| White House 'surprised that anyone would be blindsided' by U.S. withdrawal from northern Syria Posted: 07 Oct 2019 04:59 PM PDT  A senior White House official suggested that the "blindsided" comment originated from disgruntled government employees.
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| US F-16 warplane crashes in Germany with pilot taken to hospital Posted: 08 Oct 2019 07:58 AM PDT  An American F-16 fighter jet crashed Tuesday near the city of Trier in western Germany, the German air force told AFP, with the pilot surviving after using the ejector seat. After multiple emergency calls around 3:15 pm local time, emergency services reached the scene near the village of Zemmer, police said in a statement. The airman was taken to hospital. Police said it was not immediately clear how seriously he was injured in the crash. Authorities blocked off a large zone around the crash site including several roads, the police statement added, urging drivers to avoid the area. A spokesman for the nearby US military airbase at Spangdahlem told AFP he had no further information about the crash, its causes or the health of the pilot. Germany is no stranger to military aircraft crashes, including in its own shortage-plagued Bundeswehr armed forces. In June this year, two of the air force's Eurofighter jets crashed after colliding in mid-air in northeastern Germany. One of the pilots was killed, while the other ejected to safety. Less than a week later, a helicopter pilot died when his aircraft crashed near an army training centre. The last American military crash in Germany dates back to 2015, when one of the Spangdahlem base's F-16 fighters went down in northern Bavaria. In that incident, the pilot surviving after ejecting from the plane.
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| Polish politician rescues child and father from burning car Posted: 08 Oct 2019 04:45 AM PDT  A left-wing party leader in Poland has rescued a 2-year-old boy and his father from a burning car, winning praise across the political spectrum days before a national election. The car collided with a truck and began to burn Monday evening in Tabor, south of Warsaw. Robert Biedron witnessed the crash and helped the father and child until rescue officials arrived, fire officials reported.
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| The Russian Navy is Building New (Heavily Armed) Nuclear-Powered Submarines Posted: 08 Oct 2019 01:10 PM PDT  How should NATO respond? Would the same old Cold War tactics work?
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| 2020 Subaru Legacy vs. 2019 Honda Accord in Photos Posted: 07 Oct 2019 04:59 AM PDT |
| Hong Kong 'won't rule out' Chinese help over protests: leader Posted: 08 Oct 2019 11:43 AM PDT  Hong Kong's under-fire leader Carrie Lam on Tuesday said China intervening to end months of pro-democracy protests is an option following a particularly violent week of unrest that paralysed the city. Hong Kong was virtually locked down over the three-day holiday weekend, with the majority of subway stops closed. It is also the position of the central government (in Beijing) that Hong Kong should tackle the problem on her own.
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| Ex-U.S. envoy Huntsman urges rethink of Russia sanctions in WSJ op-ed Posted: 08 Oct 2019 04:51 AM PDT  Days after ending his term in Moscow, former United States ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman has urged Washington to review its sanctions-dominated approach to Russia, questioning its efficiency and calling for dialogue. The U.S. has placed multiple layers of sanctions on Russia, its senior officials and largest companies, as well as businessmen it views as connected to the Kremlin, the bulk of them linked to Moscow's role in the Ukrainian crisis which began in 2014 and has yet to be resolved. In a column https://www.wsj.com/articles/america-needs-dialogue-with-moscow-11570488054 for the Wall Street Journal published on Monday, Huntsman argued that "sanctions have become our go-to foreign policy tool to admonish misbehavior" but not all of them are having the desired effect.
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| Epic Games sued for not warning parents 'Fortnite' is allegedly as addictive as cocaine Posted: 07 Oct 2019 03:19 PM PDT  Quebec parents sued "Fortnite" publisher Epic Games for a third-person shooter they allege is as addictive and dangerous as cocaine.
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| Diplomat's Wife Suspected in Fatal U.K. Car Crash Returned to the U.S. After Telling Authorities She Would Stay. Here's What to Know Posted: 07 Oct 2019 03:42 PM PDT  U.K. officials are asking that diplomatic immunity be waived
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| Lou Dobbs: ‘RINO’ Republicans Owe America and Trump an ‘Apology’ for Criticizing Syria Pullout Posted: 07 Oct 2019 06:31 PM PDT  One of President Donald Trump's most loyal and dependable media defenders went after Republicans on Monday for rebuking Trump's plan to abandon Kurdish allies in northern Syria, calling on the president's critics to apologize to both Trump and the American people.During Monday night's broadcast of Lou Dobbs Tonight, Fox Business Network host Lou Dobbs—who recently said Trump makes weekends possible—groused about the "RINOs" who came out against the president's move to effectively allow Turkey to attack U.S.-backed Kurdish forces. (Dobbs is a frequent and vocal critic of any Republicans who don't show complete loyalty to the president.)After saying that Syria is a country that can fend for itself, and the Trump administration is only talking about bringing a thousand troops home from the northern part of the country, Dobbs showed a list of prominent Republicans who pushed back against the president following his announcement—including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley, and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)."These people are just amazingly the problem," Dobbs huffed.After derisively listing off several Republicans—notably directing much of his anger towards Haley—Dobbs finished off his roll call by taking aim at former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Fox colleague.Huckabee, a Fox News contributor, took to Twitter on Monday morning to note that while he generally supports Trump's foreign policy, he thinks it's a "HUGE mistake to abandon Kurds," as the Kurdish have been "faithful allies" and we "CANNOT abandon them.""This is nonsense!" Dobbs exclaimed. "Each one of those people owes—in my judgment, again, for multiple reasons, and a number of cases—the American people and this president an apology.""Just stand aside," he concluded.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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| Conor McGregor's entourage have been accused of forcing a nightclub bottle service girl into their car after a booze-fueled evening in LA Posted: 08 Oct 2019 05:06 PM PDT  Insider uncovered the story while investigating Los Angeles nightlife company The H.wood Group, which is popular among celebrities.
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| Afghan officials say raid killed top Al-Qaida commander Posted: 08 Oct 2019 07:32 AM PDT ![Afghan officials say raid killed top Al-Qaida commander]( "Afghan officials say raid killed top Al-Qaida commander") A top Al-Qaida commander was killed in a raid by Afghan forces last month, Afghan intelligence officials said Tuesday, in an operation backed by U.S. airstrikes that also killed tens of civilians. Afghanistan's National Directorate for Security said in a statement Tuesday that the raid on Sept. 23 killed Asim Omar along with six other Al-Qaida members in the southern Helmand province.
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| Police bust multi-billion pound drug smuggling gang after 50 tonnes of product are brought into the UK Posted: 08 Oct 2019 11:37 AM PDT  Britain's biggest ever drug smuggling gang has been smashed after billions of pounds worth of narcotics was brought into the UK, the National Crime Agency believes. Officers arrested 13 men aged between 24 and 59 on Tuesday across the country in dawn raids. The NCA seized 351 kilos of cocaine, 92 kilos of heroin, 250 kilos of cannabis and 1,850 kilos of hemp/hashish, with a total street value of more than £38 million, in three consignments in September 2018. Investigators believe more than 50 tonnes of drugs worth billions of pounds were imported from the Netherlands, between February 2017 and October 2018, hidden in lorries carrying vegetables and juice. Jayne Lloyd, NCA Regional Head of Investigations, said: "We suspect these men were involved in an industrial-scale operation - the biggest ever uncovered in the UK - bringing in tonnes of deadly drugs that were distributed to crime groups throughout the country. "By working closely with partners here and overseas, in particular the Dutch National Police, we believe we have dismantled a well-established drug supply route." The gang are believed to have imported billions of pounds worth of drugs Credit: AFP The arrests were made in London, Manchester, Stockport, St Helens, Warrington, Bolton, Dewsbury, and Leeds. Four men and two women from the Netherlands, who were arrested in April this year as part of the same investigation, are awaiting extradition to the UK. "We have got the top people in the group," said Ms Lloyd. "We believe it's probably the biggest conspiracy that's been seen in the UK." Investigators believe the arrests have disrupted the flow of drugs into the UK to be sold on by "county lines" gangs, who often use children as dealers. "Taking out this suspected organised crime group... will make, hopefully, a huge impact in relation to protecting the public and the economy," said Ms Lloyd. "You can see from where they've been arrested that the potential was that significant amounts of drugs coming into the UK would go to various areas in the UK. "We would be looking at vulnerable individuals who would then supply the commodity on behalf of other organised crime groups." The investigation is linked to an earlier NCA operation where 13 people were jailed after the seizure of more than 100kg of heroin in 2015.
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| China Knows It Can't Protect Every Island It Builds (Think South China Sea) Posted: 07 Oct 2019 08:15 PM PDT  But Beijing is building them anyway.
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| Germany holds Syrian crash truck hijacker for attempted murder Posted: 08 Oct 2019 11:34 AM PDT  German authorities Tuesday held on suspicion of attempted murder a Syrian man who hijacked an articulated lorry and smashed it into cars stopped at a traffic light in the city of Limburg, injuring several people. The 32-year-old will remain in custody, suspected of attempted murder and bodily harm as well as a traffic offence, Frankfurt prosecutors told AFP. Unconfirmed media reports said the Syrian national arrived with the massive migrant influx to Germany in 2015 and that his residency permit had expired on October 1.
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| Fat is fabulous for bears in Alaska's Katmai National Park Posted: 07 Oct 2019 12:50 PM PDT  Alaska grizzly bears packing on pounds (kilos) for the winter are competing for more than the season's last salmon. Fat Bear Week has become a national internet sensation, pitting individual bears against each other in an online voting contest. At Katmai, a park in southwestern Alaska known for its bountiful salmon runs and the huge grizzlies - Alaskans call them "brown bears" - that feed on them, Fat Bear Week is an annual highlight.
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| Israel unveils the remains of 5,000-year-old city Posted: 08 Oct 2019 01:25 PM PDT  Israeli archaeologists on Sunday unveiled the remains of a 5,000-year-old city they said was one of the biggest from its era in the region, including fortifications, a ritual temple and a cemetery.
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| America’s Good Intentions in Syria Have Led to This Dismal Outcome Posted: 08 Oct 2019 03:30 AM PDT  Recent U.S. policy in Syria, from the moment that former U.S. ambassador Robert Ford showed support for Syrian protesters in 2011, has been one of good intentions that were mismanaged through conflicting policies. This week it led to the decision to withdraw. A new crisis will unfold in eastern Syria, an area that, liberated from ISIS, has seen too much war and where the people are just beginning to reconstruct their lives. Many are expressing feelings that the U.S. betrayed its partners, the Syrian Democratic Forces, who are mostly Kurdish. The larger context is that the U.S. has been seen as abandoning one group after another in Syria, reducing American influence in Syria and the region.It is at least the third time that President Donald Trump has sought to leave Syria. In March 2018, he said that the U.S. was leaving "very soon." In December 2018, he wrote that the U.S. was bringing the troops home after defeating ISIS. In fact, ISIS was not defeated on the ground until March 23, 2019, in its last pocket near the Euphrates river. ISIS sleeper cells are still active, and there are thousands of ISIS detainees in eastern Syria. However, Trump now says that Turkey or other countries will need to deal with the remnants of ISIS and the detainees in Syria.How did the U.S. get here? In 2011, Americans were outraged by scenes of Bashar al-Assad's regime cracking down on protests. There was bipartisan support for backing the Syrian protesters and then the Syrian rebels. At the time, the Obama administration had a vast spectrum of options, from giving them anti-tank missiles to carrying out airstrikes against Assad and punishing him for using chemical weapons. But Obama walked back from his 2012 red line on the use of chemical weapons.Washington shifted from directly opposing Assad to training and equipping Syrian rebels, a program that cost up to $1 billion and was largely seen as a failure by 2015. By this time, the U.S. was working on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or the "Iran deal," and the overthrow of Assad, who is backed by Iran, was no longer a priority. ISIS had exploited the Syrian conflict to take over a third of Syria and Iraq, controlling the lives of 12 million people and committing genocide. The U.S. began anti-ISIS operations in Syria in September 2014 and helped the Kurdish fighters in Kobane resist ISIS. From there grew a unique partnership between the U.S. and these leftist Kurdish fighters, whom Turkey accused of being linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which the U.S. views as terrorists. The U.S. supported the creation of the Syrian Democratic Forces in 2015 in eastern Syria, as a way to rebrand the Kurdish fighters and distance them from the PKK, so that Washington could train and equip them without appearing to support the party.The Obama administration had moved from opposing Assad, to arming rebel fighters, to fighting ISIS and signing the Iran deal. At each juncture it narrowed its goals. By the time Trump was elected, the U.S. mission in eastern Syria, encapsulated in Operation Inherent Resolve, was to defeat ISIS on the ground and diplomatically oppose Assad through lip service in Geneva.Trump vowed during his campaign to defeat ISIS, but he also wanted to show that there was a red line with respect to Assad's crimes. He ordered airstrikes against the regime in April 2017 and April 2018 but was reluctant to do more. He ended support for the rebels in July 2017, and a year later Damascus took back rebel areas that had previously enjoyed some U.S. support. By this time, Russia and Iran were deeply involved in Syria, supporting Assad, and Turkey had launched an operation in northern Syria to prevent the U.S.-backed SDF from expanding its areas of control.At each juncture, the U.S. found its choices narrowed in Syria, and America was isolated from having a say in the future of Syria as Russia, Turkey, and Iran excluded Washington from peace discussions they held at Astana. Nevertheless, by 2018, the U.S. and its SDF partners controlled a huge area in eastern Syria. National-security adviser John Bolton sought to push a strategy whereby America would hold on to eastern Syria until Iran left. The goal was to roll back Iranian influence and reduce Israel's fears about Iran using Syria to attack. Bolton never got his way.Trump's decision in December 2018 to leave Syria led to the resignation of defense secretary James Mattis and anti-ISIS envoy Brett McGurk. Bolton was gone by September 2019. Jettisoning these key officials, the White House narrowed its role in Syria even more, no longer seeing a way to use it as leverage against Iran. Since Trump didn't want to do nation-building in Syria, and wanted Europe or the Gulf states to foot the bill to keep ISIS detainees locked up, he saw the area as a sunk cost. As for Iran, he said the U.S. would use Iraq to "watch" it.All that was left of U.S. policy in Syria was the question of what to do about the U.S. partners, the mostly Kurdish forces that had been trained and that had done a phenomenal job defeating ISIS. The problem was that Turkey, sensing that Trump wanted to leave, kept threatening to launch an invasion of eastern Syria to attack the SDF. Turkey says it will resettle 2 million Syrians, mostly Arabs from elsewhere in Syria, in the Kurdish areas of eastern Syria.U.S. policy in Syria has been one of shutting one door after another to close off U.S. influence, at the same time that Iran, Russia, and Turkey are opening those doors to partition Syria for their own interests. The risks of U.S. withdrawal are clear. Not only will ISIS make some inroads, but Washington will lose influence in Syria, and America's image will be tarnished for appearing to abandon friends and being bullied into leaving. Iran is already calling the US an "irrelevant occupier" and saying that it's ready to help take over eastern Syria.Unfortunately, as the U.S. seeks to narrow its footprint and get out of the nation-building-humanitarian-intervention business that was a hallmark of the 1990s and early 2000s, Washington has chosen such a narrow goal that its allies are wondering whether there is a future for the U.S. in the Middle East. The U.S. had good intentions — the road to hell is paved with them — in Syria but badly mismanaged them. The result is that Iran, Russia, and Turkey got something and that all the U.S. got was a damaged reputation. It's a far cry from 2011 when Syrian protesters all across the country, including Kurds and Arabs, looked to Washington for leadership and support.
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| Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower: Google Boss’ Daughter Scrubbed From Guardian Exposé Posted: 07 Oct 2019 12:18 PM PDT  Fairfax Media/GettyLONDON—Christopher Wylie, the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower, claims that Sophie Schmidt, the daughter of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, successfully campaigned for The Guardian to scrub her name from one of their bombshell data-abuse stories.In a memoir that will be published Tuesday, he says that The Guardian's willingness to back down in the face of Schmidt's legal threats—and "water down" a story that had already been published—convinced him that he could no longer trust the British newspaper alone to publish his allegations about Cambridge Analytica.Wylie had helped The Guardian report on Cambridge Analytica anonymously for months, but he said he was shocked when the newspaper amended a May 2017 story. That story originally claimed it was Sophie Schmidt who suggested to Alexander Nix, the former director of Cambridge Analytica's parent company SCL, that he should get in touch with Peter Thiel's Palantir and look into using data mining techniques to bolster their political operations."Any trust I had in The Guardian was wrecked when the paper failed to stand by its own reporting," he wrote, according to an excerpt of Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America seen by The Daily Beast.A Guardian news & media spokesperson said, "We are disappointed that this book appears to contain factual inaccuracies about the Guardian which were not put to us prior to publication."We have raised a number of concerns with the publishers and are talking to them about how they plan to rectify this."The reporter who wrote the story, Carole Cadwalladr, said it was incredibly difficult for British media organizations to stand up to well-resourced legal threats. "Schmidt bullied a British newspaper using British privacy laws. It's extraordinary that the daughter of Eric Schmidt—the man who says that privacy is dead—would be using U.K. privacy laws to get herself taken out of the piece," she told The Daily Beast."News organizations have difficult choices to make, don't have an endless pot of money, and have to make hard choices. It's a measure of the difficulty of publishing this work that The Guardian decided they couldn't defend that one."Schmidt was an intern at SCL when Wylie writes that she "introduced Alexander to some of the executives at Palantir." The New York Times later reported on Schmidt's alleged suggestion. Palantir, a secretive tech company, was co-founded by Thiel, a Silicon Valley billionaire and major Trump donor, who also sits on the board of Facebook."The idea that Cambridge Analytica had dealings with Palantir suggested by the daughter of Eric Schmidt the chairman of Google just seemed like a really massive deal because the whole piece was about the power of these Silicon Valley tech companies," Cadwalladr said.Wylie wrote that he was not one of the sources who had spoken to Cadwalladr about Schmidt, but he said he did know of Schmidt's role in the history of the company."The story wasn't remotely libelous. Schmidt threw a battalion of lawyers at The Guardian, with the threat of a time-consuming and expansive legal battle. Instead of fighting an obviously spurious lawsuit, the paper agreed to remove Schmidt's name several weeks after publication," he said. Cadwalladr emphasized that it was privacy concerns rather than libel that were raised. "Then Cambridge Analytica threatened to sue over the same article," Wylie writes. "And even though The Guardian had documents, emails, and files that confirmed everything I had told them, they backed down again. Editors agreed to flag certain paragraphs as 'disputed,' to appease Cambridge Analytica and mitigate the paper's liability. They took Cadwalladr's well-sourced story and watered it down. At this point, my heart sank. I thought, All right, I've just moved back to London, I haven't got a job, and I'm being asked to put my neck on the line for a newspaper that won't even defend its own journalism."Wylie had been in discussions about going public with his full story but now began to re-think.He said he was put in touch with Gavin Millar, a well-known London lawyer who had worked on the Edward Snowden case. Wylie said the lawyer suggested he give the story to a U.S. newspaper because the First Amendment provided a stronger defense against accusations of libel and "The New York Times was far less likely to back down than The Guardian had been, and it would never delete parts of articles after the fact."Wylie said he then gave The Guardian an ultimatum. "I reiterated to the paper's editors that I would not be cooperating or handing over documents until there was an agreement with The New York Times."Cadwalladr said: "He's right to say that it did dent his confidence in publishing in Britain but it was actually The Guardian's Katharine Viner who reached out to Dean Baquet at the New York Times to help set up the partnership."Wylie's revelations were published jointly by The Guardian and The New York Times. It eventually emerged that more than 87 million Facebook profiles had been compromised as part of a vast data collection operation. Cambridge Analytica, which worked for the Trump campaign in 2016, was bankrupted and Facebook was fined a record $5 billion by the Federal Trade Commission.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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| The Latest: California governor signs law capping rent hikes Posted: 08 Oct 2019 03:48 PM PDT  California is now the second U.S. state to cap rent increases statewide. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law Tuesday that will cap rent increases at 5% each year plus inflation. The bill also bans landlords from evicting tenants without just cause.
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| Iran's Drones Are Getting Deadlier by the Day Posted: 07 Oct 2019 05:46 AM PDT  What should Washington do about it?
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| Mystery oil spills blot more than 130 Brazilian beaches Posted: 08 Oct 2019 11:05 AM PDT  The source of large blots of oil staining more than 130 beaches in northeastern Brazil remained a mystery Tuesday despite President Jair Bolsonaro's assertions they came from outside the country and were possibly the work of criminals. Tamar, a group dedicated to the protection of sea turtles, said the oil spill was "the worst environmental tragedy" it has encountered since its formation in 1980. The patches of oil began appearing in early September and have now turned up along a 2,000 kilometer (1,200 mile) stretch of Atlantic coastline.
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| A senior border patrol agent quietly retired after he was charged with sexually assaulting a junior agent Posted: 07 Oct 2019 10:58 AM PDT  A senior Border Patrol agent retired after being arrested and indicted on sexual assault and kidnapping charges against a female colleague.
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| Sexual abuse of slaves by students at Founding Father’s university revealed by historians Posted: 07 Oct 2019 04:59 AM PDT  The two young, white University of Virginia students had a secret.It was September 1826, and the men, both scions of wealthy southern slaveholding families, were suffering from the same sexually transmitted disease.
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| Chicago teens stage 'die-in' to demand action on climate change; one man arrested Posted: 07 Oct 2019 07:24 PM PDT  Dozens of Chicago teens gathered across from Trump International Hotel and marched to City Hall Monday to demand action on climate change.
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| Trump Gives Swing-District Democrats New Cause to Back Inquiry Posted: 08 Oct 2019 05:01 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump has erased any lingering doubts among the swing-district Democrats who galvanized the House impeachment move two weeks ago despite the risks to their re-election chances in 2020.The decision by seven first-term Democrats elected in Trump-leaning districts to back an impeachment inquiry after months of resisting the idea tipped the balance in the House and helped spark Speaker Nancy Pelosi's decision to announce the investigation.Now they are back home during a congressional break, facing voters as well as a concerted effort by Republicans to make them pay. At town halls and in interviews, members of the group express no regrets."I did the right thing, and I will be able to look in the mirror 30 years from now and say I was on the right side of history," Virginia Representative Elaine Luria told a packed town hall in her coastal district last week that's home to Naval Station Norfolk.Luria and the six other freshmen lawmakers who announced their support for an impeachment inquiry in a Sept. 23 opinion essay in the Washington Post are crucial to Democrats' chances of holding the House in 2020 and to the party's hopes of making inroads in former Republican strongholds in the presidential election. They won in 2018 by playing up their military or national security backgrounds and offering a moderate counter-balance to the Democratic Party's liberal wing.Backing an impeachment inquiry gives Republicans an opening to tie them to the progressive Democrats who've been calling for Trump's impeachment for months."Make no mistake about it: backing impeachment will cost the Democrats their majority in 2020," Minnesota Representative Tom Emmer, head of the House GOP's campaign arm, said in a statement.Counter AttackThe campaign against them has already begun. Vice President Mike Pence in planning trips in the coming weeks to the districts of four Democratic freshmen who defeated Republican incumbents.Since swinging to support an impeachment inquiry, several of the vulnerable Democrats said at meetings with voters and in interviews that the events since then have only solidified their decision. Those include the White House releasing a rough transcript of Trump's call with Ukraine's president, a whistle-blower's complaint and the president himself publicly calling on Ukraine and China to investigate a Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden."There is a national security threat in addition to the illegality of a president of the United States allegedly asking for election assistance from a foreign government," said Virginia Representative Abigail Spanberger, one of the Democrats being targeted by Pence."If calling that out is wrong and gets me into political trouble, then why am I here if I'm not here to stand up for the Constitution? Why am I in this role if I am not supposed to call out things that are endanger us and are a threat to our country?" she said.Luria also said she wasn't deterred by political threats.'The Right Thing'"I have to tell you I did not do it in regard to any political consequences. I did it knowing that in the past the district I represent has been held by a Republicans and people may say 'why would you do that? You might not be re-elected.' I don't care because I did the right thing," said Luria, a Naval Academy graduate who spent 20 years in the service.The line earned Luria a standing ovation and a smattering of boos, reflecting the political divide in her district, which she won last year with 51% of the vote against Republican incumbent Scott Taylor.Luria said of the 420 calls she's received from constituents on impeachment in the last week and a half, about two-thirds were supportive. At her town hall last Thursday, those who spoke were more evenly divided."There is no evidence so far as I'm concerned, in my option, that warrants it. They have been trying to impeach this president from Day Two," said Jim Tarr, 65, a federal geologist, echoing other Trump supporters in the audience.Many attendees interviewed said that they respected Luria's judgment, as a former naval officer, about whether Trump may have imperiled national security by withholding aid to Ukraine."I think she is a taking a political risk but I like that she said she is not worried about her re-election," Conrad Schwab, who was among the crowd, said."I just think it is a waste of their time. Our health care needs to be fixed," said Marsha Spain, a self-described independent.Plea to ChinaLuria told the Virginia Beach crowd that she "didn't go to Washington to impeach the president," but that Trump's public suggestion earlier that day that China investigate Biden and his son Hunter reinforced her decision."It was even more brazen this morning when he stood on the White House lawn and an asked China to meddle in our election," she said.Trump's decision late Sunday to abandon U.S.'s Kurdish allies in Syria -- from which he is backpedaling -- also bolstering the view by Democrats that his foreign policy presents a national security risk.Spanberger, a former CIA operative, said that while the decision is itself not impeachable, there are similarities between the Ukraine call, the televised plea to China and the Syria decision."They show a president who doesn't understand foreign policy whatsoever, who doesn't understand the lines between what is appropriate and what is not," she said.Other Democrats who flipped last month in favor of impeachment also suggested parallels, including first-term Minnesota Representative Dean Phillips.At a Friday town hall event in Rochester, Michigan, an affluent town in a GOP-leaning District, Representative Elissa Slotkin defended her support of an impeachment inquiry.She told a mostly supportive crowd that she changed her mind when Trump acknowledged that he asked for information from Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy about Biden. While most of the audience clapped in approval, Slotkin was subject to frequent heckling from about a dozen Trump supporters in the crowd."I did not take this decision lightly," she said. "It's not something I wanted to do."Slotkin was asked if she thought Trump was doing his duty by investigating the accusation that Biden helped his son avoid investigation in Ukraine."You go to the American FBI," the former CIA analyst said. When the Trump supporters responded with boos, she said, "You can boo the FBI. I will not boo the FBI. You do not go to a foreign leader if you're concerned about corruption, especially to ask about a political rival."Colorado Democrat Jason Crow, a former Army Ranger who also signed the essay with Slotkin, Spanberger and Luria, spent the last week on a delegation to Afghanistan and the Jordan-Syria border. He said in an interview Monday that he has no second thoughts."Our concerns continue to be re-confirmed," he said. "More and more information is emerging about his fast and loose approach to American foreign policy and his abuse of presidential authority."Crow said that he has found support in his community for his decision but that it was important that the inquiry stay focused and proceed efficiently."I think the process is really important here," he said. "You don't make conclusions until you have reviewed the evidence."Speaking on MSNBC Tuesday, Crow said Trump's actions represent a national security risk and have damaged U.S. credibility abroad. He declined to say whether he thinks the House will ultimately impeach Trump, adding that's it's "inappropriate" to prejudge the end result."That's why we're making sure we're following the steps right now," Crow said. "We have to make sure we're doing it the right way."(Updates with lawmaker quote beginning in the 35th paragraph.)To contact the reporters on this story: Erik Wasson in Washington at ewasson@bloomberg.net;David Welch in Southfield at dwelch12@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Anna Edgerton, John HarneyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| UPDATE 2-Ethiopian Airlines flight makes emergency landing in Dakar, no casualties Posted: 08 Oct 2019 10:37 AM PDT ![UPDATE 2-Ethiopian Airlines flight makes emergency landing in Dakar, no casualties]( "UPDATE 2-Ethiopian Airlines flight makes emergency landing in Dakar, no casualties") An Ethiopian Airlines plane was forced to make an emergency landing minutes after taking off in Senegal on Tuesday because an engine had caught fire, an airport spokesman said. None of the 90 passengers or crew were injured, spokesman Tidiane Tamba told Reuters. The airline confirmed on Twitter that its Boeing 767 aircraft had to land unexpectedly at Senegal's Blaise Diagne International Airport near the capital Dakar because of "a technical problem" without providing more detail on the cause.
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| Harley falters with electric bike debut, struggles to attract new generation Posted: 07 Oct 2019 01:49 PM PDT  Harley-Davidson is betting on electric motorcycles to attract the next generation of younger and more environmentally conscious riders to reverse declining U.S. sales.
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| 2 ex-nursing home workers charged with bilking 98-year-old Posted: 07 Oct 2019 07:34 PM PDT ![2 ex-nursing home workers charged with bilking 98-year-old]( "2 ex-nursing home workers charged with bilking 98-year-old") A Cook County state's attorney's office spokeswoman said Monday that Tameeka Wolfe and Christina Wright were each charged with one felony count of financial exploitation of an elderly person. The charges stem from an investigation into allegations that employees at Symphony Residences of Lincoln Park cashed checks, made ATM withdrawals and transferred money from several of Grace Watanabe's bank accounts for about a year. Cook County Public Guardian Charles Golbert took emergency custody of the woman and removed her from the facility last year.
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| View 2020 BMW M8 Gran Coupe Photos Posted: 08 Oct 2019 04:01 PM PDT |
| Russia warns against actions that 'inhibit peace process' in Syria Posted: 08 Oct 2019 10:30 AM PDT  Russia's security council said on Tuesday it was important to avoid hindering the peace process in Syria, following discussions with President Vladimir Putin, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. The influential council discussed the creation of a constitutional committee in the country and "remarked that at this stage everyone should avoid any actions that can inhibit the peace process in Syria," he said. Peskov said earlier Tuesday that Russia "is following very closely how the situation is developing" and was not informed about the withdrawal of the United States from the region -- something that has sparked fears of a Turkish attack on Kurdish forces.
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| See This Picture? This Was the U.S. Navy's World War II Battleship 'Drone' Posted: 08 Oct 2019 02:18 AM PDT  On December 7, 1941, one of the first attacks conducted by Japanese aircraft was launched against the former battleship USS Utah, a radio-controlled target ship. Today, USS Utah remains at the bottom of Pearl Harbor, a memorial to those lost in the surprise attack.
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| Elon Musk paid convicted fraudster to spread false paedophile claims about British cave rescue hero, court documents allege Posted: 08 Oct 2019 09:33 AM PDT  Elon Musk paid a convicted fraudster to smear a British diving hero who he baselessly called a paedophile, according to court documents.The billionaire technology entrepreneur allegedly orchestrated a "malicious, false, and anonymous leak campaign" in a bid to trash the reputation of Vernon Unsworth, who helped to rescue a schoolboy football team trapped in a cave in Thailand last year.
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| Judge clears record of 21-year-old jailed 10 days for oversleeping jury duty: 'Totally rehabilitated' Posted: 08 Oct 2019 10:17 AM PDT  Deandre Somerville, 21, spent 10 days in jail after he overslept and missed jury duty. The Palm Beach County Circuit Judge since cleared his record.
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| A PAC Backed by Giuliani Henchmen Spent Millions for Member Who Targeted Ukraine Ambassador Posted: 08 Oct 2019 05:00 PM PDT  Drew Angerer/GettyA former member of Congress who pushed for political changes in Ukraine that aligned with Rudy Giuliani's investigative efforts there got millions of dollars in political support from a pro-Trump super PAC financed in part by Giuliani allies.The more than $3 million that the group, America First Action, spent supporting former Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) included huge ad buys that appear to have pushed the boundaries of laws restricting super PAC coordination with political campaigns, according to a Daily Beast review of federal campaign finance and television broadcasting records. And they could severely complicate the former congressman's attempt to win back office in 2020. The expenditures made by America First Action came during the 2018 election cycle, during which Sessions was fighting desperately to hold on to his House seat in a race he would go on to lose to Democrat Colin Allred. The PAC, which has President Donald Trump's official imprimatur, has raised millions of dollars to fulfill that task. And during that election season, $325,000 of that came from a company called Global Energy Producers LLC, a firm run by Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. The Soviet-born businessmen were, at the time of their donation to the PAC, helping Giuliani solicit dirt on President Donald Trump's political opponents from officials in Ukraine. That work, which is now at the center of an impeachment inquiry against the president, included trying to get the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, removed from her post on grounds that she was badmouthing Trump. Rudy's Ukraine Henchmen Made Big Donation to Pro-Trump PACTrump allies have also alleged that Yovanovitch was blocking key corruption investigations in the country—most importantly, for their purposes, a probe into the Ukrainian business activities of Hunter Biden, the youngest son of Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden. According to the Associated Press, the Giuliani clique continued pressed for Yovanovitch's removal early this year. She was recalled from her post in May.Sessions' role in the saga began in the spring of 2018. On May 11, Parnas posted photos to Facebook showing him and a business associate, David Correia, posing with the then-congressman in the Capitol complex. On the very same day that Parnas posted the photos to Facebook, Sessions shot off a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo questioning the fitness of Yovanovitch. "I have received notice from close companions that Ambassador Yovanovitch has spoken privately and repeatedly about her disdain for the current administration," he wrote in claims that mirrored allegations from Giuliani and his associates. Six days after the letter was sent, Global Energy Producers made its donation to American First. The following month, Parnas and Fruman each donated the legal maximum to Sessions' campaign.Sessions' campaign did not respond to a request for comment on this story. But the former congressman has denied that he pressed for Yovanovitch's removal at the behest of Giuliani, Parnas, or anyone else."I do know both these gentlemen," Sessions told BuzzFeed News and the Overseas Crime and Corruption Reporting Project in response to a joint investigation into Giuliani, Parnas, and Fruman. "They are Republicans. They are people who have an interest in foreign affairs. They have a strong interest in America not backing away from Ukraine."Lawyer Claims Congress Is 'Harassing' Rudy Giuliani's Allies—by Asking Them for Ukraine DocumentsAmerica First spokesperson Kelly Sadler said there was no understanding when GEP donated to the group that it would be supporting Sessions' candidacy, or that the money provided by Parnas' and Fruman's company would go towards a specific candidate.But as investigations into what Trump and Giuliani were doing in Ukraine continue to ramp up, Sessions' opponents are demanding that he further explain the reasoning for his letter to Pompeo and whether he was rewarded financially for writing it. "At the moment, it seems to me he was playing the role of the useful idiot," his Democratic opponent this time around, businessman Rick Kennedy told The Daily Beast in an email. "Sessions and the incumbent Bill Flores represent everything that is wrong with our politics today. They're both ordained by big donors to sit in a seat in Congress to represent [the donors'] interests. The donors move candidates around like pieces on a chess board to try to get their representatives in and their agendas through."Kennedy said he doesn't buy Sessions insistence that he was not doing Giuliani's bidding. "He wrote a letter without understanding the broader context or strategy, and he got a couple of big donations for it," the Democrat said in his email.Sessions, who was one of the most endangered Republican incumbents during the 2018 cycle, was one of fifteen House candidates that benefited from America First's eight-figure independent expenditure campaign. The group ultimately dropped more than $3.1 million supporting Sessions and attacking Allred, according to Federal Election Commission data. Only one other House candidate got more America First air support last year.Super PACs are legally prohibited from coordinating with the campaigns of federal political candidates they support. But America First's extensive television ad buys on Sessions' behalf appear to have employed a tactic that good government groups say pushes the boundaries of—and could even violate—federal laws barring such coordination.The tactic revolves around the use of a shared vendor. The Sessions campaign employed an ad-buying firm called America Media & Advocacy Group, while America First used a company called Red Eagle Media Group. Public records indicate that the groups are effectively the same entity, with shared staff and office space.In fact, the same official, America Media executive Jon Ferrell, signed Federal Communications Commission paperwork for both entities as they took out late-October ad buys in an effort to shore up Sessions' political prospects. Vendors are legally permitted to work for both a political campaign and a supportive super PAC provided they "firewall" off the services they provide to each, and Sadler said that the group had taken pains to establish just such boundaries. "We have hired political professionals, both in-house and externally, who have worked in this field for years and take these obligations seriously," she wrote. "Any suggestion otherwise is false and likely politically motivated."The Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit campaign finance watchdog, filed an FEC complaint against the National Rifle Association last year under similar circumstances, arguing that the legally required firewall is farcical when the same executive oversees ad buys for both a campaign and an allied super PAC."It appears that the coordination scheme pioneered by the NRA has also been adopted by the president's super PAC," said Brendan Fischer, CLC's director of federal and FEC reforms. "The NRA used common vendors to coordinate potentially tens of millions of dollars with the Trump campaign in the 2016 election, and Trump's super PAC appears to have replicated the scheme in 2018."Indeed, even as he was approving America First ad buys supporting Sessions' candidacy, Ferrell was signing other FCC forms as an "agent for Pete Sessions for Congress."Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| U.S. Supreme Court rejects Domino's bid to avoid disabilities suit Posted: 07 Oct 2019 08:36 AM PDT  The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected a bid by Domino's Pizza Inc to avoid a lawsuit by a blind man who accused the company of violating a law barring discrimination against people with disabilities after he was unable to place an order online. The justices, on the first day of their new nine-month term, declined to hear Michigan-based company's appeal of a lower court ruling allowing the lawsuit by Guillermo Robles invoking the Americans With Disabilities Act to move forward. Robles said in his 2016 lawsuit that the Domino's website and mobile app were not fully accessible for him in violation of the 1990 law that bans discrimination based on disability.
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| Google suspended facial recognition research for the Pixel 4 smartphone after reportedly targeting homeless black people Posted: 07 Oct 2019 06:05 AM PDT  Google contractors said they were told to find people with darker skin tones to improve facial recognition on Google's upcoming Pixel 4 smartphone.
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| Suit says feds using immigration marriage interviews as trap Posted: 08 Oct 2019 10:35 AM PDT  Alyse and Elmer Sanchez were thrilled when they survived their "green card" interview, a crucial step in obtaining lawful status in the United States. Moments later, Elmer was in shackles, detained pending deportation to his native Honduras, leaving her alone with their two little boys. "We feel it was a trap, a trick, to get us there," Alyse said.
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| 'They told me that I was going to die': The US says El Salvador is safe for migrants, but transgender women living there fear for their lives Posted: 08 Oct 2019 06:35 AM PDT  A transgender woman living in El Salvador says MS-13 killed her friends and went after her next. She's been waiting for the US to grant her asylum.
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| Doomed Kiribati ferry crew drunk, victims died horribly: official report Posted: 08 Oct 2019 12:33 AM PDT  Crew members of an overloaded Kiribati ferry which sank in the Pacific claiming 95 lives were drunk, leaving passengers to die slow deaths from starvation and hypothermia, a damning report has found. "Most, if not all, victims died from hunger, dehydration and hypothermia," it found. The deaths of 84 passengers and 11 crew was the worst maritime disaster ever in Kiribati, a collection of 33 atolls and reefs scattered over an area the size of the continental United States.
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| Minneapolis mayor fires back at Trump: Doesn’t have time to be ‘tweeting garbage out’ Posted: 08 Oct 2019 01:59 PM PDT  After President Trump criticized Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey over security costs for a campaign rally on Thursday, Frey said he doesn't have time to be "tweeting garbage out."
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| Convicted killer Samuel Little, who claims 93 murders, is 'most prolific serial killer' in US history, FBI says Posted: 08 Oct 2019 06:47 AM PDT  Samuel Little has confessed to 93 murders, with authorities matching him to 50 cases. Forty-three confessions are pending confirmation.
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| Kazakh president orders investigation into China-linked transport project Posted: 08 Oct 2019 05:16 AM PDT  NUR-SULTAN (Reuters) - Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev on Tuesday ordered an investigation into former senior officials who initiated a struggling $1.5 billion Chinese-led project to build a light rail network in the capital. While Tokayev mentioned no names, his order could mean that he is targeting former and current members of his patron and predecessor Nursultan Nazarbayev's inner circle - challenging the widespread notion that the president is only No.2 in the Kazakh political hierarchy. Tokayev's criticism could also hurt the image of Beijing's Belt and Road infrastructure development initiative, of which the troubled project was part.
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| A look at who's who in northeast Syria as war fears rise Posted: 08 Oct 2019 11:22 AM PDT  President Donald Trump's announcement that U.S. troops in Syria would step aside to make way for a Turkish military operation against U.S.-allied Syrian Kurdish fighters unleashed a torrent of near unanimous criticism and warnings of immediate and long-term negative consequences. A U.S. troop withdrawal and Turkish assault on the area risks re-igniting fighting in a corner of Syria only recently stabilized and where sleeper cells of the Islamic State group continue to operate. Kurds make up 10 percent of Syria's pre-war population and were an oppressed minority before the country's conflict started in March 2011.
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| 12 Power Strips and Surge Protectors to Keep You Organized and Powered Up Posted: 08 Oct 2019 10:37 AM PDT |
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