| Ocasio-Cortez throws her support to Bernie Sanders Posted: 19 Oct 2019 11:57 AM PDT  At a rally Saturday in Queens, N.Y., Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made her endorsement of Sen. Bernie Sanders for president official.
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| Boris Johnson Furious as Parliament Refuses to Be Bounced Into Brexit Deal Posted: 19 Oct 2019 07:07 AM PDT  REUTERSLONDON—Boris Johnson was left raging on Saturday as lawmakers forced the prime minister to seek yet another Brexit delay from the European Union. The extremely rare parliamentary vote taken on a Saturday did not reject Johnson's compromise deal with the EU outright, it merely demanded more time for the deal to be examined and inserted an additional failsafe to stop Britain from slipping out of the EU without an agreed deal on Halloween.No. 10 was furious because Johnson has repeatedly promised to leave the EU by October 31, and that will now become more difficult. Brexit campaign insiders lamented the destruction of Johnson's "head of steam," and an end to the momentum created by his unlikely success in securing a deal from Europe. After another vote that went against Johnson last month, the prime minister is now legally mandated to write to the EU asking for an extension to January 31. The government formally asked for the extension Saturday night, but also sent a letter from Johnson arguing against the delay.EU Council President Donald Tusk said in a tweet that he had received the request. "I will now start consulting EU leaders on how to react," he said.Johnson is expected to bring the withdrawal legislation to the floor of the House of Commons early next week, so he may only have to wait a few days to secure victory but Labour opponents—and nervous No. 10 insiders—believe that potential support for the deal may ebb away once lawmakers get the chance to fully examine the fineprint.Just two days after Johnson was back-slapping European counterparts and clasping hands with fellow leaders, his precarious grip on power was underlined once again in a vote that went against him by 322 to 306.In response, Johnson stood up and said he would refuse to "negotiate" a further extension with the EU. He stopped short of saying he would refuse to comply with the law and send the extension letter, although he reiterated his hopes that the EU would not immediately grant an extension. "I don't think they'll be attracted by delay," he said.As lawmakers continued to debate the result, Johnson sat slumped on the frontbench shaking his head. It was a sharp contrast to his mood two days earlier. Tickled pink with the deal he had unexpectedly secured from the EU, Johnson had sought to rush back to Westminster and bounce parliament into agreeing. One of his own long-term colleagues, Sir Oliver Letwin, had other ideas. Letwin is a veteran Conservative right-winger who has been in the heart of Conservative thinking for decades. He was a member of Margaret Thatcher's Downing Street policy unit in the 1980s and entrusted by David Cameron to write the Tory manifesto in 2010.He was kicked out of the party last month by Johnson after voting to ensure there wouldn't be a No Deal Brexit. He exacted his revenge on Saturday by wrecking Johnson's chance for a victorious homecoming. Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Let jihadists return home, French anti-terror magistrate urges Posted: 20 Oct 2019 04:39 AM PDT  The refusal of the French government to take back Islamic State fighters from Syria could fuel a new jihadist recruitment drive in France, threatening public safety, a leading anti-terrorism investigator has told AFP. David De Pas, coordinator of France's 12 anti-terrorism examining magistrates, said that it would be "better to know that these people are in the care of the judiciary" in France "than let them roam free". Turkey's offensive against Kurdish militia in northeast Syria has sparked fears that some of the 12,000 jihadists, including thousands of foreigners, being held in Syrian Kurdish prisons could escape.
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| Bulletproof memorial to Mississippi civil rights icon Emmett Till replaces vandalized sign Posted: 20 Oct 2019 09:44 AM PDT  A new, 500-pound reinforced steel memorial honoring slain civil rights icon Emmett Till was dedicated in Mississippi. Past signs were vandalized.
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| Thomas D’Alesandro III, Pelosi's brother and former Baltimore mayor, dies at 90 Posted: 20 Oct 2019 12:06 PM PDT  Thomas D'Alesandro III, a former mayor of Baltimore and the brother of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, died Sunday at 90. The Baltimore Sun reported D'Alesandro died in his North Baltimore home of complications from a stroke. Affectionately called "Young Tommy," D'Alesandro served as Baltimore's mayor for one term, from 1967 to 1971.
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| US troops leave northern Syria for Iraq despite Trump's claims they are returning 'home' Posted: 20 Oct 2019 12:08 PM PDT  US forces began withdrawing from their largest base in northern Syria on Sunday after the Pentagon chief confirmed that nearly 1,000 troops would be relocated to "help defend Iraq" against Isil's re-emergence. As President Donald Trump claimed that he was "bringing soldiers home", he was contradicted by his defence secretary, Mark Esper, who said the troops were instead headed for Syria's neighbour to join an existing US force of 5,000. "The current game plan is for those forces to re-position into western Iraq," Mr Esper said late on Saturday, not ruling out that they would conduct counterterrorism missions from Iraq into Syria. The timeframe for the transfer to be completed was "weeks, not days," he added. By Sunday afternoon, the relocation had begun, with a first convoy of more than 70 US armoured vehicles escorted by helicopters rumbling out of the Sarrin base in northern Syria and past the town of Tal Tamr. The withdrawal brings to a close America's military presence in northern Syria and effectively abandons its ally, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, to Turkish firepower. Ankara began its cross-border attack on October 9 with the goal of pushing back Kurdish YPG fighters from its border and establishing a Turkish-controlled zone to which it could eventually return Syrian refugees. The operation unleashed chaos across a part of Syria that has long been relatively stable. As the SDF came under pressure from the Turkish offensive, non-combat duties such as the policing of Isil detainees were set aside, enabling large-scale escapes of Isil members and families. Running out of allies, the Kurds made a previously unthinkable deal with Damascus last week, allowing Syrian troops into areas under their control in exchange for protection from the Turkish attack. A five-day US-brokered ceasefire, announced on Thursday and only unevenly implemented, aimed to allow Kurdish forces to withdraw from a 120-km (70-mile) strip of land that runs along the Turkish border. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to restart the offensive if Kurdish fighters fail to pull out. A sticking point has been the besieged border town of Ras al-Ain, held by the Kurds but located in the middle of a future Turkish-controlled border zone. On Sunday, however, the Turkish defence ministry said that the SDF forces there had withdrawn, a move also confirmed by the Kurdish group. In other parts of northern Syria, fighting continued as Turkish warplanes and a motley crew of Turkish-backed troops worked to oust Kurds from long-held positions along the Turkey-Syria border. Both sides have accused the other of violating the ceasefire, and yesterday Turkey's defence ministry alleged that one of its soldiers had been killed by Kurdish forces in the Tal Abyad border area. The dynamics of the conflict's latest permutation are complex, with the US brokering a ceasefire between its NATO ally and former proxy even as it rolled out of the battlefield to continue the same fight from another front. The Turkish defence ministry asserted on Sunday that "there are absolutely no impediments to the withdrawal" of Kurdish forces and that "the activities of exiting and evacuation from the region are firmly coordinated with the US counterparts". But Mr Trump's focus appears to be less on the ceasefire and more on the withdrawal of US troops from Syria and the limiting of America's role there. After saying last week it was "time to bring our soldiers back home", he continued to claim they were returning to the United States despite being contradicted by Mr Esper. On Sunday, Mr Trump referred to his defence secretary on Twitter as "Mark Esperanto" and added that "USA soldiers are not in combat or ceasefire zones. We have secured the Oil. Bringing soldiers home!" The president's bizarre comment followed a high-level visit to Jordan led by Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic US House speaker, for discussions on the "deepening crisis" in Syria.
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| Chile protests: At least eight people killed during riots in Santiago Posted: 20 Oct 2019 12:31 PM PDT  At least eight people have been killed in Chile during a second day of protests and rioting in the South American nation.Three people were left dead after a looted building was set ablaze, the governor of Santiago, the country's capital, said.
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| School apologizes after photo showing students with cardboard boxes over their heads during exam goes viral Posted: 20 Oct 2019 09:41 AM PDT  An school in India has issued an apology after a bizarre image of students wearing cardboard boxes on their heads went viral. The images were taken during a chemistry exam at Bhagat Pre-University College in the town of Haveri.
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| Rudy Giuliani reportedly tried to get a visa for a former Ukrainian prosecutor ousted with the help of Joe Biden Posted: 19 Oct 2019 08:09 AM PDT ![Rudy Giuliani reportedly tried to get a visa for a former Ukrainian prosecutor ousted with the help of Joe Biden]( "Rudy Giuliani reportedly tried to get a visa for a former Ukrainian prosecutor ousted with the help of Joe Biden") President Trump's personal lawyer and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani reportedly attempted to secure a visa for former Ukraine prosecutor Viktor Shokin, CNN reported Friday.George Kent, the deputy assistant of state for European and Eurasian affairs, reportedly told congressional investigators that Giuliani asked both the State Department and the White House for a visa, two people familiar with his closed-door deposition earlier this week said. The State Department reportedly objected to the request and refused to grant the visa, which led Giuliani to seek help from the White House. It's unclear what the response was there, but Shokin never did receive a visa. CNN notes that the revelation appears to reveal that Giuliani's attempts to gather information about Democrats went further than previously understood.Shokin was pushed out of his position in 2016 when several world leaders, including former Vice President Joe Biden, voiced concerns that Shokin was not pursuing corruption cases in Ukraine. Giuliani has previously said he wanted to interview Shokin because he promised to reveal information about Democrats' actions in Ukraine. Giuliani has alleged that Biden was trying to stop investigations to protect his son, Hunter, who was sitting on the board of a Ukrainian gas company at the time, though there is no evidence of wrongdoing on either of the Bidens' part. Read more at CNN and NBC News.
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| Researchers find second warship from WWII Battle of Midway Posted: 20 Oct 2019 03:25 PM PDT  A crew of deep-sea explorers and historians looking for lost World War II warships have found a second Japanese aircraft carrier that went down in the historic Battle of Midway. Vulcan Inc. director of undersea operations Rob Kraft said a review of sonar data captured Sunday shows what could be either the Japanese carrier Akagi or the Soryu resting in nearly 18,000 feet (5,490 meters) of water in the Pacific Ocean more than 1,300 miles (2,090 kilometers) northwest of Pearl Harbor. To confirm exactly which ship they've found the crew will deploy the AUV for another eight-hour mission where it will capture high-resolution sonar images of the site.
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| Egypt unveils biggest ancient coffin find in over a century Posted: 19 Oct 2019 05:53 AM PDT ![Egypt unveils biggest ancient coffin find in over a century]( "Egypt unveils biggest ancient coffin find in over a century") Egypt on Saturday unveiled the details of 30 ancient wooden coffins with mummies inside discovered in the southern city of Luxor in the biggest find of its kind in more than a century. A team of Egyptian archaeologists discovered a "distinctive group of 30 coloured wooden coffins for men, women and children" in a cache at Al-Asasif cemetery on Luxor's west bank, the Ministry of Antiquities said in a statement on Saturday. "It is the first large human coffin cache ever discovered since the end of the 19th century," the Egyptian Antiquities Minister Khaled El-Enany was quoted as saying during a ceremony in Luxor.
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| 'Totally gross': Susan Rice hits back at Trump after he criticizes her Syria policy Posted: 19 Oct 2019 06:47 AM PDT  Former Obama administration official Susan Rice hit back at Trump after he criticized her on Twitter.
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| Burmese fishermen 'faint' after mistaking $20 million of floating crystal meth for natural deodorant Posted: 20 Oct 2019 07:18 AM PDT  Sacks of crystal meth scooped from the sea by Burmese fishermen who mistook it for a deodorant substance had a street value of $20 million (£15.4m), an official said on Sunday, in a country believed to be the world's largest methamphetamine producer. The accidental drug haul off Burma's coastal Ayeyarwady region occurred when fishermen spotted a total of 23 sacks floating in the Andaman Sea on Wednesday. Each one contained plastic-wrapped bags labelled as Chinese green tea - packaging commonly used by Southeast Asian crime gangs to smuggle crystal meth to far-flung destinations including Japan, South Korea and Australia. Locals were mystified by the crystallised substance in the sacks, Zaw Win, a local official of the National League for Democracy party who assisted the fishermen and police, told AFP. At first, they assumed it was a natural deodorant chemical known as potassium alum, which is widely used in Burma. "So they burned it, and some of them almost fainted," he said. They informed the police, who on Thursday combed a beach and found an additional two sacks of the same substance - bringing the total to 691 kilogrammes (1,500 pounds) which would be worth about $20.2 million (£15.6m), Zaw Win said. "In my entire life and my parents' lifetime, we have never seen drugs floating in the ocean before," he said. The massive haul was sent on Sunday to Pyapon district police, who declined to comment on it. Burma's multi-billion-dollar drug industry is centred in eastern Shan state, whose poppy-covered hills are ideal cover for illicit production labs. Made-in-Burma crystal meth - better known as ice - is smuggled out of the country to more lucrative markets using routes carved out by narco gangs through Laos, Thailand and Cambodia. A study by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says that Southeast Asia's crime groups are netting more than $60 billion a year - a conservative estimate, according to experts - thanks to a sophisticated smuggling and money-laundering operation. In March, Burma authorities seized more than 1,700 kilogrammes of crystal meth worth nearly $29 million, which police said at the time was their biggest drug haul this year.
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| Pervasive Violence in 20th Week of Protests: Hong Kong Update Posted: 20 Oct 2019 07:57 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Hong Kong protesters set off fires and vandalized subway stations, banks and stores as another weekend of demonstrations descended into destruction and violence.Organizers estimated at least 350,000 people took part in an unauthorized march that failed to get approval. Police used tear gas and water cannons to clear demonstrators who lingered to cause damage after the rally ended, and said it accidentally sprayed dyed water at the entrance of a mosque while trying to disperse protesters.Protesters are seeking to keep the pressure on Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam after more than four months of demonstrations. Lam was twice shouted down in the city's legislature last week by opposition lawmakers as she discussed her annual policy address.The protests began in opposition to Lam's since-scrapped bill allowing extraditions to mainland China and have expanded to include calls for greater democracy and an independent inquiry. The unrest has turned increasingly violent, with frequent clashes between protesters and police.Here's the latest (all times local):Xiaomi store fire (9 p.m.)A store of Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp. was set on fire, while the South China Morning Post reported a blaze at a branch of medicine shop Tong Ren Tang, which belongs to a mainland group. Firefighters were also seen putting out fires at an outlet of snack shop Best Mart 360, the paper said.Kowloon Mosque (8:30 p.m.)Police said it was "most unfortunate" that its dispersal operation of protesters caused an "unintended impact" of colored water being sprayed into the compound of Kowloon Mosque. Police contacted the mosque's religious leader and other Muslim community chiefs to clarify the incident, according to a statement.Taiwan murder suspect (8:20 p.m.)Hong Kong's government said Chan Tong-kai, a Hong Kong man who's been accused of killing his pregnant girlfriend during a 2018 Valentine's Day trip to Taiwan, made the decision to surrender himself to Taipei "out of his own free will." Chan is currently imprisoned in Hong Kong for money laundering, and is about to be released, according to a statement."We have conveyed to Taiwan clearly that we will be pleased to provide the necessary and legally feasible assistance to Taiwan," according to the statement. "Should Taiwan raise any request for evidence in processing Chan's surrender case, we will positively assist in accordance with our law."Lam to visit Japan (5 p.m.)Lam will leave for Tokyo on Monday to attend the enthronement ceremony of Emperor Naruhito, according to a statement from her office. She will return Tuesday evening.Two arrested (4:15 p.m.)Police arrested two men in Tai Po for alleged possession of offensive weapons. The suspects are aged 31 and 34, the police said in a briefing. Officers found 42 petrol bombs, materials for explosives and masks, among other things, they said.Water cannon deployed (4 p.m.)A police water cannon sprayed blue-dyed liquid at protesters as it drove down Nathan Road, the main thoroughfare through districts of Kowloon. Fire fighters were seen putting out blazing barricades in streets and fires in subway stations and banks.Protesters continued to try block off roads and hurled petrol bombs as police approached. Mobs vandalized stores in the area. They broke into one in Yau Ma Tei and dumped its merchandise on the floor. At least seven MTR stations were shut in Kowloon.Subway fires (3:15 p.m.)Protesters set fires in at least two subway-station entrances in Kowloon after the march reached its destination. Activists also barricaded roads and occupied carriageways. Police fired numerous rounds of tear gas to clear the crowds of demonstrators.MTR Corp., the city's rail operator, closed three stations -- Mong Kok, Yau Ma Tei and East Tsim Sha Tsui -- after attacks on the facilities.March kicks off (1:30 p.m.)Thousands of people poured into the streets of the busy Tsim Sha Tsui shopping district in a march to West Kowloon's high-speed rail station to mainland China, about 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) away.Some marchers also defied a law prohibiting face masks as they made their way peacefully through the streets. Shopkeepers and business owners stood outside the iconic Chungking Mansions handing out bottled water to protesters.Police called on the public to leave the area immediately. Protesters are blocking carriageways and are taking part in an unauthorized assembly, police said in a statement.MTR canceled 16 high-speed trains to and from the mainland on Sunday because of signal failure, RTHK reported.The march followed a relatively peaceful day Saturday where the main event was a prayer gathering in Central that drew a couple of thousand people.Man arrested after stabbing (Sunday 6 a.m.)Police said they arrested a 22-year-old man for allegedly stabbing a teenager near a subway station in Tai Po on Saturday.The 19-year-old victim was slashed across the neck and stabbed in the abdomen by a so-called Lennon Tunnel while he was handing out leaflets, Radio Television Hong Kong reported.There was no dispute between the two, Lee, the victim's friend said, according to RTHK. The attacker said to the victim: it's you "guys turning Hong Kong into a mess," RTHK quoted Lee as saying."The police strongly condemn any acts of violence. Regardless of the motives or background, we will take every case seriously and carry out investigation actively," the police said in the statement.March ban upheld (2:30 p.m.)Hong Kong protesters lost an appeal against the police ban of their planned march on Sunday through Tsim Sha Tsui on concern about violence, RTHK reported.On Friday night protesters formed human chains citywide, with everyone covering their faces in some way in defiance of the mask ban. People masqueraded as Disney characters, animals and super heroes, but the most popular mask was one of China President Xi Jinping. In Tsim Sha Tsui a long line of protesters linked hands, all wearing a facade of Xi's smiling face.Lam may reshuffle ExCo (1 p.m.)Lam said she would consider reorganizing the city's Executive Council, its de facto Cabinet, but would wait until protests had ended.The beleaguered leader of Hong Kong said on an RTHK radio program that she doesn't "blindly" support the actions of each officer but fully supports the force in enforcing the law. She urged people to wait for a report from Independent Police Complaints Council into the recent clashes, RTHK said. Lam again rejected calls for an independent inquiry into police brutality, the latest coming from Chinese University's vice-chancellor, Rocky Tuan.Taiwan gets letter (10:45 a.m.)Taiwan's Criminal Investigation Bureau confirmed it had received a letter from the Hong Kong police offering assistance in the case of Chan Tong-kai, Central News Agency reported.There is no precedent for the cooperation and the Taiwan bureau will follow up with relevant departments for discussion, CNA reported.Homicide suspect to surrender himself to Taiwan (11:28 p.m.)Hong Kong's Chief Executive received a letter Friday from Chan Tong-kai, saying that he'd decided to surrender himself to Taiwan, according to a statement on the website of Hong Kong's government.Chan "requested the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government to assist him in making the relevant arrangement," according to the statement.Hong Kong newspaper Sing Tao Daily reported earlier on Friday, citing a person it didn't identify, that Chan made the decision after consulting with a pastor.\--With assistance from Dominic Lau.To contact the reporters on this story: Aaron Mc Nicholas in Hong Kong at amcnicholas2@bloomberg.net;Iain Marlow in Hong Kong at imarlow1@bloomberg.net;Venus Feng in Hong Kong at vfeng7@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Brendan Scott at bscott66@bloomberg.net, Stanley James, Shamim AdamFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| William Barr's speech on religious freedom alarms liberal Catholics Posted: 20 Oct 2019 08:05 AM PDT  Prominent liberal Catholics have warned that the U.S. attorney general's devout Catholic faith threatens the separation of church and state, after William Barr delivered a speech on religious freedom in which he warned that "militant secularists" were behind a "campaign to destroy the traditional moral order."
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| Detroit-area men who sent millions to Yemen spared prison Posted: 20 Oct 2019 08:22 AM PDT  A group of Detroit-area men opened bank accounts to move millions of dollars to Yemen, their war-torn native country. One by one, U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn declined to send them to prison, despite guidelines that call for a few years or more behind bars. The Detroit area is believed to have the highest U.S. population of Yemenis, a demographic that has risen amid war in Yemen that has killed tens of thousands of people and left millions more with food and health care shortages.
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| Australian newspapers unite in protest against media restrictions Posted: 20 Oct 2019 06:07 AM PDT ![Australian newspapers unite in protest against media restrictions]( "Australian newspapers unite in protest against media restrictions") Australia's biggest newspapers were expected to run front pages on Monday made up to appear heavily redacted to protest against recent legislation that restricts press freedoms, a rare show of unity by the usually tribal media industry. Mastheads from the domestic unit of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, Australian Financial Review publisher Nine Entertainment and the website of the government-funded Australian Broadcasting Corp. (ABC) were expected to show current news stories with most of the words blacked out. The protest was designed to put public pressure on the government to exempt journalists from laws restricting access to sensitive information, enact a properly functioning freedom of information system, and raise the benchmark for defamation lawsuits.
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| Trump misspells his defence secretary’s name in rambling rant about securing oil in Syria Posted: 20 Oct 2019 06:22 AM PDT  Donald Trump has misspelled his defence secretary's name while discussing his controversial decision to withdraw US troops from northern Syria.The US president tried to quote Mark Esper in a tweet, but instead he referred to him as "Mark Esperanto".
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| Deadly protests in Guinea as Russia calls for change of rules to keep despot in power Posted: 19 Oct 2019 07:54 AM PDT  When police shot dead nine pro-democracy protesters in Guinea this week, Western embassies quietly shared their misgivings with the country's president, Alpha Conde. International human rights groups were more unequivocal. François Patuel of Amnesty International denounced "a shameful attempt by Guinean authorities to stifle dissent by any means necessary". But one major power seemed unperturbed. Mr Conde's ruthless response to protests against his apparent efforts to cling to power not only suited Russia, it seems probable that they were tacitly endorsed by the Kremlin. On Wednesday, Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, will host leaders from 35 African states at a summit in the Black Sea resort of Sochi as he seeks to consolidate Moscow's growing influence in the world's poorest continent. Russia may lack the heft of its rivals, able neither to match the West in aid nor China in terms of infrastructure financing, but it does have other resources with which to woo African leaders, particularly those of a more authoritarian bent. Vladimir Putin is looking to expand Russian influence Not only has Russia sold arms to 18 African states over the past decade, its mercenaries have fanned out across the continent to offer protection and other services to receptive governments. "Political technologists" have also allegedly mounted disinformation campaigns in several recent African elections. In return, Russia has won concessions to mine minerals and secured backing from African delegates at the United Nations. Russia's blossoming relationship with Mr Conde is an example of just how successful its muscular Africa policy can be. Guineans are meant to elect a new president next year. Having served two five-year terms, Mr Conde is constitutionally barred from standing again, but has made it increasingly clear that he is not yet ready to surrender the presidency. At least four people have been killed in Guinea's capital after police fired tear gas and bullets Monday to disperse thousands of opposition supporters Credit: AP To do so, Guinea will need an entirely new constitution, plans for which have already been advanced by Mr Conde's ruling party. The opposition has accused the president of seeking to ease its path by stacking the constitutional court, taming the electoral commission and delaying parliamentary elections by more than a year to protect his narrow legislative majority. Russia has openly given its cover to Mr Conde's efforts. In an extraordinary intervention, brazen even by the Kremlin's standards, Russia's ambassador, made a televised address on New Year's Eve backing a constitutional change. Alexander Bregadze told Guineans they would be mad to allow the "legendary" Mr Conde to step down, saying: "Do you know many countries in Africa that do better? Do you know many presidents in Africa who do better?" "It's constitutions that adapt to reality, not reality that adapts to constitutions." Such naked campaigning from a diplomat is unusual. But Russia has a vital relationship to nurture. Guinea holds the world's largest reserves of bauxite, the ore that is refined and smelted to produce aluminium. The Russian firm Rusal, the world's largest aluminium producer outside Russia, sources more than a quarter of its bauxite from Guinea. Guinea's importance to Russia grew immeasurably last year after the United States imposed sanctions on Rusal and its co-owner, the oligarch and close Putin ally Oleg Deripaska. Sanctions have since been lifted on Rusal but not on Mr Deripaska. Young people block the road as they protest against a possible third term of President Alpha Conde on October 16, 2019, in Conakry Credit: AFP The significance of the relationship was underscored when Mr Bregadze stepped down as ambassador in May to head Rusal's operations in Guinea. Other Russian firms also have mineral interests in Guinea. Tellingly, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a shadowy Kremlin associate linked to mercenary and mining outfits in Africa, is understood to have set up operations in Guinea. Mr Putin has wooed President Conde, too, twice inviting him to Moscow for talks. Guinea's opposition has denounced what it says is Russian interference. Protesters last week made their feelings clear by blockading a Rusal-owned railway line used to transport bauxite. Their anger is likely to achieve little. Emboldened by Russian backing, Mr Conde has only cracked down harder. Last week, nine senior opposition figures were charged with insurrection. They face five years in prison. Given everything it has invested in Mr Conde, Russia cannot risk the opposition coming to power. When Mr Putin meets his guest in Sochi, he is likely to encourage him to persist with repression.
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| Lost hiker rescued in Oregon snowstorm: 'I wouldn’t have survived another night' Posted: 19 Oct 2019 06:27 PM PDT  Lost in a fierce snowstorm on the Pacific Crest Trail in Oregon, hiker Robb Campbell made a desperate call for help.
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| Firebrand cleric green-lights fresh protests in Iraq Posted: 20 Oct 2019 06:08 AM PDT  Influential Iraqi Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr has given his supporters the green light to resume anti-government protests, after the movement was interrupted following a deadly crackdown. Protests shook Iraq for six days from October 1, with young Iraqis denouncing corruption and demanding jobs and services before calling for the downfall of the government. Calls have been made on social media for fresh rallies on Friday, the anniversary of Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi's government taking office.
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| The Latest: Kurdish fighters pull out of Syrian border town Posted: 20 Oct 2019 08:12 AM PDT  A spokesman for the main Kurdish-led group in Syria says their fighters have evacuated the northern town of Ras al-Ayn, saying they have no armed presence there anymore. Kino Gabriel of the Syrian Democratic Forces said Sunday's evacuation was part of the agreement to pause military operations with Turkey with American mediation. The withdrawal of Kurdish fighters from Ras al-Ayn would open the way for them to leave a broader swath of territory along the Syria-Turkey border, as part of an agreement reached between the U.S. and Turkey.
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| The coming end of Christian America Posted: 20 Oct 2019 03:35 AM PDT ![The coming end of Christian America]( "The coming end of Christian America") America is still a "Christian nation," if the term simply means a majority of the population will claim the label when a pollster calls. But, as a new Pew Research report unsparingly explains, the decline of Christianity in the United States "continues at a rapid pace." A bare 65 percent of Americans now say they're Christians, down from 78 percent as recently as 2007. The deconverted are mostly moving away from religion altogether, and the ranks of the religiously unaffiliated -- the "nones" -- have swelled from 16 to 26 percent over the same period. If this rate of change continues, the U.S. will be majority non-Christian by about 2035, with the nones representing well over one third of the population.Smaller details from the study are equally striking. Protestantism lost its narrow claim to an outright majority of Americans' souls around 2012. While older generations remain at least two-thirds Christian, millennials have an even 49-49 split of Christians vs. nones (40 percent) and those of other faiths (9 percent). Religious service attendance rates haven't dramatically declined in the last decade, but they will soon if generational trends hold.As even the strictest practitioners of laicite must concede, major religious shifts like this will have equally major political effects -- but we are in somewhat uncharted territory as to what those effects may be. In broad strokes, this decline keeps the U.S. trailing Western Europe's religious and political evolution: the end of Christianity as a default faith and a move toward left/right politics that can be roughly characterized as socialism against nationalist populism. Yet Europe can hardly provide a clear window to our future, not least because many European states have both multi-party parliamentary systems and state churches.So what, then, should we expect of an increasingly post-Christian American politics? I have a few ideas.For ChristiansIn what remains of the American church, reactions to this decline will vary. Some will see it as a positive apocalypse, which is to say a revealing of what was always true. America was never really a Christian nation. Our government and society have long made choices and embraced values that are difficult, if not impossible, to square with Christianity, so an end of any association between the two is welcome. Likewise, the proportion of Americans who actually practiced Christian faith in any meaningful, life-altering sense was always substantially lower than the proportion who would identify as Christian in a poll. What we're seeing is less mass deconversion than a belated honesty which may be an opportunity for new faithfulness, repentance, or even revival.Other Christians, especially on the political right, will respond to this shift with sadness, alarm, or outright fear. And this is not mere selfishness, mere worry over loss of political or cultural power -- though certainly that is a factor for some. But if you believe, as people of faith generally do, that your religion communicates a necessary truth about God, the universe, humanity, the purpose of life and how we should live it -- well, then a precipitous decline in that religion is an inherently horrible thing with eternal implications for millions.Still other Christians (and I count myself among them) will land somewhere in between these two views. Yet all across this spectrum of responses, I suspect, we'll see an increasing concern for religious liberty as an ever-smaller portion of the broader public has a personal stake in its preservation as a special right distinct from freedoms of speech, association, and so on.Dumping fuel on this fire are proposals from the post-religious left -- Pew's data shows religion is especially on decline among white Democrats -- like Democratic candidate Beto O'Rourke's plan to revoke tax exemptions for religious institutions that don't affirm gay marriage. As O'Rourke's fellow candidate South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg commented, "I'm not sure he understood the implications of what he was saying." That includes the panic the idea induces among traditionally religious people who are already feeling isolated, caricatured, misunderstood by their country's cultural mainstream. (For more on that panic, see this helpful explainer from Vox's Jane Coaston.)For nonesFor religiously unaffiliated Americans, the political consequences of declining Christianity feel more difficult to predict, because this group is legitimately a new phenomenon. That is not to say there has never been a mass movement away from religion in a relatively modern, Western, democratic context -- see revolutionary France, for example, or, again, most of Western Europe. But there has never been anything like this in America, and you don't have to take a big swig of the American exceptionalism Kool-Aid to concede our country is in many ways unique. Moreover, there is a substantial difference between the humdrum religious apathy or vague spirituality of a none as compared to the murderous anti-Catholicism of a French revolutionary. In fact, that lack of specific opposition is key here: Many nones aren't consciously deconverting out of atheistic fervor. They're not rebelling against Christendom but growing up entirely in its aftermath. That is what makes this situation unprecedented.This caveat aside, I'd suggest the lack of a state church (which persists in nations as irreligious as Iceland, Sweden, Scotland, and the like) in America means religious efforts to obtain or keep political power will strike the unaffiliated rather differently here. No established religion means religious political action feels less like a tiresome anachronism -- outdated and unnecessary, but nice for Grandma -- and more like a threat of theocracy. In Europe, the state church already has a certain territory staked out as part of an ancient status quo. Here, every bit of territory is up for grabs, so the fight is always on.Yet as contradictory as it may seem, I'll also suggest left-wing nones may come to find they miss the religious right when grappling with its successor. The New York Times' Ross Douthat has argued the post-religious right of which President Trump has given us a glimpse will be an ugly beast indeed. Polling shows the "churchgoers who ultimately voted for Trump over Clinton still tend to hold different views than his more secular supporters," he wrote last year, including being "less authoritarian and tribal on race and identity. ...The trend was consistent: The more often a Trump voter attended church, the less white-identitarian they appeared, the more they expressed favorable views of racial minorities, and the less they agreed with populist arguments on trade and immigration." In other words, on the right, the decline of Christianity looks to mean the rise of racism, as the communal life of active faith is replaced by darker impulses.For allFinally, for Americans of any religious affiliation or none at all, the decline of Christianity will make political communication more difficult. For centuries the Christian faith has indelibly shaped the English vocabulary -- it is no exaggeration to say the King James Bible specifically is unparalleled in its cultural influence. That's especially so with politics, which beside religion is the most common context in which we discuss the world as it is and as it should be.The ways of thinking and turns of phrase that Christendom once made normative in America will become newly strange as Christianity declines. Those of us who remain religious will have to thoroughly rethink our assumptions about other Americans' frames of reference. I am regularly reminded of this by revealing expressions of religious ignorance by my fellow journalists, the archetypal example of which is an Associated Press headline which announced, after the famous cathedral burned, that "Tourist mecca Notre Dame [is] also revered as [a] place of worship." (For the AP writers, if no one else, "mecca" is a metaphor from Islam, and Notre Dame was a place of worship for centuries before the concept of tourism emerged. I read this headline to religious friends to peals of rueful laughter.)Perhaps, whether you are among the nones or not, you think moving toward a more secular shared vocabulary is a good thing. But even if you're right, the transition will be no less challenging. In an era of social fracture, loss of common language patterns can only exacerbate our disintegration. We have always talked against each other in politics; now we are talking past each other, too. As the decline of Christianity in the United States "continues at a rapid pace," it will influence every level of our fractious project of self-governance, down to our very words.
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| Priscilla to unleash flooding rainfall across southwest Mexico early this week Posted: 20 Oct 2019 03:18 AM PDT  A new tropical system will bring a heightened risk of flash flooding and mudslides to southwestern Mexico through Monday.The new tropical threat formed about 105 miles (169 km) south of Manzanillo, Mexico, early Sunday morning, and was upgraded to a tropical storm just a few hours later.As of 4 p.m. CDT Sunday, Priscilla had made landfall east of Manzanillo, Mexico, and had weakened into a tropical depression. The system was moving north at 9 mph (15 km/h) with maximum sustained winds of 35 mph (55 km/h). This satellite image shows newly formed Tropical Depression 19 off the southwestern coast of Mexico early Sunday morning. (NOAA/GOES-EAST) The storm will dissipate over the next 24-36 hours while tracking inland over southwestern Mexico."The system will quickly weaken and dissipate Sunday night," AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Rob Miller said.No matter the status of Priscilla, heavy rainfall is expected to be the main impact from the system. AccuWeather meteorologists expect widespread rainfall totals of 3-6 inches (76-152 mm), with an AccuWeather Local StormMax™ of 10 inches (254 mm).Portions of Nayarit, Jalisco, Colima and Michoacan are expected to bear the brunt of this rainfall."This rain will lead to the risk for dangerous flooding and mudslides across the region," Miller said.The area's steep terrain will heighten the risk of fast-moving, potentially life-threatening debris flows.This system is designated a less than 1 on the AccuWeather RealImpact™ Scale for Hurricanes. The AccuWeather RealImpact™ Scale for Hurricanes ranges from values of less than 1 to 5.Elsewhere in the East Pacific basin, there are no other immediate tropical threats this week. Download the free AccuWeather app to see the latest forecast and advisories for your region. Keep checking back for updates on AccuWeather.com and stay tuned to the AccuWeather Network on DirecTV, Frontier and Verizon Fios.
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| House Speaker Pelosi holds talks in Jordan with King Abdullah Posted: 19 Oct 2019 07:58 PM PDT  U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other senior members of Congress held talks in Jordan on Saturday with King Abdullah II and other top Jordanian officials. The U.S. delegation included the heads of key House committees including Foreign Affairs committee chairman Eliot Engel, Homeland Security Committee chairman Bennie Thompson, Intelligence committee chairman Adam Schiff and Representative Mac Thornberry, the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee.
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| Hillary Clinton claims Tulsi Gabbard is being 'groomed' by Russia Posted: 19 Oct 2019 10:26 AM PDT  Hillary Clinton has claimed a Democrat presidential candidate is being "groomed" by the Kremlin to run as an independent in 2020. In an astonishing attack on Tulsi Gabbard, a congresswoman from Hawaii, Mrs Clinton suggested Russia would use her to damage the Democrats' chances of taking the White House. Ms Gabbard, 38, responded by calling Mrs Clinton the "queen of warmongers" and the cause of "rot" in the Democrat party. The bitter row began when Mrs Clinton was being interviewed about the prospect of Russian interference in the upcoming election. She said: "I'm not making any predictions, but I think they've got their eye on somebody who's currently in the Democratic primary, and they're grooming her to be the third-party candidate. "She's the favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far." Tulsi Gabbard called Hillary Clinton the "queen of warmongers" Credit: AFP Mrs Clinton did not mention Ms Gabbard by name, but a spokesman later confirmed she had been referring to Ms Gabbard. The spokesman said: "This is not some outlandish claim, this is reality." Ms Gabbard is a military veteran who served in Iraq. She caused controversy after revealing that she had met with Bashar al-Assad on a fact-finding trip to Syria. Responding to Mrs Clinton's allegations she said: "Thank you Hillary Clinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain." She accused Mrs Clinton of being behind a concerted campaign to derail her candidacy. Ms Gabbard added: "It was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose." The congresswoman urged Mrs Clinton to run again in 2020. She said: "Don't cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly." During the latest televised Democrat debate in Ohio this week Ms Gabbard condemned suggestions of Russian support for her. She said: "This morning, a CNN commentator said on national television that I'm an asset of Russia. Completely despicable." Mrs Clinton also accused Jill Stein, the Green Party presidential nominee in 2016, of being a "Russian asset". In 2016 Ms Stein received about one per cent of the vote but some Democrats claim that helped Donald Trump win several key states. Ms Stein denied Mrs Clinton's accusations and accused her of "peddling conspiracy theories to justify her failure, instead of reflecting on real reasons the Democrats lost in 2016."
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| Children Die at Record Speed on U.S. Border While Coyotes Get Rich Posted: 19 Oct 2019 05:00 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Roberto the coyote can see a stretch of border fence from his ranch in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, about a mile south of El Paso. Smuggling drugs and people to "el otro lado," the other side, has been his life's work.There's always a way, he says, no matter how hard U.S. President Donald Trump tries to stop the flow. But this year's crackdown has made it a tougher proposition. A deadlier one, too—especially for women and children, who are increasingly dying in the attempt.Not much surprises Roberto, who asks not to be identified by his surname because he engages in illegal activity. Sitting on a creaky metal chair, shaded by quince trees and speaking above the din from a gaggle of fighting roosters, the 65-year-old grabs a twig and scratches lines in the sand to show how he stays a step ahead of U.S. and Mexican security forces.Here's a gap in the fence that migrants can dash through—onto land owned by American ranchers in his pay. There's a spot U.S. patrols often pass, so he's hiring more people to keep watch and cover any footprints with leaf-blowers.Roberto says he was taken aback in July this year, when he was approached for the first time by parents with young children. For coyotes, as the people-smugglers are known in Mexico, that wasn't the typical customer profile. Roberto asked around among his peers. "They were also receiving a lot of families," he says. "Many, many families are crossing over."That helps explain one of the grimmer statistics to emerge from all the turmoil on the U.S.-Mexican border.Even more than usual, the 2,000-mile frontier has turned into a kind of tectonic fault line this year. Poverty and violence—and the pull of the world's richest economy—are driving people north. At the border, they're met by a new regime of tightened security and laws, imposed by Trump in tandem with his Mexican counterpart, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, also known as AMLO.Some give up and go home; some wait and hope—and some try evermore dangerous ways to get through.Nineteen children died during attempted crossings in the first nine months of 2019, by drowning, dehydration or illness, according to the UN's "Missing Migrants" research project. That's up from four reported through September 2018 and by far the most since the project began gathering data in 2014, when two died that entire year. Women are dying in greater numbers, too—44 in the year through September, versus 14 last year.Many of those families are fleeing crime epidemics in Central America, as well as economic shocks. Prices of coffee—a key export—in the region plunged this year to the lowest in more than a decade, crushing farmers.Making matters worse, climate change will produce more frequent crop failures for those growers that will, in turn, drive more migration, said Eleanor Paynter, a fellow at Ohio State University. "Asylum law does not currently recognize climate refugees," she said, "but in the coming years we will see more and more."The demand side is equally fluid. When the Great Recession hit in 2007, a slumping U.S. economy led to a sharp drop in arrivals from Mexico and Central America. Today, the reverse is true: Record-low unemployment in the U.S. is attracting huge numbers from Central America.But none of those factors fully explains why so many families are now willing to take such great risks. To understand that, it's necessary to go back to the birth of the "Remain in Mexico" policy in January, when new U.S. rules made it much harder to seek asylum on arrival—and its escalation in June, when Trump threatened to slap tariffs on Mexican goods, and AMLO agreed to deploy 26,000 National Guard troops to the border.The crackdown was aimed at Central Americans—mostly from such poor, violent countries as El Salvador and Honduras—who'd been entering the U.S. through Mexico in growing numbers. Many would cross the border, turn themselves in and apply for asylum, then wait in the U.S. for a court hearing. That route was especially favored by migrants with young children, who were likely to be released from detention faster.Under the new policy, they were sent back to Mexico by the tens of thousands and required to wait in dangerous border towns for a court date. They might wait in shelters for months for their number to be called, with only 10 or 20 families being interviewed each day. Word was getting back that applications weren't being approved, anyway.That pushed thousands of families into making a tough decision. Juan Fierro, who runs the El Buen Pastor shelter for migrants in Ciudad Juarez, reckons that about 10% of the Central Americans who've stayed with him ended up going back home. In Tijuana, a border town hundreds of miles west, Jose Maria Garcia Lara—who also runs a shelter—says some 30% of families instead headed for the mountains outside the city on their way to the U.S. "They're trying to cross," he says, "in order to disappear."The family that approached Roberto in Ciudad Juarez wanted to take a less physically dangerous route: across the bridge into El Paso.Roberto has infrastructure in place for both options. He says his people can run a pole across the Rio Grande when the river's too high, and they have cameras on the bridge to spot when a guard's back is turned. He has a sliding price scale, charging $7,500 for children and an extra $1,000 for Central Americans—fresh proof of studies that have shown smugglers' prices rise with tighter border controls. "They pay a bundle to get their kids across," he says. "Why don't they just open a small grocery with that money?"Typically, migrants don't come from the very poorest communities in their home countries, where people struggle to cover such coyote costs, or from the middle class. Rather, they represent a range from $5,000 to $10,000 per capita in 2009 dollars, according to Michael Clemens, an economist at the Center for Global Development in Washington. This happens to be the level that the economies of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala have reached.For the family going across the bridge into El Paso, Roberto wanted to send the parents and children separately, to attract less attention. Ideally, the kids would be asleep, making the guards less likely to stop the car and ask questions. But that raised another problem. He resolved it by arranging for a woman on his team to visit the family and spend three days playing with the children. That way, they'd be used to her and wouldn't cry out if they woke up while she was taking them across.Roberto says the family made it safely into the U.S. with their false IDs, a claim that couldn't be confirmed. He earned about $35,000 from the family, and soon after had another three children with their parents seek passage. "They want to cross, no matter what," he says. "I don't know where the idea comes from that you can stop this."But people are being stopped and turned back, and the number of migrants caught crossing the U.S. border has plunged from its peak in May. That has allowed Trump to portray the new policy as a success. (Mexican officials tend to agree, though the Foreign Ministry didn't respond to a request for comment.) Yet it's not that simple. Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute, said the flow northward initially surged because Trump threatened to close the border, setting off a wave of migrant caravans and smuggling activity. Arrests rose 90% through September from a year earlier, but they're now at the same levels they were before the surge.Enrique Garcia was one of those arrested. A 36-year-old from Suchitepequez in Guatemala, he was struggling to feed his three children on the $150 a month he earned as a janitor. So he pawned a $17,000 plot of land to a coyote in exchange for passage to the U.S. for him and his son.They slipped into Mexico in August on a boarded-up cattle truck, with eight other adults and children, and drove the length of the country, to Juarez. The coyotes dropped them by car at the nearby crossing point called Palomas, where they literally ran for it.After 45 minutes in the summer heat, Garcia was getting worried about his son, who was falling behind and calling out for water. But they made it past the Mexican National Guard and gave themselves up to a U.S. border patrol, pleading to be allowed to stay. Instead, they were sent back to Mexico and given a January court date.Garcia, who recounted the story from a bunk bed in a Juarez shelter, said he was devastated. He couldn't figure out what to do for five months in Mexico, with no prospect of work. His coyotes had managed to reestablish contact with the group, and most of them—with children in tow—had decided to try again. This time, they wouldn't be relying on the asylum process. They'd try to make it past the border patrols and vanish into the U.S.But Garcia decided he'd already put his son's life at risk once, and wouldn't do it again. He scrounged $250 to take the boy home to Guatemala. Then, he said, he'd head back up to the border alone. He wouldn't need to pay the coyotes again. They'd given him a special offer when he signed away his land rights—two crossing attempts for the price of one.Researchers say there's a more effective deterrent to such schemes: opening more lawful channels. Clemens, at the Center for Global Development, noted that illegal immigration from Mexico dropped in recent years after U.S. authorities increased the supply of H-2 visas for temporary work, almost all of them going to Mexicans—a trend that's continued under Trump.The current debate in Washington assumes that "hardcore enforcement and security assistance in Central America will be enough, without any kind of expansion of lawful channels," Clemens said. "That flies in the face of the lessons of history."A hard-security-only approach deters some migrants, while channeling others into riskier routes where they're more likely to die. That's what happened after Europe's crackdown on migration from across the Mediterranean, according to Paynter at Ohio State, who's studied data from the UN's "Missing Migrants" project. In 2019, "even though the total number of attempted crossings is lower, the rate of death is three times what it was," she said.As for Roberto, he expresses sadness at the children who've died trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. He claims he would've tried to help them, even if they couldn't pay.Most of all, he sees no end to the ways he can make profits off the border crackdown. He makes a joke out of it."I'm hearing Trump wants to throw crocodiles in the river," he says. "Guess what will happen? We'll eat them." And then: "Their skin is expensive. We'll start a whole new business. It'll bring in money, because we'll make boots, belts and wallets. We'll look real handsome." To contact the author of this story: Nacha Cattan in Mexico City at ncattan@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Juan Pablo Spinetto at jspinetto@bloomberg.net, Ben HollandFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Boeing Pilot Complained of 'Egregious' Issue With 737 Max in 2016 Posted: 19 Oct 2019 01:30 AM PDT  For months, Boeing has said it had no idea that a new automated system in the 737 Max jet, which played a role in two fatal crashes, was unsafe.But on Friday, the company gave lawmakers a transcript revealing that a top pilot working on the plane had raised concerns about the system in messages to a colleague in 2016, more than two years before the Max was grounded because of the accidents, which left 346 people dead.In the messages, the pilot, Mark Forkner, who played a central role in the development of the plane, complained that the system, known as MCAS, was acting unpredictably in a flight simulator: "It's running rampant."The messages are from November 2016, months before the Max was certified by the Federal Aviation Administration. "Granted, I suck at flying, but even this was egregious," he said sardonically to a colleague, according to a transcript of the exchange reviewed Friday by The New York Times.The Max crisis has consumed Boeing, and the revelation of the messages from Forkner come at a particularly sensitive time. The company's chief executive, Dennis Muilenburg, is scheduled to testify before two congressional committees, on Oct. 29 and Oct. 30, the first time a Boeing executive has appeared at a hearing related to the crashes. Boeing's stock lost 7% of its value Friday, adding to the financial fallout.The existence of the messages strike at Boeing's defense that it had done nothing wrong regarding the Max because regulators had cleared the plane to fly, and potentially increases the company's legal exposure as it faces civil and criminal investigations and multiple lawsuits related to both crashes. Facing competition from Airbus, Boeing worked to produce the Max as quickly as possible, striving to minimize costly training for pilots. Last week, a task force of 10 international regulators released a report that found that Boeing had not fully explained MCAS to the FAA."This is more evidence that Boeing misled pilots, government regulators and other aviation experts about the safety of the 737 Max," Jon Weaks, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, said in a statement Friday.Boeing has maintained that the Max was certified in accordance with all appropriate regulations, suggesting that there was no sign that MCAS was unsafe.That contention was central to the company's rationale in not grounding the Max after the crash of Lion Air Flight 610 last October, and in waiting days to recommend grounding the plane after the second crash, of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in March.It was only after data suggested that MCAS played a role in the second crash that Boeing and the FAA decided to ground the Max.Forkner was the chief technical pilot for the Max and was in charge of communicating with the FAA group that determined how pilots would be trained before flying it. He helped Boeing convince international regulators that the Max was safe to fly.In the messages, he said that during tests in 2016, the simulator showed the plane making unexpected movements through a process called trimming."The plane is trimming itself like craxy," he wrote to Patrik Gustavsson, a fellow 737 technical pilot at Boeing. "I'm like WHAT?"Forkner went on to say that he had lied to the FAA."I basically lied to the regulators (unknowingly)," Forkner says in the messages, although it was not clear what he was specifically referring to.Lawmakers, regulators and pilots responded with swift condemnation Friday."This is the smoking gun," Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., said in an interview. "This is no longer just a regulatory failure and a culture failure. It's starting to look like criminal misconduct."Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said he expected answers from Boeing's chief executive and board of directors."They must be held accountable if Boeing was deceptive or misleading in failing to report safety concerns," Blumenthal said in an interview. "What these reports indicate is that Boeing's own employees lied and concealed the truth."The FAA administrator, Stephen Dickson, sent Muilenburg a letter Friday morning demanding that the company account for why it had not provided the messages to the agency earlier."I expect your explanation immediately regarding the content of this document and Boeing's delay in disclosing the document to its safety regulator," Dickson wrote.A Boeing spokesman, Gordon Johndroe, said the company was "voluntarily cooperating" with the congressional investigation and provided the messages to lawmakers as part of that process. He noted that the company gave the messages to the Department of Justice, which is conducting a criminal investigation into Boeing, earlier this year.A Boeing spokesman said the company did not give the messages to the FAA earlier because of the ongoing criminal investigation.The Max has been grounded for more than seven months, and airlines do not expect to fly it again this year. The FAA and Boeing have repeatedly pushed back the expected date of the plane's return to service as regulators and the company uncover new problems with the plane.The crisis has already cost Boeing more than $8 billion. It has disrupted expansion plans for airlines around the world, which have had to cancel thousands of flights and lost hundreds of millions of dollars in sales.The Times, which was the first to disclose Forkner's involvement in the plane, previously reported that he had failed to tell the FAA that the original version of MCAS was being overhauled, leaving regulators with the impression that the system was relatively benign and would be used only in rare cases.Eight months before the messages were exchanged, Forkner had asked the FAA if it would be OK to remove mention of MCAS from the pilot's manual. The FAA, which at the time believed the system would activate only in rare cases and wasn't dangerous, approved Forkner's request.Another exchange, in a batch of emails among Forkner, Boeing colleagues and FAA officials, was also reviewed by The Times on Friday. In one email from November 2016, Forkner wrote that he was "jedi-mind tricking regulators into accepting the training that I got accepted by FAA."A lawyer for Forkner downplayed the importance of the messages, suggesting Forkner was talking about issues with the simulator."If you read the whole chat, it is obvious that there was no 'lie' and the simulator program was not operating properly," the lawyer, David Gerger, said in a statement. "Based on what he was told, Mark thought the plane was safe, and the simulator would be fixed."Flight simulators replicate real cockpits and are used to test planes during development. They can sometimes behave unpredictably, depending on their configuration.Forkner, who is now a pilot for Southwest Airlines, and Gustavsson did not respond to requests for comment.Boeing provided the transcript to lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Friday morning, in advance of the hearings this month at which Muilenburg will testify about the crashes for the first time. Reuters was first to report on the existence of the transcript.DeFazio, who as chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is overseeing the investigation into the crashes, said he had reviewed other internal Boeing documents and emails that suggested employees were under pressure to produce planes as fast as possible and avoid additional pilot training."Boeing cannot say this is about one person," DeFazio said. "This is about a cultural failure at Boeing under pressure from Wall Street to just get this thing out there and make sure that you don't open the door to further pilot training."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company
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| How Catalan protest tactics are inspired by Hong Kong Posted: 20 Oct 2019 02:59 AM PDT  From blocking airports to using encrypted messaging apps, Catalan separatists demonstrating against the jailing of nine of their leaders are openly copying tactics devised by pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong. Shortly after Spain's Supreme Court on Monday sentenced nine Catalan leaders to prison terms of up to 13 years over their role in a failed 2017 independence bid, 240,000 users of Russian-designed messaging app Telegram received a message urging them to head to Barcelona's El Prat airport, Spain's second busiest. The goal according to the message -- sent by a new anonymous separatist organisation called Democratic Tsunami -- was to "paralyse" the airport, just as demonstrators did in Hong Kong in September.
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| The Latest: City plans to remove plane from site Saturday Posted: 18 Oct 2019 10:03 PM PDT  The state Department of Transportation determined the runway was not damaged by the crash, the city said in a news release. A Ravn Air Group flight brought in investigators from the state transportation department and the NTSB, the city said. It then returned the Cordova High School swim team to Anchorage.
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| 'She stole their lives': Woman convicted of passing school bus, killing 3 kids in crash Posted: 19 Oct 2019 11:08 AM PDT  Alyssa Shepherd was found guilty of three felony counts of reckless homicide for the Oct. 2018 crash that killed three siblings.
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| FACT: Cuba Hosted Russian Spy Planes to Use Against America Posted: 19 Oct 2019 12:00 PM PDT  A forgotten tale of the cold war.
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| Trump calls Mexico's president to express 'solidarity' Posted: 19 Oct 2019 01:42 PM PDT  Mexico's president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said on Saturday that President Trump called him to express his "solidarity" following an attempt to arrest a drug kingpin's son that prompted a wave of violence in the city of Culiacan.
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| Lebanon rocked by vast protests demanding resignation of Hariri government Posted: 20 Oct 2019 11:57 AM PDT  Lebanon was shaken on Sunday by its largest protests in years as young and old turned out en masse to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri and his coalition government. It marked the fourth day of protests following a proposal for new taxes, which ignited widespread anger over austerity measures and corruption in a deeply unequal society. The plan - to tax WhatsApp calls and other third-party applications that have long afforded cash-strapped Lebanese a chance to chat for free - was quickly dropped. But the protests have morphed into demands for an overhaul of the entire political system in the crisis-ravaged country. After on Friday laying out a 72-hour deadline for parties to agree to a framework for economic reforms, Mr Hariri held round-the-clock meetings with Lebanon's various political blocs to discuss proposals for the 2020 budget. Late on Sunday Mr Hariri appeared to have bought himself some time with the announcement of a package of reforms including a 50 percent reduction in the salaries of current and former officials. The reforms also include $3.3 billion in contributions from banks to reduce the deficit in the heavily indebted country, and plans to overhaul the crippled electricity sector. But they will not be confirmed until approved by the cabinet on Monday, and it is unclear whether they will go far enough. On Saturday night, the resignation of four ministers from the Christian Lebanese Forces, a party allied with Mr Hariri, underscored the chaos in government. By Sunday evening, with just 24 hours to go before Mr Hariri's deadline, the country's streets were awash in flags and furious Lebanese taking aim at all corners. "Neither Saudi nor Iran will be able to take this protest down," chanted demonstrators in downtown Beirut Sunday night, referencing the regional arch-rivals that have long jostled for control of the tiny Mediterranean country. In the predominantly Shia city of Tyre, in the country's south, there were chants accusing parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri, himself Shia, of corruption. There has also been vocal opposition to Hizbollah and its leader Hassan Nasrallah. "All of them means all of them. Nasrallah is one of them," was heard throughout the protests. While demonstrators called for the government's departure, its actual collapse would likely herald even greater instability and economic disaster – something MPs seem anxious to avoid. Mr Hariri has hinted at resignation if his demands are not met. But there are few obvious alternatives to the current PM. Not only is the post limited to Sunnis by the country's power-sharing system, but it is also unclear who would be willing to take over in such a disastrous economic situation. Mr Hariri formed the current government of national unity in February after nine months of wrangling. He is currently in his third term as leader.
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| Mitt Romney said everyone in the Senate is 'really nice' except for Bernie Sanders, who 'just kind of scowls' Posted: 20 Oct 2019 02:30 PM PDT  Romney has emerged as one of the few Republican senators willing to take a stand against Trump, but he says most people are really nice.
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| UPDATE 1-Bangladesh to move Rohingya to flood-prone island next month Posted: 20 Oct 2019 06:08 AM PDT ![UPDATE 1-Bangladesh to move Rohingya to flood-prone island next month]( "UPDATE 1-Bangladesh to move Rohingya to flood-prone island next month") Bangladesh will start relocating Rohingya Muslims to a flood-prone island off its coast next month as several thousand refugees have agreed to move, a government official said on Sunday. Dhaka wants to move 100,000 refugees to Bhasan Char – a Bay of Bengal island hours by boat from the mainland – to ease overcrowding in its camps at Cox's Bazar, home to more than 1 million Rohingya Muslims who have fled neighbouring Myanmar. "We want to start relocation by early next month," Mahbub Alam Talukder, the Relief and Repatriation Commission chief based in Cox's Bazar, told Reuters, adding that "the refugees will be shifted in phases".
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| Kuwait Sees Neutral Zone Oil Pact With Saudis Within 45 Days Posted: 19 Oct 2019 11:55 PM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Kuwait expects to sign an agreement with Saudi Arabia to restart oil production from the neutral zone along their border within 30 to 45 days, according to a person familiar with the matter.The pact, reached after months of intensive negotiations, won't be final until it's signed, the person said, asking not to be identified as the talks are private. Khafji, one of two fields in the zone, can start production immediately, while the Wafra field will need three to six months, the person said.The neutral zone, which has been shuttered for at least four years, can produce as much as 500,000 barrels a day. Negotiations continue with the Kuwaiti authorities, but even if production resumes, the area would not add oil to global markets because both countries adhere to output limits that OPEC has extended into early 2020, according to a person familiar with Saudi thinking.Talks with Saudi Arabia continue and are "very positive," Kuwait's Deputy Foreign Minister Khalid al-Jarallah was cited as saying by the Kuwait News Agency late Saturday. When an agreement is reached, the countries will start talks on resuming production, he said. Officials from Kuwait Petroleum Corp. couldn't be reached for comment.The neutral zone hasn't produced anything since the fields were shut after spats between the two countries in 2014 and 2015. The barren strip of desert straddling the Saudi-Kuwaiti border -- a relic of the time when European powers drew implausible ruler-straight borders across the Middle East -- can pump about as much as OPEC member Ecuador.The disagreement between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait started over the Wafra field, which is operated by Chevron Corp. Saudi Arabia extended the original 60-year-old concession of the field, giving the U.S. company rights over Wafra until 2039. Kuwait was furious over the announcement and claims Riyadh never consulted it about the extension.(Adds comments from person familiar with Saudi thinking in third paragraph)To contact the reporter on this story: Fiona MacDonald in Kuwait at fmacdonald4@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Nayla Razzouk at nrazzouk2@bloomberg.net, Bruce StanleyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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