| Trump's Baghdadi raid Situation Room photo has one big difference to Obama's bin Laden picture — and it tells you everything about their styles Posted: 27 Oct 2019 12:48 PM PDT  The Situation Room photo of Trump during the raid against ISIS leader Baghdadi differs significantly from Obama's during the Osama bin Laden raid.
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| Number of bodies found near Mexican resort town rises to 42 Posted: 27 Oct 2019 11:30 AM PDT ![Number of bodies found near Mexican resort town rises to 42]( "Number of bodies found near Mexican resort town rises to 42") Searching Mothers of Sonora uncovered a mass grave with the remains of 13 people inside, located near the popular beach resort town of Puerto Peñasco.
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| Driver charged as more Vietnamese feared among 39 UK truck victims Posted: 26 Oct 2019 10:54 AM PDT  British police investigating the deaths of 39 people in a refrigerated truck charged the driver on Saturday with manslaughter and people trafficking, as families in Vietnam expressed fear their loved ones were among the dead. The 25-year-old from Northern Ireland was "charged with 39 counts of manslaughter, conspiracy to traffic people, conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration and money laundering", Essex police said. Three more people are in custody in Britain over the investigation, the country's largest murder probe since the 2005 London suicide bombings.
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| South Korea Is Still Having Big Problems With Corruption Posted: 27 Oct 2019 09:00 AM PDT  A bad day for the Moon administration.
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| The Latest: California governor declares statewide emergency Posted: 27 Oct 2019 11:50 AM PDT  California Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a statewide emergency as wildfires and extreme weather conditions forced almost 200,000 people from their homes. The flames came dangerously close to homes in Vallejo. In the south, a wildfire in the Santa Clarita area north of Los Angeles has destroyed 18 structures, threatened homes and critical infrastructure.
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| Hong Kong Protests Flare for 21st Weekend Amid Global Unrest Posted: 27 Oct 2019 04:36 PM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Hong Kong pro-democracy activists demonstrated for the 21st straight weekend as unrest inspired by the movement spread around the globe, from South America to Europe to the Middle East.Police fired tear gas on Sunday at protesters in Tsim Sha Tsui who blocked roads and disrupted traffic. That followed a night of clashes in the New Territories district of Yuen Long and a peaceful rally that drew thousands in Central. Some protesters set fire to shops in Jordan and hurled petrol bombs at a police station in Sham Shui Po, an area in Kowloon, while others threw smoke grenades at train exits.The Monday morning commute was normal, with nearly all train lines running as scheduled. Rail operator MTR Corp. announced that all subway lines would shut down at 11 p.m., except for the Airport Express.The rallies have become increasingly violent over the course of October, with two protesters shot and a police officer slashed. Efforts by Hong Kong's authorities to quell the protests have largely failed, from banning marches and withdrawing the proposed extradition bill, to using an emergency law to outlaw face masks and pledging to make housing more affordable.The protests have been cited as inspiration for demonstrators around the world who've flooded the streets of major cities this month over economic inequality, regional grievances and alleged corruption.Spanish authorities are facing down separatist riots in Catalonia. In Chile, opposition to a 4-cent subway-fare hike has snowballed into the worst unrest there in decades, with at least 18 people killed so far. And in Lebanon, nationwide protests for more than a week, including hundreds of thousands demonstrating in Beirut, have pressured the country's leader to shake up his cabinet. There have also been protests in Iraq.Last week, reports surfaced that China's leaders were mulling a plan to replace Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam by early next year in a bid to calm public anger.Data due in Hong Kong this week will likely signal a technical recession is under way after a contraction in the second quarter. The benchmark Hang Seng Index tumbled 8.6% last quarter, the biggest loss among major global gauges tracked by Bloomberg.(Adds details on commute in third paragraph.)\--With assistance from Denise Wee.To contact the reporter on this story: Iain Marlow in Hong Kong at imarlow1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Brendan Scott at bscott66@bloomberg.net, Gregory Turk, Ros KrasnyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Flight attendant alleges pilots watched a livestream of the plane's bathroom Posted: 27 Oct 2019 08:41 AM PDT  A flight attendant is suing Southwest Airlines after she reported a disturbing discovery she made in a plane's cockpit. A lawsuit filed by Renee Steinaker alleges that she was working on a flight between Pittsburgh and Phoenix when she entered the cockpit and noticed an iPad mounted on the plane's windshield, displaying what appeared to be live footage of the plane's bathroom.
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| Could Trump Serve a Second Term if Ousted? It's Up to the Senate Posted: 27 Oct 2019 09:12 AM PDT  WASHINGTON -- With chances rapidly increasing that President Donald Trump will be impeached by the House and tried in the Senate, an intriguing question has reared its head: Could he be ousted only to try to return to the White House in 2020 in a Trumpian bid for redemption and revenge?Like so much of the coming impeachment showdown, that decision rests entirely with the Senate. The Constitution famously grants senators the sole power to convict and remove a president -- something that has never been done. What is seldom discussed is a more obscure clause of the Constitution that allows the Senate discretion to take a second, even more punitive step, to disqualify the person it convicts from holding "any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States."Imposing that penalty would effectively bar the president from reclaiming his old job. In an added twist, tacking on the extra punishment requires only a majority vote in the Senate, not the two-thirds -- or 67 senators -- required to convict.For now, the idea of disqualifying Trump is the remotest of hypotheticals, since it would first require the Senate to vote to impeach and remove him. That seems far-fetched, given how little appetite Republicans in the chamber have shown so far for deserting him, despite the flood of damaging revelations that have come forth in the impeachment inquiry. But if nearly two dozen Republicans did vote to impeach him, it would take only a simple majority to banish him from the presidency for life.The little-known constitutional quirk -- which has been applied unevenly in the cases of federal judges removed from office -- is only one example of what can happen in the freewheeling process of a presidential impeachment, an exceedingly rare and constantly evolving proceeding that is replete with untested precedents.The likelihood of an impeachment trial has senators and aides reading up on the process, with a lot to digest. Uncertainty is rife. Could the Senate censure Trump as an alternative to ousting him, a proposal that was defeated on procedural grounds during the 1999 impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton? Is a motion to dismiss the articles of impeachment in order -- and if so, when?Then there are much larger questions. Could new revelations about Trump's efforts to pressure Ukraine to smear his political rivals shake Republicans from strongly backing him? How would Congress impose its will on the president, and would he comply? Would the courts intervene, and what would they have to say?Some constitutional scholars wonder whether the disqualification clause even applies to a president, but the consensus is that it was written precisely for that purpose when the authors of the Constitution gathered in Philadelphia in 1787."If we know anything about what the framers were particularly thinking of when they were drafting the impeachment clauses, it was that they had the president clearly in mind," said Frank Bowman, a constitutional law professor at the University of Missouri and author of "High Crimes and Misdemeanors: A History of Impeachment for the Age of Trump."Now 73, Trump might not even be interested in running again if he were ousted by a Senate dominated by members of his own party. But for a president who is always spoiling for a fight, it might be sweet payback to be reelected by voters after Democratic and Republican lawmakers banded together to give him the boot.At least one constitutional expert said that given the nature of the allegations against Trump -- that he abused his power to enlist foreign help in next year's election -- disqualifying him would be an illogical penalty."If the impeachment is based on the Ukraine phone call and activity around that, and the idea is that he is improperly using his office to get dirt on his opponent, the remedy to that is to remove him from office," said Edward Foley, an election law authority and constitutional law professor at The Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law. "If the fear is the incumbent can't fight a fair fight, then disable the candidate's ability to not wage a fair fight."Of the eight federal judges who have been removed from the bench for crimes or misconduct, just three were disqualified from future office. The most notable person who was not barred was Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla. Hastings, a former federal district judge, was tossed out by the Senate in 1989 on bribery accusations despite being acquitted in a criminal trial, only to be elected in 1992 to the House, where he still serves. (Some scholars argue that an ousted federal officer could not be barred from running for Congress in any event.)The case of Hastings was a cautionary tale for congressional officials handling the impeachment in 2010 of Judge G. Thomas Porteous of Louisiana on bribery and perjury charges. They made sure to not only convict and remove the judge but to disqualify him as well.Yet disqualification remained something of an afterthought, and the Senate nearly missed its chance to do so. After the vote to convict Porteous, which automatically carries the penalty of removal from office, senators raced for the exits amid confusion over whether a second vote was needed on the future ban. It turned out one was, and senators were called back to cast a hasty vote of disqualification, which passed 94-2.That overwhelming margin was not needed. The Senate has concluded, based on its own precedents, that disqualification can be done with a simple majority. The Constitution explicitly requires a two-thirds vote for conviction but does not specify the margin needed for disqualification, so parliamentarians have ruled that the default for Senate votes is sufficient.Some scholars believe that such a potentially significant penalty should require a more definitive vote, arguing that a two-thirds supermajority should be the standard for both punishments."It should be invoked through the same kind of vote," said Michael Gerhardt, a constitutional law professor at the University of North Carolina and author of "Impeachment: What Everyone Needs to Know.""It is not clear why one should be easier than the other," he added.The lower threshold has driven some speculation that even if the Senate did not convict Trump, it might still be able to disqualify him from future office on a simple majority vote. But that notion is generally dismissed as unconstitutional, since the ban on future office has to flow out of conviction on articles of impeachment."It is a sentencing provision," Bowman said.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company
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| U.S. lawmakers will press Boeing CEO for answers on 737 MAX crashes Posted: 27 Oct 2019 02:41 PM PDT ![U.S. lawmakers will press Boeing CEO for answers on 737 MAX crashes]( "U.S. lawmakers will press Boeing CEO for answers on 737 MAX crashes") The head of a U.S. Senate panel reviewing two catastrophic Boeing 737 MAX crashes told Reuters ahead of hearings this week that the plane would not return to U.S. skies until "99.9% of the American public" and policymakers are convinced it is safe. Boeing Co Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg will testify for two days before Congress starting on Tuesday, which is the anniversary of the Lion Air 737 MAX crash in Indonesia, the first of two crashes within five months that killed a total of 346 people. "Clearly the accidents didn't have to happen and I don't think there was sufficient attention to how different pilots would react to signals in the cockpit," Senator Roger Wicker, a Republican who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee that will hold the first hearing, said in an interview on Friday.
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| This Is How America Can Stop China From Dominating the South China Sea Posted: 27 Oct 2019 05:00 AM PDT  America can't do it alone.
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| Vietnam takes forensic samples to help in truck deaths case Posted: 27 Oct 2019 07:47 AM PDT  Police in central Vietnam said Sunday that they have taken forensic samples from residents who believe their family members may be among the 39 victims found dead last week in the back of a truck in England. Police in Nghe An province took samples including hair and nails from the family members to try to help identify the victims, the VNExpress news website reported. Up to 24 Vietnamese families had reported their missing family members to local authorities as of Sunday afternoon, the website said.
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| Pete Buttigieg responded to homophobic comments made by a local Tennessee official, advocating for an 'approach with compassion' Posted: 26 Oct 2019 08:05 AM PDT  "He's right that there is a gay man running for president, he doesn't seem to be right about much else," Buttigieg said.
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| World ‘Awash’ in Oil as U.S. Sees Its Shale Boom Barreling Ahead Posted: 26 Oct 2019 11:34 PM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Global markets are "awash" in crude thanks to the surge in U.S. oil output, and the boom looks set to continue, U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry said in a Bloomberg TV interview.U.S. shale production has turned the world "on its head," and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is "off a bit" in a report last week saying that the bonanza is fading, Perry said on Sunday in Dubai.Oil and natural gas from American shale fields have made the U.S. one of the world's largest producers and enabled it to become a net energy exporter. Perry will travel in the coming week to Saudi Arabia to discuss possible sales of U.S. liquefied natural gas and Saudi efforts to develop a nuclear power program. Perry held talks in the United Arab Emirates and visited the country's largest solar-power facility at a site near the U.A.E.'s commercial hub of Dubai.The U.S. sent 11 LNG shipments to the U.A.E. over the past three years and is seeking to sell more of the fuel there and to Saudi Arabia, Perry said.The world needs to be prepared for attacks disrupting the global economy, and the U.S., Saudi Arabia and other allies are discussing the safety of oil supply routes, he said. Aerial strikes against Saudi oil facilities on Sept. 14 temporarily knocked out half of the kingdom's output, and the U.S. is currently doing enough to help Saudi Arabia defend against such attacks in the future, Perry said.Washington won't hold a grudge forever against Saudi Arabia over the murder last October of government critic and U.S. columnist Jamal Khashoggi, though there's not a "massive amount of forgiveness" in Congress for his killing in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Perry said.The energy secretary said he asked U.S. President Donald Trump to call Ukraine to try to sell U.S. LNG there. The approach to Ukraine is important for energy sales and to break that country's over-reliance on Russian gas, he said.The U.S. is "making progress" with its Middle East foreign policy, while efforts to impeach Trump won't be an issue in the U.S. presidential election next year and will go away in six months, Perry said.\--With assistance from Giovanni Prati.To contact the reporters on this story: Anthony DiPaola in Dubai at adipaola@bloomberg.net;Manus Cranny in London at mcranny@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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| Convicted Russian agent Maria Butina released from prison and deported Posted: 25 Oct 2019 06:19 PM PDT  Russian gun rights activist Maria Butina released from prison and left Miami on a flight to Moscow Friday night.
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| Man Opens Fire in Georgia Walmart Dies After Turning Gun on Himself: Police Posted: 26 Oct 2019 10:56 AM PDT  No one besides the shooter was injured
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| Who Is Bill Barr? Posted: 27 Oct 2019 09:06 AM PDT  William Barr had returned to private life after his first stint as attorney general when he sat down to write an article for The Catholic Lawyer. It was 1995, and Barr saw an urgent threat to religion generally and to Catholicism, his faith, specifically. The danger came from the rise of "moral relativism," in Barr's view. "There are no objective standards of right and wrong," he wrote. "Everyone writes their own rule book."And so, at first, it seemed surprising that Barr, now 69, would return after 26 years to the job of attorney general, to serve President Donald Trump, the moral relativist in chief, who writes and rewrites the rule book at whim.But a close reading of Barr's speeches and writings shows that, for decades, he has taken a maximalist, Trumpian view of presidential power that critics have called the "imperial executive." He was a match, all along, for a president under siege. "He alone is the executive branch," Barr wrote of whoever occupies the Oval Office, in a memo to the Justice Department in 2018, before he returned.Now, with news reports that his review into the origins of the Russian investigation that so enraged Trump has turned into a full-blown criminal investigation, Barr is arousing fears that he is using the enormous power of the Justice Department to help the president politically, subverting the independence of the nation's top law enforcement agency in the process.Why is he giving the benefit of his reputation, earned over many years in Washington, to this president? His Catholic Lawyer article suggests an answer to that question. The threat of moral relativism he saw then came when "secularists used law as a weapon." Barr cited rules that compel landlords to rent to unmarried couples or require universities to treat "homosexual activist groups like any other student group." He reprised the theme in a speech at Notre Dame this month.In 1995 and now, Barr has voiced the fears and aspirations of the conservative legal movement. By helping Trump, he's protecting a president who has succeeded in confirming more than 150 judges to create a newly conservative judiciary. The federal bench now seems more prepared to lower barriers between church and state and reduce access to abortion -- a procedure that Barr, in his 1995 article, included on a list of societal ills that also included drug addiction, venereal diseases and psychiatric disorders.In his unruffled and lawyerly way, Barr emerged as the president's most effective protector in the spring, when he limited damage from special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election by shaping the public narrative of the Mueller report before he released any of it.In his pursuit of investigating the investigators, he even traveled to Britain and Italy to meet with intelligence officials there to persuade them to help it along. Now it is possible that the Justice Department could bring charges against its own officials and agents for decisions they made to investigate Trump campaign advisers in the fraught months around the 2016 election, when the Russian government was mounting what the Mueller report called "a sweeping and systematic" effort to interfere.This criminal investigation seems ominous in the context of Barr's other moves.His Justice Department recently declined to investigate a whistleblower's complaint that the president was "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election" and advised the acting director of national intelligence not to send the complaint to Congress. Last week, dozens of government inspectors general warned in a letter to the Justice Department that its position "could seriously undermine the critical role whistleblowers play in coming forward to report waste, fraud, abuse and misconduct across the federal government."So while Rudy Giuliani is freelancing U.S. diplomacy as the president's personal lawyer, often leaving bedlam in his wake, and Mick Mulvaney flails as acting chief of staff, Barr has used the Justice Department, with precision, on the president's behalf. The New York City Bar Association complained a few days ago that Barr "appears to view his primary obligation as loyalty to the president individually rather than to the nation."William Barr (Billy, when he was young) grew up in an apartment on Riverside Drive in Manhattan with a framed Barry Goldwater presidential campaign poster in the foyer, according to Vanity Fair. His mother, who was of Irish descent, taught at Columbia University. His father, a Jew who converted to Catholicism, taught at Columbia, too, and then became the headmaster of the elite Dalton School, leaving after 10 years amid criticism over his authoritarian approach to student discipline.Barr went to high school at the equally elite Horace Mann and then to college at Columbia, where he majored in government and then got a master's degree in government and Chinese studies. He went to work for the CIA in Washington in 1973 and attended George Washington University Law School at night.He joined the Reagan White House in 1982, where he sought to curb regulation. After George H.W. Bush was elected president in 1988, he became director of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department, which provides legal advice to the president and all executive agencies.It didn't take long for Barr to express his views on executive power. He warned in one of his early opinions, in July 1989, of congressional "encroachments" on presidential authority. "Only by consistently and forcefully resisting such congressional incursions can executive branch prerogatives be preserved," he wrote. Some of his Republican colleagues remember being taken aback."Bill's view on the separation of powers was not overlapping authority keeping all branches in check, but keeping the other branches neutralized, leaving a robust executive power to rule. George III would have loved it," said Douglas Kmiec, a law professor at Pepperdine who preceded Barr as head of the Office of Legal Counsel.Barr also argued that the president had the "inherent authority" to order the FBI to abduct people abroad, in violation of an international treaty principally written by the United States. This view reversed the position that the Office of Legal Counsel had taken nine years earlier. When Congress asked to see Barr's opinion, he refused, even as the government defended the abduction of a man in Mexico accused of participating in the killing of a Drug Enforcement Administration agent. The charges against the man were dismissed. It took four years for Barr's opinion to come to light."You have a secret opinion that violated the internal rules of the Justice Department" and "diminished America's reputation as a country that operates by the rule of law," said Harold Hongju Koh, a Yale law professor who worked in the Office of Legal Counsel under the Reagan administration and advised the State Department. "At the time, we thought that was as bad as it was going to get."After becoming deputy attorney general in 1990, Barr continued to push the limits on questions of presidential power. He told the first President Bush that he didn't need congressional approval to invade Iraq. Bush asked for it anyway.Barr, who took over the Justice Department in the fall of 1991, also urged Bush to pardon all six of the Reagan administration officials who faced criminal charges in an arms-for-hostages deal at the heart of the Iran-Contra scandal. The president took his advice.When Bush lost his bid for reelection, Barr went back into private practice before taking jobs as the general counsel first for GTE and then Verizon. He served on the boards of several religious groups, including the Catholic Information Center, a self-described "intellectual hub," affiliated with the ultraconservative order Opus Dei.Those groups include other conservative Washington insiders, such as Leonard Leo, the executive vice president of the Federalist Society. Leo has also served on the board of the Catholic Information Center, and he came out strongly in favor of Trump's nomination of Barr for attorney general.In a sense, both Barr and Leo have found parallel ways to use the Trump administration as a vehicle for their causes. Leo has enormous influence from outside the government on the selection of judicial nominees. From the inside, Barr plays a role in federal judicial appointments and has supported a Justice Department task force set up to look for cases of religious discrimination.When Barr undercut the Mueller report, he lost some supporters. While delaying its release, he presented the conclusions as far less damning for Trump than Mueller found them to be. (For example, Barr said that the special counsel did not find sufficient evidence of a crime when in fact Mueller had not exonerated Trump of wrongdoing.)"Not in my memory has a sitting attorney general more diminished the credibility of his department on any subject," wrote Benjamin Wittes, the editor-in-chief of Lawfare.Despite criticism, Barr has continued to champion the presidency -- and this president. But on Friday, a federal judge in Washington ruled against the Justice Department's effort to block Congress from getting grand jury evidence obtained in the Mueller investigation. The department has also asked a federal judge to block a subpoena from the Manhattan district attorney for eight years of Trump's personal and corporate tax returns."From my perspective," Barr told Jan Crawford of CBS News in May, "the idea of resisting a democratically elected president and basically throwing everything at him and, you know, really changing the norms on the grounds that we have to stop this president, that is where the shredding of our norms and our institutions is occurring."In other words, amazingly, it wasn't Trump, or Barr, who was violating the norms of American governance. It was their critics.Since Watergate, a crucial norm of Justice Department independence has prevented presidents from ordering or meddling in investigations for partisan reasons.In 2001, Barr praised the first President Bush for leaving the Justice Department alone. Bush's White House "appreciated the independence of Justice," Barr said. "We didn't lose sight of the fact that there's a difference between being a government lawyer and representing an individual in his personal capacity in a criminal case."Now, Barr seems hard-pressed to maintain a semblance of those boundaries. The criminal investigation of the origins of the Russia investigation that he ordered is official government business. It's headed by an experienced prosecutor, John Durham, the U.S. attorney for Connecticut, and it's supposed to be on the up and up.But when Barr told Congress in April that he thought "spying" on the Trump campaign by U.S. intelligence agencies occurred -- the FBI director, Christopher Wray, told Congress that "spying" was "not the term I would use" -- he echoed Trump's conspiracy theory of being a victim of the "deep state." And in the last month, Barr has found his review mixed up with the machinations of Giuliani, who was directed by Trump to investigate the 2016 election and the Biden family in Ukraine.Trump made the overlap explicit when he lumped Giuliani and Barr together in his July phone call with Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. "I will have Mr. Giuliani give you a call and I am also going to have Attorney General Barr call," Trump told Zelenskiy, according to notes released by the White House. Barr was reportedly "surprised and angry" by the president's reference, and a Justice Department representative has denied he had any contacts with Zelenskiy.Then, Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, brought up Barr's review of the Russia investigation at his news conference on Oct. 17 in defense of Trump's request to Zelenskiy for "a favor" and information. ("So you're saying the president of the United States, the chief law enforcement person, cannot ask somebody to cooperate with an ongoing public investigation into wrongdoing?" he asked.)The White House's use of the Justice Department as a shield in the Ukraine scandal risks leaving Barr's review "hopelessly compromised," tweeted Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith, an alumnus of the Office of Legal Counsel who has defended Barr.And in blockbuster testimony before Congress last Tuesday, the topU.S. diplomat in Ukraine, William Taylor, said that he and Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, who was conveying Trump's orders concerning Ukraine, discussed the possibility that Ukraine's prosecutor would make a public statement about "investigations, potentially in coordination with Attorney General Barr's probe." Either people in the president's circle are using Barr as a pawn, or he's in deeper than he has said.Either way, maybe the lesson is the same one that applies throughout the administration: The fallout from the president's maneuvering taints the people around him. The longer Barr stays in office, the more that Trump will look for the attorney general to do for him.When Mueller closed up shop, he left several cases pending with the Justice Department, including charges against the Trump operative Roger Stone, which could end with disclosures at trial that damage the president (Stone has pleaded not guilty). What if Trump would rather make cases like these go away, with pardons or other inducements? Will Barr go along?During the Bush administration, in a more moderate time, Barr worked for a buttoned-down president who called for a "kinder" nation and "gentler" world. Now he has a boss who calls the impeachment process "a lynching," Republican critics "human scum" and the news media "the enemy of the American people."As the buttons fly off, Barr seems unperturbed. He's the perfect attorney general for Trump. Not so much, it seems, for the country.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company
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| Thousands ordered to flee California wine country blaze Posted: 26 Oct 2019 12:13 PM PDT  California firefighters raced against time on Saturday as they cut defensive lines against a wildfire in Sonoma County's famed wine country and authorities ordered 50,000 people to evacuate, ahead of winds that are forecast to pick up at night and spread the flames. The expanded evacuation orders came as the utility Pacific Gas and Electric Corp prepared to shut off power to about 940,000 customers in 36 of the state's counties to guard against the risk that an electric mishap could spark a blaze. The move to cut power to so many people quickly drew a rebuke from California Governor Gavin Newsom, who called it "unacceptable" in a video message on Twitter.
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| 'Beautiful' moments as Mexican migrants meet families on US border Posted: 27 Oct 2019 01:11 AM PDT  Ciudad Juárez (Mexico) (AFP) - Hundreds of Mexican migrants to the United States have reunited with their families for a few fleeting moments as part of the "hugs not walls" meetup on the US-Mexico border. People shed tears on a bridge linking Mexico's Ciudad Juarez with El Paso in the United States, flinging their arms around relatives they hadn't seen for years and walking slowly along together. The bridge was made neutral territory for four hours during the event, held for the seventh time, to allow undocumented migrants to the US to see their Mexican families.
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| Does Russia's Anti-Drone Pantsir S1 System Even Work? Posted: 26 Oct 2019 06:00 PM PDT  Let's take a look.
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| Vietnamese village prays, awaits news on loved ones' fate Posted: 27 Oct 2019 12:13 AM PDT  The rural village of Do Thanh in central Vietnam has relied on its sons and daughters working abroad to send money back home. The mother and a sister of Bui Thi Nhung cried as they set up an altar with incense and a photo of the missing 19-year-old. The family heard from a friend living in the U.K. that "Nhung is one of the victims," said a relative who was visiting the woman's despaired mother.
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| Lebanon’s Wild ‘WhatsApp’ Revolution Challenges Hezbollah and the Old Elites Posted: 27 Oct 2019 02:16 AM PDT  JOSEPH EIDBEIRUT—In a country long known for its live-for-the-day parties and grinding social discontent, both have now come together to spawn Lebanon's October Revolution. The Mediterranean air is filled with exhilaration, but also with fear.A spiraling economic crisis that ignited spontaneous protests and clashes with riot police over corruption and the high cost of living has turned into a popular uprising against the political elite and sectarian political system. On the heels of mass protests in Algeria, Sudan, and Iraq, Lebanon has joined a second wave of social discontent in the Arab world emerging in countries that were not transformed by the mass protests of 2011. They seem undeterred by the counter-revolutions, repression and civil war that rolled back the victories of the Arab Spring everywhere but in Tunisia. Discontent with their domestic political system's inability to address social demands and economic crises, as in 2011, has created this new wave of mass social action attempting to transform society and bring down old leaders.Who Are Iran's Covert Missile Minions Arming Hezbollah?Tire-fire barricades and protesters blocking main highways and an open-ended general strike have paralyzed Lebanon. Over a million working- and middle-class people from across the sectarian divide of this state of 6 million have joined together in city squares chanting "the people want the downfall of the regime." "These words mean freedom, they mean changing the economy," says 24-year-old Ali Hassan about the chant made famous during the 2011 uprisings across the region. Smoking a cigarette on a curb in downtown Beirut, he looks over at a crowd of protesters standing on the steps of the Al-Amin Mosque who are denouncing the country's leaders as thieves. The building, designed to emulate Istanbul's Blue Mosque, was erected with a donation by Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister assassinated in 2005. His son, Saad Hariri, is prime minister now. Hassan, here on the curb, hails from the Hariri stronghold of Sidon on the coast south of Beirut, where he was a supporter of the Hariri-led Future Movement. Now working in Beirut as a nurse, however, he says his salary of $800 a month can't cover the cost of rent let alone finance his staggering student debt from four years paying the annual $40,000 university tuition. Hassan blames Lebanon's confessional political system left by French colonial rule as the root of the country's problem. Based on the demography of the early 20th century, it assures the president will be a Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim, and the speaker of parliament a Shia Muslim. The result thwarts the power of the electorate by dividing government and civil service positions along sectarian lines to balance representation of the major faiths and minorities. In practice it has created a system of patronage where the parties that fought the 15-year civil war that ended in 1990 use their governing positions to grant state jobs to their constituents. It has also facilitated the governing parties' role as proxies for foreign powers. "We want to be free from Syria, Iran, America and Saudi," Hassan says of the countries that exert influence on the government through their support of rival political factions. So he joined the hundreds of thousands from around the city regularly converging on the downtown. Carrying Lebanese flags and condemning all the establishment leaders as corrupt and inept in equal measure, they are an unprecedented coalition of people trying to force the collapse of a government made up of faces that have ruled since the civil war. The country is mired in an economic spiral, carrying one of the largest per capita national debts in the world, over $71 billion in total, and facing a shortage of the dollar to which the Lebanese Lira is pegged. Daily power cuts and non-potable tap water have been long-term problems resulting from government infrastructure neglect dating back almost 30 years, when the Hariris' construction company led the reconstruction that followed the civil war.According to Sami Nader, the director of the Levant Institute for Strategic Affairs, 37-percent youth unemployment and private currency traders increasingly abandoning the official Lebanese exchange rate are signs the country is heading toward a debt crisis like Argentina in 2001 or Greece in 2008. As a result, he says, people now feel they don't have anything left to lose. The protests were sparked by unpopular austerity measures and tax increases in a country with few public services and the government has been back peddling, scrambling to cling to power, since they erupted. First the government scrapped a proposed tax on WhatsApp. Used across Lebanon to avoid paying for calls and texts in a country with high mobile phone costs, the tax became the final straw that pushed people from economic despair to political rage. Then, as rival parties blamed each other, police cracked down on the streets with tear gas and water cannons. The protests only grew, forcing Hariri and President Michel Aoun to address the country in speeches promising economic reforms, vowing to fix long term infrastructure problems, and to take anti-corruption measures–but refusing to resign. Hassan Nasrallah, general secretary of Hezbollah (the Party of God) has also spoken to the country, stating clearly that his party will not accept the toppling of the presidency or resignation of the government. Hezbollah's Iranian-backed "militia" is the largest armed force in the country and it leverages this power to shape the government to serve its interests. Nasrallah has warned that if his party brings its supporters into the streets, it will "change the equation." However, the government's refusal to relinquish power has only boosted the movement."This is no longer about the reforms, it's about the people making the reforms," says Nader. "This is a real social and economic revolution." * * *In Beirut protesters have shut down highways that connect the capital with much of the rest of the country. The army is deployed along the main traffic arteries, watching protesters block them while sporadic barricades around the city have left streets, normally jammed to the point of gridlock, now virtually devoid of traffic. In Dahieh, the mostly Shia majority working class suburb of southern Beirut that has been a support base for Hezbollah, what normally are bustling alleys are not quiet, with shops shuttered. In the Sunni majority upscale neighborhood of Hamra, a key constituency of Prime Minister Saad Hariri in the city's west, banking towers are closed and protesters on the streets lined with bars and cafés blame their PM for making life in the city unaffordable. It is as quiet as Easter Sunday in the middle-class eastern Christian district of Ashrafieh, where the right-wing Lebanese Forces party and President Michel Aoun's Hezbollah-allied Free Patriotic Movement have battled for support. The usually booming music emanating from the boisterous nightlife in the district's neighborhoods of Mar Mikhael and Gemmayze is overpowered by the echoing chants of protesters returning from the mass rallies. However, it is in the city's downtown that hundreds of thousands come together in an often festive atmosphere to curse their leaders, chanting "all of them means all of them" in a call for them to go. Rebuilt after the civil war into a French-influenced, manicured Mediterranean promenade filled with foreign-owned investment properties, luxury shops, banks and embassies, Beirut's central business district is now controlled by protesters. Standing in the streets outside Parliament amid throngs of young people chanting "Revolution! Revolution!" 71-year-old Sukaina Salameh is overjoyed. The crowd is filled with contemporary anti-establishment references. Some protesters don the Guy Fawkes masks of the Anonymous movement while others prefer the Salvador Dali masks from the Spanish Bank Heist series "La Casa de Papel." There are Joker face-painting stations. But the aged Salameh is perfectly easy with all that. "I feel like I'm still young and I'm still fighting," she says.Salameh is director of NAVTSS, a Palestinian-Lebanese non-governmental organization that provides educational services in Palestinian and Syrian Refugee camps and to poor Lebanese communities. Lack of opportunities for poor and marginalized people in the country has demoralized people, she says, creating a drop in enrolment in her organization's education and training programs. As a Palestinian who was able to get Lebanese citizenship in the 1990s and has been an activist all her life, Salameh has lived on multiple sides of Lebanon's divide. She was involved in left-wing Palestinian and pan-Arabist struggles in the 1970s and sees some parallels with the mass protests against the political establishment then. "In the details we were fighting for something different when I was younger, but in the bigger picture we are still fighting for dignity and a better life," she says.In the mid-1970s, Druze leader Kamal Jumblatt's Progressive Socialist Party led the struggle against Lebanon's sectarian system. Now his son Walid, who took over after his father's assassination in the civil war, heads the party. He is seen as a kingmaker in Lebanese politics and has resisted the calls for the government to quit. Salameh does not sympathize. "I want the old guard of the civil war to go and bring in people with new ideas," she says, admiring the younger generation's willingness to criticize the old leaders. For a woman who saw the civil war from some of its worst front lines, it is the cross-confessional political unity that has inspired her the most. "This is the first time in which poor people in every sect are speaking together and making the same demands," she says.* * *The scenes in Beirut are being replicated across the country. In southern Lebanon, in which Hezbollah fought and defeated Israeli occupation, Shia majority protests have condemned both the Party of God and its tenuous ally, Amal, which has been led since the civil war by Parliamentary Speaker Nabil Berri. Hariri is facing rejection by his own constituents as they rally in the northern city of Tripoli. And Christian communities from Mount Lebanon to the Bekaa Valley are saying time is up for President Aoun, Foreign Affairs Minister Gebran Bassil and Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea. Both Aoun and Geagea have gone from civil war strongmen to leading establishment politicians. Geagea was one of the few civil war leaders to be convicted and jailed in Lebanon for crimes committed during the civil war that raged from 1975-1990.Amid a new optimism there is also looming fear. Early in the protests, when rioting broke out in Beirut, two people were killed in fires. The following day, the bodyguard of a former member of parliament opened fire on a crowd in Tripoli, Lebanon's second city, killing two people and injuring two others. Amal members have attacked protesters in the south of the country and Hezbollah supporters have fought with protesters in Beirut, prompting Nasrallah to call on Hezbollah supporters to leave the scenes of protest and warning that continued unrest could lead to civil war. Protesters worry aloud about the potential for mass violence if the governing parties call their loyalists into the streets. Lebanon's political establishment is digging in as a new vision for the country comes together in the streets. What has become a protracted battle over turning the page on the political system that lead the country into and out of civil war is now transforming how people see their future and each other.To Take Down Trump, Take to the StreetsRead more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Hitman outsourced a murder to hitman, who hired hitman, who hired hitman, who hired hitman Posted: 27 Oct 2019 09:17 AM PDT  Six men — including five hitmen — have been charged in Chinese court last Thursday, after all attempted to subcontract the killing to another hitman.
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| Four-star US army general compares Trump to Mussolini after ‘watershed moment’ for America Posted: 26 Oct 2019 06:06 AM PDT  A decorated retired US Army general has compared Donald Trump to fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, and said the president's actions over the past week are a watershed moment for America.Mr Trump ordered his administration to cancel subscriptions to The New York Times and The Washington Post at the start of the week, a move that Barry McCaffrey called 'deadly serious'.
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| Far-right AfD deals setback to Merkel's CDU in German state vote Posted: 27 Oct 2019 10:19 AM PDT  The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) beat Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives into third place in Sunday's regional election in the eastern state of Thuringia, in which the incumbent far-left Linke came first, an exit poll showed. The result follows the AfD's successes in the eastern states of Saxony and Brandenburg, where it surged into second place in Sept. 1 elections, and marks a setback from Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU).
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| Germany Budget Surplus to Reach Billions in 2019: Handelsblatt Posted: 27 Oct 2019 05:34 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Explore what's moving the global economy in the new season of the Stephanomics podcast. Subscribe via Pocket Cast or iTunes.Germany will have a budget surplus this year amounting to billions of euros, Handelsblatt reported, citing government sources.Greater-than-expected tax revenue will result in the figure reaching the "high-single digits," the paper said.Germany's finance ministry is preparing a tax revenue estimate for next week, and calculations show the number has increased by 4 billion euros ($4.4 billion) compared to the last assessment in May, Handelsblatt reported.The government also has to pay about 5 billion euros less than planned to serve its current debt. On top, "many billions" earmarked for investments for states and municipalities will not be called, the newspaper wrote, while some of the surplus will be reserved to help refugees.With countries from China to the U.K. announcing fiscal stimulus plans, Germany is facing pressure to loosen the purse strings. So far, Germany hasn't committed to such a program, instead discussing measures including higher investments, subsidies for electric cars or corporate tax write-offs.To contact the reporter on this story: Richard Weiss in Frankfurt at rweiss5@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Daniel Schaefer at dschaefer36@bloomberg.net, Sara Marley, Jon MenonFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| After India's Aircraft Carrier Fire Left 1 Sailor Dead, China Had Words Posted: 27 Oct 2019 06:00 AM PDT  Beijing didn't mince words.
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| Woman, 78, gets 22 years for attempted murder of lawyer Posted: 26 Oct 2019 11:56 AM PDT ![Woman, 78, gets 22 years for attempted murder of lawyer]( "Woman, 78, gets 22 years for attempted murder of lawyer") Patricia Currie of Mandeville was 75 when she raised a loaded shotgun toward Keith Couture in 2016. A St. Tammany Parish jury convicted Currie in August of attempted second-degree murder, which carries a minimum sentence of 10 years. Prosecutors asked for the 50-year maximum at Thursday's sentencing by Judge Alan Zaunbrecher, District Attorney Warren Montgomery said in a news release Friday.
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| 'It's time to drop things, pack and go.' Threat of 85 mph winds forces 90K to flee in Northern California Posted: 27 Oct 2019 10:02 AM PDT  85-mph winds that threaten to spark fires are expected in Northern California, forcing the biggest evacuation in Sonoma County in a quarter-century
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| US boosts force in oil-rich east Syria, crosses regime checkpoints Posted: 26 Oct 2019 12:15 PM PDT  Washington has started to send reinforcements to oil-rich eastern Syria, a US defence official said Saturday, as a military convoy flying American flags crossed into the war-torn country from Iraq. The official told AFP that Washington has begun reinforcing positions in Deir Ezzor province with extra military assets in coordination with Kurdish fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces.
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| Mind your language: Archbishop of Canterbury's Brexit warning for Boris Posted: 26 Oct 2019 07:21 PM PDT  The Archbishop of Canterbury has taken Prime Minister Boris Johnson to task for his use of "inflammatory" language through the Brexit debate. Justin Welby told The Sunday Times there was a risk of pouring "petrol" on the country's divisions on the issue of Britain's departure from the European Union. The archbishop said Mr Johnson had come to symbolise a climate in which Britain had become consumed by "an abusive and binary approach to political decisions", and where those with opposing views treated each other as "total" enemies. In an era in which social media had made it "extraordinarily dangerous to use careless comments", and in which hate speech was on the rise, Mr Welby called for political leaders to take more care with their language. He said his criticisms were not confined to Mr Johnson and his Government, but made it clear he considered the prime minister partly to blame for the fact society had become "quite broken". The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby during an address at Westminster Abbey. Credit: Paul Grover/Paul Grover "I think we have become addicted to an abusive and binary approach to political decisions: 'It's either this or you're my total enemy'," Mr Welby told the paper. "There have been inflammatory words used on all sides, in parliament and outside - 'traitor', 'fascist', all kinds of really bad things have been said at the highest level in politics." Mr Welby said he was "shocked" by Mr Johnson's recent dismissal of concerns extreme language could encourage death threats against politicians as "humbug". And he added political leaders could no longer behave the same way as Mr Johnson's hero, Winston Churchill. "Churchill was well known for his somewhat inflammatory putdowns in parliament," the archbishop said. "But this is happening at a time when we have social media, which amplifies things. "In a time of deep uncertainty, a much smaller amount of petrol is a much more dangerous thing than it was in a time when people were secure. "There is a great danger to doing it when we're already in a very polarised and volatile situation." Mr Welby said action was needed to heal divisions "at almost every level of society, including the political level of society", adding: "I don't only blame government. I think we are quite broken."
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| After This War, India Became A Powerhouse and Pakistan Was Ruined Posted: 26 Oct 2019 05:14 PM PDT  The 1971 India-Pakistan War's legacy lives on.
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| Ousted Republicans plot rematches with Trump back on the ballot Posted: 27 Oct 2019 04:16 AM PDT  Former Rep. Claudia Tenney got swept out of Congress in 2018 on an anti-Trump wave. And with Trump back on the ballot in 2020, Tenney and her supporters see a chance to make her comeback. "I think it's going to be a good year," Tenney said in an interview.
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| Lebanon puts temporary ban on taking large sums of dollar cash out of country - NNA Posted: 27 Oct 2019 01:19 PM PDT ![Lebanon puts temporary ban on taking large sums of dollar cash out of country - NNA]( "Lebanon puts temporary ban on taking large sums of dollar cash out of country - NNA") A Lebanese state prosecutor on Sunday banned traders and money exchangers from taking significant amounts of physical dollar currency out of the country at air and land borders, state news agency NNA said. The order, which it said was issued by Public Prosecutor Ghassan Oueidat, imposed the ban until the central bank determines a new mechanism for regulating such transfers, NNA reported. People had previously been able to take large sums of dollar cash out of Lebanon with a permit from customs authorities.
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| Giuliani Butt-Dials NBC Reporter, Heard Saying He Needs Money Posted: 26 Oct 2019 12:59 AM PDT ![Giuliani Butt-Dials NBC Reporter, Heard Saying He Needs Money]( "Giuliani Butt-Dials NBC Reporter, Heard Saying He Needs Money") (Bloomberg) -- Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump's personal lawyer, accidentally dialed the phone of an NBC reporter and inadvertently left recordings of his conversations with associates, including one where he is heard looking for money."The problem is we need some money," Giuliani is heard telling an unidentified person in the voice mail left on the phone of NBC reporter Rich Shapiro, NBC reported. Giuliani goes on to tell an unidentified man that "we need a few hundred thousand."NBC said it is unclear what the two men are discussing or who the other man is in the roughly three-minute message left on Oct. 16.It wasn't the first time that Giuliani inadvertently called the reporter, NBC said. Shapiro also received a butt-dial voice mail message on Sept. 28. In that call, Giuliani could be heard attacking former Vice President and 2020 Democratic hopeful Joe Biden, as well as Biden's son Hunter. Giuliani is a central figure in the impeachment investigation and the allegations that Trump improperly solicited Ukraine's help in investigating a political rival.NBC's follow-up calls to Giuliani for comment on the voice mails weren't returned and the phone's voice mailbox was full."I have yet to receive an intentional or unintentional call back," Schapiro said in an interview with MSNBC.\--With assistance from Kathleen Miller.To contact the reporter on this story: Andrew Davis in London at abdavis@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Matthew G. Miller at mmiller144@bloomberg.net, Sara Marley, Jon MenonFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Steal The Show In This 1994 Ford F-150 SVT Lightning Posted: 27 Oct 2019 04:00 AM PDT  An attractive muscle truck created for performance.From 1993 through 1995, Ford created a potent version of its top-selling F-150 pickup truck to compete against other performance-oriented GM vehicles such as the GMC Syclone and Chevy 454 SS. That's when the SVT (Special Vehicle Team) developed the performance-oriented SVT Lightning with impressive power but still retained the ruggedness and capability of Ford's F-Series. Classic Car Liquidators is happy to offer the chance to take home this incredible 1994 Ford F-150 SVT Lightning with just 20,863 miles on the clock.While there is no denying that the sporty pickup has an attractive exterior, the main selling point was tucked under the hood. Powered by a slightly modified fuel-injected 351cui V8 engine, the muscular Lightning generated 240-horsepower and 340 ft/lb of torque straight out of the gate. The truck handles smooth and sits low thanks to modifications made to a basic F-150 chassis. The sporty pickup sprints from 0 to 60 in 7.6 seconds and can reach a top speed of 110 miles per hour.Under the truck is a Ford 8.8-inch solid rear that houses 4.10 gears. Stopping power comes from the combination of ABS drum and disc brakes. The Lightning was given a custom tubular intake manifold, and it came with true dual exhaust mated to stainless steel tubular exhaust headers. The '94 Ford Lightning was only offered as a standard 2-door cab with a short-bed, and it was only produced with a 4-speed automatic transmission with overdrive. Even more, the truck was only available in three colors: red, black, and white. The Lightning was easy to identify with badges and accents placed from the exterior to the engine bay. Only 11,563 first-gen SVT Lightnings were produced total over its 3-year span, and only 1,460 of those were slathered in white for the 1994 model year. Who knows how many of that number actually still exist today.If you want to haul more than just the mail, contact Classic Car Liquidator today. The truck is listed at $19,999, but feel free to make an offer here. Read More... * Pack A Potent Punch In This 2015 Ford Mustang GT Hennessey * Pro-Touring 1965 Ford Mustang GT Up For Grabs
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| Australian serial killer Ivan Milat dies in prison at 74 Posted: 27 Oct 2019 12:23 AM PDT  Ivan Milat, whose grisly serial killings of seven European and Australian backpackers horrified Australia in the early '90s, died in a Sydney prison on Sunday, ending hopes of a deathbed confession to more unsolved slayings. Milat died in Long Bay Prison where authorities sent him from a hospital last week to ensure he ended his days behind bars, officials said. Milat was convicted of murder in the deaths of three German, two British, and two Australian backpackers after giving them rides while they were hitchhiking.
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| Samsung pseudo satellite falls out of the sky, lands in rural Michigan neighborhood Posted: 27 Oct 2019 01:55 PM PDT  According to a statement from Samsung, the landing was planned, and no injuries occurred when the "Samsung Europe's SpaceSelfie balloon" landed.
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| Saudi takes command of coalition troops in Yemen's Aden Posted: 27 Oct 2019 08:22 AM PDT  Saudi Arabia took command of anti-rebel troops in Yemen's Aden, Saudi state media said Sunday, after the government and southern separatist forces struck a power-sharing deal following clashes in the city. "Coalition forces have been repositioned in Aden to become under the kingdom's command and redeployed to conform with requirements of current operations," the Saudi-led pro-government coalition said in a statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency.
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| Everyone expected the Pixel 4 to have the best smartphone camera, but Apple's iPhone 11 Pro ruined Google's party (GOOG, GOOGL) Posted: 26 Oct 2019 05:54 AM PDT  It was close, but Google let Apple win the battle of the square cameras because of one controversial decision for the Pixel 4.
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| ‘This is going to do lasting damage’: Impeachment leaves Ukraine policy in chaos Posted: 27 Oct 2019 03:35 AM PDT  The donor who gave $1 million for his inauguration, then helped run a backdoor channel from Ukraine to the Oval Office, has seen his credibility damaged. The secretary of state who let it all unfold is flirting with a Senate run and angrily brushing off questions about what he knew, and when. U.S. policy toward Ukraine is in shambles, lawmakers and foreign policy experts say, as House Democrats barrel along with an impeachment probe that began with an anonymous whistleblower's complaint and has ballooned into the most serious threat so far to Donald Trump's presidency.
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| UPDATE 1-Northern California wildfire evacuation orders rise to 180,000 Posted: 27 Oct 2019 11:08 AM PDT ![UPDATE 1-Northern California wildfire evacuation orders rise to 180,000]( "UPDATE 1-Northern California wildfire evacuation orders rise to 180,000") The southward march of a Northern California wildfire toward the more populated areas above the San Francisco Bay led officials on Sunday to raise the number of residents ordered to leave their homes in the area to 180,000. The increase, from 130,000 earlier on Sunday, came as wind gusts pushed the Kincade Fire down from the rolling hills and wine regions of northern Sonoma County and threatened communities as far south as northern Santa Rosa, officials said. Sonoma County Sheriff Mark Essick, defending the evacuation orders which he said had been criticized by some as overly cautious, increased the police presence in evacuation zones.
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| Storms to unleash snow, cold across the Midwest this week Posted: 27 Oct 2019 10:39 AM PDT  The storm system bringing heavy snow to parts of the Rocky Mountains this weekend will be the first of a pair of storms to travel across the Plains and Midwest.
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| Why the 2020 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500's Carbon Wheels Are Superior to the GT350R's Posted: 27 Oct 2019 10:40 AM PDT  It's more than just looks, although they are beautiful: the carbon-fiber wheels are as advanced as those on a Ferrari.
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