest, a witness said. A Wednesday court hearing was postponed until Thursday. The information minister did not return calls seeking comment. A statement from the security minister and attorney general said they were investigating the crimes of Somalis who were involved in treason, terror and the destruction of government systems . Warsame comes from Somalia s formidable Habar Gidir clan, which is spread across south-central Somalia. Although both his supporters and the government stress that his detention is political, rather than a clan issue, it will further sour relations between the two sides. If that sparks fighting it could split Somalia s security forces, which are composed mostly of clan-based militias. In September, a battle between the police, intelligence, and military killed nine people in Mogadishu s Habar Gidir district. It s a lose-lose situation for the government. If they pursue this, they face a showdown with the Habar Gidir, who are powerful, wealthy and well-armed and provide many units in the SNA, said a Somalia security analyst who spoke on condition of anonymity, referring to the Somali National Army. If they back down, they look weak. It s very hard to see how the administration could survive this crisis. In August, a joint U.S.-Somali raid in the town of Bariire killed 10 Habar Gidir members. The U.S. military said they were Islamist militants but clan elders said they were civilians. In May, a soldier accidentally killed the minister of public works in a case of mistaken identity. A Habar Gidir clan member, the soldier was sentenced to death, angering clan members who felt that blood money should have been accepted. Somalia s new government has won plaudits from diplomats for trying to assess the extent of mismanagement and corruption in the armed forces and the International Monetary Fund has praised it for fiscal reforms. But at home, the government has many problems. It has hired and fired a string of top security officials. Al Shabaab militants, skilled at exploiting clan divisions, stepped up a campaign of deadly bombings in Mogadishu. One October bomb killed more than 500 people. A split between Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, both of which have supported Somali factions, has fuelled a spat between the president and leaders of Somalia s regional administrations, damaging security cooperation. This month, the U.S. government announced it was suspending aid to most of the military over accountability concerns. Now many parliamentarians are angry that a government that promotes itself as reformist is arresting critics like Warsame, said Abdirizak Mohamed, a lawmaker and former security minister. MPs are concerned about freedom of expression and association. This was an unnecessary crisis when they already had a lot on their plate. | 1 |
3,501 | Comey signs book deal after abrupt end to FBI career | (Reuters) - Former FBI Director James Comey, who was fired by U.S. President Donald Trump, has signed a deal for a book on leadership and decision-making that will come out in spring 2018, the publisher said on Wednesday. The book deal with Macmillan’s Flatiron Books comes three months after Comey’s firing raised questions about whether Trump tried to interfere with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s probe into Russia’s alleged meddling with the U.S. presidential election. Russia denies any interference, and Trump has denied collusion with Russia and interfering with the investigation. The book, which has not yet been given a title, will discuss “what good, ethical leadership looks like and how it drives sound decisions,” Bob Miller, president of Macmillan’s Flatiron Books, said in a statement on Wednesday. Flatiron won the rights to the book after an auction and did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In addition to reflections on Comey’s interactions with Trump this year, the book will feature anecdotes from his role in leading an investigation into the use of a private email server by Democrat Hillary Clinton during her 2016 presidential campaign. Comey’s announcement that the FBI was reopening the Clinton email investigation days before the November election led to accusations by some Democrats that he was unfairly influencing the outcome. The FBI eventually closed the probe without taking any action. | 1 |
3,502 | Clinton proposes 65 percent tax on U.S. billionaire estates | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic U.S. presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on Thursday proposed raising taxes on inherited property to 65 percent for the largest estates as she bolstered plans for tax hikes on the wealthiest Americans. Known by conservative opponents as the “death tax,” the estate tax, levied on property such as cash, real estate, stock or other assets transferred from deceased persons to heirs, currently is imposed only on inherited assets worth $5.45 million or more for an individual. Clinton’s plan, posted on her campaign’s website, would raise the estate tax from the current 40 percent to 45 percent, the rate that existed in 2009. But the biggest estates would face rates of up to 65 percent for property valued at more than $500 million for a single person or $1 billion per couple, under her proposal, an update of an earlier plan. Clinton’s proposed top rate of 65 percent would be the highest estate tax since the 1980s, and is in line with a proposal made during the Democratic primaries by her former rival for the party’s presidential nomination, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders. Her campaign said the boosted estate tax and a change in the rules to tax capital gains associated with inherited assets would help pay for other proposals to benefit middle-class people, such as expanding a tax credit for working parents. Clinton’s campaign said the plan would hit only the wealthiest people. “Hillary Clinton has made a commitment throughout this campaign to make sure there is a plan to pay for the progressive policies we have laid out,” said Mike Shapiro, an economic adviser to Clinton. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan group focused on budget issues, said Clinton’s new tax proposals including the estate tax changes, taxes on capital gains of inherited assets and other provisions would together raise $260 billion in revenue over a decade. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, a wealthy real estate developer, wants to eliminate the estate tax. Clinton’s proposal prompted criticism from conservatives ahead of her first debate with Trump on Monday night at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. Jason Miller, a Trump spokesman, issued a statement decrying Clinton’s “dramatic hike in the death tax.” Republicans want to eliminate estate taxes altogether because they believe the system penalizes families who want to pass down businesses, said U.S. Representative Kevin Brady, chairman of the tax-writing House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee. Brady said in a statement that Clinton’s plan was “dead on arrival.” The nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said this month that only the estates of the wealthiest 0.2 percent of Americans, about two out of every 1,000 people who die, currently owe any estate tax because the first $5.45 million per person is exempt. Clinton would lower that exemption to $3.5 million. | 1 |
3,503 | Trump Just Met With Airline Execs, RUINS Meeting With INSANELY Unpresidential Rant (VIDEO) | Donald Trump has turned yet another meeting in which he should have been focusing on being America s president and getting sh*t done into an absolute circus and embarrassment.During a meeting with airline executives, Trump decided that he was bored and could no longer focus, so he went on a completely incoherent rant about things his personal pilot had told him. As you can imagine, everyone in the room was shocked as Trump continued to hijack the meeting and went on babbling, making it impossible to actually get anything accomplished until he was finished.According to the White House pool report, Trump commended airlines for succeeding despite the bad equipment that the airport gives you, in many cases. Then he started complaining about the equipment, stating that he had a pilot who s a real expert who once told him that airlines are often given the wrong stuff. Trump continued: Let s order the right equipment. Probably the wrong equipment cost more. Here are some more gems from his rant: We want the traveling public to have the greatest customer service and with an absolute minimum of delays. We spent six trillion dollars in the Middle East, we got nothing. And we have an obsolete plane system, we have obsolete airports. As you can imagine, most of this rant made zero sense. This has become a pattern for Trump he continues to meet with industry CEOs, but he doesn t actually accomplish anything. He doesn t tackle policy, and he spends most of his time talking about himself or complaining. This shouldn t be too surprising, considering that we elected a former reality television star who knows NOTHING about policy, so he s obviously doing whatever he can to pass the time in these meetings.You can watch Trump go completely off track in the meeting below:Read more:Featured image via Win McNamee / Getty Images | 0 |
3,504 | KELLYANNE CONWAY Hits Back On Claims Russia Has Compromising Info On Trump [Video] | Not fake news, just fake! Team #Trump hits back on claims #Russia has compromising material on #DonaldTrump. pic.twitter.com/ZjHssN2uS6 Jon Williams (@WilliamsJon) January 11, 2017 | 0 |
3,505 | Maine GOP Governor Holds State Senate Hostage Over Personal Grudge | Paul Lepage, the Tea Party disaster that happens to technically be the governor of Maine, just keeps finding bold new ways to prove he isn t qualified to hold his job. I say he is technically the governor of Maine because the word itself implies governing as in working and doing a job. LePage does virtually none of that.The latest crusade of stupidity he has embarked upon is the outright refusal to perform his constitutional duty and swear in a new state senator, who recently won a special election. This leaves people of his state without representation in their capitol and shows yet again why the phrase tea party automatically disqualifies from any position of authority in any job.Susan Deschambault, a Biddeford Democrat, won a special election for the Senate District 32 seat on Tuesday. She traveled to the capitol with her family to be sworn in, only to be told the governor refused to do it. His reason is even worse than his behavior. LePage won t swear her in because of a totally unrelated issue where the senate has rejected the confirmation of the governor s nominee to the state s unemployment insurance commission.Deschambault literally has NOTHING to do with any of this, but he is denying her the ability to do her job, denying her constituents representation, denying Maine a fully-functional state house and violating his oath of office as governor just because he is an overgrown child who wants to have a tantrum.Tea Partiers are not the brightest bulb in the room normally. However, this move really is beyond reason even for them. We have a sitting U.S. governor who is literally holding his own state s ability to govern itself hostage until he gets his way. Mario Moretto, the spokesman for state senate Democrats, has said that the senate is looking for alternative methods of installing Deschambault into her office. The state attorney general also gave a statement that she is aware of the situation and that alternative methods are being sought, but she declined to comment further on the matter.Featured image via YouTube screen capture | 0 |
3,506 | YOU’LL NEVER BELIEVE WHICH REPUBLICAN JUST CALLED TED CRUZ A “JACKA@@” | What kind of leader speaks like this? It s obvious that there s lots of frustration within the RINO delegation of the Republican party. The heat s on these guys and they don t like it. Ted Cruz should feel honored to be called a jackass by none other than Speaker of the House John Boehner. Speaker of the House John Boehner stunned audience members Wednesday evening at a Colorado fundraiser by referring to Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz as a jackass .At a Steamboat Springs event for GOP Rep. Scott Tipton, the Ohio Republican quipped that he likes how Cruz s presidential campaign keeps that jackass out of Washington, and from telling Boehner how to do his job.That remark rubbed some attendees the wrong way. I don t think it s terribly speaker-like, and I think it kind of goes against everything that Reagan ever said about disparaging Republicans, said Ed MacArthur, the president of Native Excavating, who attended the fundraiser.Read more: Daily Caller | 0 |
3,507 | Head of Afghan election body sacked, raising doubts over 2018 ballots | KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan President Ashraf Ghani sacked the chairman of the country s Independent Election Commission on Wednesday, raising doubts over whether parliamentary and council ballots scheduled for next year will take place as planned. Najibullah Ahmadzai, head of the body charged with organizing the elections, had faced growing pressure following repeated delays to preparations for them and had lost the support of both Ghani and disillusioned foreign donors. The 2018 votes are seen as dry runs for a presidential election in 2019 and a key test of the progress made by Afghanistan s Western-backed government towards establishing durable democratic institutions. Following a contentious presidential election in 2014, marred by allegations of massive voter fraud on both sides, international donor countries have laid heavy emphasis on the need for successful elections next year. But planning has been beset by a mix of technical and political problems that have made the officially scheduled date of July 2018 increasingly unrealistic. Five members of the seven-member IEC wrote to Ghani this week accusing Ahmadzai of was incompetence. Ambitious plans for a biometric voter registration system had to be abandoned and squabbling between members of parliament and Ghani s fragile National Unity Government over issues including who sits on the election commission have caused months of delay. The problems underline the fragility of the political institutions created in Afghanistan since a U.S.-led campaign brought down the Taliban in 2001. The bitter 2014 presidential election produced no agreed winner and led to a U.S.-brokered deal which saw former rivals Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah forced into an uneasy coalition that has struggled to win popular support. District council elections have never been held, despite being mandated in the 2004 constitution, while the current parliament s term was supposed to end in June 2015 but has been extended due to the difficulty of holding new elections. Last month, officials from international partners including the United Nations told the Afghan government that even under the most favorable conditions, the earliest date on which an election could feasibly be held was Oct. 2018. Many Western diplomats believe even that date is impossible. If not ready by October, Afghanistan s mountainous terrain, bad roads and lack of security mean that registering voters and setting up balloting stations across the country are likely to face severe delays over the winter months, potentially pushing the date into the following year. | 1 |
3,508 | ‘Trumping’ America’s Liberal Elite: The Failure of Political Correctness | Kirsten Powers USA TodayOver the past 18 months, whether in Midwestern airports or New Hampshire and Iowa hotels, I learned the best way to spot a Donald Trump supporter was to note who was remaining silent.As Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz or John Kasich voters enthusiastically shared their reasons for supporting their candidate, a family member or friend would often stand by quietly.When pressed, if they came clean, it was often with downcast eyes or an apologetic smile: I m voting for Trump, they d almost whisper.A few months ago, an Uber driver told me he was voting third party, then tepidly announced he was voting Trump as I exited the car. Why didn t he just tell me this in the first place, I asked. Because I thought you would judge me, he said.Here we can see why Donald Trump s constant inveighing against political correctness was so ingenious. It forged an unlikely but unshakable bond between a Manhattan billionaire who had manifestly lived a life of New York values with conservative white Americans who feel under constant assault by a cultural elite that treats them with contempt. Perhaps more importantly, it ultimately inoculated Trump against allegations that many believed would be his undoing: that he was a racist and misogynist who bragged of sexually assaulting women. Trump s success among women was in part a reaction against enforced political correctness (Image Source: Pulse.ng)After all, these same voters have watched as every Republican candidate in recent memory has been accused of waging a War on Women. If Democrats are going to claim that Mitt Romney and John McCain hate women (and they did), then they shouldn t be surprised when voters ignore them when they say Donald Trump hates women. If every Republican is a misogynist, then no Republican is.While many liberals have dismissed the idea of political correctness as a right-wing manufactured hysteria, it is in fact a real thing. That Trump has stretched its meaning to encompass pretty much any horrible thing he wants to say makes its existence no less real.Conservative white Americans have watched (often fearfully) as liberal cultural elites demand that everyone fall in line with their agenda or risk being called a homophobe, racist or misogynist. The concept of persuasion and debate has been overridden by a quest for immediate and forced cultural conformity. My friend Sally Kohn, the liberal commentator, summed up the left wing view fairly honestly when she told me in a recent debate over free speech that, If [conservatives on campus] feel like they can no longer speak against positive social change, good. This is a paradigm where honest disagreement about abortion makes one a woman-hater, holding orthodox religious views on marriage equates to gay-bashing, and refusing to cop to white privilege even if you are a working class white person struggling economically defines you as a racist.A recent Slate article explaining why a slight majority of white women voted for Trump asserted that these female Trump supporters were self-loathing racists who were doing the bidding of their husbands and fathers. This is the omnipresent lefty trope Republican women have lived with for a long time, yet people are actually shocked that they wouldn t throw their support behind a party that too often casts them as gender-traitors.It s not hard to see how accusations against Trump as a racist and misogynist would be met with eye rolls and knowing murmurs of political correctness by people who have had their worldview constantly caricatured and demonized by the cultural elites in academia, media and politics Continue this story at USA TodayREAD MORE ELECTION NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire 2016 Files | 0 |
3,509 | Remains of exiled Italian king return to Italy | MILAN (Reuters) - The remains of Victor Emmanuel III, who reigned as Italy s king through two world wars and died in exile in 1947, were flown back from Egypt on Sunday for reburial at a family mausoleum near Turin. The remains of his wife, Queen Elena, also returned to Italy on Friday for reburial with those of the king at the Sanctuary of Vicoforte, near the Piedmont town of Cuneo, a spokesman for the sanctuary said. Elena died in 1959 and her remains had lain in Montpelier in France. Victor Emmanuel III s 46-year reign, which started in 1900 after the assassination of his father Umberto I, encompassed the period of fascist rule in Italy under dictator Benito Mussolini. He drew criticism for failing to prevent Mussolini s seizure of power in 1922 and for fleeing Rome in 1944 to avoid an invading German army. The monarch - known as sciaboletta , or small sabre, due to his stature - abdicated the throne in 1946 in favor of his son Umberto II in a vain effort to avert a plebiscite to decide whether Italy should remain a monarchy or become a republic. After Italians voted for a republic, Victor Emmanuel went into exile in Alexandria, Egypt, where he died the following year. Italy s post-war constitution barred male descendants of the royal House of Savoy from setting foot in Italy because of the family s support for Mussolini. The ban was lifted in 2002. The grandson of Umberto II, Emanuele Filiberto, told the Italian press recently that he believed the right place for the remains of former Italian kings was the Pantheon in Rome. | 1 |
3,510 | Former Virginia Mayor Could Get 40 Years After Pleading Guilty To Trading Meth For Sex (VIDEO) | The former mayor of Fairfax City in Virginia is facing up to 40 years in prison after he pled guilty to trading crystal meth for sex. Richard Scott Silverthorne entered a guilty plea to one charge of distributing methamphetamine on Monday.This shocking story began in August of 2016 when Silverthorne was arrested. Police say they got a tip that he was using a website to set up casual sexual encounters and distribute meth. An undercover officer set up a fake profile on the site and Silverthorne took the bait. In just days he had responded to the undercover officer and arranged to meet him at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in McLean, Virginia. The police set up a sting operation and busted him when he gave the undercover cop two grams of meth. During the raid, police arrested Silverthorne and two other men.Silverthorne was released on his own recognizance last August and had remained free since then. It was expected that he would be released today to await his sentencing hearing, but instead, he was sent to jail. Reports say that there were audible gasps in the courtroom when the judge made the announcement.His sentencing hearing is scheduled for June 9. He could receive a maximum of 40 years behind bars and a hefty $500,000 fine. However, his attorney, Brian Drummond, says he is hopeful that Silverthorne will get time served and be placed on probation because of the decades he has spent as a public servant with no criminal record.Before he was caught trading drugs for sex, Silverthorne had been re-elected as Fairfax City Mayor. He was also a substitute teacher who worked in the Fairfax County Public Schools. After he was arrested, a special election was held in February of 2017 to replace him.You can watch more on this story here, via ABC7: Featured image via video screen capture | 0 |
3,511 | Carson tells supporters no 'path forward' in presidential bid | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson said on Wednesday that he does not see a “political path forward” in his 2016 bid for the White House. Carson, a retired neurosurgeon who has not yet won a state contest of the more than a dozen held so far, said he will not attend Thursday’s Republican debate in Detroit. He has not formally suspended his campaign. (Reporting by Megan Cassella; editing by Tim Ahmann) This article was funded in part by SAP. It was independently created by the Reuters editorial staff. SAP had no editorial involvement in its creation or production. | 1 |
3,512 | Green groups sue Trump administration over delay of methane rule | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A coalition of nearly 20 environmental and Native American tribal groups sued the Trump administration on Tuesday, challenging its delay of a rule limiting emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas methane from oil and gas drilling operations on federal lands. Earlier this month, the Bureau of Land Management, part of the Department of the Interior, suspended implementation of the rule for a year, until Jan. 17, 2019, saying it wanted to avoid compliance costs for energy companies as it revises the regulation. The delay “is yet another action taken by the Trump administration to benefit the oil and gas industry at the expense of the American public, particularly the millions of Westerners” who use public lands for ranching, hunting, hiking and other purposes, Darin Schroeder, a lawyer with the Clean Air Task Force, said in a statement. His organization represented the National Wildlife Federation, one of the groups that filed the lawsuit against Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and his department. Energy companies say the rule, finalized at the end of the Obama administration in 2016, could cost them tens of thousands of dollars per well. The Trump administration is expected to announce a new draft rule in coming weeks, in line with its policy of maximizing output of oil, gas and coal and dismantling regulations it says prevent job growth. The rule targets accidental leaks and intentional venting of methane from drilling operations on public lands, where about 9 percent of the country’s natural gas and 5 percent of its oil were produced last fiscal year. Some of its 2017 provisions have already been phased in, but the majority of them have yet to go into effect. The lawsuit, also filed by the Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Council, and the Diné Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment, a Navajo group, seeks to stop the delay and force the Interior Department to implement the rule in January. It was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco. The Interior Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit. | 1 |
3,513 | Bengaluru building collapse kills at least five: officials | BENGALURU (Reuters) - A multi-storey building collapsed in the south Indian city of Bengaluru on Monday, killing at least five people and injuring several, officials said. The accident occurred in a densely populated residential area in the south-east of the city after the suspected explosion of a cooking gas cylinder, they said. Rescue operations were under way, according to media reports. Five people have died and five have been rescued, Bengaluru Development and Town Planning Minister K.J. George said on TV from the accident site. The building is more than 20 years old. At around 6 a.m., there was a loud noise, either due to gas cylinder explosion or building collapse, said Karnataka state home minister Ramalinga Reddy. | 1 |
3,514 | trump warns of vote flipping on machines | wikileaks email clinton operative thinks black voters are stupid david brock accused of elitist racism paul joseph watson october comments a new email released as part of the wikileaks podesta dump features clinton ally brent budowsky accusing hillary operative david brock of having a plan that relied upon black voters being stupid the email sent to clinton campaign chairman john podesta and another clinton ally ceo roy spence centers around a discussion of a bernie sanders campaign ad which featured many black faces back in january clinton operative david brock caused consternation within the campaign when he publicly claimed that bernie sanders didnt care about black people budowsky is not impressed with brocks outburst writing in the email brock makes the cardinal mistake of those who bring politics into disrepute with voters he tells a lie that people will know is a lie and insults the intelligence of black voters with a kind of elitist racism that bill and hillary clinton should not be seen with i guess brocks plan is that black voters are stupid and will not watch the ad and believe his lie writes budowsky i cannot think of anything more desperate more stupid and more selfdestructive than david brock lying about the bernie ad and playing a seamy brand of the politics of race using the tactic of deceit on her behalf adds the the hill and huffington post columnist before offering to write a campaign ad for hillary to counter the bernie sanders ad the email once again underscores the clinton camps paranoia about not being able to authentically connect with africanamerican voters in a way that bernie sanders could some black voters have been reluctant to support clinton as a result of her support for a crime bill that resulted in the mass incarceration of young black americans whom hilary referred to at the time as super predators
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3,515 | Trump BUSTED Giving The Middle Finger To Italy’s Prime Minister (VIDEO) | If you didn t already think Donald Trump embarrassed our country at the G7 summit in Sicily, wait till you see this.Like a 12-year-old whose mommy told him he can t buy the new gold-plated, diamond-encrusted fidget spinner, Trump flipped a world leader the bird with an age-old I m going to pretend to scratch my face move that has never fooled a single person.After Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni greeted his peers with a friendly Buongiorno, Trump wasted no time in being a complete dick to him.Gentiloni looked at Trump like he was a petulant child with whom the adults in the room were forced to deal, then continued speaking.Recently, the Prime Minister encouraged Trump to accept more refugees fleeing violence and to devote some money to rescue efforts in the Mediterranean Sea something that seems to have irritated Trump.Watch it happen below:Featured iamge via screengrab | 0 |
3,516 | White House to offer balanced budget plan by mid-May: Mulvaney | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A detailed version of President Donald Trump’s budget to be released in May will lay out plans to eventually erase U.S. deficits, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said on Sunday. “We’re getting into that now. By May, I think it’s mid-May we’re shooting for right now, we’ll have that larger budget...” Mulvaney said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program. Mulvaney acknowledged that the budget would not be balanced in the upcoming 2018 fiscal year but said the administration wants to put the country on a path toward eventually wiping out annual deficits. “We won’t be able to balance the budget this year, but we’re working on trying to get it to balance within the 10-year budget window, which is what Republicans in the House and the Senate have traditionally done in the last couple of years,” Mulvaney said. “It is a very complicated budget process when your entitlements, your mandatory spending is driving most of your budget deficit,” he said. “So over the course of the next decade, we’ll have to look at the mandatory spending side in order to figure out a way to make changes to the way we spend money.” The full budget to be rolled out in May will put “more flesh on the bones” of Trump’s preliminary budget plan that was released last week, said Mulvaney, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. Trump’s initial budget outline prompted criticism from both Democrats and some Republicans for its proposals for steep cuts in domestic programs such as education and environmental enforcement programs as well as foreign aid. As a presidential candidate, Trump campaigned on a pledge to quickly balance the budget, and eliminate federal debt during his presidency. Mulvaney said Trump’s proposals to boost U.S. infrastructure could be ready to be issued around “summer or early fall.” He said some money had been taken out of the budget blueprint “with the intention of putting it back into the infrastructure bill.” | 1 |
3,517 | Trump team disavows survey seeking names of climate workers | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team on Wednesday disavowed a survey sent to the U.S. Department of Energy that requested the names of people working on climate change in the agency. “The questionnaire was not authorized or part of our standard protocol,” Trump spokesman Sean Spicer said. “The person who sent it has been properly counseled.” Spicer declined to comment further on the team’s protocols. The survey of 74 questions, which the Energy Department received last Tuesday, asked for the names of workers and contractors who had attended U.N. climate meetings. It also asked for the names of those who had attended meetings on the social cost of carbon, a metric that federal agencies use in formulating regulations on the energy business. The department had balked at the survey on Monday, saying it would not comply. A department spokesman said on Wednesday that the Trump team’s disavowal hopefully signals the return to a smooth transition at the agency. The survey had also asked for a list of all the professional society memberships of workers at the department’s 17 national laboratories and all of their recent publications. The White House weighed in on the survey this week. Josh Earnest, a White House spokesman, said the questionnaire “could have been an attempt to target civil servants,” including career scientists and lawyers and other experts critical to the government’s ability to make policy. In addition, hours before the disavowal, Democratic U.S. Representatives Frank Pallone and Elijah Cummings sent a letter to Vice President-elect Mike Pence, the head of the transition, saying the team is entitled to select political appointees who share Trump’s climate views, but that any effort to marginalize civil servants on the basis of their scientific analysis would be an “abuse of authority.” Trump, a Republican, has said that climate change was a hoax perpetrated by China. He said he would rip up last year’s landmark global climate deal struck in Paris that was signed by Democratic President Barack Obama. Since winning the election, however, Trump, who will take office on Jan. 20, has said he will keep an “open mind” about the Paris deal. He also met with former Vice President Al Gore and actor Leonardo DiCaprio, strong advocates for action on climate change. Trump has picked climate change skeptic Rick Perry to run the Energy Department. Perry, governor of Texas from December 2000 to January 2015, would replace nuclear physicist Ernest Moniz. | 1 |
3,518 | Baltimore Teacher Breaks 7-Yr-Old’s Jaw For Being ‘Disruptive,’ Throws Child Into Wall (VIDEO) | An assistant elementary school teacher from Baltimore is facing abuse charges after he threw a 7-year-old boy into a wall, breaking his jaw, all because the child was being disruptive. Lateekqua Jackson and Trayvon Grayson Sr. say their son, Trayvon Grayson, was assaulted by an assistant teacher at City Springs Elementary/Middle School on Monday. My son told me that [the teacher] threw my son into a wall, Jackson explained. My son had dreams about it all last night. He s still shaking in his sleep, saying that he keeps having visions of [the teacher] throwing him into a wall. Jackson said that her son s jaw was broken and two of his teeth were knocked out in the violent assault.Timothy Randall Korr, who is employed by the Baltimore Curriculum Project charter operation, has been identified as the child s abuser. Korr claims that the child was being disruptive and said he was taking the boy to the principal s office when the attack occurred, which he described as a mistake. The teacher told me that he put him over his shoulder, and when he put him down he was bleeding, Jackson recalled. That s it. How can you tell somebody like that? He said he made a mistake. He said, I made a mistake. It was a mistake. That s what he said. Child abuse detectives got a warrant for Korr s arrest after watching the disturbing footage of the appalling incident that had been caught by a security camera. On Wednesday, the Baltimore Curriculum Project announced that Korr had been fired. We are heartsick that this child suffered this injury, the group said in a statement. We pray for his complete and quick recovery and for his family as well. Korr has been charged with 1st and 2nd-degree child abuse, 1st and 2nd-degree assault, reckless endangerment and neglect of a minor.Watch more on this sickening story here: Featured image via video screen capture | 0 |
3,519 | HOW HILLARY CLINTON Has Secured Her Husband’s Legacy As “A Rapist” And Hers As An “Enabler” [VIDEO] | Hillary Clinton is a professional panderer. There is no vote she won t attempt to secure, no matter the cost. In reality, her desire to gain the vote of young women in America will only harm her, as her call to stop the sexual assaults against women on campuses across America only shines a light one of the ugliest aspects of the Clinton Crime Syndicate. Bill s pattern of sexual abuse, and Hillary s willingness to sit back and watch will undoubtedly to come back to haunt them. Anyone who thought Hillary could get away with this phony compassion for women who are truly sexual victims, underestimates the disdain that women on both sides of the aisle have for her and her serial rapist husband.Articles have now appeared in two left of center websites, VOX and Slate, noting that it s hard to dismiss Ms. (Anita) Broderick (claims of sexual assault by Bill Clinton) given the new progressive consensus on believing victims. Well the injunction to believe victims gained currency among progressives because of a potent mix of gender theory and advocacy statistics.The theory came from the legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon, who taught that: Feminism is built on believing women s accounts of sexual use and abuse and by men. The statistics were supplied by activist researchers who claimed that women almost never lie about sexual assault. Now those activist statistics have been shredded, but among progressives, the doctrine of sexual victim infallibility, that lived on. But if victims are infallible, then those they accuse, must be presumed guilty. And that brings us to the Clintons. Hillary Clinton has signed on to that theory. Watch here: | 0 |
3,520 | Former minister for Argentina's Fernandez arrested | BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Julio De Vido, an ex-minister in former Argentine President Cristina Fernandez s government, was jailed after turning himself in to authorities on Wednesday, marking an anti-corruption milestone in a country known for impunity. Congress voted to strip former planning minister and current lawmaker De Vido of his parliamentary immunity earlier in the day, and he later appeared at a federal judge s chambers in Buenos Aires where he was taken into custody. He faces charges in two separate corruption cases. Argentina s Congress rarely removes lawmakers immunity and De Vido is the most powerful official from the 2007-2015 Fernandez era to be jailed. Local television showed police escorting De Vido from the chamber but covered his face with riot shields. He was then driven to Ezeiza jail outside the capital city, where he will be detained indefinitely. This is a scandal. In a state of law sentences are applied after a conviction, De Vido s lawyer Maximiliano Rusconi told local television. Corruption allegations dogged Fernandez s government and isolated her politically ahead of a Senate race on Oct. 22. De Vido is under investigation in a case involving the Patagonian coal mine Rio Turbio. Prosecutors accuse him of embezzling state funds allocated for the mine. He has denied any wrongdoing. A three-judge panel ordered De Vido s arrest last week, saying he should be jailed to prevent him fleeing or interfering with the case. Fernandez won a Senate seat for the province of Buenos Aires under Argentina s list system on Sunday, but finished second, lessening her chances of staging a comeback for the presidency in 2019. De Vido was in charge of running energy infrastructure projects under Fernandez, a left-leaning populist who was succeeded by business-friendly President Mauricio Macri in late 2015. Fernandez, the subject of corruption investigations herself, has acknowledged there was likely corruption during her government but denies personal involvement. | 1 |
3,521 | WATCH: Journalist Kicked Out Of World’s Largest Gun Show For Asking This Totally Valid Question (VIDEO) | Wednesday, January 22 was the day of the world s largest gun show. Held in Las Vegas, Nevada, the SHOT show (Shooting, Hunting, and Outdoor Trade) is where arms dealers gather to show off their best and newest instruments of death. Understandably, the event sponsors have to keep a tight grip on media at the event, lest journalists ask questions that might make people think just a little bit.That s why when The Guardian s Rupert Neat went to the show to ask people questions that are indirectly related to gun control, he must have known it would be only a matter of time before he would be thrown out of the event. Neat s experiences were documented on video, and then posted online.In the beginning of the video, Neat says that he was specifically asked not to talk about gun control with any of the more than 1,600 hundred exhibitors at the event. Despite this warning, Neat actually talked to many of the exhibitors and attendees of the event about questions indirectly related to gun control, before being kicked out of the show. Neat asked people what they thought was driving the huge boom in gun sales that were seen last year.They re answers were nearly identical fear. Fear is what is driving the record sales of firearms in the United States. It has been well documented that mass shootings drive gun sales. So does talk of gun control, when President Obama is elected/reelected, and when minuscule actions on gun control are taken. In December of 2015, after President Obama announced he would be taking executive actions to slightly increase gun regulations, 1.6 million guns were sold. The only other month that has topped that record was in January of 2013, which coincided with both the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre, and Obama s second term.But those types of questions are not what get Neat kicked out of the gun show. While talking to an exhibitor with Smith & Wesson, Neat was shown a MP 1522 sport rifle. Neat held the gun and casually asked the exhibitor: So, is the same gun used in the San Bernardino shooting? Neat asks.The exhibitor dodged the question, simply answering that the gun is MP 1522 sport rifle. He then promptly removes his microphone. At that point Neat gets an e-mail asking him to come speak to the communications director at the event. Neat and his crew are told multiple times to stop filming, and refused to answer any questions while the camera was rolling. Neat then left the gun show.The truly disturbing and important aspect of the encounter between the journalist and man from Smith & Wesson is that it shows how dangerous breaking the fantasy that the NRA and other lobby groups sell, is to gun manufacturers. The goal of public relations is to sell a credible version of reality. The reality that weapons manufacturing industry wants to sell is that their weapons are tools to fight dangerous people, not tools used by dangerous people or toddlers. Any questioning that can potentially unravel the credibility of their meticulously crafted version of reality must be silenced, or disregarded as the deranged ramblings of lunatics.You can watch the video, in full, below.https://www.facebook.com/GuardianUs/videos/1264293813597683/Featured Image Credit: Video Screenshot via Facebook/Guardian US | 0 |
3,522 | Australian former governor-general and peacemaker Ninian Stephen dies at 94 | SYDNEY (Reuters) - Former Australian Governor-General Sir Ninian Stephen, who worked on the Northern Ireland peace talks and served on the International Court of Justice, died on Sunday. He was 94. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced plans for a state funeral, saying there were very few honors that Stephen, who held five separate knighthoods, didn t have to his name. Australia will remember Sir Ninian for his humility, his intellect, and his lifelong commitment to justice and the rule of law, Turnbull said. Stephen served as governor-general from 1982 to 1989 when he became the first Australian Ambassador for the Environment, working hard to ban mining in Antarctica. He was born in Britain and moved to Australia in his late teens where he studied law before serving as an infantryman during World War Two, serving in New Guinea and Borneo. Both the British and Irish governments chose Stephen to chair the second phase of the Northern Ireland peace talks in 1992. He was also a judge for the International Criminal Tribunal investigating war crimes in the former Yugoslavia. In his later years, he advised on South Africa s constitution, worked for the International Labour Organisation in Burma and was involved in setting up a tribunal to hear cases involving atrocities committed by the genocidal Khmer Rouge killing fields regime of 1975-79. He also helped draft a constitution for Afghanistan after the 2001 ouster of the Taliban. | 1 |
3,523 | Trump’s Deplorables Just Got Flat-Out MONSTROUS With Sexual Assault Victims On Twitter (TWEETS) | One of Twitter s top trending hashtags is full of women who ve been harassed and assaulted, and they re explaining why women don t report such incidents with their personal stories. There are many, many moving accounts under #WhyWomenDontReport, but there are also the misogynistic jerkwads who are intentionally hurting victims all over again.Trump s deplorables are busy reinforcing their image as the bottom-feeders of deplorability. They re calling Trump s victims liars, and they re calling women who report sexual assault liars, gold-diggers, and worse. In short, they re doing every single thing they can to shame women who have been harassed and outright attacked. Some are even using #NextFakeTrumpVictim as a rebuttal to #WhyWomenDontReport.They are disgusting, and they are monsters. They ve once again shown themselves to be the basket of deplorables that Hillary said they are.We don t live in a rape culture. Shut up. #whywomendontreport Sean Spooky Derp (@Seanbeandood) October 13, 2016@cristinalaila1 #whywomendontreport REAL sexual assault victims don t report 1st time ever 26 days before election in a circus. #hookers do! Pimping Politics (@PimpingPolitics) October 13, 2016#WhyWomenDontReport Because Hillary s campaign told them to wait until 3 weeks before the election and then disappear with the money.#Trump 26Days??TrumpWins (@GordonPress) October 13, 2016Does anyone think its suspicious that suddenly after 30 yrs these women come out on same day just 3 wks before election? #WhyWomenDontReport My Place (@MyPlace4U) October 13, 2016#WhyWomenDontReport Becuase of the #Clintonbodycount Bring Me To Heel (@desi2finh) October 13, 2016Because they re afraid someone might check the report for validity. #whywomendontreport Diggs Niffeur (@Kissingers4skin) October 13, 2016While I understand #WhyWomenDontReport at times, but 3 weeks b4 a major election? Don t buy it. NoYb (@Luvthe1970s) October 13, 2016#WhyWomenDontReport cuz there waiting for #DonaldTrump to run for #POTUS Surajkumar (@suraj1972kummar) October 13, 2016#WhyWomenDontReport b/c a lot of dumb women brainwashed 2 believe OK 2 get drunk, dress+ act like a slut, pass out+groped you re a victim? [email protected] (@Stump4TrumpSF) October 13, 2016#WhyWomenDontReport if this could ever be true it d be bc of bimbos arguing like they know anything during the debates, @MarthaRaddatz DeploRAEble (@twilightblueam) October 13, 2016#WhyWomenDontReport Can I too get $50,000 from the Clinton campaign if I lie about Trump groping me? Naw, not worth selling the USA. Ryan Deardorff (@Grumbull) October 13, 2016#WhyWomenDontReport b/c they didn t own a TV and know Trump was running for President until 3 weeks before the election? Howard Notelling (@BluegrassPundit) October 13, 2016#WhyWomenDontReport because it never happened thats why. Sam DeGreen (@samdegreen) October 13, 2016#WhyWomenDontReport people usually tend to believe rape cases that are actually true. However, there s too many false cases as well Nick (@NickyBRizzle) October 13, 2016If people stopped trying to destroy the life of a human being because they don t agree with them, this wouldn t happen #WhyWomenDontReport I Support Trump ?? (@TheRealKWingate) October 13, 2016#WhyWomenDontReportBecause 70% of them have a rape fetish. 75% Ironic ( ) (@Synthovine) October 13, 2016#WhyWomenDontReport Because false rape accusations like the ones against Trump make it harder for women to be believed. Rev. Templeton Jones (@TempletonTJones) October 13, 2016WARNING: The picture at the link in the tweet below is explicit and triggering:#WhyWomenDontReport refugees rape women at alarming rates. Liberals love refugees liberals love rape. pic.twitter.com/E7CCg35DqZ Deplorable Trumpanze (@alstegner) October 13, 2016#WhyWomenDontReport waiting for the next wiki dump #nextfaketrumpvictim EverydayAmerican (@jcvolt) October 13, 2016Because the rewards for playing the victim outweigh the risk of filing a fake police report #WhyWomenDontReport Moonman (@Uncle_Adolf1488) October 13, 2016Women don t report sexual assault or harassment for a variety of reasons. Many fear that nobody will believe them. They fear the accusation will be turned back on them and destroy their reputations and lives. They can t stomach the idea of having to answer explicit questions about their bodies and their sexuality in order to prove they were actually attacked.It s because there are police who tell women to deal with it, and sometimes don t even file the report. It s because women are asked what they were wearing, whether they were drinking and flirting, why they were wherever they were, why they let themselves be alone with their attackers, and so forth. It s because people say that sexual assault is just sex that the victim regrets later on.No, people don t believe us. Yes, people shame us to hell and back. Yes, we re accused of ruining the lives of the men who hurt us so badly. Why don t women report sexual assault and harassment? Because we can t.Featured image by Ralph Freso via Getty Images | 0 |
3,524 | schools all over america are closing on election day due to fears of violence | homeless woman protects trumps walk of fame star from violent leftists im gonna stay here and watch this and make sure nobody touches it chris menahan information liberation october comments
powerful video shows a homeless woman protecting donald trumps walk of fame star after it was smashed by a criminal leftist
as the gateway pundit reports the woman was seen holding up a sign reading million illegals and americans sleep on the streets in tents vote trump
it was repaired on the same day
the day after this homeless trump supporter went to protect it
im gonna stay here and watch this and make sure nobody touches it she was heard saying homeless trump supporter guards realdonaldtrump s star on hollywood blvd against all sjws basedsentinel magax httpstcobjgcfodu pictwittercomnrmqnbwuk
peterduke magax peterdukephoto october
video shared on periscope shows hordes of disgusting leftists insult and attack the woman for supporting trump
in this short video posted to youtube one angry black man is seen screaming in her face and asking her do you know your federal government is not even party of the fing government
do you know that he asks no i didnt think so he says
hello another woman in the crowd shouts in agreement open your eyes she says
in case anyone is not aware the federal government is part of the government
while hillary clinton wants to bring in millions of foreigners to take jobs and welfare from the poorest of americans donald trump wants to help our own and put the needs of americans first newsletter sign up get the latest breaking news specials from alex jones and the infowars crew related articles | 0 |
3,525 | Michigan governor issues appeal over Flint funds denial | (Reuters) - Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has urged federal officials to reconsider their denial for funds to help deal with the crisis caused by lead-contaminated water in the city of Flint, his office said on Thursday. The contamination and the state’s long delay in addressing the problem have sparked outrage and drawn attention from U.S. presidential candidates. In the latest appeal to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Snyder is requesting money to pay for food, water and other essential needs; the removal of health and safety hazards; activation of emergency operations centers; measures to avoid further damage; and homeowners’ repairs not covered by insurance. A FEMA spokesman said Snyder’s appeal was under review by the agency. The agency turned down an earlier request for financial help in January because the areas in which Snyder requested aid were deemed not appropriate, but has provided non-monetary support in the form of a FEMA coordinator. Also in January, Snyder asked for federal declarations of emergency and major disaster. President Barack Obama approved the federal emergency declaration, but denied a major disaster declaration. Snyder appealed that decision and was denied. Snyder said on Thursday that Flint needed continued local, state, federal and national efforts. “Assistance from our federal partners could go a long way in moving Flint forward,” he said. Activists and some Democratic state lawmakers have demanded that Snyder resign, but a spokesman said the Republican governor had no intention of stepping down. Snyder is scheduled to testify before a U.S. congressional committee on March 17. Also on Thursday, Snyder said the federal government approved a waiver allowing for Medicaid coverage for children and pregnant women in Flint. Flint, a predominantly black city of 100,000 about 60 miles (100 km) northwest of Detroit, was under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager when it switched the source of its tap water from Detroit’s system to the Flint River in April 2014. The city switched back last October after tests found high levels of lead in blood samples taken from children. Water from the Flint River, which was more corrosive than Detroit’s, leached lead from the city’s pipes, posing widespread health risks. Experts have said it could take some time for anti-corrosive chemicals now being added to the water to re-coat pipes so that they will not leach more lead. Meanwhile, Flint officials said they would begin replacing lead pipes running to homes with copper on Friday as part of a $55 million project. | 1 |
3,526 | Iraq's Kurdistan shuts 350,000 bpd of oil output due to security: sources | LONDON (Reuters) - Iraq s Kurdistan has shut down some 350,000 barrels per day (bpd) of production from major fields Bai Hassan and Avana due to security concerns after a flare-up in tensions with the central government, trading sources told Reuters on Monday. One trading source said he was informed by Kurdish operators that civilian workers at both fields were released following a build up of Iraqi military forces around the fields. The operations were stopped and civilian employees will be able to return and operations will restart only when the intentions of Iraqi security forces are clear, the source added. He added that the flows of oil from North Oil Co s Kirkuk oil field, which are under control of the central government, were continuing normally at an export rate of 90,000 bpd. Iraq earlier warned Kurdish officials against shutting down Kirkuk oil flows. | 1 |
3,527 | GYM OWNER WHO BANS COPS AND MILITARY Speaks Up…Calls America a “Brutal Terrorist Force” [Video] | This guy opened his mouth and proved us all right. He s a total jerk who hates America.This guy is a typical limousine liberal who s so hateful it s beyond belief. He s on Facebook ranting about how much he hates America and Americans: Jim Fergie Chambers A TRUST FUND AMERICA HATER:In the East Atlanta Village neighborhood, the EAV Barbell Club is known as the one owned by the guy who hates cops.His policy? Police officers and members of the military are not welcome to work out at EAV Barbell Club. The self-proclaimed radical said he believes police officers are violent henchmen of the state.So what does he have against military personnel? My belief is that the American state, the American empire is the most destructive and sadistic force the world has ever seen, Chambers said. What our army does is evil, so I don t want to make somebody strong so they can go kill Yemenis and North Koreans, period. Ever since the story began to circulate, Chambers said he s gotten a lot of angry phone calls. He said some people have threatened his life. I d say during peak hours I ll get a death threat about every 15 seconds, Chambers said.On the gym s Facebook page, most of the posts are not appropriate for television, but one post sums up general sentiment: I hope your stupid little sign was worth it. You started something now. Chambers is independently wealthy. He confirmed to me he s the great-grandson of the founder of communications giant Cox Enterprises, which owns the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and WSB-TV, among other businesses.We asked Chambers if he would consider calling the police to report the death threats he s received. Absolutely not, under no circumstances, he said. I would feel more unsafe in their presence. | 0 |
3,528 | ICYMI: Seth Meyers Rips Apart Email from Paul Ryan | Like many other comedians, Seth Meyers is not impressed with the healthcare bill that was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives. Like the other comedians, he has been very vocal about his feelings. For his part, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) was not pleased with Meyers description of the legislation. Meyers said the newly passed American Health Care Act is a tax cut for the wealthy, and that it will hurt the poorest and sickest among us.In order to make his views known, Ryan had his staff send Meyers an email detailing all the ways he felt the comedian got it wrong. Not one to back down from a fight, Meyers used his show s segment, A Closer Look, to respond.Meyers said to his audience: Unlike Republicans and their healthcare bill, we actually read the whole email. This was clearly a jab at the many House members who did not take the time to read the bill they had passed. Many of these same representatives complained up one side and down the other about the same sort of thing going on when the Affordable Care Act was passed back in 2009. They vowed they d never vote for a bill they hadn t read.Watch Meyers eviscerate Ryan s email below: Featured image via screen capture from embedded video | 0 |
3,529 | New Hampshire Democrat defends role on Trump voting commission | MANCHESTER, N.H. (Reuters) - A Democratic member of President Donald Trump’s commission to investigate possible voter fraud defended his participation on the panel on Tuesday while warning that its mission is being threatened by “extreme partisanship.” Dozens of protesters gathered before the second meeting of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity’s in Manchester, New Hampshire, the state that has long held the first nominating primary in the U.S. presidential election cycle. The panel member, Bill Gardner, who is New Hampshire’s secretary of state, had faced calls to resign after commission Vice Chairman Kris Kobach, a Republican, suggested that thousands of people illegally voted in the northeastern state in November. Despite calls by New Hampshire’s four-person, all-Democratic congressional delegation to resign, Gardner said he would not. “New Hampshire people aren’t accustomed to walking away or stepping down from their civic duties,” Gardner said. “I will not either.” He criticized Kobach, who is the Kansas secretary of state, for calling into question the election’s “real and valid” results. Gardner also noted the opposition the commission has faced from its beginning. “The specter of extreme political partisanship already threatens our ability to reach a consensus,” Gardner said. Trump established the commission in May after charging, without evidence, that millions voted unlawfully in the November presidential election. Most state election officials and election law experts say that U.S. voter fraud is rare. Although Trump handily won the Electoral College vote that ultimately decides the outcome of presidential elections, he lost the popular vote to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million votes. Trump has said on Twitter that New Hampshire, which he lost to Clinton by fewer than 2,800 votes, and two other states had “serious voter fraud.” Tuesday’s meeting drew protesters as the panel heard from speakers about voting trends and the extent voter fraud exists, something speakers from conservative groups like Judicial Watch and Heritage Foundation said was real. One speaker, John Lott, an economist known for his writings against gun control laws, proposed making voters go through the same federal background check system used for firearm purchases. In a Breitbart News column on Thursday, Kobach claimed voter fraud led to the November victory in New Hampshire for U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan, a Democrat and former governor of the state, over incumbent Republican Kelly Ayotte by 1,107 votes. Kobach, an advocate of tougher voter identification, also said Clinton may have won New Hampshire due to illegal voting by non-residents. He renewed his views on Tuesday. “This is obviously a subject of concern,” he said. Kobach cited statistics showing 5,313 voters with out-of-state driver’s licenses registered to vote on the day of the election but who did not later obtain New Hampshire licenses. Democrats countered that the data likely reflected college students from out-of-state who were voting. | 1 |
3,530 | Biden visits Iraq in show of support amid multiple crises | ERBIL, Iraq/BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Joe Biden met Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and other top officials in unannounced visits to Baghdad and Erbil on Thursday to show support for a government battling Islamic State amid political and economic crises. It was the first visit for Biden, the White House’s point person on Iraq, since U.S. forces withdrew in 2011 after nearly nine years of occupation. He was the third and highest-level U.S. official to visit the country this month. Islamic State, also known as ISIL, seized large portions of Iraq and neighboring Syria in 2014. Iraqi forces have won back some territory, such as the western city of Ramadi, but often after long battles that have left the areas destroyed. Biden’s trip, several months in the planning, is a sign of the progress Washington believes Iraqi forces have made in beating back the militants over the past year and its hope that the northern city of Mosul can be recaptured before U.S. President Barack Obama leaves office in January. “This is a good indication of the United States’ continued support for Prime Minister Abadi’s efforts to unify the nation of Iraq to confront ISIL,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. The vice president has close relationships with Iraqi leaders and speaks with them about every 10 days. Still, “there’s no substitute for being able to sit down face-to-face,” a U.S. official said. Biden, a longtime U.S. senator before becoming vice president in 2009, said he had been to Iraq almost 30 times during his career. His first stop on Thursday was Baghdad where he met Abadi and Parliament Speaker Salim al-Jabouri to discuss “progress” in the fight against Islamic State, including plans to retake Mosul. “It’s real. It’s serious. It’s committed,” Biden told reporters. Iraqi officials say they will retake Mosul this year but, in private, many question whether that is possible. Biden hopes some progress can be made before the extreme summer heat, a senior administration official said. He later flew to Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, for a 90-minute working dinner with the Kurdistan region’s president, Massoud Barzani, to discuss the Mosul offensive in which Kurdish peshmerga forces are expected to have a critical role. The peshmerga have emerged as a key component of a U.S.-led coalition’s strategy to “degrade and destroy” Islamic State, driving the insurgents back in northern Iraq with the help of air strikes despite a financial crisis that has made it difficult to pay salaries. Biden’s trip also served to counter a “misperception in the region” that Iran, which backs powerful Shi’ite Muslim militias fighting Islamic State in Iraq, has undue influence in the nation, the U.S. official added. But it comes at a turbulent time in Iraqi politics. Abadi has faced resistance to a government overhaul aimed at tackling corruption. He won lawmakers’ approval to replace a handful of ministers on Tuesday after delays and disruptions. The political battle has also sparked populist protests that forced the government to bring back troops from the front lines to secure the capital. U.S. officials have expressed concern that unrest could distract from the war effort. Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Ash Carter visited Baghdad earlier this month to show their support. “It’s been a pretty all-consuming political affair,” a senior U.S. official told reporters, noting recent signs of a “calmer trajectory” in the drama. Obama has said he has seen “momentum” in the efforts of the coalition fighting Islamic State, and recently authorized more U.S. forces to go to Iraq and Syria to help train and assist local fighters. Their goal is to help Iraqi and Kurdish forces retake Mosul by the end of the year. The United States has already redeployed several thousand troops to Iraq to help defeat Islamic State. The White House is concerned that not enough is being spent to rebuild parts of Iraq devastated by the fight, a deficit made worse by the low price of oil, Iraq’s main revenue source. The United Nations is urgently seeking $400 million from Washington and its allies for reconstruction, while Obama asked Gulf Arab leaders to assist during a visit to Riyadh last week. He also discussed the issue with European leaders in London and Hanover, Germany, and told reporters Iraqi reconstruction would be a topic for the G7 meeting in Japan next month and for NATO. Biden, whose late son Beau spent a year in Iraq with the Army, later spoke with U.S. troops and embassy workers. He showed them a daily tally of the number of U.S. troops serving, killed and injured in the line of duty that he carries in his front suit pocket. “The history of this region is a nightmare from which everyone is constantly trying to awake,” he said, adapting a line from Irish novelist James Joyce. | 1 |
3,531 | 3,000 form chain of light against far right in Austrian government | VIENNA (Reuters) - At least 3,000 people formed a chain of light in Vienna on Wednesday to protest against the formation of a government that includes the far-right Freedom Party. Demonstrators holding flickering candles, torches and bicycle lamps encircled the capital s government district. Our republic s most powerful political offices should be exclusively reserved for trustworthy people who are not in the slightest connected to right-wing extremists, said Alexander Pollak, spokesman for SOS Mitmensch, one of several human rights groups which organized the demonstration. It was the biggest protest in Austria since coalition talks between the conservative People s Party (OVP) and the Freedom Party (FPO) started two weeks ago. Organizers estimated the number of people taking part at 8,000 to 10,000, the police at around 3,000. We are here because they (the FPO) feed hatred and want to divide people, said Brigitte Griesser, holding a candle. But the protest was far smaller than unrest 17 years ago, when the FPO last formed a government with the OVP and more than 100,000 took to the streets. (The shift to the right) has become a European trend... it s no longer just an Austrian issue and that s why it is not that controversial any longer, said protester Juergen Pucher. | 1 |
3,532 | LIBERAL HOLLYWOOD SUFFERS Worst Summer For Movies In 25 Years | With the list of Hollywood actors and entertainers that Americans have decided to boycott over their sickening public hate for our President, is it really any wonder we re seeing the worst box office numbers in 25 years? Meryl Streep used her allotted time for accepting her lifetime achievement award at the Golden Globes to trash President Trump. At the start of her dramatic speech, Streep bemoaned to her fellow liberals that Hollywood belong to one of the most vilified segments in America right now . It appears that she hit may have actually the nail on the head. The problem with arrogant actresses like Meryl Streep who falsely believe that because they ve been gifted with exceptional acting abilities, that Americans should fall in line with their radical political beliefs or we are ignorant."As my friend Princess Leia said to me once: take your broken heart, make it into art." #MerylStreep pic.twitter.com/GzOHo7O729 #GoldenGlobes Richard Hine (@richardhine) January 9, 2017And then there s Robert DiNero, who called candidate Trump a punk, a pig and an idiot. Only days before the election, DiNero angrily admitted that he would like to assault our soon to be President, claiming, I d like to punch him in the face .The list of Hollywood losers who have made vile, unfounded and even threatening remarks against a man who has put his very successful life on hold in an effort to save our nation is vast. The list of Hollywood losers who have said they would like to harm our President is also rather significant, starting with Madonna who got a visit from the secret service after she told a large, adoring group of women at the Women s March in DC, that she d like to blow up the White House.And then there s comedian Kathy Griffin, who saw her career literally blow up after making an ISIS style video holding up a decapitated and bloodied head of President Trump. Is Hollywood s rapidly declining appeal really so surprising to most Americans who are 100% FED UP with their hate for middle-America?As Hollywood wraps up the all-important summer box-office season this Labor Day weekend, a sobering reality has gripped the industry.The number of tickets sold in the United States and Canada this summer is projected to fall to the lowest level in a quarter-century.The results have put the squeeze on the nation s top theater chains, whose stocks have taken a drubbing. AMC Theatres Chief Executive Adam Aron this month called his company s most recent quarter simply a bust. Such blunt language reflects some worrisome trends. Domestic box-office revenue is expected to total $3.78 billion for the first weekend of May through Labor Day a key period that generates about 40% of domestic ticket sales down nearly 16% from the same period last year, according to comScore. That s an even worse decline than the 10% drop some studio executives predicted before the summer began. LA TimesBreitbart Even before this catastrophic Labor Day weekend is factored in (more on this below), the domestic 2017 box office is in hideous shape. This year is 6.3% behind 2016 and continues to fall behind 2015, 2013, and 2012.If you figure in inflation, those numbers are even worse. For example, in 2012 the average ticket cost $7.96. Today it is almost a full dollar more at $8.89. Yeah, things are that bad and will look even worse on Tuesday.With no apparent faith in their own product, this is the first Labor Day in 25 years where a new title has not been released on more than 1,000 screens. Over this weekend last year, the box office hauled in nearly $130 million. This year will do about a third of that.Summer attendance is at a 25-year low.The summer box office is down a whopping 16% compared to 2016.Can a handful of titles It, Kingsman 2, Bladerunner 2, Thor 3, Justice League, Star Wars 8 save an entire year? Doubtful. Pull out of a dive? Maybe. Still, we are talking about only six big titles over four months, which is about on par with last year s Passengers, Rogue One, Doctor Strange, Fantastic Beasts, Inferno, Sully, and Magnificent Seven. | 0 |
3,533 | With or without Democratic director, U.S. consumer watchdog to be weakened | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Whether or not Richard Cordray stays as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) until his term ends in July, the agency’s ability to rein in Wall Street will be severely weakened, political insiders, lawyers and consumer advocates said. Doubts are growing that the Democratic director of America’s top consumer watchdog will leave his post to run for Ohio governor, as had been widely speculated, after a lackluster Labor Day speech sparked anxiety over his campaign appeal, according to some party insiders. Cordray, whose term at the CFPB ends in July 2018, is not expected to announce any decision to run until the regulator releases long-awaited rules restricting payday lenders, which are expected within weeks, according to multiple sources. Cordray has evaded questions from the Republican chairman on the House of Representatives Financial Services committee, Jeb Hensarling, about his plans, writing in a recent letter: “At this time, I have no further insights to provide on that subject.” Even if Cordray stays, he will not enjoy a reprieve from Republican efforts to defang the agency which they believe is too powerful and restricts the flow of credit. “He has been under constant attack in his position because of the threat he poses to the status quo on Wall Street,” said Karl Frisch, executive director of Allied Progress, a consumer advocacy group which has called for Cordray to stay on. “I would imagine that would continue regardless of how long he stays in the job.” Some Republicans, including Hensarling, have introduced legislation to weaken and even dismantle the agency which was created as part of the post-crisis Dodd Frank Act. While those bills have not gotten far, Cordray will still have to play defense against a Republican-dominated Congress poised to suffocate new CFPB rules using the Congressional Review Act, a mechanism already used to kill 14 Obama-era regulations. Lawmakers are also considering amending the government budget to bring the CFPB’s funding, currently provided by the independent Federal Reserve, under the control of Congress, potentially allowing Republicans to starve the agency of resources. President Donald Trump could also take the more extreme step of intervening to remove Cordray. A court ruling last year said the president should be able to fire the CFPB director without cause, which the CFPB is appealing. Even if the CFPB is victorious, Trump may still seek to use causes allowed by the law, such as inefficiency or neglect of duty, to get Cordray out of the way, according to legal experts. The CFPB has declined to comment multiple times on Cordray’s plans, possible successors or how it would operate in his absence. Since Trump came to power, the CFPB has raced to finish outstanding rule proposals and taken numerous enforcement actions, hoping to lock in its work in case Trump appoints a pro-Wall Street replacement, said Quyen Truong, a partner at law firm Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, who was the assistant director and deputy general counsel for the CFPB until early 2016. If Cordray quits or is removed, Dodd-Frank requires his deputy to step up temporarily but lawyers say the legitimacy of that step could be challenged. The act may be superseded by a law that allows the president to temporarily fill vacancies. Alan Kaplinsky, head of the Consumer Financial Services Group at law firm Ballard Spahr and a Cordray critic, said the White House is widely expected to appoint Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin as an interim replacement, who would then delegate his duties to lower-ranking officials. Scrapping a new rule allowing bank and credit-card customers to band together in class-action lawsuits and tougher regulation of payday lenders will likely be a Trump appointee’s first moves, Kaplinsky said. This could be done by delaying the rule’s effective date for further study, a common Washington tactic used to stall the implementation of regulation indefinitely. An acting director could also dramatically scale back the consumer complaint database, a key tool the CFPB uses to resolve disputes for individuals and to identify corporate malfeasance, Truong said. Meanwhile, she said, the agency will continue pursuing enforcement cases, but those will likely be much smaller in scope. Jeff Emerson, a spokesperson for Hensarling, said any new director would naturally be bound by the law, but this person would have “a lot of discretion” to make changes. | 1 |
3,534 | Trump backs waterboarding and 'a lot more' after Brussels attacks | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said on Tuesday the United States should use waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques when questioning terror suspects, and renewed his call for tougher U.S. border security after the attacks in Brussels. The billionaire businessman said authorities “should be able to do whatever they have to do” to gain information in an effort to thwart future attacks. “Waterboarding would be fine. If they can expand the laws, I would do a lot more than waterboarding,” Trump said on NBC’s “Today” program, adding he believed torture could produce useful leads. “You have to get the information from these people.” Waterboarding, the practice of pouring water over someone’s face to simulate drowning as an interrogation tactic, was banned by President Barack Obama days after he took office in 2009. Critics call it torture. Trump’s main Republican rival, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, suggested heightened police scrutiny of neighborhoods with large Muslim populations. “We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized,” he said in a statement. Trump also called for increased law enforcement surveillance of mosques in the United States. “You need surveillance. You have to deal with the mosques, whether we like it or not,” Trump told Fox Business Network. “These attacks ... they’re not done by Swedish people, that I can tell you.” Islamic State claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s suicide bomb attacks on Brussels airport and a rush-hour metro train in the Belgian capital which killed at least 30 people. Trump, who has called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country, urged tougher measures to stop the flow of illegal immigrants, particularly Syrian refugees, into America. “As president ... I would be very, very tough on the borders, and I would be not allowing certain people to come into this country without absolute perfect documentation,” said Trump, campaigning to become the Republican nominee for the Nov. 8 election that will decide on Obama’s successor. The Brussels attacks brought national security back to the top of the presidential election agenda, possibly sharpening the division between Trump’s isolationist approach to foreign policy and his Republican rivals’ more traditional interventionist outlook. On Monday, Trump expressed skepticism about the U.S. role in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and said the United States should significantly cut spending on the defense alliance. Cruz criticized Trump’s NATO proposal. “The way to respond to terrorist attacks is not weakness. It’s not unilateral and preemptive surrender. Abandoning Europe, withdrawing from NATO, as Trump suggests, is preemptive surrender,” Cruz told reporters in Washington. Earlier attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, have pushed security issues to the forefront of the White House campaign debate. When 130 people were killed in Paris in November, the threat of terrorism jumped from fifth to first on a Reuters/Ipsos poll list of the country’s most important problems and remained there until the economy moved back to the top of the list in mid-January. Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton said U.S. military leaders have found techniques like waterboarding are not effective. “We’ve got to work this through consistent with our values,” she said on NBC, adding officials “do not need to resort to torture, but they are going to need more help.” Clinton’s Democratic rival, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, backed stronger intelligence-sharing and monitoring of social media in the fight against Islamist militants, but opposed bolstered surveillance of Muslim communities. “That would be unconstitutional, and it would be wrong. We are fighting a terrorist organization, a barbaric organization that is killing innocent people. We are not fighting a religion,” Sanders told reporters. Walid Phares, named by Trump this week as one of his foreign policy experts, told Reuters the Brussels attacks would force Europe and the United States to “reassess” counter-terrorism strategies in “identifying the radicalized elements and also the type of protection soft targets need.” Trump looks to take another step toward winning the Republican presidential nomination in contests in Arizona and Utah on Tuesday, aiming to deal another setback to the party establishment’s flagging stop-Trump movement. He has a big lead in convention delegates who will pick the Republican nominee, defying weeks of attacks from members of the party establishment worried he will lead the Republicans to defeat in November. In Arizona, one of the U.S. states that borders Mexico, Trump’s hardline immigration message is popular and he leads in polls, while in Utah Trump lags in polls behind Cruz. In addition to the temporary ban on Muslims entering the country, Trump has called for the building of a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border to halt illegal immigration. | 1 |
3,535 | Iraq hangs 38 Sunni militants in mass execution: justice ministry | BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq hanged 38 Sunni Muslim militants on Thursday after they were sentenced to death on terrorism charges, the justice ministry said in a statement. The mass executions were carried out at a prison in the southern Iraqi city of Nassiriya, the statement said quoting the Justice Minister. On Sept. 24, Iraq executed 42 Sunni Muslim militants on terrorism charges ranging from killing members of security forces to detonating car bombs. The justice ministry said all the convicted were members of Islamic State. Officials have said all the appeal options available to the condemned had been exhausted, according to the statement. | 1 |
3,536 | Illinois gets June 20 deadline to boost Medicaid funding | CHICAGO (Reuters) - Illinois must increase payments to Medicaid providers despite an ongoing budget impasse, after a U.S. District Court judge on Wednesday ruled the minimal payments made by the state do not comply with federal consent decrees. Judge Joan Lefkow ordered renewed negotiations between Illinois and health care advocates for the poor, setting a June 20 deadline to be in “substantial compliance” with the decrees. Lawyers representing the state’s 3 million Medicaid recipients had asked the judge to give precedence to payments to managed care organizations participating in the state and federal health care program for the poor and disabled over the state fully funding other priorities, including debt service on bonds and pensions. Lefkow said Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza, who pays the state’s bills, has not offered a “lawful basis” for not paying the Medicaid providers the $2 billion they are owed. “Although the court means no disrespect to the comptroller, who faces an unenviable situation, it finds that minimally funding the obligations of the decrees while fully funding other obligations fails to comply not only with the consent decrees, but also with this court’s previous orders,” the judge’s latest order stated. Illinois is limping toward the June 30 end of a second-straight fiscal year without a complete spending plan due to a political stalemate between its Republican governor and Democrats who control the legislature. Lawmakers ended their spring session on May 31 without a fiscal 2018 budget deal, triggering downgrades that pushed Illinois’ credit ratings from S&P and Moody’s Investors Service to a step above junk. As a result of the stalemate, Illinois’ backlog of unpaid bills reached $14.9 billion this week. Mendoza said the real solution is enacting a budget. “The lack of a budget for the last two years has created a situation in which we now have more court-ordered and state-mandated payments than we have revenues to cover them,” she said in a statement. Tom Yates, executive director of the Legal Council for Health Justice, who is representing Medicaid recipients in court, said more money is being sought at this time to ensure access to medical care, not an immediate payment in full. “I think the talks will have little different tenor now because the judge makes it pretty clear she expects more money to flow to Medicaid providers,” he said. The consent decrees, which require the state to continue to make Medicaid payments despite its budget problems, stem from two 1992 cases. | 1 |
3,537 | WATCH: MSNBC Host TORCHES Trump Campaign Manager To A Crisp For 18 Glorious Minutes | Defending Satan is hard. That s what Kellyanne Conway learned during an appearance on MSNBC on Wednesday morning.With eleven hours to go before the third presidential debate kicks off, host Stephanie Ruhle relentlessly grilled Donald Trump s campaign manager on everything from the Republican nominee s claims that the election is rigged to the sexual assault allegations against him to him inviting President Obama s estranged half-brother to the debate.Ruhle began by asking Conway if she really believes there will be widespread fraud on Election Day. Conway responded by breaking with her boss. No, I don t believe that, she said but she went on to suggest that there is a conspiracy to defeat Trump among Clinton and some members of the media. Specifically, Conway cited James O Keefe and his selectively edited undercover videos as proof of Trump s claims.Ruhle called out Trump for misleading the American people. Conway tried to spin by pointing to Trump s recent introduction of an ethics plan for government, but Ruhle was skeptical because Trump could have introduced such a plan months ago but is only doing it now.Conway whined about how the media is supposedly ignoring Trump s plans but Ruhle was not having it, noting that while the media has covered Trump s policy plans, he has made it difficult for them to do so by making wild claims and saying offensive things such as his various insults aimed at women, which Ruhle talked about next.Ruhle asked Conway if she is offended by Trump s remark about grabbing women by the pussy. She acknowledged that she is offended but she also lied by claiming that no one in Trump s campaign has tried to defend or condone his remarks when many of his surrogates have tried to write off his comments as mere locker room talk. Ruhle then moved on to the sexual allegations against Trump, especially those made by a People magazine contributor. Trump has repeatedly called her a liar and attacked her but it turns out there are six witnesses who can corroborate her accusations that he groped her and forcibly tried to kiss her. When there are six people corroborating the People magazine story you still say her word against his? Ruhle said. You ve got to look at your kids when you go home at night. Conway complained that it was fair for Ruhle to say that to her because I get that from a lot of childless people worrying about my kids but Ruhle actually has three kids, whom she says are not allowed to watch Trump speak because she is afraid he will say offensive things about women.Conway countered by claiming that Hillary Clinton has not done anything for women, which again, is a lie.According to Huffington Post,Globally, no candidate has done more for women s rights than Secretary Clinton. In her time as Secretary of State, she appointed the first-ever Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women s Issues at the State Department; oversaw the creation of the U.S. National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security; and introduced the Global Health Initiative (GHI), investing $63 billion to help partner countries provide robust maternal and infant health services.Hillary is also a strong supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment and voted for the Lily Ledbetter Act and Paycheck Fairness Act when she was a United States Senator.She also fought for over-the-counter contraception and expanding Medicaid for family planning services.In short, her record of achievement is long when it comes to women.Conway also bragged about Hillary Clinton not reaching 65 percent support among women, but the fact is that she has a 19-point lead over Trump among women 53-34 in a new CBS poll. If the election were held today, it would be the largest margin of victory among women in history, even surpassing President Obama s wins in 2008 and 2012.For some reason, Conway also tried to criticize Hillary for hanging out with billionaires like Mark Cuban just because she has their support. Ruhle was quick to smack Conway down by pointing out that Trump is a billionaire who actually does hang out with billionaires.Conway also took heavy fire from Ruhle after saying that Hillary Clinton isn t an American success story even though she is the first woman in history to be a major party s nominee for president.Here s the video via YouTube.Overall, Conway really took a beating in this interview. She lied multiple times all while trying to soften Trump s claims, which really undermines them more than anything else.Donald Trump is unfit to be president and, quite frankly, anyone who worked for his campaign should never be able to work in politics or in the media ever again, and that includes Kellyanne Conway. They have done nothing but poison the democratic process while demonizing the press that is responsible for vetting candidates. That only weakens our country and it s unforgivable.Featured image via screenshot | 0 |
3,538 | CHARLIE DANIELS SENDS A MESSAGE To Bruce Springsteen And Other Spineless Rockers Who’re Canceling Shows | Charlie daniels is such a great man and a great Patriot! He s not going to let down his fans so he s promising not to cancel any concerts because of the bathroom laws.Boycotting states like North Carolina and Mississippi is all the rage for many celebrities these days but for one singer it s just the opposite.While Bruce Springsteen, Ringo Starr, Bryan Adams and even filmmaker Michael Moore have declined to do business in North Carolina and Mississippi, because the states passed laws preventing men from using women s bathrooms, Charlie Daniels has stepped up.Read more: BPR | 0 |
3,539 | Four Moldovans killed in Ivory Coast plane crash: security minister | ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Four Moldovan nationals were killed and two others were injured when a propeller-engine cargo plane crashed into the sea near the international airport in Ivory Coast s main city Abidjan on Saturday, the Ivorian security minister said. Four French citizens also survived the crash but were injured, Sidiki Diakite told reporters at the scene of the accident. Several Ivorian security sources said they were French soldiers. | 1 |
3,540 | WATCH: Top Senator Proves GOP Built Trump, Makes Them Own It | Republicans now scrambling to contain the political damage being inflicted on their party by presidential candidate Donald Trump were given a strong wakeup call by Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), the top ranking Democratic senator in the country.In a speech delivered at the Center for American Progress, Reid tore into Trump with particular emphasis on how the extremism of the modern Republican Party led to his shocking rise. The Republican establishment acts bewildered. But they shouldn t. As much as they may try to distance themselves from Trump now, Republican leaders are responsible for his rise, he said.He attacked his Senate colleagues for trying to distance themselves from Trump s rise, saying they bear the responsibility. When Trump calls immigrants rapists and murderers, he s just doing what he s learned from generations of conservatives, Reid said. The Republican Party has become the party of Trump. Reid went on to describe the actions of Republican leaders towards Trump as moral cowardice, pointing out that they simply dole out a verbal slap on the wrist when Trump indulges in hate but are still prepared to back him for the highest office in the land.Republican leaders, looking at Trump s poor performance in head to head polls against Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, particularly among the core voters that have given Democrats victories in the last two presidential elections black, latino, and female voters have begun to prepare contingency plans.One group is organizing in order to arrange votes against Trump at the Republican convention this summer in Cleveland, while others are discussing an idea to draft a third party candidate to run in the elections this fall. As a practical matter, both plans would likely lead to the easy election of whoever the Democratic nominee happens to be.Reid also pointed out that he at least respects Ted Cruz, even though he is amazingly unpopular in the Senate Because he stands for things. Trump stands for nothing. Featured image via Flickr | 0 |
3,541 | Putin-linked think tank drew up plan to sway 2016 US election - documents | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Russian government think tank controlled by Vladimir Putin developed a plan to swing the 2016 U.S. presidential election to Donald Trump and undermine voters’ faith in the American electoral system, three current and four former U.S. officials told Reuters. They described two confidential documents from the think tank as providing the framework and rationale for what U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded was an intensive effort by Russia to interfere with the Nov. 8 election. U.S. intelligence officials acquired the documents, which were prepared by the Moscow-based Russian Institute for Strategic Studies [en.riss.ru/], after the election. The institute is run by retired senior Russian foreign intelligence officials appointed by Putin’s office. The first Russian institute document was a strategy paper written last June that circulated at the highest levels of the Russian government but was not addressed to any specific individuals. It recommended the Kremlin launch a propaganda campaign on social media and Russian state-backed global news outlets to encourage U.S. voters to elect a president who would take a softer line toward Russia than the administration of then-President Barack Obama, the seven officials said. A second institute document, drafted in October and distributed in the same way, warned that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was likely to win the election. For that reason, it argued, it was better for Russia to end its pro-Trump propaganda and instead intensify its messaging about voter fraud to undermine the U.S. electoral system’s legitimacy and damage Clinton’s reputation in an effort to undermine her presidency, the seven officials said. The current and former U.S. officials spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the Russian documents’ classified status. They declined to discuss how the United States obtained them. U.S. intelligence agencies also declined to comment on them. Putin has denied interfering in the U.S. election. Putin’s spokesman and the Russian institute did not respond to requests for comment. The documents were central to the Obama administration’s conclusion that Russia mounted a “fake news” campaign and launched cyber attacks against Democratic Party groups and Clinton’s campaign, the current and former officials said. “Putin had the objective in mind all along, and he asked the institute to draw him a road map,” said one of the sources, a former senior U.S. intelligence official. Trump has said Russia’s activities had no impact on the outcome of the race. Ongoing congressional and FBI investigations into Russian interference have so far produced no public evidence that Trump associates colluded with the Russian effort to change the outcome of the election. Four of the officials said the approach outlined in the June strategy paper was a broadening of an effort the Putin administration launched in March 2016. That month the Kremlin instructed state-backed media outlets, including international platforms Russia Today and Sputnik news agency, to start producing positive reports on Trump’s quest for the U.S. presidency, the officials said. Russia Today did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Sputnik dismissed the assertions by the U.S. officials that it participated in a Kremlin campaign as an “absolute pack of lies.” “And by the way, it’s not the first pack of lies we’re hearing from ‘sources in U.S. official circles’,” the spokesperson said in an email. PRO-KREMLIN BLOGGERS Russia Today and Sputnik published anti-Clinton stories while pro-Kremlin bloggers prepared a Twitter campaign calling into question the fairness of an anticipated Clinton victory, according to a report by U.S. intelligence agencies on Russian interference in the election made public in January. [bit.ly/2kMiKSA] Russia Today’s most popular Clinton video - “How 100% of the 2015 Clintons’ ‘charity’ went to ... themselves” - accumulated 9 millions views on social media, according to the January report. [bit.ly/2os8wIt] The report said Russia Today and Sputnik “consistently cast president elect-Trump as the target of unfair coverage from traditional media outlets.” The report said the agencies did not assess whether Moscow’s effort had swung the outcome of the race in Trump’s favor, because American intelligence agencies do not “analyze U.S. political processes or U.S. public opinion.” [bit.ly/2kMiKSA] Neither of the Russian institute documents mentioned the release of hacked Democratic Party emails to interfere with the U.S. election, according to four of the officials. The officials said the hacking was a covert intelligence operation run separately out of the Kremlin. The overt propaganda and covert hacking efforts reinforced each other, according to the officials. Both Russia Today and Sputnik heavily promoted the release of the hacked Democratic Party emails, which often contained embarrassing details. Five of the U.S. officials described the institute as the Kremlin’s in-house foreign policy think tank. The institute’s director when the documents were written, Leonid Reshetnikov, rose to the rank of lieutenant general during a 33-year-career in Russia’s foreign intelligence service, according to the institute’s website [bit.ly/2oVhiCF]. After Reshetnikov retired from the institute in January, Putin named as his replacement Mikhail Fradkov. The institute says he served as the director of Russia’s foreign intelligence service from 2007 to 2016. [bit.ly/2os4tvz] Reuters was unable to determine if either man was directly involved in the drafting of the documents. Reshetnikov’s office referred questions to the Russian institute. On its website, the Russian institute describes itself as providing “expert appraisals,” “recommendations,” and “analytical materials” to the Russian president’s office, cabinet, National Security Council, ministries and parliament. [bit.ly/2pCBGpR] On Jan. 31, the websites of Putin’s office [bit.ly/2os9wMr] and the institute [bit.ly/2oLn9Kd] posted a picture and transcript of Reshetnikov and his successor Fradkov meeting with Putin in the Kremlin. Putin thanked Reshetnikov for his service and told Fradkov he wanted the institute to provide objective information and analysis. “We did our best for nearly eight years to implement your foreign policy concept,” Reshetnikov told Putin. “The policy of Russia and the policy of the President of Russia have been the cornerstone of our operation.” | 1 |
3,542 | LATE NIGHT HOST Goes Low In Anti-Trump Rant With ‘Homophobic’ Slur [Video] | COLBERT LANGUAGE WARNING! This late night host is one angry dude! He does everything he can to try and rip on President Trump but it comes off as cold and just mean spirited.The disgusting rant at the end of his monologue has backfired on him .his homophobic slur was in poor taste and very offensive to just about everyone within earshot. You can even tell the audience was shocked when he said it. If this was said about anyone else, Colbert would be in hot water but this is against Trump so it s ok. Isn t that pitiful How low can Colbert go? Not much lower Stephen Colbert unleashed a torrent of anti-Trump jokes on his show Monday night, ending with a c*ck-in-Trump s-mouth jab. The 12-minute tirade was dedicated to the 100-day mark in Trump s presidency, and Colbert went after Trump with a vengeance. The jokes included, The only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin s c*ck holster. Go to the 11:13 mark for the rant language warning:READ MORE: TMZ | 0 |
3,543 | WATCH: President Obama Issues Warning About Trump Nomination And Every American Should Listen | It s still hard to conceive that Donald Trump is the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party and, although in the past the GOP has produced bad candidates like George W. Bush capable of doing serious damage to the country, a Trump presidency could certainly finish the disastrous job Bush started.President Obama has tried to fix the damage Bush and the GOP caused America and he will be leaving with a stronger country than when he came into office. No one knows more than President Obama what had to be done to fix the economic, social, and political damage Bush caused the American people. No one knows more than President Obama that the most powerful and critical position in the world is no laughing matter. That s why the president s statement about Trumps presumptive nomination came with a warning. The President said: I think it s important for us to take seriously the statements he s made in the past. But most importantly, and I speak to all of you in this room as reporters as well as the American public. I just want to emphasize the degree to which we are in serious times and this is a really serious job. Obama went on to add: This is not entertainment, this is not a reality show. This is a contest for the presidency of the United States. And what that means is that every candidate, every nominee needs to be subject to exacting standards and genuine scrutiny. While many in the media and the public have found Trump s antics entertaining, the joke will be on all of us if this man, who many never believed would get this far, becomes president. It s important that America goes out and votes this November. We can t go back to the Bush years of war and recession.Watch video here:[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALku3gpLnSw]Featured image via video screenshot. | 0 |
3,544 | Republicans Were Just Told To Stop Talking About Healthcare Repeal Because It’s Political Suicide (DETAILS) | Remember when Republicans were told to stop talking about rape because they were repeatedly sticking their foot in their mouths? Well, now they are being told to stop talking about their attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act.Ever since Republicans giddily started preparing to repeal the landmark healthcare law, they faced a sea of angry constituents at town hall events across the country. As the GOP dug in their heels to strip healthcare from millions of Americans, their own voting base began to realize that their own healthcare was threatened as well and that the law they referred to as Obamacare wasn t so bad after all.In fact, many realize that the law saved their lives and they don t want Republicans to repeal it and put their lives back in jeopardy.But Republicans shoved their bill through the House without even reading it and getting the CBO to score it. The bill lets states opt out of requiring insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions, which have now been defined as including sexual assault, pregnancy, cancer, acne, asthma, diabetes, sleep apnea, Alzheimer s disease, and a whole host of other conditions and medical problems, a list of which you can find here.This pretty much would allow insurance companies to discriminate against millions of Americans, conservatives included.The bill also slashed $880 billion from Medicaid, which covers millions of low-income Americans, in order to fund a tax gift for the wealthy. Again, millions of Americans, including conservatives in red states, got healthcare because the Affordable Care Act expanded Medicaid.Understandably, most Americans are pissed at Republicans, especially after House Republicans celebrated taking healthcare from people by throwing a beer party on Capitol Hill and smiling and laughing about it at the White House Rose Garden while Donald Trump spiked the football.And Americans have been flocking to town halls ever since to shame Republicans for their actions. Many Republicans have even been too cowardly to even attend their own town halls to face the music.Those who have shown up have only angered their constituents even more by lying about what s in the bill and making any lame excuse they can think of to justify stripping healthcare from millions.That s why a conservative consulting firm in now telling Republicans to stop talking about repealing the Affordable Care Act.According to Raw Story,In a memo issued this week by conservative firm WPA Intelligence, lawmakers were cautioned to avoid using the term full repeal because it is highly unpopular.So, it appears that Republicans may now go to their constituents and claim that their bill is only a partial repeal even though it is, in fact, a full repeal.Make no mistake, this consulting firm knows that Republicans are committing political suicide. That s why they warned them to stop talking so much about the healthcare repeal.But the damage has already been done and will get even worse if Republicans send the bill to Trump for his signature.The American people, including conservative voters, now know that Republicans were full of shit when they insisted that a full repeal was the only way to fix the Affordable Care Act. The fact is that these problems can be easily fixed if Republicans are willing to work with Democrats. Instead of admitting they were wrong, Republicans doubled down and now they get to experience the consequences in 2018 when a Democratic wave could very well sweep them out of power in Congress.Featured Image: Mark Wilson/Getty Images | 0 |
3,545 | China signals will again block Indian bid to blacklist militant leader | BEIJING (Reuters) - China on Monday signaled it would again block an Indian request at the United Nations to blacklist the head of a Pakistan-based militant group because there was no consensus, a move likely to cause recrimination in New Delhi. India, backed by the United States, has been trying to get Maulana Masood Azhar on a U.N. list of groups with ties to Al Qaeda, blaming his group for a series of attacks in India, including one on its parliament in 2002 and another last year on an airbase. But China, a member of the U.N. Security Council, has repeatedly put a technical hold on the Indian request, the latest of which is due to end this week. Such decisions must be based on cast-iron evidence and fully backed by members of the U.N. panel charged with implementing resolutions relating to sanctions on militant groups and individuals, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said. China proposed a technical hold, the aim of which was to give more time for the committee members to discuss it and for relevant parties to have further consultations, Hua told a daily news briefing. But regrettably, the committee has yet to reach consensus. The wrangling over Masood Azhar, a longtime Indian foe, has become a thorny issue in ties between China and India, which fears Beijing is disregarding its concerns over terrorism. It has also fueled worries that China will stick to its all-weather friend, India s arch-foe Pakistan, no matter the weight of evidence against Islamabad. Pakistan denies giving material support to militants fighting Indian rule in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir besides carrying out attacks elsewhere. It said it interrogated Azhar and his associates in the Jaish-e-Mohammad group after the January 2016 attack on the Pathankot air base but found no evidence linking him to it. Hua said there were clear rules for listing a person or group as a terrorist, and that China has always believed the relevant U.N. committee should operate on the principles of objectivity, fairness and professionalism on this matter. Jaish-e-Mohammad has already been blacklisted by the 15-nation Security Council, but not Azhar, an Islamist hardliner. | 1 |
3,546 | U.S. tempers part of Trump travel ban amid big protests, criticism | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s administration on Sunday tempered a key element of his move to ban entry of refugees and people from seven Muslim-majority countries in the face of mounting criticism even from some prominent Republicans and protests that drew tens of thousands in major American cities. Trump signed the directive on Friday, but the policy appeared to be evolving on the fly. Democrats and a growing number of Republicans assailed the move and foreign leaders condemned it amid court challenges and tumult at U.S. airports. The president’s critics have said his action unfairly singled out Muslims, violated U.S. law and the Constitution and defiled America’s historic reputation as hospitable to immigrants. In a fresh defense of the action on Sunday, Trump said his directive was “not about religion” but keeping America safe. Trump has presented the policy as a way to protect the country from the threat of Islamist militants. U.S. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said in a statement that people from the seven countries who hold so-called green cards as lawful permanent U.S. residents would not be blocked from returning to the United States from overseas, as some had been after the directive. All green card holders who were detained at U.S. airports had been admitted into the country by late Sunday, a U.S. official familiar with the process told Reuters. The source could not provide a figure of how many people whose re-entry had been delayed, in some cases for hours. Outside the White House, where some viewing stands from Trump’s Jan. 20 inaugural parade still stood, several thousand protesters denounced him, carrying signs such as “Deport Trump” and “Fear is a terrible thing for a nation’s soul.” Protests also were staged in cities and airports in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Houston, Dallas and elsewhere. The Republican president on Friday put a four-month hold on allowing refugees into the country, an indefinite ban on refugees from Syria and a three-month bar on citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Border and customs officials struggled to put Trump’s directive into practice. Confusion persisted over details of implementation, in particular for the people who hold green cards. Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a Trump supporter, said the president’s order had been poorly implemented, particularly for green card holders. “The administration should immediately make appropriate revisions, and it is my hope that following a thorough review and implementation of security enhancements that many of these programs will be improved and reinstated,” Corker said. Trump defended his action. “To be clear, this is not a Muslim ban, as the media is falsely reporting,” Trump said in a statement on Sunday. “This is not about religion - this is about terror and keeping our country safe. There are over 40 different countries worldwide that are majority Muslim that are not affected by this order.” He added: “We will again be issuing visas to all countries once we are sure we have reviewed and implemented the most secure policies over the next 90 days.” The department said on Saturday Trump’s action did apply to people with green cards who were returning to the United States from the seven nations, while a White House official said green card holders who had left the United States and wanted to return would have to visit a U.S. embassy or consulate to undergo additional screening. White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus then went on the Sunday morning news programs to say those people would not be blocked. “As far as green card holders moving forward, it doesn’t affect them,” Priebus said on the NBC program “Meet the Press.” Priebus added that these green card holders would be subjected to “more questioning” by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents when they try to re-enter the United States “until a better program is put in place over the next several months.” In an apparent indication that Kelly’s instructions were being implemented, some green card holders arriving in the United States said they had no trouble clearing customs. Mahdi Tajsarvi, an engineer who lives in Virginia, said he and his wife, Arezoo Hosseini, both Iranian citizens with U.S. green cards, were asked a few routine questions by authorities at Dulles International Airport outside Washington on Sunday evening and let through within a few minutes. Priebus also said Customs and Border Patrol agents would have “discretionary authority” when they encountered someone arriving who they suspect “is up to no good” from certain nations. Asked why Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Egypt were not included on Trump’s list, Priebus said that “perhaps other countries needed to be added to an executive order going forward.” U.S. judges in at least five states blocked federal authorities from enforcing Trump’s directive, but lawyers representing people covered by the order said some authorities were unwilling on Sunday to follow the judges’ rulings. U.S. Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, prominent Republican foreign policy voices, said in a joint statement Trump’s order may do more to help recruit terrorists than improve U.S. security. “Ultimately, we fear this executive order will become a self-inflicted wound in the fight against terrorism,” they said, adding the United States should not stop green card holders “from returning to the country they call home.” “This executive order sends a signal, intended or not, that America does not want Muslims coming into our country,” the added. Trump blasted the two senators in a Twitter statement, calling them “sadly weak on immigration.” In a another Twitter message earlier on Sunday, Trump said the United States needed “strong borders and extreme vetting, NOW.” “Christians in the Middle-East have been executed in large numbers. We cannot allow this horror to continue!” added Trump, who successfully tapped into Americans’ fear of attacks during his election campaign. Trump’s tweet did not mention that many more Muslims have been killed in the bloody Syrian civil war and other violence in the targeted countries. Condemnation of Trump’s action poured in from abroad, including from traditional allies of the United States. In Germany, which has taken in large numbers of people fleeing the Syrian civil war, Chancellor Angela Merkel said the global fight against terrorism was no excuse for the measures and “does not justify putting people of a specific background or faith under general suspicion,” her spokesman said on Sunday. Canada will offer temporary residency to people stranded in the country as a result of Trump’s executive order on immigration, Canadian Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen said. Briefing reporters at the White House on condition of anonymity, a U.S. administration official rejected criticism of the way Trump’s plan had been carried out, saying: “So it really is a massive success story in terms of implementation on every single level.” Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the Republican-led U.S. Senate, had a different view, calling Trump’s administration incompetent. “One hand doesn’t know what the other is doing,” Schumer said. “I think banning refugees, banning immigrants, banning religions like Islam or any other religion, is un-American,” said Will Turner, 42, draped in a U.S. flag among a crowd of several thousand people in front of the White House chanting: “No hate, no fear, refugees are welcome here.” An official of the conservative billionaire industrialist Koch brothers’ political network of donors criticized Trump’s immigration order at the donors’ winter gathering in Indian Wells, California. “Our country has benefited tremendously from a history of welcoming people from all cultures and backgrounds. This is a hallmark of free and open societies,” Brian Hooks said in a statement. Civil rights and some religious groups, activists and Democratic politicians have promised to fight Trump’s order and Schumer said his party would introduce legislation to overturn it. Republicans control both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Priebus said that of 325,000 people who arrived from foreign countries on Saturday, 109 people were detained for further questioning, and most of them were moved out, with just a “couple dozen more that remain” detained. “It wasn’t chaos,” he said. Judges in California, Massachusetts, Virginia and Washington state, each home to international airports, issued their rulings after a similar order was issued on Saturday night by U.S. District Judge Ann Donnelly in New York’s Brooklyn borough in a case involving two Iraqis caught by the order as they flew into the country. Attorneys general from California, New York, 13 other states and Washington, D.C., condemned and pledged to fight what they called Trump’s “dangerous” and “unconstitutional” order. | 1 |
3,547 | U.S. governors urge Trump to make insurance payments | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic and Republican U.S. governors on Wednesday urged the Trump administration, as well as Congress, to continue funding payments to health insurance companies that make Obamacare plans affordable, calling it critical to stabilizing the insurance marketplace. Republican President Donald Trump, frustrated that Obamacare survived attempts to repeal it, has threatened to cut off about $8 billion in subsidies that help control costs for low-income Americans under the Affordable Care Act, Democratic former President Barack Obama’s signature domestic initiative. “The Administration has the opportunity to stabilize the health insurance market across our nation and ensure that our residents can continue to access affordable health care coverage,” said a statement by the Health and Human Services Committee of the National Governors Association. “A first critical step ... is to fully fund CSRs (cost-sharing reduction payments) for the remainder of calendar year 2017 through 2018,” the statement said, adding this was needed as Congress and the administration address long-term reform efforts. The committee is led by Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, and Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, a Republican. Earlier this year, the governors sent a letter calling on Congress to fully fund the cost-sharing payments. Some Congressional Republicans have joined Democrats in urging Trump to continue the payments. Republican Senator Lamar Alexander, chairman of the health committee, said Tuesday the president should pay the subsidies through September while lawmakers work on bipartisan legislation to fund the outlays for another year. But the Senate’s No. 2 Republican John Cornyn hesitated when asked Wednesday if he would support such legislation. “I’ve said before that I’m not in favor of throwing money at insurance companies without reform, so that’s going to be the nature of the conversation,” Cornyn told reporters outside his office. Asked what reforms he’d like to see, Cornyn mentioned the “skinny” Obamacare repeal bill the Senate voted down last week. Among other things, it would have repealed the requirement that every American have health insurance or pay a penalty. Insurers say that the cost-sharing payments are passed onto customers in the form of lower deductibles and co-pays that make care more affordable for low income Americans. Insurers are finalizing 2018 premium rates for the individual Obamacare market, with many saying their decision hinges on government guarantees for cost-sharing subsidies. Molina Healthcare Inc said on Wednesday it would stop selling Obamacare plans in Utah and Wisconsin, joining a slew of health insurers that have exited Obamacare markets amid uncertainty over the healthcare law. Anthem Inc, one of the largest sellers of these plans in 2017, has pared back offerings or mostly exited five states including California and may exit more. White House budget director Mick Mulvaney told CNN the administration was still considering whether to end cost-sharing subsidies. | 1 |
3,548 | Saleh was killed in RPG, gun attack on his car, Houthis say; party confirms death | DUBAI (Reuters) - Officials in Ali Abdullah Saleh s General People s Congress party (GPC) confirmed to Reuters that the former Yemeni president and party leader has been killed outside Sanaa, in what sources in the Houthi group said was an RPG and gun attack. The GPC officials said Saleh was killed south of the capital Sanaa along with the assistant secretary-general of the GPC, Yasser al-Awadi. Sources in the Houthi group said fighters stopped his armored vehicle with an RPG rocket and then shot him dead. | 1 |
3,549 | news office of the future researchers predict that over percent of workplace discrimination will be automated by | email several months ago we published a list of irreverent photoshops depicting the thenpresidential candidate donald trump as a bald man in several humiliating contexts we understood that these images were a bit crass and promised to remove them if trump were to win the election as a sign of respect for the office of the united states presidency true to our word we tried to take these pictures down as soon as trump was elected but unfortunately we havent been able to figure out how to delete this article from our website once content is published to our homepage it seems to be stuck there though we cannot delete the bald photoshops we have been able to stretch out donald trumps face all wide so that you cant even tell hes the one in the pictures we hope this serves as an adequate temporary solution until we find a way to take these unbecoming images down completely at the current time we are comfortable posting this picture with the caption my bald spot is absolutely yuge alongside it but should trump assume the esteemed office of president in the fall we would immediately remove it
we apologize that we werent able to remove this disrespectful picture of our presidentelect completely but we did what we could and stretched it out all wide you can barely tell its donald trump regardless of whatever political views you hold it is disrespectful to show a picture of the commanderinchief along with a caption like so this is what that pile of straw on his head is for
were talking with our programmers now to figure out a way to delete these images from the web hopefully they will develop a method for doing so in the near future in the meantime we have preserved the dignity of presidentelect trump by stretching his face out and making his eyes huge nobody will be able to recognize that the man in this image is our new president of course it would still be fine to disagree with president trump if you dont support his policies a healthy democracy allows dissent and debate however implying that the president wears a toupee when there is no evidence that he does is a crass breach of proper decorum
the presidency is the most hallowed office in our nation and it is worthy of reverence and decorum at all times ideally this image of donald trumps toupee flying off in the wind would no longer be on our website since this is currently impossible weve used the magic of photoshop to make his head very tall and thin his identity is obscured this bald man could be anybody no matter who is president you address them as sir not donald the hutt we would quickly remove this if the american people choose trump on november
this degrading photoshop of president trumps face on jabba the hutts body is immature and degrading and wed remove it if we could since we currently dont know how weve at least given him a tie to wear to imbue him with the poise and decorum the presidency confers on all who hold that hallowed office comparing president trump to adolf hitler would remain a valid political commentary but making him bald in addition is completely uncalled for if donald trump is elected we promise to restore his normal hair to this image
now that the american electorate has chosen donald trump to lead our nation this image depicting him as a bald adolf hitler has become an unsubtle and tactless political statement that does not meet our exacting editorial standards weve given presidentelect trump his hair back in an effort to restore his dignity for now let us enjoy this humorous photoshop and its accompanying caption i am going to build a wig and mexico is going to pay for it during a trump presidency it would no longer have a place in the national discourse
all right thats all of them weve stretched out presidentelect donald trumps face all wide so that nobody will know that he is the bald man in this picture hopefully well find a way to remove these pictures from our website but until then this will have to do | 0 |
3,550 | WEDDING CRASHERS: Hillary Tries To Explain Why She And Bill Attended Trump Wedding And Proves They Are First Class Grifters | Who goes to a wedding and doesn t bring a gift? Who brags about going to a wedding and not bringing a gift? Hillary admits she and Bill thought the wedding would be fun .Grifters Opportunists The Clinton s That s who When Hillary Clinton and husband Bill attended Donald Trump s 2005 wedding, their presence was their present.Asked at a Monday night forum in Iowa what she got Trump for his wedding, Clinton responded with a slight smile, Nothing. Nothing. He used to he was basically a Democrat before he was a Republican, she continued, and he was, you know, somebody that we all knew in New York. And he was supportive of Democrats. He was supportive of a lot of the causes that I cared about and that people I knew cared about. Now he seems to have taken another road, she concluded.At the GOP debate in Cleveland, Trump claimed Clinton had no choice but to attend his wedding. Trump married Melania Knauss, his third wife, at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach.In August, Clinton offered a different explanation for attending. I didn t know him that well. I mean I knew him, and I happened to be in Florida, and I thought it was going to be fun to go to this wedding, because it s always entertaining, she said last year. It s all entertainment. I think he s having the time of his life, saying what he wants to say getting people excited both for and against him. It is generally accepted that guests invited to a wedding bring a gift, even when the groom is a real estate mogul.Advice columnist Miss Manners wrote in 2013, You should not be attending a wedding if you do not care about the couple (either truly, or because they are relatives and you are supposed to care), and therefore wedding guests give wedding presents. Via: NYP | 0 |
3,551 | Exclusive: Obama approves broader role for U.S. forces in Afghanistan | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama has approved giving the U.S. military greater ability to accompany and enable Afghan forces battling a resilient Taliban insurgency, in a move to assist them more proactively on the battlefield, a U.S. official told Reuters. The senior U.S. defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the decision would also allow greater use of U.S. air power, particularly close air support. However, the official cautioned: “This is not a blanket order to target the Taliban.” Obama’s decision again redefines America’s support role in Afghanistan’s grinding conflict, more than a year after international forces wrapped up their combat mission and shifted the burden to Afghan troops. It also comes ahead of Obama’s eagerly anticipated decision on whether to forge ahead with a scheduled reduction in the numbers of U.S. troops from about 9,800 currently to 5,500 by the start of 2017. A group of retired generals and senior diplomats urged Obama last week to forgo those plans, warning they could undermine the fight against the Afghan Taliban, whose leader was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan last month. Under the new policy, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, will be able to decide when it is appropriate for American troops to accompany conventional Afghan forces into the field - something they have so far only been doing with Afghan special forces, the official said. The expanded powers are only meant to be employed “in those select instances in which their engagement can enable strategic effects on the battlefield,” the official said. That means that U.S. forces should not be expected to accompany Afghan soldiers on day-to-day missions. “This added flexibility ... is fully supported by the Afghan government and will help the Afghans at an important moment for the country,” the official said. The decision is a departure from current U.S. rules of engagement in Afghanistan, which impose limits on U.S. forces’ ability to strike at insurgents. For example, the U.S. military was previously allowed to take action against the Taliban “in extremis” - moments when their assistance was needed to prevent a significant Afghan military setback. That definition, however, left the U.S. military postured to assist them in more defensive instances. The new policy would allow U.S. forces to accompany Afghans at key moments in their offensive campaign against the Taliban. “The U.S. forces will more proactively support Afghan conventional forces,” the official said. The Taliban control or contest more territory in Afghanistan than at any time since they were ousted by a U.S.-backed intervention in late 2001, and U.S. officials have acknowledged the uneven performance of Afghan security forces. Large portions of Afghanistan, including the provincial capital of northern Kunduz and multiple districts of southern Helmand province, have fallen, at times briefly, to the Taliban over the past year-and-a-half. Many other districts and provinces are also under varying degrees of Taliban control. The new authorities that Obama has given the U.S. military could give it greater leeway in addressing the shortcomings of Afghan security forces. Still, experts warn that its hard to predict when Afghanistan will be able to stand on its own against the Taliban, not to mention the country’s enormous economic difficulties and fractious political system. The U.S government’s top watchdog on Afghanistan told Reuters that the United States had wasted billions of dollars in reconstruction aid to Afghanistan over the past decade, and now a renewed Taliban insurgency was threatening the gains that had been made. | 1 |
3,552 | Exxon Mobil, Tillerson agree to cut all ties | (Reuters) - Exxon Mobil Corp and Rex Tillerson agreed to sever all ties to comply with conflict-of-interest requirements as the company’s former chairman and chief executive awaits confirmation as U.S. secretary of state. If his appointment is confirmed, the value of more than 2 million deferred Exxon Mobil shares (worth about $182 million at Tuesday’s closing price) that Tillerson would have received over the next 10 years will be transferred to an independently managed trust, the company said in a statement. The share awards will be canceled and Tillerson will also surrender entitlement to more than $4.1 million in cash bonuses, scheduled to pay out over the next three years, and other benefits, Exxon Mobil said. Separately, Tillerson also committed to the State Department that, if confirmed, he would sell the more than 600,000 Exxon shares he currently owns, the company said. Exxon said last month its president, Darren Woods, will become chief executive and chairman in January following the retirement of Tillerson. Tillerson could face a rocky confirmation process, given concerns among both Democrats and Republicans about his ties to Russia. Exxon stock has gained 6.5 percent since election results of Nov. 8 up to Tuesday’s close of $90.89. | 1 |
3,553 | Anti-LGBT ‘Street Preachers’ Are Invading Target Stores Nationwide Threatening ‘God’s Judgement’ (VIDEOS) | Target stores are living up to their name by being the literal target of anti-LGBT, transphobic bigots and professionally-offended Christians, who are now showing up at their locations across the country. Their intent, it seems, is to frighten patrons into being afraid to use the bathroom. Walking up and down the aisles, and wearing shirts depicting stick figures having sex, they shout and scream about how God is the new judge of retail merchandise as they try to convince people the women s restrooms are loaded with perverts.Below are some videos taken in target stores, showing the preachers rebuking people for going to the bathroom. Target this is your wake up call. The Bible says that from the beginning God made them male and female. He didn t make them transvestites. He made them male and female Target, this is your warning. You will be judged according to God s standards. Not man s, but God s You need to repent You will be judged. And if there are Christians in here, supporting this abomination, shame on you! But you justify this place. You have to stand by the bathrooms because perverts can go in there. Because transvestites allowed. Apparently, God can create a universe in 6 days but can t deal with the idea of someone peeing in a bathroom in a department store.One of these God Warriors, Michael Merichko, was charged with disorderly conduct following a disturbance inside a Target store in Illinois. His obnoxiousness, coupled with the fact he was an unhinged white guy, convinced an entire shopping mall to go on lockdown because they thought he was an active shooter.via towleroadLuckily he was not, but frankly it isn t a stretch to think that some unhinged individual will eventually walk into a Target store and start shooting because God told them it was a good idea.Below is another religious idiot in St. Louis who is too obsessed with the idea of people peeing for his own good.Part 1: Part 2: The Republican party can be thanked for this. If it wasn t for people like Ted Cruz using religion as a justification for hatred, Target would never have had to make a bathroom policy. Transgender people have been using public restrooms forever without God destroying the planet as a result. It took Republicans to make it a sudden problem for him.Featured image via video screen capture | 0 |
3,554 | WATCH: Trump Just Threatened The Media With ‘Consequences’ For Doing Their Jobs | No matter what you think about Buzzfeed publishing a dossier of unverified information about Trump, threatening the free press with consequences should never be tolerated.But that s exactly what Donald Trump did during his first press conference in six months after the contents of the report went viral.On Tuesday, Buzzfeed released a dossier of alleged information gathered by Russia to use against Trump, which included a claim that he was videotaped at the Ritz Carlton in Moscow paying prostitutes to pee on the bed in the presidential suite that President Obama had used during previous visits to the nation.Predictably, Trump lashed out on Twitter.Russia just said the unverified report paid for by political opponents is A COMPLETE AND TOTAL FABRICATION, UTTER NONSENSE. Very unfair! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2017Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2017I win an election easily, a great movement is verified, and crooked opponents try to belittle our victory with FAKE NEWS. A sorry state! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2017Apparently, Trump feels it is perfectly acceptable to tout fake news about Hillary Clinton but when that news is about him he thinks it s unacceptable and should be punished.It s true that the information has yet to be verified, but this is no different than a lot of the bullshit stories Fox News ran with about President Obama over the last eight years and no different than what conservative media and Trump did to Hillary Clinton over the course of the election by citing unverified Wikileaks documents.But rather than simply dispute the report, Trump went a tyrannical step further by threatening Buzzfeed with consequences for reporting on the story. As far as BuzzFeed, which is a failing pile of garbage writing it I think they re going to suffer the consequences, Trump said.Here s the video via YouTube.Trump went on to have a shouting match with CNN s Jim Acosta and accused the news organization of being fake news as his minions applauded.Donald Trump is a serious threat to the free press. And he s only making things worse for himself by making such accusations.Fox News politics editor Chris Stirewalt warned Trump to be careful earlier on Wednesday, basically noting that Trump only has himself to blame. I would caution Trump and his supporters about this: This is what they asked for when they praised Julian Assange and Wikileaks to the high heavens and said, We don t care where it came from. We don t care if it s verified. It s been stolen but it s bad for the Democrats and now the truth is out so here you go. Featured Image: Screenshot | 0 |
3,555 | Jeb Bush Confronted On Why He Wanted Rubio For VP In 2012 – Gives Worst Answer EVER (VIDEO) | Jeb Bush is campaigning against Marco Rubio we all get that. When a person becomes your rival in a presidential contest, all the gloves come off. Yet you d think the arguments presented would be somewhat in line with what that candidate s own thoughts were in the past. Not so in this case.Jeb Bush is trying to say Marco Rubio is inexperienced, but when confronted on why he recommended Senator Rubio to be Romney s Vice Presidential choice back in 2012, Bush became visibly flabbergasted.Here was the exchange between him and Fox News Bret Baier:Bret: Well, (Rubio) had enough experience that you recommended him for Vice President when Mitt Romney was looking.Jeb: Yeah, except he doesn t have the experience to make a tough decision.Bret: But, why recommend him for Vice President then if he didn t have the experience back then?Jeb: Because he would have earned it.What does that even mean? Look it s obvious Jeb is trying to wiggle his way out of this one, and on that front he failed, big time.For some more context on this, here was what Jeb said back when Romney was still mulling over his options for VP: Look he has more experience than Barack Obama had when he ran. And the practical experience he s certainly got the intelligent acumen and fortitude to be a good president and I have a special place in my heart for him. It s hard to describe the pride I have for his incredible success and how he has moved in to the job of being a U.S. senator with humility, not trying to be an arrogant guy, to learn the trade if you will. And people in Washington really admire him. Those are some very kind words. Not only that, but Bush even went further in another interview with Newsmax in April of 2012, when he said Rubio was probably the best choice out of every potential candidate. For Bush to now try to play the experience card is just absurd. He picked the wrong battle to fight on this one. This is just another reason people don t trust anything politicians say.Featured image from video screen capture. | 0 |
3,556 | GOP Senator Desperately Tries To Distance His Re-Election From Trump | As Donald Trump continues down his path of self destruction (which is bringing the Republican Party down with him), members of the GOP controlled Senate are running scared and they should be. Trump is literally ruining the Republican s hope of keeping their majority.One Senator in particular is making it his mission to distance his re-election bid from the monstrosity that is Donald J. Trump.Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey, who resides in a swing state very weary of Trump s antics, told reporters that voters should separate his run from Trump when they go to the ballot box in November and that they can see for themselves that the two are not similar.Pennsylvania voters are really quite sophisticated and they know for sure that Donald Trump is really in a category unto himself. So they will make their decision about the presidential race, and then they will make a completely separate decision about the person they want representing them in the Senate.Toomey has not endorsed Trump as of yet, but did say he is waiting and watching before he makes a decision.According to RealClearPolitics, Toomey and Katie McGinty, his formidable Democratic challenger, are tied. The McGinty campaign didn t waste time in quickly tying the two together, saying, Pennsylvanians understand that it s a Trump-Toomey ticket, and added:If he opposes Clinton, as he says he does, he s by definition supporting not only Trump, but the policies and values Trump would bring to the White House.So now instead of refusing to endorse, Republican candidates are literally telling voters not to think about Trump when voting for them. Republicans are now asking voters to pretend Donald Trump isn t on the ballot. They re asking the electorate, in a presidential campaign election, to disregard their down-ballot obligations are create two brands of conservatism to suit the GOP s needs.Let that all sink in. That s how desperate they have become.If Toomey were serious about keeping his seat and holding on to any shred of dignity he might have once had, he would quickly and unequivocally denounce Trump and the vile things that have come out of his mouth. As Clinton leads the state by 8 points (and growing), Toomey needs all the respect he can get.The implosion is going strong, and they are tearing each other apart.Featured image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images | 0 |
3,557 | they said what find out what miley cyrus alicia vikander and zadie smith have to say | email
whether or not youre a basketball fan youre going to love this story about a bold new humanitarian initiative from the nba in order to help alleviate the refugee crisis in europe the league is housing syrian refugees on whichever half of the court isnt being played on during the game
now thats making a difference way to go nba
since the syrian civil war began in millions of syrians have been displaced but thanks to the generosity of the nba some of them will now find a new home right around the threepoint line on the half of the court that isnt being played on at that time while players occupy one half of the court syrian refugees will have a safe and welcoming space on the other half to reassemble their lives until the ball changes possession and they are shuttled to the opposite end
wow what a beautiful gesture from the nba with courts across the country and games in the season the league is set to provide housing that periodically oscillates from one half of the court to the other for several thousand syrian refugees this is huge
in contrast to europes notoriously overcrowded refugee camps the nbas half courts are big enough to comfortably house at least five families around the perimeter and one or two in the paint the refugees also have access to any snack vendors who happen to be milling about the crowd near whichever half of the court theyre on at the time
of course its a new program and its not perfect there have been several incidents in which refugees have collided with players after failing to get to the other half of the court in time and last night an yearold syrian girl had to be treated for minor injuries after lebron james dunked on her during a fast break
still according to nba commissioner adam silver the program is a huge step up from the refugee camps abroad
the syrian refugee crisis is only getting worse meanwhile weve got this half of the court that isnt being played on just collecting dust waiting to be put to good use said silver adding that he felt the league had a moral responsibility to harbor the refugees if we can help these people by sheltering them on one side of the court until theres a change in possession and then sheltering them on the other half as soon as theres a change in possession and then sheltering them on the other half until theres a change in possession then we have an obligation to do that
its refreshing to see a major organization like the nba reaching out to a group of people who so desperately need our help right now faith in humanity restored | 0 |
3,558 | Trump disbands business councils after CEOs quit in protest | WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - President Donald Trump disbanded two high-profile business advisory councils on Wednesday after several chief executives quit in protest over his remarks blaming weekend violence in Virginia on anti-racism activists as well as white nationalists. A parade of prominent Republicans also rebuked Trump, as well as U.S. ally Britain, leaving him increasingly isolated after his comments on Tuesday about the bloodshed in the college town of Charlottesville further enveloped his seven-month-old presidency in controversy. The mayor of Phoenix asked Trump to delay a rally planned for next Tuesday, an appeal the president appeared to reject. A memorial service was held on Wednesday in Charlottesville for 32-year-old Heather Heyer, who was killed when a car plowed into anti-racism protesters on Saturday. A 20-year-old Ohio man said to have harbored Nazi sympathies has been charged with her murder. Trump, a real estate magnate who had never before held public office, was elected president in November touting his experience in the business world and ability to strike deals. However, some of the Republican president’s actions and words have alienated many corporate leaders. He said he would dissolve the American Manufacturing Council and the Strategic and Policy Forum after eight executives, including Campbell Soup Co CEO Denise Morrison and 3M Co CEO Inge Thulin, quit the panels. Both councils were moving to disband on their own when Trump made his announcement on Twitter. “Rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople of the Manufacturing Council & Strategy & Policy Forum, I am ending both,” he wrote. The Strategic and Policy Forum was headed by Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman, a close ally of Trump in the business world. Schwarzman organized a call on Wednesday for member executives to voice concerns after Trump’s comments, and an overwhelming majority backed disbanding the council, two sources said. Schwarzman then called Trump to tell him about the decision to disband. Campbell Soup Co’s Morrison said: “Racism and murder are unequivocally reprehensible and not morally equivalent to anything else that happened in Charlottesville.” JPMorgan Chase & Co CEO Jamie Dimon, a member of one of the panels, said in a statement that “fanning divisiveness is not the answer.” Dow Chemical Co Chief Executive Andrew Liveris, who headed the manufacturing council, said he told the White House on Wednesday that “in the current environment it was no longer possible to conduct productive discussions.” The Strategic and Policy Forum was intended to advise Trump on how government policy impacts economic growth, job creation and productivity. The manufacturing council was designed to promote U.S. job growth. Along with the snubs from business leaders, Trump was rebuked by a string of Republicans including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Ohio Governor John Kasich, Senator Lindsey Graham and former U.S. Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. Trump needs the support of fellow Republicans as he tries to push his policy agenda, including tax cuts, through a Congress that is controlled by the Republicans. Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton, a Democrat, said Trump would “enflame emotions and further divide our nation” if he used next week’s rally to pardon Joe Arpaio, a former Arizona sheriff who was found guilty last month of criminal contempt of court. Arpaio gained a national profile due to his harsh treatment of inmates and outspoken opposition to illegal immigration. Shortly after Stanton’s statement, Trump urged supporters on Twitter to attend the Phoenix rally. Few public figures have voiced support for Trump over his response to the violence. Vice President Mike Pence, who is cutting short a trip to Latin America, told reporters in Chile that “I stand with the president and I stand by those words.” Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke praised Trump’s “honesty and courage,” while Richard Spencer, head of a white nationalist group, lauded the president for “speaking the truth.” U.S. stocks ended slightly firmer but off the day’s highs as investors worried that the backlash to Trump’s remarks could stunt his ability to deliver on pro-business promises. A former senior Trump administration official raised the prospect that some White House officials could quit because of Trump’s comments. The demise of the councils raised Wall Street speculation that senior administration figures, such as White House economic adviser Gary Cohn or U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, might step down to avoid being tarnished by association with Trump. Cohn, Mnuchin and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao stood awkwardly by Trump during his remarks at Trump Tower on Tuesday. “He’s worried about his reputation being trashed, which is much more valuable to him than anything else,” the former administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said of Cohn. McConnell, who drew Trump’s ire last week over the Senate’s failure to pass healthcare legislation, issued a statement saying “messages of hate and bigotry” from white supremacists should not be welcome in the United States. McConnell’s statement did not mention Trump by name. The Republican Jewish Coalition, a group whose board includes big party donors including casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, called on Trump to “provide greater moral clarity in rejecting racism, bigotry and antisemitism.” U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said there is “simply no place” in American public discourse for the “hate and violence” displayed in Charlottesville. He spoke before a meeting with Canada’s foreign minister. Trump’s remarks on Tuesday were a more vehement reprisal of his initial response to the bloodshed. He said at a heated news conference in New York “there is blame on both sides” for the violence, and that there were “very fine people” on both sides. In London, British Prime Minister Theresa May offered a rare rebuke of a U.S. president from so close an ally. “I see no equivalence between those who propound fascist views and those who oppose them and I think it is important for all those in positions of responsibility to condemn far-right views wherever we hear them,” May told reporters. Politicians in Germany, which has tough laws against hate speech and any symbols linked to the Nazis, who murdered six million Jews in the Holocaust during World War Two, expressed shock at the images of people in Charlottesville carrying swastikas and chanting anti-Jewish slurs. Germany’s justice minister accused Trump of trivializing anti-Semitism and racism. Senior American military officers usually stay clear of politics but three more of the U.S. military’s top officers weighed in on Wednesday, without explicitly mentioning Trump. Joseph Dunford, the Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in Beijing: “I can absolutely and unambiguously say that there is no place, no place, for racism and bigotry in the U.S. military or in the United States as a whole.” U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley wrote on Twitter: “The Army doesn’t tolerate racism, extremism, or hatred in our ranks. It’s against our Values and everything we’ve stood for since 1775.” Air Force Chief of Staff General Dave Goldfein said on Twitter that “I stand with my fellow service chiefs in saying we’re always stronger together.” Their comments followed similar ones from the top officers of the Navy and Marine Corps. | 1 |
3,559 | Saudi Arabia makes fresh arrests in anti-graft crackdown: sources | RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabian authorities have made further arrests and frozen more bank accounts in an expanding anti-corruption crackdown on the kingdom s political and business elite, sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday Dozens of royal family members, officials and business executives have already been held in the purge announced on Saturday. They face allegations of money laundering, bribery, extortion and exploiting public office for personal gain. But the sources, speaking on Wednesday, said a number of other individuals suspected of wrongdoing were detained in an expansion of the crackdown, widely seen as an initiative of the powerful heir to the throne, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Others under scrutiny are being telephoned by investigators about their finances but appear to remain at liberty, one of the sources said, adding that the number of people targeted by the crackdown was expected eventually to rise into the hundreds. The number of domestic bank accounts frozen as a result of the purge is over 1,700 and rising, up from 1,200 reported on Tuesday, banking sources said. A number of those held most recently include individuals with links to the immediate family of the late Crown Prince and Defence Minister Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz who died in 2011, the sources said. Others appear to be lower-level managers and officials, one of the sources said. Many Saudis have cheered the purge as an attack on the theft of state funds by the rich, and U.S. President Donald Trump said those arrested had been milking their country for years . But some Western officials expressed apprehension at the possible ramifications for the secretive tribal and royal politics of the world s largest oil exporter. Saudi Arabia s stock market continued to fall in early trade on Wednesday because of concern about the economic impact of its anti-corruption purge. The Saudi index .TASI was 1.0 percent lower after half an hour of trade. Shares in companies linked to people detained in the investigation slid further. Late on Tuesday, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the Saudi central bank sought to ease worries about the crackdown. They said that while individuals were being targeted and having their bank accounts frozen, national and multinational companies - including those wholly or partly owned by individuals under investigation - would not be disrupted. Anti-corruption authorities have also frozen the bank accounts of Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, one of the most senior members of the ruling Al Saud, and some of his immediate family members, the sources added. Prince Mohammed, or MbN as he is known, was ousted as Crown Prince in June when King Salman replaced him with the then Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Since Sunday, the central bank has been expanding the list of accounts it is requiring lenders to freeze on an almost hourly basis, one regional banker said, declining to be named because he was not authorized to speak to media. MbN made his first confirmed public appearance since his ousting at the funeral on Tuesday for Prince Mansour bin Muqrin, deputy governor of Asir province, who was killed in a helicopter crash on Sunday. No cause has been given for the crash. Among business executives detained in the probe so far are billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, chairman of investment firm Kingdom Holding 4280.SE; Nasser bin Aqeel al-Tayyar, founder of Al Tayyar Travel 1810.SE; and Amr al-Dabbagh, chairman of builder Red Sea International 4230.SE. The U.S. State Department said on Tuesday it had urged Saudi Arabia to carry out any prosecution of officials detained in a fair and transparent manner. Commenting on the purge, Human Rights Watch called on Saudi authorities to immediately reveal the legal and evidentiary basis for each person s detention and make certain that each person detained can exercise their due process rights . It s great that Saudi authorities are declaring that they want to take on the scourge of corruption, but the right way to do that is through diligent judicial investigations against actual wrongdoing, not sensationalistic mass arrests to a luxury hotel, Right Watch official Sarah Leah Whitson in a statement. | 1 |
3,560 | Trump to sign order sweeping away Obama-era climate policies | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will sign an executive order on Tuesday to undo a slew of Obama-era climate change regulations, a move meant to bolster domestic energy production but which environmentalists have vowed to challenge in court. The decree, dubbed the “Energy Independence” order, will seek to undo former President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan requiring states to slash carbon emissions from power plants - a critical element in helping the United States meet its commitments to a global climate change accord agreed by nearly 200 countries in Paris in December 2015. It will also rescind a ban on coal leasing on federal lands, reverse rules to curb methane emissions from oil and gas production, and reduce the weight of climate change in federal agencies’ assessments of new regulations. “We’re going to go in a different direction,” a senior White House official told reporters ahead of Tuesday’s order. “The previous administration devalued workers with their policies. We can protect the environment while providing people with work.” Trump will sign the order at the EPA with the agency’s Administrator Scott Pruitt, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Energy Secretary Rick Perry on Tuesday afternoon. The wide-ranging order is the boldest yet in Trump’s broader push to cut environmental regulation to revive the oil and gas drilling and coal mining industries, a promise he made repeatedly during his campaign for the presidency. “I cannot tell you how many jobs the executive order is going to create but I can tell you that it provides confidence in this administration’s commitment to the coal industry,” Kentucky Coal Association president Tyler White told Reuters. Environmental groups have promised to challenge the orders. “These actions are an assault on American values and they endanger the health, safety and prosperity of every American,” said billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer, the head of activist group NextGen Climate. Green group Earthjustice said it will fight the order both in and out of court. “This order ignores the law and scientific reality,” said the group’s president Trip Van Noppen. Trump campaigned on a promise to sweep aside green regulations he said hurt the economy, and vowed to pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord. Since being elected, however, he has been mum on the Paris deal and the executive order does not address it. The White House official said Trump’s administration was discussing its approach to the accord, meant to limit the planet’s warming by reducing carbon emissions. The order will direct the EPA to start a formal “review” process to undo the Clean Power Plan, which was introduced by Obama in 2014 but has never been implemented in part because of legal challenges brought by Republican states. The review is likely to trigger legal challenges by environmental groups and some state attorneys general that could last years. The Clean Power Plan would have required states to collectively cut carbon emissions from power plants by 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. | 1 |
3,561 | U.S. flies bombers over Korea as Trump discusses options | SEOUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military flew two strategic bombers over the Korean peninsula in a show of force late on Tuesday, as President Donald Trump met top defense officials to discuss how to respond to any threat from North Korea. Tensions have soared between the United States and North Korea following a series of weapons tests by Pyongyang and a string of increasingly bellicose exchanges between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. North Korea has launched two missiles over Japan and conducted its sixth nuclear test in recent weeks as it fast advances toward its goal of developing a nuclear-tipped missile capable of hitting the U.S. mainland. The two U.S. Air Force B-1B bombers were joined by two F-15K fighters from the South Korean military after leaving their base in Guam, South Korea s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement on Wednesday. After entering South Korean airspace, the two bombers carried out air-to-ground missile drills in waters off the east coast of South Korea, then flew over the South to waters between it and China to repeat the drill, the release said. The U.S. military said in a separate statement it conducted drills with Japanese fighters after the exercise with South Korea, making it the first time U.S. bombers have conducted training with fighters from both Japan and South Korea at night. The U.S. bombers had taken off from the Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. In August, Pyongyang threatened to fire intermediate-range missiles toward the vicinity of Guam, a U.S. Pacific territory that is frequently subjected to sabre-rattling from the North. South Korean and U.S. government officials have been raising their guard against more North Korean provocations with the approach of the 72nd anniversary of the founding of North Korea s ruling party, which fell on Tuesday. Trump hosted a discussion on Tuesday on options to respond to any North Korean aggression or, if necessary, to prevent Pyongyang from threatening the United States and its allies with nuclear weapons, the White House said in a statement. Trump was briefed by Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford at a national security team meeting, the statement said. U.S. and South Korean wartime operational plans, including a plan to wipe out the North Korean leadership, were stolen by North Korean hackers last year, a South Korean ruling party lawmaker said on Wednesday. Some 235 gigabytes of military documents were taken from South Korea s Defense Integrated Data Center in September last year, Democratic Party representative Rhee Cheol-hee said in radio appearances on Wednesday, citing information from unidentified South Korean defense officials. In May, an investigative team inside the defense ministry announced the hack had been carried out by North Korea, but did not disclose what kind of information had been taken. The United Nations Security Council, which has imposed a series of ever tighter sanctions on North Korea, has banned four ships from ports globally for carrying coal from North Korea, including one vessel that also had ammunition. The vessels are the first to be designated under stepped-up sanctions imposed on North Korea by the 15-member council in August and September over two long-range ballistic missile launches and Pyongyang s sixth and largest nuclear test. China, North Korea s main ally and trading partner, has consistently argued sanctions alone will not work, urging Washington and Pyongyang to lower their rhetoric and return to the negotiating table. China s influential Global Times tabloid expressed alarm at how far the rhetoric on both sides had gone and how it had increased the risk of a fatal misjudgment . The international community won t accept North Korea as a nuclear power. North Korea needs time and proof to believe that abandoning its nuclear program will contribute to its own political and economic advantage. This positive process is worth a try, the paper said in an editorial late on Tuesday. War would be a nightmare for the Korean Peninsula and surrounding regions. We strongly urge North Korea and the U.S. to stop their bellicose posturing and seriously think about a peaceful solution, it said. | 1 |
3,562 | Republicans PROVE They Believe In Party Over Country With One Incredibly Stupid Question | Congress is chest-deep in their leak investigations, with FBI Director James Comey in the hot seat today. During the House Intelligence Committee hearing, chairman Devin Nunes thought he d try and ask some really hard-hitting questions, maybe in an attempt to trap Comey into saying something that will incriminate everyone who isn t Republican in the increasingly tangled web that is the Russia scandal.All he did was prove that this is about Republicans desperately puffing up their party instead of actually getting to the bottom of possible treason. And he did it with just one question: If this committee or anyone else for that matter, someone from the public, comes with information to you about the Hillary Clinton campaign, or their associates, or someone from the Clinton Foundation, will you add that to your investigation? Really? He s trying to make this about Hillary, despite consensus that Russia acted in the interest of Trump? It certainly sounded like that s what Nunes was doing when he followed up with: If they have ties to Russian intelligence services, Russian agents, would that be something of interest to you? Comey would not fall into Nunes trap, though. He replied with: If people bring us information about what they think is improper, unlawful activity of any kind, we will evaluate it. Not just in this context. Folks send us stuff all the time. They should keep doing that. Nunes may well by trying to follow Trump s lead on this, as Trump regularly throws Twitter tantrums in childish attempts to deflect blame. Trump is livid Comey s statements that the FBI is, indeed, investigating the Russian scandal are infuriating to him. As such, he s still all over Twitter trying to convince us that the real problem is the leaks, and that Hillary s a traitor and a crook and we supposedly all know it, rather than all the evidence piling up against him.What about all of the contact with the Clinton campaign and the Russians? Also, is it true that the DNC would not let the FBI in to look? Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 20, 2017Is it a coincidence that Nunes would also ask about Hillary? Likely not. Nunes and the rest of the GOP should give us a call when they re ready to actually go to work.Featured image via Mark Wilson/Getty Images | 0 |
3,563 | The Phoenix Police Department Just Sent Trump A Cease-And-Desist Letter — They’re Furious (VIDEO) | The Phoenix, Arizona police department is not at all happy with Donald Trump after the GOP presidential nominee aired an ad implying they were endorsing him. They weren t and now the police department wants the ad taken off the air.The ad includes a short clip of Trump being surrounded by Phoenix police. He was seen shaking hands with one. While the ad didn t specifically say that the Phoenix PD was endorsing Trump, it was a implied and for that, the Phoenix Police Department sent Trump a cease and desist letter demanding the ad be taken down. Phoenix has not approved and will not approve the creation or use of any media bearing the faces and likenesses of its on-duty police officers in any political advertisement for any political candidate, (City Attorney Brad) Holm wrote in the letter. The officers were unaware they were photographed and videotaped, and they did not consent to the use of their on-duty images in any Trump (or any other) campaign advertisement. Source: ABC 15Holm went on to say that Trump, in his ad, unmistakably and wrongfully implied the city and its police officers endorsed Trump. Not only that, the inclusion of the uniforms violates, according to Holm, copyright laws. As owner of this intellectual property, the City of Phoenix hereby orders the Trump campaign to immediately cease and desist from your unauthorized use of Phoenix Police Department uniforms, bird emblem, police badge, police insignia patch, and all other imagery of official City of Phoenix materials and on-duty employees, Holm wrote.Here s the ad. The brief and objectionable moment comes at the :22 mark.There seems to be a bizarre war going on in normally very red Arizona. Even before the Phoenix police balked at Trump s campaign ad, the Arizona Republic newspaper gave a rousing endorsement of Hillary Clinton and a thorough takedown of Donald Trump. Trump is asking his followers to cancel their subscription to the Arizona Republic and to the other papers that are lining up against the dangerous presidential candidate.The people are really smart in cancelling subscriptions to the Dallas & Arizona papers & now USA Today will lose readers! The people get it! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2016His supporters, of course, are going even further. The paper has been receiving death threats. You have to wonder if the police department will also receive death threats, or just its lawyer.Featured image via Mark Wilson/Getty Images | 0 |
3,564 | Trump calls Russia sanctions legislation 'significantly flawed' | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Wednesday called the Russia sanctions legislation he signed into law “significantly flawed” and urged Congress to not use the measure to hinder U.S. efforts to resolve the Ukraine conflict with its European allies. “While I favor tough measures to punish and deter aggressive and destabilizing behavior by Iran, North Korea, and Russia, this legislation is significantly flawed,” the Republican president said in a statement. “In its haste to pass this legislation, the Congress included a number of clearly unconstitutional provisions.” | 1 |
3,565 | alleged hidden nbc news site prepares to announce hillary clinton victory before election | and you think we are stupid obama you are as big a liar as hillary | 0 |
3,566 | John Oliver Successfully Turns Trump’s ‘Plan’ For A Wall Into A Pile Of Decaying Pig Sh*t (VIDEO) | When it comes to Donald Trump, there s really not much you can believe that comes out of his mouth except for what can only be assumed is a putrid odor, and this is explained by the fact that he talks out of his ass.Beautifully proving this point was none other than Last Week Tonight s John Oliver in a segment utterly dismantling Trump s plan for a border wall with Mexico.Point by point, down to the size, capability, location, and price tag, Oliver successfully turns Trump s plan into a decaying pile of pig shit. It s absolute nonsense, and better plans have been constructed on the back of a napkin at Chuck-E-Cheese by a desperate father brainstorming his escape from the chaos.However, knowing that this great wall is pretty much one of the few things Trump talks about, Oliver said: The border wall is one of the few policy proposals Trump has talked about in detail, so instead of mocking or dismissing it out of hand, tonight let s take a serious proposal by a serious presidential candidate seriously. It was then that the dismantling began, and there was absolutely no refuting it. And no matter how much the wall costs, Oliver points out that according to the Sierra Club, The Congressional Budget Office estimates that wall maintenance costs will exceed the initial construction costs within seven years He then used this brilliant comparison: It s a big, dumb thing that only gets more expensive over time. It s like getting a pet walrus: You think it s stupid now, wait until you learn what a bucket of sea cucumbers costs. You ve not prepared for that! Which pretty much sums up the realism of the wall and how it s going to be built and maintained, because Mexico has made it damn clear they re not going to be the ones paying for it. And if you need proof that this wall is just simply never going to happen, the Washington Post fact checked everything right here.Trump has no plans to actually build this wall. He has no plans for anything. He s talking out of his ass, and because so many Americans are racist shiteaters, they gleefully consume every last ounce of his poppycock.Kudos to Oliver for this brilliant takedown. Well f*cking done.Featured image via video screen capture | 0 |
3,567 | EU-U.S. trade deal in doubt as France urges end to talks | PARIS/BRUSSELS (Reuters) - France cast serious doubt on Tuesday on the prospects of an EU free trade deal with the United States, adding to opposition within Germany and growing scepticism among Americans. Washington and Brussels are officially committed to sealing the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) before U.S. President Barack Obama leaves office in January, but their chances of doing so are being eroded by approaching elections on both sides of the Atlantic and Britain’s vote in June to leave the European Union. “Everything is moving. In this situation it’s just not going to happen,” said Peter van Ham, senior research fellow at Dutch think tank Clingendael and author of a paper on Tuesday called “TTIP is dead, long live transatlantic trade”. French Trade Minister Matthias Fekl said he would request a halt to TTIP talks at next month’s EU trade ministers’ meeting in Bratislava after German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel declared at the weekend that talks were “de facto dead”. Observers say both are responding to public mistrust of a deal that critics say would lower environmental and food standards and allow foreign multinationals to challenge government policies. Stop TTIP campaigns have been particularly vocal in Germany and Austria, which supporters of TTIP say are among the countries most likely to benefit from increased U.S. trade. In the United States, Obama has promoted the accord, saying it would fuel growth. But the public mood is turning increasingly negative, with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump making attacks on international trade deals a cornerstone of his campaign, saying they have cost U.S. jobs. His opponent, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, has also stepped back from her previous support for free trade when she was U.S. Secretary of State, and has questioned whether trade deals hold down U.S. wages. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, of Gabriel’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), urged diplomats and business chiefs on Tuesday to counter anti-globalization sentiments that are fuelling opposition to free trade deals. Ahead of elections in France and Germany next year, politicians are keenly aware that TTIP is not a vote winner. The Bertelsmann Foundation poll showed only 17 percent of Germans saw TTIP as a good thing in April, down from 55 percent two years earlier. “There may be an economic rationale, but everyone is scrapping for votes and you lose votes if you support TTIP,” Van Ham said, adding that any credit from potential free trade gains would be two to three years away. Supporters say TTIP could boost each economy by $100 billion, creating jobs at a time of economic uncertainty as growth and consumption slow in China and emerging markets. EU leaders backed TTIP talks at a summit in June. Speaking to reporters in Washington, White House spokesman Josh Earnest admitted “significant aspects” of the deal were unresolved, but said U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman would travel to Europe in an effort to push the talks forward. “I anticipate that when he travels to Europe in mid-September that they’ll be engaged in substantive discussions and hopefully will be able to make some additional progress,” Earnest said. Three years of negotiations have failed to resolve multiple differences, however, including over public procurement and rules to protect foods from particular regions, such as Parma ham, which the EU wants, and greater access to services and for its agricultural products, as demanded by the United States. “Practically there’s no real change. It’s been stuck for the better part of two years,” said Hosuk Lee-Makiyama, director of Brussels-based think tank ECIPE. EU trade chief Cecelia Malmstrom told journalists negotiations had not failed and that many EU countries had said they still backed TTIP. They included Italy, whose trade and industry minister said it was essential for Italian exporters that the negotiations bore fruit. Germany’s Gabriel is the chairman of the SPD who share power with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives. Merkel backs the talks and her spokesman insisted on Monday that they should continue. Malmstrom added that it made no sense to suspend talks in September because the two sides could still make advances in regulatory cooperation, agreeing standards that are important to industries such as the auto sector, and that could be picked up by Obama’s successor even if a deal was not sealed this year. “The more work we have done, the easier it is to resume,” she said before a planned video conference with Froman. Froman has said Britain’s EU exit will affect TTIP because Britain consumes about a quarter of U.S. exports to the bloc. Trade analysts say that Washington may be preparing for the end of trade talks, which typically conclude with each side holding the other responsible for failure. President Francois Hollande told ambassadors on Tuesday that talks were “bogged down” and “unbalanced” and it was an illusion to imagine that a deal could be sealed during Obama’s term. “Very soon you end in a blame game,” said Lee-Makiyama. “But trade negotiations never really die. They just go into a stock-taking phase.” | 1 |
3,568 | White House chiefs of staff welcome new member to ranks | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Eleven men who have held what is considered to be the toughest job in Washington - White House chief of staff - were to gather for lunch on Friday to welcome Reince Preibus, chief of staff to President-elect Donald Trump, to their ranks. President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, was hosting his successor at the gathering, along with former chiefs of staff from administrations dating back to the Jimmy Carter White House of 1977-1980. The White House lunch is similar to one hosted in 2008 by Josh Bolten, then chief of staff to outgoing President George W. Bush, for Obama’s first chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, a White House official said. Both Bolten and Emanuel will be at the lunch, joined by Obama’s three other former chiefs of staff - Jack Lew, Bill Daley and Pete Rouse - as well as Andrew Card, George W. Bush’s first chief of staff. Jack Watson, who was chief of staff to Jimmy Carter, was invited, along with Kenneth Duberstein from the Ronald Reagan White House and Samuel Skinner from the George H.W. Bush administration. Also invited: John Podesta, a chief of staff in the Bill Clinton White House who helped run Trump rival Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the presidency. | 1 |
3,569 | Girl strapped with bomb kills five in Cameroon mosque | YAOUNDE (Reuters) - A girl with a bomb strapped to her walked into a mosque in northern Cameroon where it exploded, killing five worshippers in an attack bearing the hallmarks of Islamist militant group Boko Haram, authorities said. The girl of 12 or 13 years old arrived at the Sanda-Wadjiri mosque in remote Kolofata at the first call to prayer at between five and six a.m., the governor of Cameroon s Far North region Midjiyawa Bakary told Reuters by telephone. The men were bowed in prayer when she came, Bakary said. Five of the worshippers were killed and the bomber also. He did not name any suspects, but Boko Haram has repeatedly used suicide bombers as well as strapping children with explosives to strike at civilian and military targets. The Nigerian jihadist group, which is now split into at least two factions, has been fighting for almost a decade to revive a medieval Islamic caliphate in the Lake Chad region, where Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger and Chad meet. Allied forces from the four countries have routed it in much of the territory it once controlled, but the group has responded by scattering and stepping up attacks on civilians. Amnesty International said last week that Boko Haram had killed 381 civilians in Nigeria and Cameroon since the beginning of April, more than double that for the preceding five months. Of those, 158 of the deaths were in Cameroon, which the rights group linked to a rise in suicide bombings, the deadliest of which killed 16 people in Waza in July. | 1 |
3,570 | How Female Execs Are Striking Back At Pharma For Using Women As ‘Eye Candy’ (VIDEO) | Women in the biotech and pharmaceutical industries have had it with executives working with firms that truck in scantily clad women to populate cocktail parties being held at their industry conferences.And now those women are circulating a letter in order to get the men that head those firms to stop the practice, most recently seen at a healthcare conference held by mega-firm JP Morgan.The impetus for the letter, which was initiated by two women who have high profiles in the biopharma world, was yet another cocktail party in which inappropriately clad women served as eye candy during the week-long festivities surrounding the recent JP Morgan health care conference.The event, which is arguably the most important stomping ground for biopharma executives and investors, attracted some 9,000 people last month to San Francisco, where countless receptions and parties were held in hotels and restaurants dotting the city s Financial District.Kate Bingham, a managing partner at venture capital firm SV Life Sciences, and Karen Bernstein, whose company runs BioCentury, a news site, created the letter.In it they ask, Are we still working with people who think of women as chattel? What compelling business rationale could there possibly be for that kind of entertainment? Perhaps anticipating sexist counterarguments or an attempt to escape blame, the letter notes, It doesn t matter who, or what kind of company, organized these events. If biotech executives attend, they endorse them. That reflects not only on them as individuals, but on us as an industry. One company in particular, LifeSci Advisors, an investor relations firm, was called out in the letter for a party where young, female models were brought in to escort the guests on buses bound for the Exploratorium science and art museum in San Francisco. Once there, the models were also used to mingle with the crowd. The letter also points out that the recent ROTH Conference had a promotional video that flaunts its use of scantily clad female dancers, who appear alongside cool male rock stars and skateboarders, and images of professionally dressed businessmen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N_Xvla_5loThe industry in question, along with tech, already faces major criticism of its inability to include women and minorities in what is already one of the fastest growing fields in America and the world. Cocktail parties with female entertainment are something straight out of the 1960s male-dominated mad men point of view, and most likely serve as a major turn off for women who might think about pursuing a career.Data shows that businesses benefit from hiring women and minorities, so if we want to excel against the world, it might be smart to ditch the boy s club. Featured image from YouTube | 0 |
3,571 | Catalan government to appeal direct rule in constitutional court | MADRID (Reuters) - Catalonia plans to appeal the application of article 155, which will place its governance in the hands of the central government, in the constitutional court, regional spokesman Jordi Turull said on Tuesday. Spain s upper house of parliament is set to authorise the government to use those special powers on Friday. | 1 |
3,572 | Factbox: Trump fills top jobs for his administration | (Reuters) - President-elect Donald Trump has chosen former Goldman Sachs partner and Hollywood financier Steven Mnuchin as his nominee for Treasury secretary and billionaire investor Wilbur Ross to head the Commerce Department, the two men told CNBC on Wednesday. The following is a list of Republican Trump’s selections for top jobs in his administration: Mnuchin, 53, is a relatively little-known but successful private equity investor, hedge fund manager and Hollywood financier who spent 17 years at Goldman Sachs (GS.N) before leaving in 2002. He assembled an investor group to buy a failed California mortgage lender in 2009, rebranded it as OneWest Bank and built it into Southern California’s largest bank. The bank came under fire for its foreclosure practices as housing advocacy groups accused it of being too quick to foreclose on struggling homeowners. Ross, 78, heads the private equity firm W.L. Ross & Co. His net worth was pegged by Forbes at about $2.9 billion. A staunch supporter of Trump and an economic adviser, Ross has helped shape the Trump campaign’s views on trade policy. He blames the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, which entered into force in 1994, and the 2001 entry of China into the World Trade Organization for causing massive U.S. factory job losses. Chao, 63, was labor secretary under President George W. Bush for eight years and the first Asian-American woman to hold a Cabinet position. Chao is a director at Ingersoll Rand, News Corp and Vulcan Materials Company. She is married to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky. HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY: U.S. REPRESENTATIVE TOM PRICE Price, 62, is an orthopedic surgeon who heads the House of Representatives’ Budget Committee. A representative from Georgia since 2005, Price has criticized Obamacare and has championed a plan of tax credits, expanded health savings accounts and lawsuit reforms to replace it. He is opposed to abortion. U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS: GOVERNOR NIKKI HALEY Haley, a 44-year-old Republican, has been governor of South Carolina since 2011 and has little experience in foreign policy or the federal government. The daughter of Indian immigrants, Haley led a successful push last year to remove the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the South Carolina state capitol after the killing of nine black churchgoers in Charleston by a white gunman. DeVos, 58, is a billionaire Republican donor, a former chair of the Michigan Republican Party and an advocate for the privatization of education. As chair of the American Federation for Children, she has pushed at the state level for vouchers that families can use to send their children to private schools and for the expansion of charter schools. [L1N1DO0KC] Sessions, 69, was the first U.S. senator to endorse Trump’s presidential bid and has been a close ally since. The son of a country-store owner, the senator from Alabama and former federal prosecutor has long taken a tough stance on illegal immigration, opposing any path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: RETIRED LIEUTENANT GENERAL MICHAEL FLYNN Flynn, 57, was an early supporter of Trump and serves as vice chairman on his transition team. He began his U.S. Army career in 1981 and served deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq. Flynn became head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2012 under President Barack Obama, but retired a year earlier than expected, according to media reports, and became a fierce critic of Obama’s foreign policy. Pompeo, 52, is a third-term congressman from Kansas who serves on the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, which oversees the CIA, National Security Agency and cyber security. A retired Army officer and Harvard Law School graduate, Pompeo supports the U.S. government’s sweeping collection of Americans’ communications data and wants to scrap the nuclear deal with Iran. | 1 |
3,573 | Italian parliament votes to toughen laws against fascist propaganda | ROME (Reuters) - Italy s lower house of parliament approved on Tuesday a bill aimed at curbing fascist propaganda, more than 70 years after the death of wartime dictator Benito Mussolini. The draft law, proposed by the ruling Democratic Party (PD), follows a politically charged summer, with human rights groups warning of growing racism in Italy in the face of mass immigration across the Mediterranean from Africa. Under existing laws, pro-fascist propaganda is only penalized if it is seen to be part of an effort to revive the old Fascist Party. The new bill raises the stakes by outlawing the stiff-armed Roman salute as well as the distribution of fascist or Nazi party imagery and gadgets. Offenders risk up to two years in jail, with sentences raised by a further eight months if the fascist imagery is distributed over the Internet. The legislation now passes to the upper house Senate for further approval. Opposition parties, including the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement and the center-right Forza Italia (Go Italy) party of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, said the bill posed a threat to freedom of speech. But Emanuele Fiano, a PD lawmaker who drew up the legislation, dismissed such concerns. This bill does not attack personal freedoms but will act as a brake on neo-fascist regurgitation and a return of extreme right-wing ideology, he said. Mussolini ruled over Italy from 1922 until 1943. He took Italy into World War Two on Adolf Hitler s side and passed race laws under which thousands of Jews were persecuted. Italy was routed by the allied forces and Mussolini, also known as Il Duce , was executed in 1945. ANTI-IMMIGRANT SENTIMENT Mussolini is still admired by a hard core of supporters on the far-right and posters using fascist imagery regularly appear on city billboards most recently in a stylized picture of a white woman being assaulted by a muscular black man. Defend her from the new invaders, said the poster, put up by a fringe party called Forza Nuova (New Force). The group was referring to a high-profile rape case last month when four foreigners were accused of gang-raping a Polish tourist. More than 600,000 migrants, mainly Africans, have come to Italy over the past four years, boosting anti-immigration sentiment in the country and pushing up support for rightist and far-right parties that demand rigid border controls. Given the political climate, the ruling PD was forced on Tuesday to delay its push to approve a contested law that would grant citizenship to the children of immigrants. Opposition parties said the law would encourage migrants to try to come to Italy and claimed victory when the PD announced it was dropping the bill from the Senate schedule this month. To approve this bill we need a majority, but we don t have one right now in the Senate, said Luigi Zanda, head of the PD in the upper house of parliament. | 1 |
3,574 | South Korea calls for 'bone-numbing' sanctions on North for nuclear test | SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea warned North Korea on Wednesday that the United States and its allies were working on sanctions to inflict “bone-numbing pain” after its latest nuclear test, and urged China to do its part to rein in its isolated neighbor. With tension high on the border after the North’s fourth nuclear test on Wednesday last week, South Korean forces fired shots toward what Yonhap News Agency said was a suspected North Korean drone. It returned to the North after the shots, South Korean military officials told Reuters. The North’s nuclear test angered both China and the United States and again raised questions about what can be done to stop its development of nuclear weapons. The World Economic Forum withdrew its invitation for North Korea’s foreign minister to attend its annual Davos meeting because of the nuclear test. It was to have been the country’s first participation in the event in 18 years. The U.S. House of Representatives voted nearly unanimously on Tuesday to pass legislation to broaden sanctions on the North. But apparently unperturbed by the prospect of further international isolation, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called for an expansion of the size and power of his country’s nuclear arsenal, urging the “detonation of more powerful H-bombs”, the North’s state media reported. North Korea said last week it had tested a powerful hydrogen bomb but the United States and various experts doubt that, as the blast was roughly the same size as that from its previous test, of an atomic bomb, in 2013. South Korean President Park Geun-hye said more “provocations” by the North including “cyber-terrorism” were possible and new sanctions should be tougher than previous ones. She did not give specifics. “We are cooperating closely with the United States and allies to come up with effective sanctions that will make North Korea feel bone-numbing pain, not only at the Security Council but also bilaterally and multilaterally,” she said in a speech. Park said South Korea and China were discussing a U.N. Security Council resolution on North Korea, noting that China had stated repeatedly that it would not tolerate its nuclear program. China is North Korea’s main ally and trade partner but it opposes its bombs, while Beijing’s ties with South Korea have grown closer in recent years. “I am certain that China is very well aware if such a strong will isn’t followed by necessary steps, we will not be able to stop the North’s fifth and sixth nuclear tests and we cannot guarantee true peace and stability,” Park said. “I believe the Chinese government will not allow the situation on the Korean peninsula to deteriorate further.” Sung Kim, U.S. special representative for North Korea policy, met with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts in Seoul on Wednesday and said the three agreed that a “meaningful” new sanctions resolution was needed from the Security Council. “I hope the Chinese authorities agree with us that we simply cannot take a business as usual approach to this latest provocation. We will be working very closely with them to come up with a meaningful resolution,” he said. In Washington, White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said China could and should put more pressure on North Korea. “We understand their concern about instability on the Korean peninsula, but the fact of the matter is that the current status quo is destabilizing where you have nuclear tests,” he told a news briefing. Rhodes said it was important the United States and its allies developed capabilities to respond and referred to Sunday’s U.S. B-52 bomber flight over South Korea, missile defense and military cooperation with both South Korea and Japan. Rhodes also said that President Barack Obama chose not to mention North Korea in his State of the Union address on Tuesday as he did not want to give Kim Jong Un the attention. “He likes attention and probably would like nothing more than the president to spend a lot of time to talk about it in the State of the Union,” Rhodes said. “We didn’t particularly feel compelled to give him that attention.” China rejects complaints it is not doing enough on North Korea. In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said China’s efforts toward a denuclearised Korean peninsula would continue. “This is in everyone’s interests and is everyone’s responsibility, including China and South Korea,” he said. The U.S. House sanctions measure passed by 418-2 and Senate leaders expect to consider a similar bill shortly. The House bill had been introduced in 2015 but was brought up for a vote only after North Korea’s latest test. “(The bill) uses targeted financial pressure to isolate Kim Jong Un and his top officials from the assets they maintain in foreign banks, and from the hard currency that sustains their rule,” said Republican Representative Ed Royce, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and an author of the measure. To become law, it must also pass the U.S. Senate and be signed by Obama. The 28,500 U.S. troops in South Korea have been put on high alert as a noisy propaganda battle is played out across the heavily fortified border with the North. South Korea, still technically at war with the North since their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a treaty, has for days been blaring propaganda through loudspeakers across the border. South Korea’s military said it had found anti-South leaflets in the Seoul area, which it suspects were dropped from North Korean hot air balloons. South Korean financial regulators met computer security officials at 16 banks and financial institutions and urged vigilance in the face of possible cyberattacks by North Korea, although none has been detected. | 1 |
3,575 | arise president trump or why its not the end of the world as we know it | prof rafiq islam responds to the vicechancellor of the university of punjab outlining the background of the hall case at the shares
dear vice chancellor kamran
salam from the east coast of canada
thank you for taking the time to address this important issue regarding professor hall like yourself we all have been stunned by the voracity of dr mahons action we used to think academics of certain reputation were above the reach of the tentacles of the establishment we all hoped that a president would not resort to such a shameless pandering to a special interest group however bnai brith is not just a special interest group it is perhaps the most vindictive organization that has ever received prominence in the west allow me to elaborate
you have correctly identified bnai brith to be behind this movement against shutting down free speech while this statement is accurate this phenomenon of targeting canadian universities and canadian society is not something that started now not too long ago it used to be branded as the hidden hand behind the hidden hand during the harper era this operation became a fullblown politically driven policy directive the legislation that dr mahon pathetically relies upon is a product of the harper era harper had an extremist rightwing background and organizations like bnai brith have channelled that extremism to accomplish their hateful agenda as early as the s i personally observed the spirit of this unholy union during my tenure as the president of muslim student association at the university of alberta although harper didnt attend that university we were not too far from the epicentre of the neoconservatism movement that was brewing in canada we fastforward years and come upon the type of events such as professor hall travesty that are products of that time in fact a web of such operations has been in full force for sometime in every aspect of canadian lives only recently we had this court ruling against canadian security intelligence service that was illegally spying on the public this gangsterlike involvement started in shortly after harper and the neocon came to power
this is not to say that the public is protected from such unconscionable manoeuvring under a liberal government in fact the most notorious scandals involving government and human rights have erupted during the liberal regime take for instance the case of omar khadr travesty
more creating an antimuslim bias at a canadian university suspension of tenured professor lacks due diligence toxic mind control contaminates the public sphere irish human rights activists against freedom of speech this case is something we had known albeit too late to intervene at the time and has been subsequently discredited publicly even during the harper regime the overwhelming theme was pointed out by then barely year old omar khadr who said you dont care about me this is what defines the mindset of these people bent on extremism over extremism to subdue public conscience
the attack on professor hall was particularly toxic but equally sinister attacks have taken place before some decade ago now defunct canadian islamic congress faced onslaught from all sides based on planted stories and baited manoeuvring it was the largest muslim organization at a time canadian muslims became the largest religious minority one particular episode involved bnai briths planted story involving a university professor who became the target of hate crime while at the same time investigated for hate crime if it wasnt for the humane and civic behaviour of the then university president current governor general david johnston it would have become career threatening if not life threatening event of the professor top university personnel told me in private how the university faced pressure from donors that wanted that professor to disappear from the academic as well as public arena the vendetta of this sort beggars belief even today what we dont know is how many of these assaults on conscience took place and has been brewing
clearly some of the faithful memberssympathizers apply it publicly such was the case of former professor turned politician irwin cotler who routinely infected the political arena with his prejudice and bias imported from the academia then there are others such as alan rock of university of ottawa that implanted manoeuvring of the political arena to the academia a third group would be lorna marsden of york university that abused authority to run a vindictive agenda yet others have found every other way possible to target a person of conscience all the meanwhile covering up all trails so the victim cannot point a finger to the attacker and has no recourse to justice or self defence it doesnt matter which category they belong to they all produce scandals and drag down the good name of the academia while agencies that are supposed to be uphold the rights and dignity of the academia stand by and for some cases join in to the atrocity this obscene attack on human rights and academic decency was once brought to light by late professor david noble who ended up suing york university and canadian jewish congress jointly for conspiring against him professor noble a jew himself faced the vilest of subjugation by organizations claiming to promote the rights of jews that wasnt enough dr noble had to take on human rights commission and other agencies that stood by either in complicity or in collusion with the university authority professor noble passed away before the lawsuit could see a day in court but soon university of ottawa would come in the picture with the infamous involvement of alan rock a man without a phd that was at the helm of the university mr rock recently left the universitybut not before leaving the universitys good name in the sewerage of politicking what dr mahon has done is bring this insidious modus operandi to yet another victim
had i not have the misfortune of being on the wrong side of this modus operandi in the last years i would almost not understand what is at works here in old days such tactic would be unheardof in a university certainly such things couldnt happen in a civilized country i would exclaim
so what happened to professor hall is not new what is new is the waking up of the general public your letter reverberates the emotion of everyone with conscience that came to know about professor hall people are waking up and are beginning to ask for justice for instance in the context of csis an activist jim comeau wrote i would say its time to jail the highest ranking csis to send a clear message to the rest of them do something illegal straight to prison they damn well knew what they were doing was illegal
the peoples revulsion to such atrocious maligning of people of conscience was summed up in recent letter of julian assange who wrote on us general election day november
yet some weeks ago in a tactic reminiscent of senator mccarthy and the red scare wikileaks green party candidate stein glenn greenwald and clintons main opponent were painted with a broad red brush the clinton campaign when they were not spreading obvious untruths pointed to unnamed sources or to speculative and vague statements from the intelligence community to suggest a nefarious allegiance with russia the campaign was unable to invoke evidence about our publicationsbecause none exists
in the end those who have attempted to malign our groundbreaking work over the past four months seek to inhibit public understanding perhaps because it is embarrassing to them a reason for censorship the first amendment cannot tolerate only unsuccessfully do they try to claim that our publications are inaccurate
of course recent events have allowed us to see this in the highest level of politics in the united states
to anyone with an iota of conscience there is no mystery here people are making their voice clearly known in the words of claire lanyado i prefer unpredictable to criminal and evil the problem is when a president of university for whatever reason decides to use his position to serve the special interest group deliberately there is no recourse for a professor to fight himher in other cases if such atrocity were launched against a student eg the case of freemanmaloy vs lorna marsden of york university the student an antizionist jew could bring a lawsuit of misfeasance in public office with the help of yet another jewish lawyer peter rosenthal who himself is a university professor of mathematics it was struck down by the court and then it was overruled by the court of appeals at the end the university settled and dr marsden the embattled president was gone the morale of this story is the path to justice is steep but for a professor the path to justice is becoming impossible
the irony is that it is the people harboring so much hate who tell others that they are committing hate crimes just because they dare speak out against an atrocity of course they pick their targets that are perceived as weak and vulnerable and they attack the target only after making sure that the target cannot run to anyone for justice
thats how extremism works
sincerely
rafiq islam | 0 |
3,576 | BOOM! BRILLIANT ANDREW MCCARTHY Totally Destroys Any Case Against Trump [Video] | Andrew McCarthy is just awesome! He goes through the reasons why there is nothing on Trump at all. Tucker Carlson even says at the end of the interview that McCarthy should work in the White house I don t know a single person who works at the White House who can explain things the way you can. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAsy2ob28s0You have to love the common sense and brilliance of McCarthy. Here s a great McCarthy piece from the National Review:Finally, something else about those lawyers. I nearly fell out of my chair upon reading the very first paragraph of the notes of Clinton s interview, which identifies the lawyers for Clinton who were permitted to be present for the interview. Among them is Cheryl Mills, Clinton s longtime confidant and chief-of-staff at the State Department.Readers may recall that I suggested back in May that the fix was in in the investigation of the Clinton emails. The reason was that the Justice Department was allowing Cheryl Mills a witness, if not a subject, of the investigation to invoke attorney-client privilege on behalf of Mrs. Clinton in order to thwart the FBI s attempt to inquire into the procedure used to produce Clinton s emails to the State Department. Mills was a participant in that procedure and it is the procedure in which, we now know, well over 30,000 emails were attempted to be destroyed, including several thousand that contained government-related business.When she worked for Clinton at State, Mills was not acting in the capacity of a lawyer not for then-Secretary Clinton and not for the State Department. Moreover, as Clinton s chief-of-staff, Mills was intimately involved in issues related to Clinton s private email set up, the discussions about getting her a secure BlackBerry similar to President Obama s, and questions that were raised (including in FOIA requests) about Clinton s communications.That is to say, Mills was an actor in the facts that were under criminal investigation by the FBI. Put aside that she was not Mrs. Clinton s lawyer while working for the State Department; as I explained in the May column, Mills, after leaving the State Department, was barred by ethical rules from acting as Mrs. Clinton s lawyer in connection with a matter in which the lawyer participated personally and substantially as a public officer or employee. There is no way Mills should have been permitted to participate as a lawyer in the process of producing Clinton s emails to the State Department nearly two years after they d both left.I thought it was astonishing that the Justice Department indulged her attorney-client privilege claim, which frustrated the FBI s ability to question her on a key aspect of the investigation. But it is simply unbelievable to find her turning up at Mrs. Clinton s interview participating in the capacity of a lawyer under circumstances where Clinton was being investigated over matters in which Mills participated as a non-lawyer government official.Read more: NRO | 0 |
3,577 | HOUSTON TEXAN PLAYERS THREATEN Owner For Telling NFL Team Owners “We can’t have the inmates running the prison” During Private Meeting | The NYP reported that the players whom Bob McNair employs were not happy about his comments at a recent NFL owners meeting.McNair sparked the outrage by saying, We can t have the inmates running the prison, during an NFL owners meeting one day after he and 10 other NFL representatives met with current and former players to discuss the issues behind the national anthem protests. McNair has apologized for the racially insensitive analogy, but count outspoken Seahawks star Richard Sherman who will play against the Texans this weekend among those who don t believe the apology was sincere.The Texans nearly staged a team-wide walkout Friday, a few hours after McNair apologized for comparing NFL players to inmates in a prison, ESPN reported.Texans players wanted to walkout today in response to owner Bob McNair s comments, per @sarahbarshop. Had to be persuaded to stay. Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) October 27, 2017Houston s best offensive player, wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins, skipped practice for personal reasons, but ESPN later confirmed it was in response to McNair s comments. Head coach Bill O Brien said he is 100 percent with his players.Texans offensive lineman Duane Brown said McNair s comments sickened him and were horrible, according to the Houston Chronicle. Brown also said he wasn t surprised by the comments, and that Houston players are not done dealing with the issue.Brown s wife also spoke out on the issue. My husband has put his BODY & MIND on the line for your team for 10 YRS & to you he is an inmate, Devi Brown wrote. You owe these players RESPECT & support. ESPN reported the Texans will do something before the game Sunday but have not decided what yet.Texans rookie Treston Decoud tweeted, I don t believe he is the only owner that feel that way smh. NFL players may not be happy with the Houston Texan team owner s choice of words when he told other team owners in a private meeting that, We can t have the inmates running the prison , but how far off base was Texan s owner Bob McNair when he used the commonly used phrase?While the Houston Texans may only have 13 players who ve been arrested for crimes, they re not exactly a group of choir boys either. Here are just a few examples of NFL teams and the number of players who ve been arrested on those teams since 2000. Keep in mind that each NFL team has 53 players.Minnesota Vikings Number of arrests: 49 Perhaps the most notable of the Vikings arrests was the Love Boat scandal, during which Fred Smoot, Daunte Culpepper, Bryant McKinnie and Moe Williams were all arrested. Adrian Peterson s child abuse case along with 18 DUI cases were also among the Vikings arrests over the years.Denver Broncos Number of arrests: 47 Brandon Marshall accounted for four of these arrests while he was with the team, including two instances of domestic violence and one domestic dispute. The Broncos have had 12 instances of domestic violence since 2000, as well as 12 DUIsCincinnati Bengals Number of arrests: 44 The Bengals currently employ Adam Jones, who has the most arrests of any NFL player since 2000 (10) and was even arrested earlier this year for poking a security guard in the eye. They also employed the player with the third most arrests since 2000, Chris Henry (6), who passed away in 2009. Overall, the Bengals have had nine assaults, nine DUIs and six domestic violence cases over the past 17 years.Tennessee Titans Number of arrests: 36 Kenny Britt, who has the second-most individual arrests since 2000 (seven times), was arrested six times within a span of two years with Tennessee. In total, the Titans have had 10 DUIs, four assaults and four domestic violence cases over that span.Tampa Bay Buccaneers Number of arrests: 36 The Buccaneers have had 11 DUIs since 2000, as well as four drug charges and four instances of domestic violence. Former Patriots cornerback Aqib Talib was arrested on gun and assault charges while with Tampa Bay.Jacksonville Jaguars Number of arrests: 35 The Jaguars have had four gun charges and five drug charges to go with their seven DUIs. Among those drug charges was wide receiver Matt Jones, who was spotted cutting up cocaine in his car by police in 2008.Cleveland Browns Number of arrests: 33 Johnny Manziel recently made the list after he was accused of domestic violence in early 2016. Meanwhile, Dont Stallworth was charged with a DUI manslaughter in 2009, while Ausar Walcott was charged with attempted murder in 2013. The Browns also have six drug charges and five gun charges.Chicago Bears Number of arrests: 32 The Bears have had seven assaults and 10 DUIs since 2000. Among those arrests was Lance Briggs, who crashed his Lamborghini into a pole and left the scene of the accident a crime that he pled guilty to.Kansas City Chiefs Number of arrests: 32 The Chiefs employed Jovan Belcher, who fatally shot his girlfriend 10 times before going to the team s facility and shooting himself in the head with a gun. They also employed Larry Johnson, who was arrested four times including twice for domestic disputes. Kansas City has 10 DUI cases and four cases of theft/burglary since 2000.Miami Dolphins Number of arrests: 31 The Dolphins have seven domestic violence cases and seven assault and battery cases to go with their eight DUI arrests. They also had Ricky Williams, who was charged with reckless driving after going 126 mph on the highway once.Baltimore Ravens Number of arrests: 27 The Ravens have several high-profile arrests since 2000, including Ray Rice s domestic violence case and Ray Lewis murder charge. They also had Terrence Cody, who was indicted on charges of animal cruelty after one of his dogs died. Cody also illegally owned an alligator. Seattle Seahawks Number of arrests: 27 Lofa Tatupu, who was arrested for a DUI during which he had a .155 blood alcohol content, was one of 11 Seahawks players to be charged with a DUI. Seattle has also had six domestic violence instances over that span.Carolina Panthers Number of arrests: 22 Panthers players have had six DUIs, four assaults, three gun charges, three domestic violence cases and three drug cases since 2000. One of the more prominent cases involved defensive end Greg Hardy, who threw his victim onto a couch covered in guns among other instances of domestic violence.Black Lives Matter posterchild for disrespecting our flag, former 49 ers QB Colin Kaepernick s team is in the middle of the pack for team members with most criminal arrests and convictions:San Francisco 49ers Number of arrests: 25 The 49ers have 13 DUI charges since 2000 along with three domestic violence cases. One of those cases involved former fullback Bruce Miller, who later was charged with assault after allegedly assaulting his 70-year-old father in a hotel in San FranciscoWhile the Houston Texans team doesn t land in the top of the list for players with most criminal convictions on their team, they certainly have their fair share. Sadly, only having 13 arrests on their team makes them look good compared to the other teams with more arrests for criminal activity. Houston Texans Number of arrests: 13 The Texans were founded in 2002, and have overall been pretty good about staying out of trouble compared to the rest of the league. Houston has four DUI charges, including one to Jacoby Jones that he pleaded guilty to.Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman sounded off on McNair s comments, as he attempted to throw gasoline on the fire:I can appreciate ppl being candid. Don t apologize! You meant what you said. Showing true colors allows ppl to see you for who you are. Richard Sherman (@RSherman_25) October 27, 2017Sherman isn t shy about his hate for cops. His big mouth and unnecessary disrespect for a law-enforcement officer didn t end up well for him, as he was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct towards a police officer in 2014.Empire Sports Sherman is known for his cockiness on the field and a vocabulary that can only be described as trash-talk. His passion on the field often carries over to the after-game interviews, and he is the type of player Seahawks fans either love or love to hate.Despite his reputation for attitude within the NFL, witnesses to Sherman s altercation with a Seattle police officer were shocked by his behavior. It was like he just picked off Peyton in the Super Bowl, and ran it back for a touchdown or something. His cockiness was at an all-time high! Said Curt Johnson, a bystander to the incident.Sherman s problems arose when a police officer witnessed him jaywalking, and gave him a warning not to do it again. The officer later admitted that he wasn t so much worried about the jaywalking law in Seattle, but the fact that it was a busy street and Sherman could have been hurt, as several pedestrians have been hit by cars in the same area over the last few months. He asked me if I knew who he was, and I said, of course, I m a huge fan. Said Patrolman Mike Stephens. [Sherman] then continued to say, Then you know that I own [expletive] Seattle, and any [expletive] street I want to cross I can, no matter where I decide to [expletive] cross it. Stephens apparently tried to apologize, and explain to Sherman that he was just doing his job and that Sherman s celebrity status in the city did not give him the right to curse anyone. He told me that I was a terrible police officer, and said I should just go eat some [expletive] donuts. Said Officer Stephens. He went off on me about how he was doing better in life than I was, and said that I shouldn t even watch a Seattle game again because I didn t deserve to witness the greatness that was him on a football field. Sherman was arrested and charged with jaywalking and disorderly conduct towards a police officer in the course of his duty. | 0 |
3,578 | U.S. states could not set self-driving car rules under Republican plan | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - California and other states would be barred from setting their own rules governing design and testing of self-driving cars, while federal regulators would be blocked from demanding pre-market approval for autonomous vehicle technology, according to a U.S. House Republican proposal reviewed by Reuters on Thursday. The draft legislation, while far from becoming law, still represents a victory for General Motors Co, Alphabet Inc, Tesla Inc and other automakers and technology companies seeking to persuade Congress and the Trump administration to pre-empt rules under consideration in California, New York and other states that could limit deployment of self-driving vehicles. The industry also opposed an Obama administration proposal last year that raised the possibility of giving regulators the power to review and approve self-driving car technology before it was put into service, similar to the vetting by Federal Aviation Administration of new technology for aircraft. The 45-page draft package of 14 bills would designate the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration as the lead agency for regulating self-driving cars, pre-empting state rules. States could still set insurance and registration rules but could not use them as a way to regulate self-driving technologies. California has proposed changes to its self-driving car rules, but automakers said in April it has not gone far enough. One of the bills in the proposal would allow the U.S. Transportation Department to exempt up to 100,000 vehicles per year from U.S. federal motor vehicle safety rules, which currently prevent the sale of self-driving vehicles without steering wheels, pedals and other human controls. Another would declare crash data, other testing and validation reports from automated cars turned over to U.S. regulators to be “confidential business information.” U.S. Representative Bob Latta, who chairs a key panel overseeing automobile regulation, called the draft legislation “an important step in establishing a framework to allow innovators to safely develop and test autonomous vehicles.” He said Republicans want “to continue working with all parties in a bipartisan manner as we refine language and move toward a consensus package.” On Tuesday, a bipartisan trio of U.S. senators said they planned to introduce legislation to remove regulatory roadblocks to the introduction of self-driving cars. Mitch Bainwol, head of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, an auto trade group, told Congress on Wednesday it should work to eliminate state or local laws that could “unduly burden or restrict the use of self-driving vehicles in the future.” | 1 |
3,579 | U.S. lawmakers seek compromise on Zika virus funding | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers sought on Wednesday to break a logjam over $1.1 billion in funding to combat the Zika virus, with the Senate possibly considering legislation as soon as next week, even as one congressman toted a jar full of mosquitoes to the House floor to condemn congressional inaction. “Can you imagine the fears and anxieties if the mosquitoes were not in this jar?” Florida Republican David Jolly told his colleagues as he brandished the container holding about 100 of the insects in the House of Representatives chamber. “Members of Congress would run down the hall to the physician’s office to be tested,” added Jolly, whose state is the first in the nation with local transmission of the mosquito-borne virus that has spread through the Americas. The potential Senate Zika measure could advance as part of a broader legislative effort to temporarily keep federal agencies operating in the 2017 fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. Republicans and Democrats huddled separately in closed meetings in both the Senate and House to see if they could reach a compromise during a 19-day work session this month, before lawmakers break for a recess in the weeks before the Nov. 8 U.S. election. Lawmakers returned to work this week after a seven-week summer recess. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters he was in talks with Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid. “We’re looking for a way forward. And I’m hopeful and optimistic that we’ll be able to do that,” McConnell, a Republican, said of both a temporary agency funding bill and Zika money. In February, President Barack Obama asked Congress to approve $1.9 billion in emergency funds to deal with the Zika virus, which can cause severe birth defects when pregnant women become infected. Since then, both parties have backed $1.1 billion as the funding figure. But fights over side issues related to abortion and Obama’s signature healthcare law have bitterly divided the two parties. One of the biggest controversies involves Democrats’ opposition to language, backed by Republicans, that they say would prevent Zika funds for abortion providers like Planned Parenthood, mainly in Puerto Rico. The Miami Herald on Tuesday quoted Senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, who chairs a Senate panel overseeing healthcare funding, suggesting the Planned Parenthood language might have to be dropped in order to reach a deal. Aides to both senators declined to confirm or deny the accuracy of the quotes. Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine, asked by Reuters whether she thought Planned Parenthood funding restrictions should be eliminated from Zika legislation, said: “That would be my preference.” Still, some Republicans were resisting a deal that would abandon the Planned Parenthood language in the Zika bill. | 1 |
3,580 | Obama briefed on man who took hostages in German cinema: White House | ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (Reuters) - The White House said on Thursday that President Barack Obama had been briefed about a masked man who took hostages at a cinema in western Germany and was later killed by police. White House spokesman Eric Schultz told reporters that U.S. officials were in contact with their German counterparts about the situation, but had no further details. | 1 |
3,581 | SHOCKING VIDEO: Baltimore Baseball Fans Fight VIOLENT #BlackLivesMatter Protestors | THIS FIRST-HAND ACCOUNT OF WHAT HAPPENED IN BALTIMORE IS SO SHOCKING AND UNREAL BUT OUR GOOD FRIEND, MATHEW BOYLE, IS ABLE TO TELL US WHAT REALLY HAPPENED: BALTIMORE, Maryland Racial protests supposed to be peaceful quickly turned into violent riots on Saturday evening, closing down the city of Baltimore for some time and creating a panic for thousands of people as just 50 miles away elites in Washington partied with President Barack Obama at the White House Correspondents Dinner.Personally, I wasn t supposed to be on the job tonight as a reporter. After a long news week and as several of my contemporaries lived high on the hog down in D.C. at the so-called Nerd Prom, me and my brother left D.C. to go see our Boston Red Sox play the Baltimore Orioles at Oriole Park at Camden Yards I hate the White House Correspondents Dinner it represents everything I think is wrong with Washington, making celebrities out of news media and politicians and given the fact I grew up just outside Boston I figured seeing the Red Sox play in Baltimore would be a great reprieve from the political culture. Boy was I wrong.My brother and I arrived in Baltimore just outside Camden Yards about an hour before the game, and went into Bullpen Bar one of three iconic all-brick building bars right outside the stadium for a beer before the Sox took on the O s. I usually make it up here for a game or two every year, and have always found Orioles fans to be pleasant. We re united in our hatred of the Yankees.Bullpen Bar sits between Pickles Pub and Sliders Bar & Grill. Outside each of the brick-faced bars, on the days of Orioles Games, each bar puts out barricades about 20 feet from their front doors. Shoulder-to-shoulder crowds of fans from each team the Orioles, and in the case of Saturday night, the Red Sox pack into three bars and the barricaded-off space in front before each game. Inside and outside of each, bartenders serve cheap beer or so the $6-per-tall-boy-cans are advertised on big signs while hotdogs, sausages and other pastime favorites are sold by each and by vendors who set up tents across the street. The blue collar culture and really friendly people are what make Baltimore baseball games so much fun, and there s no better place to kick off an adventure into Camden Yards than here.But on Saturday night, after my brother and I finished off our beers at Bullpen and began walking across the street to the stadium, planning to make our way to our seats after getting inside, chaos broke out.As helicopters circled overhead and protestors smashed windows outside, Camden Yards put fans on lockdown on Saturday.Several people across the street from these bars between there and the stadium, which is less than 100 yards away were holding signs that said #BlackLivesMatter. They were protesting the death of Freddie Gray, who Agence France Press newswire wrote died last Sunday from spinal injuries, a week after his arrest in the city s impoverished west side. In a press conference Friday, officials acknowledged Gray should have received medical help at the moment of his arrest, when he was seen by bystanders and caught on video howling in apparent pain, AFP wrote, providing the background of the simmering tensions in the mid-Atlantic port town. They also revealed that Gray, contrary to police department policy, was not buckled into his seat in the van, which made at least three unexplained stops on its way to the Western District police station. Gray died Sunday with 80 percent of his spine severed at the neck, lawyers for his family have said. His funeral is scheduled for Monday. Six officers have been suspended with pay as the police investigation inches closer to a May 1 deadline to submit findings to a Maryland state prosecutor, who could decide to press charges. All of a sudden literally as my brother and I walked out of Bullpen everything went haywire. What were peaceful marchers holding up signs turned into violent rioters. Innocent fans standing by were confronted by the rioters, who physically and verbally threateningly engaged many of them and then the protesters got even more violent.All of a sudden, beer bottles and cans, and other projectiles were lobbed by the protesters into the crowds of fans. To get those projectiles, the protesters stole them forcibly from the bartenders and vendors set up outside each of those three bars. One beer can whizzed by my brother s face, missing him by about six inches, and more flew all over the crowded area.The crowd of protesters then stopped a blue station wagon carrying a white family as they tried to drive past Pickles, Bullpen and Sliders along a narrow one-way stretch between the bars and the main road. As a horde of them smashed their open and closed fists on the hood of the car while impeding them by standing in front of them the driver backed up on the one way pass in a desperate attempt to get out of dodge. Then, stopped on the other side with nowhere to go, protesters ripped open the passenger door of the car and began reaching around inside the vehicle. As hundreds of people looked on, including several police officers who didn t engage the violent protesters, the white woman in the front seat middle-aged and a little heavyset with dark hair was visibly terrified.CONTINUE READING: BREITBARTCHAOS IN BALTIMORE:The death of Freddie Gray, a Baltimore resident arrested after leading police on a foot chase, catalyzed the unrest. Mr. Gray allegedly did not receive timely medical attention for a spinal cord injury, and died a week after his April 12 arrest for carrying a switchblade.Thousands of protestors marched on city streets near Camden Yards during Saturday s the Red Sox-Orioles game. Some collapsed in place in a die in on the street. Others threw rocks at police and windows. The demonstrations led to brawls between fans and protestors at bars near the stadium. Due to an ongoing public safety issue, the Mayor of Baltimore City & the [Baltimore County Police Department] have asked all fans to remain inside the ballpark until further notice, the jumbotron at Camden Yards told fans. Thank you. Very strange, Steve Cockey told the Baltimore Sun, from being whisked in here. They were just ripping tickets, just getting people in as quickly as possible, which I ve never seen. They did not do the metal detectors. Very, very strange. I ve never been trapped in the ballpark before. Baltimore received better news inside of Camden Yards than outside of it. David Lough hit a walk-off home run in the tenth to give the Orioles a 5-4 victory over the Red Sox.Via: Breitbart | 0 |
3,582 | U.S. health insurers want Cruz proposal dropped from Senate bill | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two major U.S. health insurance groups on Friday called on Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell to drop from a healthcare bill a provision proposed by Senator Ted Cruz that allows insurers to offer stripped-down, low-cost healthcare plans. “It is simply unworkable in any form and would undermine protections for those with pre-existing medical conditions, increase premiums and lead to widespread terminations of coverage for people currently enrolled in the individual market,” America’s Health Insurance Plans and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association said in a letter to McConnell and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer. | 1 |
3,583 | [VIDEO] FED UP DRIVER IN SUV PLOWS THROUGH FERGUSON PROTESTERS BLOCKING BUSY HIGHWAY… #DontPlayInTheStreets | This fed up driver was not going to be bullied into submission by these ignorant protesters. Was he wrong to keep driving when these people know they re blocking traffic and putting themselves in grave danger standing in front of traffic? How do these fools know what circumstances of each one of the drivers may be facing as they re blocked by a pack of ignorant people? Someone may be rushing their child to the hospital or trying to get to work on time for fear of losing their jobs. No one should never have to sit behind a wall of human protesters on a busy highway it doesn t matter what you re protesting that s just common sense to stay off the highways and roads.The best part of this whole video is when one of the brave protesters announces to everyone that he got the license plate number so he could report him to the cops they re standing in traffic to protest! #LowInformationVoters .https://twitter.com/CassandraRules/status/630873997735911424 | 0 |
3,584 | Indonesia to bar Myanmar protest at world's biggest Buddhist temple | JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesian police have pledged to bar Islamist groups from staging a rally on Friday at the Borobudur Buddhist temple in central Java to protest against the persecution of Myanmar s Rohingya Muslims. Islamist groups say they plan the demonstration close to the stupa-topped Borobudur temple, which dates from the 9th century and is a popular tourist site, to call for an end to violence against the religious and ethnic minority in Myanmar. Indonesia has the world s largest population of Muslims and there have been a number of anti-Myanmar protests in Jakarta and the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur over the treatment of Buddhist-majority Myanmar s roughly 1.1 million Rohingyas. Almost 125,000 Rohingyas have been forced to flee clashes between Rohingya insurgents and the army in the northwest Rakhine state. Tens of thousands have crossed the border into neighboring Bangladesh. The action at Borobudur temple will be prohibited, National Police Chief Tito Karnavian told reporters, according to media. This is not just part of the heritage of Indonesia, but that of the world. There is no need for protests in response to the Rohingya conflict because the Indonesian government is taking action on it already. Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi on Monday met Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi and top security officials to call for a halt to the bloodshed. Marsudi was due in Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital, on Tuesday. Pakistani Foreign Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif expressed deep anguish at the ongoing violence against the Rohingya Muslims and urged the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to take immediate and effective action to bring an end to all human-rights violations against innocent and unarmed Rohingya Muslim population . An organizer of Friday s planned protest said the groups wanted to protest peacefully near the Borobodur temple to show Indonesia s tolerance. The Borobudur is an extraordinary symbol of tolerance, said Anang Imamuddin. We want the world to know that it is in a majority Muslim country but it is safe. Buddhist monks are safe here too. | 1 |
3,585 | Obama’s “CLOCK BOY” Comes Back To Texas…After Spending 9 Months Doing THIS… | After 9 Months Of Hard-Core Islam Muslim Clock Boy Returns To TX Still Plans To Sue State He Misses For $15 MILLIONCAIR s poster child for how to use Islam to get everything you want in politically correct America comes home Obama boot camp?Ahmed Mohamed, the teen known as Clock Boy, may be back in Texas within days. After nine months of living in his new homeland, Qatar, he reportedly feels homesick. Late Friday, the Dallas Morning News reported Mohamed plans to return to Texas early in the week for an extended visit. The teen s uncle, Aldean Mohamed, said: He miss[es] Texas, and he miss[es] Irving. Breitbart Texas reported on Ahmed Mohamed s earlier yearnings to return to the Lone Star State in December. The uncle also indicated his nephew will catch up with family in the Dallas suburb of Irving and has events lined up with some tech companies. The Dallas newspaper did not disclose any information with whom the teen will meet.Ahmed Mohamed was the 14-year-old Irving Independent School District high school freshman detained last September for bringing to class a makeshift clock-in-a-box which school officials and police initially believed was a hoax bomb. No charges were filed once the situation sorted itself out, but the teen served three days of suspension before his family decided to withdraw him from the school district.A subsequent media firestorm ensued in which mainstream news outlets insisted Islamophobia was behind Mohamed s detainment. Breitbart Texas maintained it was the result of rigid public school zero tolerance policies and a month later, the Associated Press agreed.Last October, Mohamed accepted a fully-funded education scholarship from the Qatar Foundation, an organization with reputed ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, over an invitation to the one of the world s most prestigious private research universities, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). This year, MIT ranked #1 across twelve fields of study with other disciplines placing in the Top Five internationally.Fueled by the progressive narrative of victimization, Mohamed traveled to Google s Northern California headquarters, toured the Qatari educational system he now attends, made a Saudi-funded pilgrimage to Mecca, rubbed shoulders with Sudanese Islamic autocrat Bashir, appeared in a Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) promo video with Executive Director Nihad Awad, a supporter of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, and attended CAIR s 2015 Champions for Justice gala in Arlington, VA. Then, Mohamed visited the White House for Astronomy Night where he met President Obama alongside other invited students.Previously, the Commander-in-Chief tweeted the teen should bring his cool clock with him but that was not possible. The family did not retrieve it until late October despite the Irving Police Department s requests for them to do so a month earlier.While in Washington, D.C., Uncle Aldean, Ahmed, and his father Mohamed Elhassen Mohamed rallied with uber-left California U.S. Rep. Mike Honda, who pushed for a DOJ probe into the Irving school district and police department regarding the legality of the teen s detainment.TIME Magazine listed Mohamed on their 30 Most Influential Teens of 2015; yet, by December, with the Christmas season shrouded by Islamic State attacks in Paris, State Department travel alerts, and Syrian refugees at U.S. borders, sympathy waned for the Islamophobia poster child. Breitbart News reported that the same liberal media that championed Mohamed s every move, lost interest.According to the Dallas Morning News, Uncle Aldean Mohamed said the family still plans to sue the Irving ISD over Ahmed s arrest. After they left for Qatar, the Mohamed family demanded a total of $15 million $10 million from the City of Irving and $5 million from the school district and threatened a lawsuit if they did not receive it. In a 10-page letter to the Irving City Attorney and a similar 9-page letter to Irving ISD s attorney, the family claimed Islamophobia among their clock related incident allegations. Via: Bretibart News | 0 |
3,586 | horoscope du novembre le gorafi | by george zapo
posted friday october at am edt
keywords atlanta food food waste fresh food georgia hunger landfills perishable food second helpings atlanta volunteers waste managment
food waste and hunger are enormous global environmental and public health problems as overwhelming as these issues are community groups volunteers local businesses and organizations are working on trying to find a solution
what started as a social action project in a few members of a small community in metroatlanta georgia took up the challenge to feed people in need and eliminate food waste
and theyre succeeding
the project grew into a nonprofit organization with a team of more than volunteer drivers a network of more than donors and frontline agencies who feed the hungry on a daily basis
amazingly the entire group has rescued more than million pounds of food enough to provide million meals heres more of this motivating againstallodds story food waste and hunger
about a third of the planets food goes to waste thats enough to feed two billion people
the united nations environment programme unep and the world resources institute wri report that about onethird of all food produced worldwide worth around trillion are lost or wasted in food production and consumption systems
furthermore the natural resources defense council nrdc cites the following
forty percent of the food in the united states is never eaten but at the same time one in eight americans struggles to put enough food on the table
nearly million people worldwide suffer from hunger but according to the food and agriculture organization of the united nations we squander enough food globally trillion pounds a year to feed every one of them more than twice over
in developing nations much of the food is lost after harvest because of the lack of refrigeration good roads and adequate storage facilities on the other hand developed nations waste more food when retailers order display or serve too much
additionally consumers waste food when they ignore leftovers in the back of their refrigerators or toss perishable food out before it expires more alarming statistics of wasted food
much of the wasted food in the us ends up in landfills the us environmental protection agency epa reports that food waste is the second largest category of municipal solid waste sent to landfills in the united states
and it accounts for about percent of the waste stream thats more than million tons of food waste that the us sends to the landfills each year
additionally according to nrdc on average people dining out leave percent of meals uneaten and percent of these potential leftovers are not taken home
in spite of the dismal statistics on food waste and the struggles and pain hungry people endure community groups organizations local businesses and volunteers in metroatlanta georgia are making headway in not wasting food and feeding people in need people are fed perishable food not wasted
more than ten years ago a few members of a community in metroatlanta georgia took up the challenge to feed people in need and eliminate food waste they wanted to take leftover fresh food from grocery stores and restaurants and quickly deliver it to agencies that provide food to families and individuals in need
since the first delivery was made in the group has rescued more than million pounds of food and the group believes this figure equals enough to provide more than million meals
as success mounted in eliminating food waste and feeding people in their community the group established itself as a nonprofit organization called second helpings atlanta now second helpings atlanta has donors partner agencies and a team of more than volunteer drivers who pick up and drop off perishable food every day
executive director joe labriola says the challenge is getting the food from those who have it to those who need it and thats what we do we play a very specific role we do scheduled pickups and deliveries a week weve gotten pretty good at this fresh food versus nonperishable
fresh food provides more nutrition than the nonperishable processed diet that so many people eat especially people with low or no income one of second helpings atlantas goals is to change that standard offering fresh food that will ideally help prompt healthier eating habits
this year the group has delivered pounds of food and labriola estimates they will pick up and deliver more than million pounds by the end of the year
the reason were so focused on perishable food is that were providing nutrition to the diets of people who are surviving on processed food were breaking the cycle and hope that some of the health benefits of fresh food will start to kick in
according to labriola he sees no reason why this type of food waste program cant easily be adopted anywhere he adds that percent of the food produced in the us is never consumed and the average annual cost per household of food that is thrown out is
twenty percent of people in georgia live in a foodinsecure environment meaning theyre not sure when theyre going to eat next its a pretty grim story labriola says but if we rescue just percent of that food we can feed million americans how its working
when people sign up to volunteer theyre shown the available routes then theyre asked to choose the route that would work best with their location and schedule
most pickups are regularly scheduled however the group often gets calls from people holding weddings bar mitzvahs or festivals knowing there will be leftover food at the end of the night then a call goes out to find a volunteer to help pickup and delivery the leftover food
volunteer drivers make food deliveries every day of the year except christmas food pickups range in size so people can pick them up no matter if they own a small sedan or a minivan that way volunteering is within the reach of everyone
from the time a driver leaves home stopping to pick up the food and drop it off at a partner agency it usually takes no longer than minutes for he or she to return home families volunteer
quite often entire families will volunteer and work together for the weekly delivery service labriola says families volunteering are instrumental to educating younger generations about hunger and food waste
for example around thanksgiving a family with two young children met labriola one day to pick up dozens of turkeys at a grocery store the children looked amazed as they helped carry the delivery birdbybird from the store to the truck and into the agency that would distribute them to families labriola told the kids they just helped feed families the children soon realized what they did one of the children said thats as many kids that are in my school
the exemplary work and dedication exhibited by volunteers in the metroatlanta georgia community is a truly successful model of how to eliminate food waste and hunger perhaps more community groups organizations local businesses and volunteers will consider following their worthy example you might also like | 0 |
3,587 | U.N. chief asks Iran president to release former U.N. official | UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani for the release of U.S. citizen and former U.N. official Baquer Namazi, a U.N. spokesman said on Thursday. The pair met on Monday on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. The Secretary-General did raise the issue and again appealed for the release of Baquer Namazi on humanitarian grounds, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. Last October, an Iranian court sentenced Namazi, 80, and his son 46-year-old Siamak Namazi to 10 years in prison on charges of spying and cooperating with the United States. (This story corrects to say Guterres met with Rouhani on Monday, not Thursday) | 1 |
3,588 | Hezbollah says Kurdish vote a step toward wider Mideast partition | BEIRUT (Reuters) - The powerful Lebanese group Hezbollah said on Saturday that an Iraqi Kurdish independence vote marked a first step toward the partition of the Middle East, warning that this would lead to internal wars and must be opposed. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, head of the Iran-backed group, said events in northern Iraq, where Kurds overwhelmingly voted for independence on Monday, were a threat to the whole region and not just Iraq and neighboring states with Kurdish populations. It will open the door to partition, partition, partition, Nasrallah said. He added that partition means taking the region to internal wars whose end and time frame is known only to God . Nasrallah noted that his group s arch enemy Israel had come out in support of Kurdish statehood and described the referendum as part of a U.S.-Israeli plot to carve up the region. The United States came out in opposition to the vote, along with major European states and neighboring countries Turkey and Iran. The government of Syria, where Kurdish groups have established autonomous regions, also opposed the referendum. Nasrallah was speaking to supporters on the eve of Ashura, when Shi ites commemorate the slaying of the Prophet Mohammad s grandson, Imam Hussein, at Kerbala in 680 AD. Hezbollah, a political and military movement, is a major player in the Syrian conflict, where it has deployed thousands of fighters in support of President Bashar al-Assad. Hezbollah fighters are currently fighting along with other Iran-backed militias and the Syrian army against Islamic State militants in eastern Syria. Daesh is at its end. It is a matter of time in Iraq and Syria, Nasrallah said, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State. He said counter attacks mounted by Islamic State in eastern Syria in the last two days were expected as the group was besieged, adding that it was incapable of recovering ground . | 1 |
3,589 | Merkel, Abe agree sanctions against North Korea should be stepped up | BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Japanese Prime Minister spoke by telephone on Tuesday and agreed that sanctions against Pyongyang should be stepped up in response to North Korea s nuclear test, a spokesman for the German government said. She agreed with Prime Minister Abe that North Korea s latest nuclear test threatened the security of the entire world and that this massive violation of the U.N. Security Council s resolution must result in a resolute reaction from the international community as well as tougher sanctions, spokesman Steffen Seibert said. Merkel and Abe agreed that increased pressure on North Korea should make Pyongyang more willing to agree to a peaceful solution and that China and Russia had a key role to play in that, Seibert added. | 1 |
3,590 | Talks to form NZ coalition govt start, no decision until after final count | WELLINGTON (Reuters) - New Zealand First Party leader Winston Peters began talks on Thursday with the governing National Party and opposition Labour Party aimed at forming a coalition government after last month s inconclusive election. Peters, whose nationalist party holds the balance of power, has said no decision will be made until after a final vote count is released on Saturday. It s like being between the devil and the deep blue sea here, Peters told reporters at Parliament, according to the New Zealand Herald. Peters held talks with Prime Minister Bill English and members of his center-right National in the morning and an afternoon meeting with Labour leader Jacinda Ardern, who told local media the conversation was a great start . It s setting the agenda, the ground rules, the protocols, how we re going to go about it. Let s have an agreement about precisely how we re going to do this, Peters said in a video posted on Fairfax Media. English s National Party won a 10-point lead over center-left Labour in the Sept. 23 election, but neither won enough seats to govern alone. This is the third time Peters, 72, has held the balance of power after an election and he has previously formed coalitions with both National and Labour. A complete count is due on Oct. 7 when special votes which make up 15 percent of the total and include overseas ballots are released. The final count is not expected to change the outcome. Peters has said he will make a final decision by Oct. 12. Observers said Peters focus in talks will likely be on domestic policies, especially regional development to shore up his voter base, despite his rhetoric about limiting Asian investment and slashing immigration. Regional development is surely going to figure highly...I think there s no doubt New Zealand First is shifting to be more of a provincial, country party and that the important points are going to be directly related to that development, said Bryce Edwards, political analyst at Critical Politics in Wellington. In one of the only indications of his priorities going into negotiations, Peters this week promised to revive the country s forestry sector, which has been a hot topic in his remote home region in the country s far north. Peters plans to create state-owned forests and a quota system to favor local processors over those exporting logs to overseas, largely to China. | 1 |
3,591 | House Democrats question if Valeant is withholding records | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats on a powerful U.S. congressional panel are questioning whether Canada-based Valeant Pharmaceuticals may be wrongfully withholding documents in connection with its ongoing probe into sky-rocketing drug prices, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters on Tuesday. The memo, which was sent to Democratic members of the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform from the staff of its top Democrat Elijah Cummings, reveals that Valeant previously withheld readily available analyst reports prepared by banks such as Goldman Sachs, saying they were protected by attorney-client privilege. The memo says it also raises questions about other documents that are still being withheld, saying some of these “were not drafted by attorneys and do not include communications with attorneys.” A spokeswoman for Valeant denied that the company has done anything wrong, saying it has already provided more than 78,000 pages of documents and will continue cooperating. “We continue to discuss with the committee the issue of privileged documents, but any suggestion that we have withheld documents inappropriately is incorrect,” Laurie Little said in a statement. The April 26 memo comes just one day before three of Valeant’s top executives are slated to appear before a different U.S. Senate panel that is also investigating high drug prices. The company’s outgoing CEO Michael Pearson will be testifying before the Senate Special Committee on Aging late Wednesday afternoon, along with activist investor William Ackman, a majority shareholder and board member, and Howard Schiller, a director and former chief financial officer. Their appearance before Congress comes at an awkward and difficult time for the company, which is under fire from its shareholders and facing a number of ongoing government investigations into drug pricing and distribution, accounting and disclosures, and antitrust matters. Last month, the company announced that Pearson would be stepping down and that Ackman would be joining its board, after a board committee probe into the company’s dealings with specialty pharmacy Philidor RX Services uncovered accounting problems dating back to December 2014. The company said it would restate its earnings and delay filing its annual report, opening the door to a possible default on its $30 billion debt. The company has blamed some of the accounting problems on Schiller, and asked him to step down from his board seat. Schiller has refused to do so, and has denied any wrongdoing through his attorney. Valeant plans to file its annual report on April 29, two days after the hearing. Wednesday’s hearing will be primarily focused on Valeant’s drastic price increases for two of its heart drugs. The committee previously planned to vote to hold Pearson in contempt for failing to be deposed, but backed down after he agreed to be interviewed April 18. | 1 |
3,592 | Exclusive: Former Egyptian premier Shafiq says intends to run in 2018 election | CAIRO (Reuters) - Former Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq, an ex-air force pilot and former presidential candidate, said on Wednesday he intended to run in the presidential election early next year and would return to Cairo in the coming days . But Shafiq later told pan-Arab TV channel Al Jazeera that the United Arab Emirates, a close ally of Egypt s where he is currently living, had barred him from traveling. I was surprised that I was prevented from leaving the UAE for reasons I do not understand, Shafiq said, adding that he thanked the UAE for its hospitality but wished to depart. Anwar Gargash, the UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, denied on his official Twitter account that any obstacles had been placed to his travel, saying the UAE hosted him despite strong reservations about some of his positions . In a video declaration sent earlier to Reuters as well as a telephoned statement, Shafiq said he would run in the election planned for around April, when President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is widely expected to seek a second term. I m honored to announce my will to run in the upcoming presidential elections in Egypt as a choice to be president of the country for the next four years, he said in the statement from the UAE in which he highlighted his time in the air force. Shafiq would be among a small number of candidates to announce their intentions for 2018. He lost against Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in the first presidential election after Egypt s 2011 uprising toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak. Sisi, who as a military commander led the army s ousting of Mursi in 2013 before his own landslide election a year later, has yet to announce whether he will run again. He says he will follow the will of the people. His supporters regard Sisi as the key to stability following the prolonged, violent upheaval that followed the 2011 revolt. His government is fighting a stubborn Islamist militancy in the North Sinai and has also enacted painful austerity reforms over the last year that critics say have dented his popularity. After his defeat, Shafiq fled overseas. He formed a political party and led it from abroad but it failed to make significant gains in a 2015 parliamentary election. Shafiq has faced various corruption charges but was either acquitted or had cases against him dropped in most instances. A year ago, his lawyer said he was removed from airport watchlists, clearing his way to return home. | 1 |
3,593 | no title | woman eaten alive by daughters dogs german shepherds reportedly responsible for mauling death published min ago
foxny new york inside edition a yearold woman was found dead in the basement of her new york home by her devastated daughter who told authorities her dogs may have eaten her mother a police source told inside edition
officers responding to a call for an unconscious and unresponsive woman found the body of daisie bradshaw in her staten island home at about am tuesday the nypd said
the victim who was found beaten and bruised was pronounced dead at the scene officials said | 1 |
3,594 | Ethiopian ex-official gets Dutch life sentence for war crimes | THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Dutch judges jailed a onetime aide to Ethiopia s former communist ruler Mengistu Haile Mariam for life on Friday for war crimes carried out during Ethiopia s Red Terror purges of the 1970s, including the execution of 75 prisoners. Eshetu Alemu, 63, was found guilty at his trial in the Hague of ordering the 1978 killing of camp detainees - many of them under 18 years of age - who were taken from their cells and strangled with ropes in a church. In the hearings held under Dutch universal jurisdiction, Alemu, a former Mengistu regional representative, was convicted of all charges brought by prosecutors, including arbitrary detention, inhumane treatment, torture and mass murder. The fact that the majority of victims were children younger than 18 makes the crimes all the more cruel, said presiding judge Mariette Renckens. Alemu came to the Netherlands as an asylum seeker in 1990 and had been in custody since 2015. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges but was not present when the verdict was read out. Negus Gebeyehu, a prisoner in a camp under Alemu s control, gave an emotional speech in the Hague court following the verdict as other victims cheered. Justice has been done for Ethiopia, he said. I was imprisoned as a young man and I survived. This is also the day for us to forgive. An Ethiopian court had sentenced Alemu to death in absentia in 2007 for his role in the Red Terror , which Mengistu s communist military junta conducted after Ethiopian emperor, Haile Selassie, was ousted in 1974. Mengistu was found guilty in absentia of genocide in the same trial in 2007, where he and top members of his military government were accused of killing thousands during his 17-year rule. Today s verdict shows perpetrators that the Netherlands will not be a safe haven, Jirko Patist of the national prosecutor s office said. The Netherlands is one of the European countries that has established an international crimes prosecution unit to prosecute alleged war criminals residing in the Netherlands even if their crimes were committed abroad. | 1 |
3,595 | us charges over indiabased scam involving victims | breitbart october
a syrian christian mother shared her story of escaping the islamic state terrorist group in a suburb of damascus while losing her son george after he refused to identify himself to the terrorists by a muslim name
the woman alice assaf said that she had heard that her son who was beaten and shot to death was spared a much worse fate being baked in the ovens of the local bakery or kneaded to death in the bakerys industrialsized mixer
assaf told her story to roads of success a human rights ngo with a focus on the rights of women and christians in the middle east the group has provided testimony of the plight of christians and yazidis persecuted by the islamic state to the house foreign relations committee and regularly publishes video interviews with isis attack survivors
the christian post picked up the story and video interview in which assaf narrates the final days of her yearolds life this article was posted wednesday october at am share this article | 1 |
3,596 | Puerto Rico bill expected soon, House Democratic leader says | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday said she expects legislation to help tackle Puerto Rico’s ongoing financial crisis to come soon and that lawmakers will hopefully act on it quickly. “We should have a bill pretty soon. And I think the Republicans are acting in good faith on this,” Pelosi, the chamber’s minority leader, told reporters. The U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to leave for a recess on Wednesday. “It would be my hope that we would see something before we leave here, that would be marked up as soon as we come back and then taken to the floor and ... sent to the Senate,” she added. | 1 |
3,597 | Trump Considers ‘Terminating NAFTA’ With Executive Order (DETAILS) | Donald Trump is reportedly considering an executive order that would pull the United States out of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) unless they are willing to renegotiate with him for a better deal.This is what Trump had to say about NAFTA during his recent word salad of an interview with the Associated Press earlier this week.AP: What about NAFTA? What s the plan on NAFTA?TRUMP: What would you like to know?AP: I would like to know what your plan is in terms of renegotiating.TRUMP: I am very upset with NAFTA. I think NAFTA has been a catastrophic trade deal for the United States, trading agreement for the United States. It hurts us with Canada, and it hurts us with Mexico. Most people don t even think of NAFTA in terms of Canada. You saw what happened yesterday in my statements, because if you look at the dairy farmers in Wisconsin and upstate New York, they are getting killed by NAFTA.AP: Is your plan still, though, to renegotiate the whole deal?TRUMP: I am going to either renegotiate it or I am going to terminate it.AP: Termination is still on the table.TRUMP: Absolutely. If they don t treat fairly, I am terminating NAFTA.AP: What s a timeline for that decision?TRUMP: It s a six-month termination clause, I have the right to do it, it s a six-month clause.CNN reported today that two senior administration officials had confirmed that Trump is debating withdrawing the U.S. from NAFTA through an executive order. The White House is currently mulling an executive order declaring the US intent to withdraw from NAFTA, a move that could trigger a renegotiation of the trade pact rather than outright withdrawal, the officials told CNN.This isn t a new stance for Trump, who railed against NAFTA throughout his campaign. In June, Trump declared that NAFTA was the worst trade deal in the history of this country. I m going to tell our NAFTA partners that I intend to immediately renegotiate the terms of that agreement to get a better deal by a lot, not just a little, by a lot for our workers. And if they don t agree to a renegotiation, which they might not, because they re so used to having their own way not with Trump, they won t have their own way then I will submit under Article 2205 of the NAFTA agreement that America intends to withdraw from the deal, Trump declared to his rabid supporters last summer.Featured image via Mark Wilson/Getty Images | 0 |
3,598 | Trump call for immigration legislation sparks Republican interest | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s call to the U.S. Congress to pass protections for some undocumented immigrants is stirring interest among his fellow Republicans in Congress, despite the party’s longstanding divisions over immigration that were on display on Wednesday. Trump, who fashioned his 2016 presidential campaign around a pledge to clamp down on illegal immigration, has now turned the political landscape on its head. On Tuesday, he angered business groups and Democrats with his announcement that he was terminating former President Barack Obama’s executive order protecting from deportation nearly 800,000 immigrants, known as Dreamers, who were illegally brought to the United States as children. But he also urged legislative efforts to permanently protect those youth, despite long-held opposition from some of the most conservative members of the Republican Party who comprise his base of supporters. Democrats have long been united around major elements of a comprehensive immigration bill, while Republicans have been divided over whether to embrace anything beyond narrow tweaks of current law. “My challenge to the president,” said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, is to help Congress get legislation passed within Trump’s six-month deadline. “Work the phones, try to find a consensus.” Republican lawmakers on Wednesday touted a slew of competing ideas on immigration that could lure votes from many pockets of the party but might doom any bill by alienating Democrats or conservative Republicans. One of Trump’s most vocal supporters in Congress, Republican Representative Chris Collins, wasted no time in introducing legislation on Tuesday to protect Dreamers. In an interview on Wednesday he went further, calling for comprehensive moves to put the 11 million undocumented people living in the United States on a pathway to citizenship if they qualify. “Our dairy farmers need it, our crop farmers, the hoteliers, the restaurateurs, the families need it, the kids need it,” Collins said of firms that employ foreign workers and the millions of undocumented. Representative Pete Sessions, a senior Republican who chairs the powerful House Rules Committee, said he favors allowing undocumented immigrants to apply for a “guest worker” program. But he said he would not support legislation that ultimately grants them citizenship - a major stumbling block for immigration advocacy groups, Democrats and some Republicans. Attorney General Jeff Sessions also said Republicans are not fully on board yet with effort. Upon leaving a closed-door meeting of House Republicans, he was asked whether immigration legislation might emerge in early 2018. “I think that there’s no decision. We listened carefully,” he said. Indeed, conservative Republican Representative Mike Burgess quipped, “We’ve got other things that are probably more pressing” than addressing the Dreamers now. The immigration issue has vexed Congress for years, raising doubts about whether Trump and a Republican Congress could build a consensus around legislation. “It may be difficult for Republicans to address the DACA (Obama’s executive order) issue within the six-month time frame, because that’s exactly when many of them are entering primary season, where candidates could outflank them on the right calling them weak on immigration,” said Ron Bonjean, a political strategist who previously worked for House and Senate Republican leaders. Meanwhile, Senator Tom Cotton wants to reduce the number of legal immigrants allowed into the United States, a move that Democratic Senator Dick Durbin called “problematic,” especially amid some Republican opposition. In the meantime, lawmakers are expected to fine-tune proposals to help farmers get easier access to temporary foreign workers, just as others work to help their home-state high-tech industries get more visas for skilled immigrants. More border security steps are likely too, although there is only weak support for Trump’s southwestern border wall. Those measures could help House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell patch together the votes that would be needed - if they are so inclined. If the effort sputters, as it has so many times in the past, Republican Representative Mike Coffman has a Plan B at the ready: a three-year pause in deporting qualified Dreamers to give Congress yet more time to come up with a permanent fix. | 1 |
3,599 | Pennsylvania bans bias against transgender people | (Reuters) - Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf signed two anti-discrimination executive orders on Thursday aimed at safeguarding rights of transgender people, countering efforts by other states forcing them to use public bathrooms that match their gender at birth. One order bans the state from discriminating against any employee or job applicant based on a host of criteria including “gender expression or identity.” It also bans discrimination based on race, color, religious creed, ancestry, union membership, age, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, AIDS or HIV status, or disability. The second seeks to eliminate discrimination in contracting, requiring any company doing business with the state to eliminate bias in hiring and promotion. | 1 |
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