| House Democrats face question: Impeach Pence, or make him president? Posted: 31 Oct 2019 02:00 AM PDT  If the House approves impeachment, and if the Senate votes to remove Trump, Pence would become president. Would he make a better president?
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| Rep. Katie Hill, freshman targeted by revenge porn, resigns with a blast at Trump Posted: 31 Oct 2019 12:11 PM PDT  During her final speech on the House floor Thursday, Rep. Katie Hill apologized for actions that led to her resignation while also boasting that her last vote as a member of Congress was in favor of the impeachment inquiry into President Trump.
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| Hedge fund billionaire fires back at Warren: 'Your vilification of the rich is misguided' Posted: 31 Oct 2019 03:38 PM PDT  Hedge fund mogul Leon Cooperman takes issue with Sen. Warren's plans for a wealth tax.
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| Brazil authorities zero in on ship suspected of oil spill Posted: 01 Nov 2019 01:39 PM PDT  After oil mysteriously washed ashore on some 2,100 kilometers (1,300 miles) of Brazil's coastline for two months, authorities on Friday identified a suspect: a Greek-flagged ship belonging to Delta Tankers Ltd. Brazil's government has been striving to investigate the cause of the spill that has hit 286 beaches along the northeast coast and hurt fishing and tourism. The specific source of the oil has remained unclear since it began appearing in early September.
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| A union for 28,000 American Airlines cabin crew has told Boeing's CEO its members are scared of getting back on the 737 Max Posted: 01 Nov 2019 03:38 AM PDT  Lori Bassani, who leads the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, wrote to Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg about the 737 Max crisis.
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| Trump lures senators who have his back on impeachment with cash Posted: 31 Oct 2019 06:12 AM PDT  President Trump is rewarding senators who have his back on impeachment — and sending a message to those who don't to get onboard. Trump is tapping his vast fundraising network for a handful of loyal senators facing tough reelection bids in 2020. Each of them has signed on to a Republican-backed resolution condemning the impeachment inquiry as "unprecedented and undemocratic."
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| Michael Bennett Slams Warren’s Medicare for All Plan: The ‘New Numbers are Simply Not Believable’ Posted: 01 Nov 2019 11:32 AM PDT  Democratic senator and long shot presidential candidate Michael Bennet panned the new details of Senator Elizabeth Warren's Medicare for All plan on Friday, arguing that the cost estimates she provided simply won't cover the services her plan promises."Voters are sick and tired of politicians promising them things that they know they can't deliver," the Colorado senator said in a statement. "Warren's new numbers are simply not believable and have been contradicted by experts. Regardless of whether it's $21 trillion or $31 trillion, this isn't going to happen, and the American people need health care."Warren on Friday released the cost estimate of her plan, which increases federal spending by $21 trillion over the next ten years, a significant increase that is nevertheless cheaper than the $31 trillion increase attributed to Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All plan.The plan does not directly tax the middle class but does levy $9 trillion in additional taxes on employers over the next decade. The Massachusetts lawmaker argues that the employer tax would simply replace the cost employers currently incur to provide employee health insurance plans.Former Vice President Joe Biden, another 2020 contender, said the plan's nearly $9 trillion tax on employers would end up hitting middle class workers hardest as employers would simply pass them along to rank-and-file employees."The mathematical gymnastics in this plan are all geared towards hiding a simple truth from voters: it's impossible to pay for Medicare for All without middle-class tax increases," Biden's deputy communications director Kate Bedingfield said.Former Maryland congressman John Delaney, another long shot Democratic 2020 candidate, dismissed the plan as well, saying Warren's "numbers don't add up," but the "public options" plans more moderate Democrats have proposed are not enough."A 'public option' is a government run insurance company that does not go nearly far enough in addressing the inequality in our healthcare system," Delaney said in a pair of tweets on the issue. "We need universal healthcare; most developed nations have universal healthcare. But Medicare4all is a bad plan, BetterCare works."
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| Honduras joins El Salvador in obtaining protected status extension in U.S Posted: 01 Nov 2019 11:13 AM PDT ![Honduras joins El Salvador in obtaining protected status extension in U.S]( "Honduras joins El Salvador in obtaining protected status extension in U.S") The U.S. government has extended temporary protection for Hondurans living in the United States by a year, Honduran officials said on Friday, following a similar extension for Salvadorans in a rollback of U.S. plans to end the program. U.S. President Donald Trump last year said he would shut down temporary protected status (TPS) for Hondurans and Salvadorans after a January 2020 expiration, amid a slew of measures meant to crack down on growing numbers of migrants from Central America. "On our part, we will keep working to find a permanent and humane solution for our Honduran brothers," Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez said in a Tweet on Friday, adding that TPS covers more than 40,000 Hondurans.
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| 4 Killed, Several Injured in Shooting at Airbnb Halloween Party in California. Here's What to Know Posted: 01 Nov 2019 04:19 AM PDT  The mass shooting at a Halloween party at an Airbnb in Orinda, Calif. left four people dead and several others injured.
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| Chasing shadows in China: Detained lawyer's wife battles on Posted: 01 Nov 2019 11:14 AM PDT  With winter approaching, Xu Yan brought some warm clothes and money for her husband to a detention centre in eastern China, though she's not even sure the arrested human rights lawyer is still being held there. Xu, 37, has travelled some 20 times from Beijing to Xuzhou in Jiangsu province in a vain struggle to get any information about Yu Wensheng after he was taken into custody last year. Xu returned again this week, joining the line at the Xuzhou City Detention Centre with other people bringing plastic bags bulging with thick duvets and sweaters for inmates.
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| Kids of U.S. Immigrants Move Up Just Like Those 100 Years Before Posted: 31 Oct 2019 12:30 PM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Children of U.S. immigrants tend to earn more than their parents and have higher rates of upward mobility than their American-born peers.Those are some of the conclusions in a working paper circulated this week by the National Bureau of Economic Research that explores how immigrants often improve their children's prospects in life -- and shows those born to recent immigrants are moving up just like those who came to American shores a century before.Many immigrants earn less than U.S.-born workers upon arrival, and while they don't completely catch up in a single generation, their children do, according to the research by Ran Abramitzky of Stanford, Leah Platt Boustan and Elisa Jacome of Princeton University, and Santiago Perez of the University of California at Davis."Children of immigrants from nearly every sending country have higher rates of upward mobility than the children of the U.S.-born," they said.They also directly take on the politics around immigration, which was a central theme during the 2016 election that installed Donald Trump as president and remains a controversial topic as the country gears up for the 2020 campaign."Although some politicians have a short-term perspective on immigrant assimilation, our findings suggest that this view might underestimate the long-run success of immigrants," they wrote. "Our findings are more consistent with the idea of the 'American Dream,' by which even immigrants who come to the U.S. with few resources and little skills have a real chance at improving their children's prospects."The analysis tracks immigrants using historical data that stretch back more than 100 years. The first earliest groups consist of 4 million first-generation immigrants and their children in the 1880 or 1910 censuses, with the first group mostly from northern and western European nations such as Ireland or Germany, and the second including more from the southern and eastern parts of the continent who are thought to have faced more initial disadvantages in the labor market.The researchers then follow the children of those groups to the 1910 and 1940 censuses using information on their names, ages and birthplaces. The historical data show "immigrant families were more likely than the U.S.-born to move to areas that offered better prospects for their children," the researchers wrote.To contact the reporter on this story: William Edwards in Washington at wedwards29@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Margaret Collins at mcollins45@bloomberg.net, Jeff Kearns, Alister BullFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Barack Obama thinks 'woke' kids want purity. They don't: they want progress Posted: 01 Nov 2019 03:00 AM PDT  The former president took black and progressive movements to task, without understanding his own failure to deliver change • Call-out culture: how to get it right (and wrong)Former president Barack Obama speaks with actress, model, and activist Yara Shahidi during the Obama Foundation summit in Chicago, on 29 October. Photograph: Ashlee Rezin Garcia/APOn Tuesday, in Chicago, former president Barack Obama joined actress Yara Shahidi in a conversation with activists from his Obama Foundation program. Over the nearly 1.5-hour Obama Foundation summit event, the beloved political figure deployed his trademark charm and humor while discussing the challenges of movement politics.Media attention has focused on a particular part of the conversation – Obama's criticism of call-out culture and what he perceived as an excessively strident activist left. "We can't completely remake society in a minute," Obama said, "so we have to make some accommodations to the existing structures."He added, "This idea of purity and you're never compromised and you're always politically woke and all that stuff, you should get over that quickly. The world is messy. There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws. People who you are fighting may love their kids and share certain things with you."He then made a separate point about social media activism:"If I tweet or hashtag about how you didn't do something right or used the wrong verb, I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself. 'Man you see how woke I was, I called you out.'" But "that's not activism. That's not bringing about change."On its face, these are fair remarks. During the session, both Obama and Shahidi drew from examples of the nonviolent civil rights movement of the early 1960s, which required enormous faith, patience and compromise from its activists in the face of threats to their lives and livelihood. Today, as social justice activists' material conditions have relatively improved, they will encounter people in positions of power with wealth and access, and they have to learn to work with them on some level, Obama implied. And no, tweeting about a verb probably won't bring about change.However, we can't look at Obama's remarks in a vacuum. From 2016 – as he prepared to exert his influence over who would be the next Democratic nominee – to the present, Obama has often aimed his political critiques at youth-led, black and progressive movements. While upholding the necessity of nuance, Obama himself seems to force these movements into a box, cherry-picking anecdotes for a strawman: that these movements expect purity and demand perfection.> This idea of purity and you're never compromised and you're always politically woke … you should get over that. The world is messy. There are ambiguities> > Barack ObamaIn an early instance of this ideological pattern, at a 2016 youth town hall in London, Obama spoke generally of Black Lives Matter while referring to the handful of activists who confronted the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for her role in criminalizing black youth:"Once you've highlighted an issue and brought it to people's attention … then you can't just keep on yelling at them. And you can't refuse to meet because that might compromise the purity of your position. The value of social movements and activism is to get you at the table, get you in the room."A few months later in a Howard commencement address, with Chicago protests of the police killing of Laquan McDonald not far in the distance, he told the audience of mostly black students about his criminal justice reform as a state senator:"I can say this unequivocally: without at least the acceptance of the police organizations in Illinois, I could never have gotten those [criminal justice reform] bills passed … If you think that the only way forward is to be as uncompromising as possible, you will feel good about yourself, you will enjoy a certain moral purity, but you're not going to get what you want."And earlier this year, Obama again raised the amorphous specter of purity politics as people have embraced a leftward policy shift:"One of the things I do worry about sometimes among progressives in the United States … is a certain kind of rigidity where we say, 'Uh, I'm sorry, this is how it's going to be' and then we start … a 'circular firing squad', where you start shooting at your allies because one of them has strayed from purity on the issues."Obama has offered these platitudes without much evidence that progressives, Black Lives Matter activists or young voters expect purity. Impatience with the status quo is not purity. A consistent political project is not purity. And being patient has its limits.> For many Americans, the normalization of genuinely leftwing policies is providing the hope and change Obama campaigned onYou can gather from the general direction of Obama's career, from turning down a route in corporate law to his community organizing, that he has some commitment to social justice. However, his remarks indicate discomfort with more radical tactics in achieving it, reducing them to petulant zeal and not a legitimate strategy among the broad scope of tools needed to dismantle oppressive systems.While discussing Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King as examples of patient progress, he freezes them in time. He failed to note either King's or Parks's evolutions. Over time King became more radicalized and questioned integration. When Parks was forced to Detroit to retreat from the backlash against her bus boycott activism, she became a proponent of the Panthers' self-defense demands and identified Malcolm X as her personal hero.Obama also failed to discuss how, despite King's strategies negotiating with Lyndon Johnson to sign the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Congress waffled in passing further civil rights measures until the 1968 riots after King's assassination, when Congress was forced to swiftly pass the Fair Housing Act.Or go back further: despite the negotiations and patience of abolitionists in the 1800s, it was a steady stream of black uprisings, and an entire civil war, that gave abolition laws and the Emancipation Proclamation any teeth.Obama's fundamental problem is in confusing a strategy of pragmatism with the strategy. Pragmatic approaches can coexist with more radical politics. But Obama's pattern of dismissing radical demands altogether shows a serious unwillingness to appreciate the times. Obama is committed to a notion of reaching across the aisle that may have seemed necessary in 2012, but not so much in 2019.Americans in the throes of economic struggle and social oppression have been advised to hold their nose for so long that they're suffocating. The labor movement is experiencing more worker strikes now than in the past 40 years. We're in a 1968 moment, not 1963. But Obama has not accepted this evolution.As people demand universal policies for basic needs of shelter, food, freedom from police terror, and economic security, and when wealth inequality is the worst in a century, Obama has to reckon with his own questions. How is his form of calling out – scolding black, young and progressive movements – bringing about change? Is he part of the solution or part of the problem?For many Americans, the normalization of genuinely leftwing policies is providing the hope and change Obama campaigned on. This is the time for him to finally help achieve it.
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| A plane flying from Portugal to Scotland was mistakenly told it was flying near the North Pole when its navigation gear malfunctioned Posted: 01 Nov 2019 05:43 AM PDT  A Ryanair Boeing 737-800 was flying to Edinburgh when it experienced a number of malfunctions, including with the plane's altitude readings.
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| U.S., allies working to offset loss of Iranian oil: Mnuchin Posted: 01 Nov 2019 09:51 AM PDT  The United States is working with allies to ensure adequate global oil supplies after its sanctions barred nations from buying Iranian crude, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Friday. Mnuchin spoke to reporters during a trip to India - which was one of the main importers of Iranian oil until New Delhi stopped the shipments this May in the aftermath of the U.S. sanctions. "We are working with our allies to make sure that there is significant supply in the market of oil to offset sanctions," said Mnuchin, who is on a regional tour to try to build up support against Iran.
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| Maskless Merkel braves severe Delhi smog Posted: 01 Nov 2019 12:38 AM PDT  German Chancellor Angela Merkel got a toxic welcome to India on Friday as Prime Minister Narendra Modi treated her to a military parade in New Delhi's severely polluted air. Ignoring medical advice to the choking megacity's 20 million inhabitants, Merkel and Modi reviewed a guard of honour at the presidential palace without pollution masks. The European Union's longest-serving leader is due to step down in 2021.
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| Latest Impeachment Witness: I Wasn’t Worried That Trump Broke the Law With Call Posted: 31 Oct 2019 12:18 PM PDT  SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty ImagesTim Morrison, a senior White House official who listened to President Donald Trump's controversial call with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, said he did not worry Trump broke the law on the call. He also said he was not aware of any meaningful material being left out of the White House's memo on the call."I want to be clear, I was not concerned that anything illegal was discussed," he said in a prepared statement to Congress obtained by The Daily Beast. After the call between Zelensky and Trump took place, Morrison directed that the transcript of it be put on a secret White House server. He said that the memo the White House released about the call is, to the best of his memory, complete and thorough. Another witness, NSC official Alex Vindman, suggested that noteworthy parts of the conversation were missing from the White House's memo.Those dual statements from Morrison may prove to be a setback for Democrats who have argued that the call amounted to an impeachable offense since it involved the president demanding an exchange of a political favor for military aid. Morrison, who served as the senior director for European affairs on the National Security Council until his resignation on Wednesday, says he had a different recollection of events than what Ambassador Bill Taylor described in his Oct. 22 testimony—including an episode that appeared to indicate the lofty expectations that Trump and his team had for Zelensky's commitment to investigating the Bidens. John Bolton Brings a Nuclear Superhawk Into the White HouseIn his testimony, Taylor recounted a conversation in which Morrison briefed him on another conversation between Ambassador Gordon Sondland and a top adviser to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. Taylor said Morrison informed him that Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union at the heart of the impeachment inquiry, told Zelensky-aide Andriy Yermak that U.S. security aid wouldn't come until Zelensky publicly committed to an investigation into Burisma, the company on whose board Hunter Biden served.That is not how Morrison remembers it. "My recollection is that Ambassador Sondland's proposal to Yermak was that it could be sufficient if the new Ukrainian prosecutor general, not President Zelensky, would commit to pursue the Burisma investigation," Morrison told impeachment investigators. Morrison concluded his opening remarks with something that GOP lawmakers have noted frequently: that the hold on Ukraine's security aid ultimately was released. "I am pleased our process gave the president the confidence he needed to approve the release of the security sector assistance," said Morrison. "My regret is that Ukraine ever learned of the review and that, with this impeachment inquiry, Ukraine has become subsumed in the U.S. political process."On Thursday morning, Republicans hinted that Morrison's testimony might undermine aspects of the narrative Democrats have constructed on impeachment so far. They noted that his opening statement had not yet surfaced, as it frequently had with other witnesses in the inquiry. But other parts of Morrison's opening statement did seem to bolster the idea that Trump was applying a pressure campaign on the Ukrainians through a non-official channel. Morrison noted that his predecessor, former national security official Fiona Hill, had told him that Sondland and the president's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani "were trying to get President Zelensky to reopen a Ukrainian investigation into Burisma." Morrison went on to say that "At the time, I did not know what Burisma was or what the investigation entailed.""I did not understand why Ambassador Sondland would be involved in Ukraine policy," he added. Morrison was slated to be the first senior White House official to testify to the impeachment inquiry, but he resigned just hours before his appearance. On the eve of his testimony on Thursday, NPR broke the news that he would be leaving the post after less than two years on the job.A senior administration official quoted by The Washington Post said in a statement that Morrison had "decided to pursue other opportunities — and has been considering doing so for some time." However, Morrison's appearance still comes in defiance of a White House directive that officials not cooperate with the probe, and congressional officials said that he appeared for testimony after being issued a subpoena. Morrison's testimony occurred as the House took a vote to formally codify the impeachment investigation and bring it into a so-called "public" phase. 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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| Exxon, Chevron Begin Pushing Back Against Warren’s Fracking Ban Posted: 01 Nov 2019 12:53 PM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- America's two biggest oil companies are starting to push back against the fracking ban touted by the leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, which may become one of the most consequential flashpoints for energy markets during the election campaign.Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. executives spoke out publicly against the proposals for the first time on Friday, saying they would shift profits from crude production from the U.S. to other countries, and may increase prices for consumers while doing nothing to reduce oil demand or greenhouse-gas emissions.It's a line of attack that's likely to feature heavily in debates in the year ahead as the energy industry and Republicans seek to counter the Democratic Party's green wing. To be sure, whoever gets elected next year will find it difficult to end fracking. Presidential powers to enact a ban only extend to federal lands, something that would be certain to face immediate legal challenges. A wider restriction would need to go through Congress."Any efforts to ban fracking or restrict supply will not remove demand for the resource," Neil Hansen, Exxon's vice president of investor relations, said on a conference call with analysts. "If anything it will shift the economic benefit away from the U.S. to another country, and a potentially impact the price of that commodity here and globally."Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, two front-runners in the race to be the Democratic candidate, are keen to stop America's reliance on fossil fuels, and they also want to end what they say is Washington's subservience to corporate interests. They also know how to hit Exxon and Chevron where it hurts. Five years ago, both companies produced little crude from fracking and might have even have benefited from a ban if it led to higher oil prices. But now fracking is the fastest-growing part of their global businesses and a key profit driver.Hydraulic fracturing of shale rock is pushing U.S. oil production to record highs, touching 12.4 million barrels a day in August. Exxon said Friday its output from the Permian Basin in West Texas and New Mexico had boomed by more than 70% in the third quarter from a year earlier. Chevron, a bigger Permian producer, saw its output there climb 35%.That wave of supply has ensured lower gasoline and energy prices for domestic consumers, bolstered economic growth for states such as Texas and North Dakota, and restored the country to ranks of the world's major crude exporters."It's really unlocked an economic huge economic benefit for the country, as well as for the companies involved," Jay Johnson, the boss of Chevron's upstream business, said during the company's earnings conference call.But fracking also has costs, particularly in terms of the climate. Cheap fossil fuels typically mean people use more of them, causing higher emissions. Hansen said that while Exxon shares concerns about climate change, "there are more effective policies" such as a revenue-neutral carbon tax and technology initiatives.To contact the reporter on this story: Kevin Crowley in Houston at kcrowley1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Simon Casey at scasey4@bloomberg.net, Joe CarrollFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Lawyer indicates Bolton won't testify in impeachment probe Posted: 31 Oct 2019 08:34 PM PDT  The lawyer for former national security adviser John Bolton signaled Thursday that Bolton will not testify anytime soon in the House impeachment inquiry. Democratic lawmakers want to hear next week from Bolton over the administration's approach to Ukraine that is central to House proceedings that could lead to the impeachment of President Donald Trump. Charles Cooper, Bolton's lawyer, was in federal court Thursday on behalf of another client whose testimony the House also wants.
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| History shows Democrats are being fair to Republicans on Trump impeachment: Ex-Starr aide Posted: 31 Oct 2019 09:23 AM PDT  This partisan vote is a sad commentary on the degradation of a once noble party. Republicans need to stop carping about process and face reality.
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| Biden stumbles over words, struggles to deliver his message to voters Posted: 31 Oct 2019 06:55 AM PDT  Joe Biden was making an impassioned case for protecting immigrants in the country illegally one recent Sunday when he abruptly stopped himself. "There's many more things, but —" he said before trailing off at a union forum. Six months into his presidential campaign, Biden is still delivering uneven performances on the debate stage and on the campaign trail in ways that can undermine his message.
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| What links a prison murder, a New York drug trial and the Honduras president? Posted: 01 Nov 2019 03:00 AM PDT  A brazen attack on an inmate and revelations in a US courtroom have piled pressure on Juan Orlando Hernández over his alleged ties to the narco tradeRiot policemen take positions during clashes with students demanding the resignation of President, Juan Orlando Hernández in Tegucigalpa this week. Photograph: Orlando Sierra/AFP via Getty ImagesDespite several attempts against his life – poisoned food, a smuggled grenade – drug trafficker Nery López appeared calm as he spoke to the warden inside a maximum-security prison in western Honduras.He hardly seemed to notice when a guard wearing a ski mask entered the hallway, eyeing López as he reached for the keys on his belt.Moments later, the masked guard stepped aside from a heavy sliding door as a group of men in T-shirts and shorts burst in, one of them firing a handgun at López.A second man drew a long knife, hacking at the fallen trafficker before the gunman drew a second weapon and emptied another cartridge of bullets.Within hours of the 26 October murder, footage of the brazen attack had leaked on to social media, sending a shockwave of fear through the nation.The killing came just days after evidence seized from López helped a New York jury convict a former Honduran politician named Juan Antonio "Tony" Hernández on four counts of drug trafficking and related weapons charges.Tony Hernández is the brother of Honduras's current president, Juan Orlando Hernández – and Lopez's lawyer was quick to accuse the government of complicity in his client's murder."Juan Orlando [Hernández] silenced him," said López's lawyer, Carlos Chajtur. "That door opened on purpose."Nery López is attacked in prison. Photograph: Honduras prison serviceThe murder is the latest embarrassment for the US state department, which continues to ignore the haze of allegations around the Honduran government while pushing the country to cooperate in Donald Trump's regional crackdown on migration.A week before the trial began, the two countries announced an agreement, allowing the US to send asylum seekers from third countries to the violence-torn Central American nation while their claim is processed. Similar deals have been drawn up with Guatemala and El Salvador.So, while US prosecutors in New York described a situation of "state-sponsored drug trafficking", the state department has maintained a business-as-usual approach following Tony Hernández's conviction.A day after the verdict, the top US diplomat in Honduras was photographed smiling with President Hernández at a military parade.The Honduran president also featured in the New York case, when prosecutors accused him of having received millions of dollars from drug traffickers, including a $1m bribe from Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán.Prosecutors accused Tony Hernández of conspiring to murder rival traffickers, including a massacre with a bazooka and machine guns that resulted in four deaths.President Hernández, who was re-elected in a fraud-marred vote in 2017 after the supreme court lifted a single-term limit, has denied all accusations of links to drug trafficking and maintained his brother's innocence. "What can you say about a conviction based on the testimonies of confessed murderers?" he said on Twitter after the verdict was announced.Opposition leaders have called for President Hernández to resign, but fear, division and a dearth of leadership have prevented sporadic protests from coalescing into a mass movement.At the time of his capture in June 2018, López was living under an assumed name, after faking his own death a few years earlier by paying bribes to obtain a falsified death certificate and a new identity.An opposition supporter holds signs reading 'Together we will make history. JOH out' and 'Narco-state out' at a protest in Tegucigalpa Photograph: Orlando Sierra/AFP via Getty ImagesHe was considered one of the largest drug traffickers in Honduras, so anti-narcotics agents were intrigued to discover hundreds of pages of records itemizing his business welded in a secret compartment in a vehicle seized in the arrest.One of those agents testified at the trial of Tony Hernández that he had immediately spotted the former legislator's name in the ledgers, which also list payments to a person identified as "JOH" – the initials by which President Juan Orlando Hernández is commonly known.Critics argue that López was murdered to avoid any possibility that he might someday testify in a US court – and to send a message to others who might do the same."The first message is for those who are linked to drug trafficking in Honduras related to Tony Hernández, or Juan Orlando Hernández and their whole group – to show them that they or their family members will be murdered if they continue providing evidence," said Dr Joaquín Mejía, a human rights lawyer who has studied violence in Honduras.
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| Belgium told to bring back IS mother, children from Syria Posted: 31 Oct 2019 02:59 AM PDT  Belgian authorities have been ordered to repatriate a woman who joined the Islamic State group and her two children from the camp in Syria where she is being held, a lawyer for her family said Thursday. The Belgian government has 75 days to bring back the 23-year-old Belgian woman and her children from the Al-Roj camp controlled by Kurdish fighters under the order issued by a Brussels court, the lawyer, Nicolas Cohen, told AFP, confirming a report on Belgian state television. The ruling lays bare a debate in Europe over the fate of European citizens who left to join IS and who are now being held in camps in Syria and Iraq following the defeat of the jihadists' so-called "caliphate".
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| View Photos of Honda's SEMA Lineup Posted: 01 Nov 2019 09:00 AM PDT |
| U.S.-Led Coalition Blocks Russia in Syria While Allowing Turkey to Terrorize the Kurds Posted: 01 Nov 2019 04:59 AM PDT  Syrian Kurds are stuck between Donald Trump's 2016 campaign promise to "take the oil" and a hard place.
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| Finally, some good news for California: Infamous Diablo and Santa Ana winds will die down soon Posted: 01 Nov 2019 08:54 AM PDT  Santa Ana and Diablo winds, the pattern responsible for frequent and strong wind events in California, are forecast to end soon.
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| Biden Says Warren’s Medicare for All Plan Would Require $9 Trillion Middle-Class Tax Hike Posted: 01 Nov 2019 10:45 AM PDT  Presidential candidate Joe Biden took a shot at the Medicare for All white paper released Friday by rival 2020 contender Senator Elizabeth Warren, saying her plan would require a nearly $9 trillion middle-class tax hike."For months, Elizabeth Warren has refused to say if her health care plan would raise taxes on the middle class, and now we know why: because it does," Biden's deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said. "Senator Warren would place a new tax of nearly $9 trillion that will fall on American workers."Warren on Friday released the results of her campaign's numbers crunching on Medicare for All, which does not raise taxes on the middle class through an increase in income tax, but does include an almost $9 trillion tax on employers. The Massachusetts Democrat argues that the tax would simply replace the costs employers currently incur for their workers' health insurance — but Biden warned that cost will ultimately be passed along to rank-and-file employees."There's no two ways about it, we cannot defeat Donald Trump with double talk on health care — especially not about the impact and cost of a proposal to completely dismantle our health care system and eliminate employer-sponsored and all other private health insurance," Bedingfield added.Biden has repeatedly criticized Warren's Medicare for All plan, which she claims would require $21 trillion in additional spending over ten years, which is significantly less than the cost projections for Senator Bernie Sanders' similar plan. The former vice president instead favors expanding the existing Affordable Care Act, the Obama administration's signature legislative accomplishment, so that all Americans would be eligible to sign up."My plan costs a lot," Biden said from the Democratic debate stage in September. "But it doesn't cost $30 trillion. That's twice the entire federal budget before it exists now. How will we pay for it? I want to hear. [Warren] has not said how she'll pay for it, and [Sanders] only gets about half way there. I lay out how I can pay for it and how I can get it done and why it's better."
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| Four people shot dead at Halloween party at Airbnb rental in California Posted: 01 Nov 2019 05:31 AM PDT ![Four people shot dead at Halloween party at Airbnb rental in California]( "Four people shot dead at Halloween party at Airbnb rental in California") The shooting took place around 10:45 p.m. on Thursday at a house party with more than 100 people attending in an expensive neighborhood of Orinda, a small city across the bay from San Francisco, the Contra Costa Sheriff's Office said in a statement. Four people died in the shooting and several other people were injured, the statement said.
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| G.M. Union Members Return to Work, but Worries Are Far From Over Posted: 31 Oct 2019 03:48 AM PDT  GM autoworkers returned to work with a new contract after their longest nationwide strike in nearly 50 years. Here's where they stand now.
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| Vietnam arrests two in UK truck death investigation Posted: 01 Nov 2019 08:31 AM PDT  Vietnam police have arrested two people for trafficking in connection with the death of 39 migrants whose bodies were found in a truck in Britain, many of them feared to be Vietnamese. The move comes after British police arrested four people over the tragedy and are now seeking to question two brothers from Northern Ireland who have links to the road-haulage and shipping business. The victims were initially identified by British police as Chinese, but many are now believed to be Vietnamese after families in central Vietnam said their loved ones had not been heard from.
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| A woman in Indiana was found dead in a house filled with 140 snakes with an 8-foot-long python wrapped round her neck Posted: 01 Nov 2019 07:41 AM PDT  Laura Hurst, 36, was found dead in a house in Oxford, Indiana, owned by County Sheriff Don Munson, an avid snake collector.
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| Aniah Blanchard's UFC Fighter Stepdad Says Missing Alabama Teen Is 'Amazing' Posted: 01 Nov 2019 04:12 PM PDT  Aniah Haley Blanchard, 19, was reported missing by her family on Oct 24. The last time she was heard from was by a friend the night before, according to authorities.
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| 50 Tips for Better Interneting Posted: 31 Oct 2019 09:42 AM PDT |
| Have Kentuckians finally had enough of Mitch McConnell? Posted: 01 Nov 2019 10:40 AM PDT  A recent poll shows that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the president's most stolid defender, is down to an 18 percent job approval rating in Kentucky. Only 37 percent in a recent Public Policy Poll said they would vote for him again next year.
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| AP-NORC poll: 61% say Trump doesn't respect democratic norms Posted: 31 Oct 2019 11:56 AM PDT  A majority of Americans say President Donald Trump has little to no respect for America's democratic institutions and traditions, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. The issue strikes at the heart of the House impeachment inquiry into Trump, which is focused in part on whether he used his office to seek a foreign government's help for personal political gain. Sixty-one percent of Americans, including 26% of Republicans, say Trump lacks respect for democratic norms.
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| Troops, armored vehicles enter Syria to protect oil fields from ISIS Posted: 31 Oct 2019 01:06 PM PDT  The Pentagon moved troops and armored vehicles into Syria Thursday to protect oil fields from exploitation by ISIS.
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| Tropical Cyclone Maha to threaten flooding, damaging winds in western India by middle of next week Posted: 01 Nov 2019 09:36 AM PDT  Tropical systems will continue to be the source of wet weather in India through the first full week of November.Maha, now a severe cyclonic storm that formed in the Arabian Sea on Wednesday, has slowly moved in a northwest direction while continuing to strengthen over the last few days.Maha is currently packing winds up to 110 km/h (68 mph), equivalent to a Category 1 hurricane in the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific oceans. The above satellite image shows Maha spinning off the western shores of India on Friday, 1 November. (Photo/NASA) Many of the typical impacts expected from a such a strong system have been kept at bay, due to Maha's offshore path. While staying parallel to the western coast of India, the strongest winds have remained over open water, with occasional downpours reaching western parts of the country."The northwesterly track is expected to continue for Maha into Monday, keeping most of the wind and rain offshore," said AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Dave Houk.Gradual strengthening into a very severe cyclonic storm is expected during this time, which is comparable to a Category 3 hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean.However, by Tuesday, AccuWeather meteorologists anticipate that Maha will hook eastward and head for the Gujarat region of western India.While southern and coastal parts of Gujarat may get some of the outer rain bands from Maha into Monday night, the heaviest rainfall will wait until later Tuesday and Wednesday. "When Maha moves closer to the Indian coast, it's likely to still be a very severe cyclonic storm, bringing increasingly dangerous winds and flooding rainfall," added Houk.While the proximity to land may ultimately weaken Maha before it makes landfall, gusty winds are likely to cause tree damage as well as power outages.Rounds of tropical downpours and locally heavy rainfall looks to stretch from the Gujarat coast to southern and eastern Rajasthan as well as northern Madhya Pradesh into Thursday. This amount of rainfall can amount to flooding, especially in poorly drained or low-lying areas.Both the rain and wind are likely to cause travel disruptions for many in the region.The rest of the western shores of India will continue to endure daily downpours next week as onshore flow brings moisture in from the Arabian Sea.Maha will not be the last of the tropical influences on India in early November.Meteorologists have been monitoring the lingering energy from what was once Tropical Storm Matmo, a tropical system that which crossed the western Pacific Ocean and made landfall in Vietnam late in October.The concern is that as the energy emerges into the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal late next week, it could redevelop into a tropical system."While such a development could spell more tropical rainfall for parts of India, any impacts felt to the country are likely to wait until somewhere around Nov. 9," said Houk.Until that time, most of the rainfall will remain over open waters, while some showers reach parts of Myanmar as well as the Adnaman and Nicobar Islands.
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| UPDATE 1-Mixed martial arts star McGregor convicted of assault, fined 1,000 euros Posted: 01 Nov 2019 08:47 AM PDT ![UPDATE 1-Mixed martial arts star McGregor convicted of assault, fined 1,000 euros]( "UPDATE 1-Mixed martial arts star McGregor convicted of assault, fined 1,000 euros") Irish mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor was convicted on Friday of assault for punching a man who refused a shot of whiskey from him in a Dublin pub in April and was fined 1,000 euros ($1,117). McGregor's solicitor Michael Staines asked the court to give McGregor "one last chance" and said a criminal conviction could lead to a refusal of a visa to the United States and create "very severe difficulties" for McGregor's career.
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