| Democratic Sen. Doug Jones says he'll vote to acquit President Trump if 'dots aren't connected' Posted: 22 Dec 2019 12:39 PM PST  Democratic Sen. Doug Jones dismissed concerns that he will lose his seat if he votes to remove President Trump in a Senate trial, but said he would acquit Trump if "dots aren't connected" over "gaps" in the impeachment case.
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| Man sought for questioning in stabbing that killed QB's brother Posted: 23 Dec 2019 12:09 AM PST  Nashville police released surveillance video from the bar and said they wanted to interview several people identified at the scene.
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| An Idaho couple wed just weeks after the groom's wife died in suspicious circumstances. Now they're wanted for questioning after the bride's 2 kids were reported missing. Posted: 23 Dec 2019 11:17 AM PST  Joshua Vallow, 7, and his 17-year-old sister Tylee Ryan haven't been seen since September. And now their mom and step-dad are on the run.
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| Slain Barnard College student mourned at private memorial Posted: 21 Dec 2019 05:53 PM PST  A Barnard College freshman who was fatally stabbed in a New York City park earlier this month was remembered by friends and classmates Saturday at a private memorial service at her high school alma mater in Virginia. Music figured prominently in the gathering, along with poetry readings and personal testimonies by those close to her. Majors had played in a rock band in New York and had told an editor from a newspaper internship in high school that she planned to take journalism classes in college.
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| How to Throw a Legit New Year’s Eve Party on the Cheap Posted: 23 Dec 2019 07:00 AM PST |
| Army Officer Rushes Home to See Mom—Before She Is Deported to Mexico Posted: 23 Dec 2019 03:11 PM PST  U.S. Army 2nd Lt. Gibram Cruz arrived home to California from his posting in Arizona last week. The reason for the visit wasn't the holidays; he would be back on base before then. The purpose was to see his mother, who is about to be deported from the country he serves to protect."I'm here essentially to say goodbye to my mom," the 30-year-old army officer told The San Diego Union-Tribune on Sunday.Rocio Rebollar Gomez, 50, is an undocumented immigrant who has lived in San Diego on and off for over 30 years. She owns a business and a house in the United States, and raised her three children here, and she has no criminal record. But on Dec. 4, she was ordered to self-deport to Mexico within the month—and the federal government refused to grant her discretionary protections provided for relatives of military service members that would allow her to stay longer. "Honestly I am worn out. I feel like my life is gone and everything I have is here—my whole life," Gomez told The Daily Beast on Monday."I cannot eat, I cannot sleep, my life is on hold. No one should be going through what I am going through."She is expected to return to her native Acapulco, Mexico—a once tourist-filled beachside city that has since become overrun by cartel violence—on Jan. 2.Immigrant Advocates Use Temporary Reprieve to Prep Families at Risk for Deportation"They are using her immigration status to override all of the hardwork and the life she created in the United States," her attorney, Tessa Cabrera, told The Daily Beast on Monday. "Her son is worried that his military status and title will threaten her safety in Mexico, but there is nothing we can do."We're hoping for a miracle."According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website, the "Patrol in Place" program makes parents, spouses, widows, or children of active-duty U.S. armed forces members eligible for discretionary deferred action for up to two years. "We recognize the important sacrifices made by U.S. service members, veterans, enlistees, and their families," the agency's website says. "To support these individuals, we provide discretionary options such as parole in place or deferred action on a case-by-case basis."According to Cabrera, ICE has denied Gomez the protection because she has not passed the threshold of 10 years of continuous presence in the United States. A USCIS spokesperson declined to comment, citing the ongoing investigation. Gomez's deportation is especially heartbreaking for her military son since he cannot travel to visit his mother in Mexico. As an intelligence officer, the 30-year-old must adhere to military travel restrictions and a lengthy process to leave the country. "He has no idea how when and how he is going to see his mother after she is sent back to Mexico," Cabrera said.ICE Ran Fake College to Target Undocumented Immigrants"My son is heartbroken," Gomez added. "He doesn't understand why this is happening to me, a woman devoted to God and work."Cabrera said the December decision to deny her client's petition to stay is the end of a years-long battle to keep the grandmother of three in the United States. The process—which included Gomez's detention for over a month—also drew the interest of two members of Congress, who asked ICE for discretion. Gomez first arrived in the United States in 1988. Seven years later, she was picked up during an immigration raid at a hotel where she worked while seven months pregnant with her youngest daughter.That same day, she was deported to Mexico. With her two children still in the U.S., Gomez had no choice but to re-enter the country illegally, Cabrera said. She was removed from the United States two more times over the last two decades, re-entering to be with her family and starting her life over each time. Cabrera said one of those removals involved several armed immigration officials coming to the family's home early on Saturday morning—an image she says still haunts her client's three children. But Gomez continued to persevere, running her own natural products business and driving more than eight hours a day for Uber. "All my hard work has been to give my children the chance for a better future and to make them good citizens," Gomez said. In April 2018, however, Gomez was detained for a third time and immediately placed in a San Diego Detention center for over a month. Cruz, who just finished his four years in the army, decided to take a commission and remain in the military. He said one of the main reasons he decided to stay was the immigration perk granted to relatives of active-duty service members. "I joined to serve the country and keep my family safe," Cruz told the Union-Tribune. "Now, I'm facing dangers here on my home front."Cabrera said her first attempt in 2018 to prevent Gomez' department was trying to establish her reasonable fear of returning to Mexico. Her brother was abducted by a cartel, and though the family paid almost $10,000 for his return, his body has never been found. That year, Acapulco had the third highest number of homicides in Mexico and the highest homicide rate of the country's most violent cities, a University of San Diego report stated. Gomez stated her fears during a reasonable threat interview with an ICE officer in the hopes of being granted asylum. She was denied."That unfortunately didn't meet the threshold for reasonable fear. So at that point there was nothing really to do with her," Cabrera said. The attorney said she immediately applied for a deferred action, but her requests for appointment about the case, inquiries about the status of her application, and general questions about the time-table were ignored. "Every-time they told me it's pending, it's pending," she said. Washington Man Accused of Hurling Molotov Cocktails at ICE Detention Center Killed by PoliceIn October, Cabrera said she got an ICE letter, ordering her and her client to appear the following month for Gomez's "interview and removal, that's what they called it." The appointment was moved back to Dec. 4, but one day before the meeting, Cabrera officially learned her client's petition was going to be denied."I got word she was denied at about 1 p.m. the day before her hearing—they didn't say why. So immediately I put together another packet for a deferred action to reapply," she said.The next morning, a USCIS official who reviewed Gomez's case said she wasn't protected by the "Patrol in Place" police. When Cabrera countered she had re-filed her stay of removal request with "about 200 pages" in documents supporting her case, the official verbally denied her within two hours."I am translating it to her as the officer is denying our last effort and she is freaking out because she thinks she has to leave right away," Cabrera said, adding the officer informed her that her client had 30 days to self-surrender for deportation.Equipped with an ankle bracelet and strict orders not to leave the San Diego area, Gomez now is trying to enjoy her family for the last few days before she is forced to return to Mexico, her attorney said. After saying goodbye to her only son on Sunday, her two daughters are planning to spend the holiday at her house."My one wish is a miracle to stay," Gomez said.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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| 'I'm Kidnapped': A Father's Nightmare on the Border Posted: 22 Dec 2019 08:24 AM PST  REYNOSA, Mexico -- He remembers being on his knees, gagged and blinded with duct tape, his hands tied behind his back. One of his captors struck his left thigh with a bat and scraped his neck with an ax, threatening to cut him.His 3-year-old son watched and wailed."Tell the boy to shut up. Make him shut up," one of the men barked, ripping the duct tape from his mouth.A few hours earlier, the 28-year-old migrant from Honduras, whose name is Jose, had been walking with his son down a street in Reynosa, Mexico, having been turned back at the border by the United States. Suddenly three men grabbed him, shoved a hood over his head and thrust him and his son into a vehicle.The abduction Nov. 25 set off hours of intense negotiations as Jose's wife in the United States, forced to listen to the sounds of her husband being tortured, tearfully negotiated a ransom over the phone.In a series of phone conversations, and in several voice messages reviewed by The New York Times, the wife, a woman named Cindy who works at a bakery in Elizabeth, New Jersey, promised to get the $3,000 the kidnappers were demanding. "I will do everything to get it," she said, sobbing into the phone. "But don't let them hurt him. Take care of the child."Hundreds of thousands of people fled Central America over the past year, many of them seeking asylum in the United States from threats of extortion, murder and forced recruitment into gangs. But instead of allowing them to enter, the Trump administration has forced more than 55,000 asylum-seekers to wait for months in lawless Mexican border towns like Reynosa while it considers their requests for protection, according to Mexican officials and those who study the border.Drug-related violence has long plagued these areas, but this bottleneck of migrants is new -- and because many asylum-seekers have relatives in the United States, criminal cartels have begun kidnapping them and demanding ransoms, sometimes subjecting them to violence as bad or worse than what they fled.In the past, migrants from places like Central America, Africa and Asia seeking asylum were allowed to enter the United States while their claims were adjudicated. Those who could not demonstrate a fear of persecution usually were ordered deported to their home countries. That changed earlier this year with the adoption of the "Remain in Mexico" policy, under which most asylum applicants are prevented from entering the United States except to attend their court hearings.With the Mexican government struggling to contain crime and violence, and ramshackle camps full of vulnerable migrants cropping up on the border, kidnappings have spiked. "Families on this side of the border, regardless of social status, will manage to pay ransom," said Octavio Rodriguez, a scholar at the University of San Diego who studies violence in Mexico and the border region.Authorities have doubled the number of police officers in the past three years in the state of Tamaulipas, which includes Reynosa, but it is not enough, said Aldo Hernandez, the state's communications director. "Neither the municipal nor state governments have the resources to fight this situation," he said.Some are blaming Mexico's president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, and his government's decision to step back from confrontations with drug cartels."The Lopez Obrador administration has sent the message to organized crime that police and national guard will not confront you. That emboldens them to target this population," said Tony Payan, a scholar at the Baker Institute of Rice University who studies the U.S.-Mexico border.Mark Morgan, acting commissioner for Customs and Border Protection, said that those awaiting asylum hearings who fear for their safety should "work with the government of Mexico" to keep themselves safe."I have heard reports the same as you of violence," he told reporters last week, noting that it is well known that dangerous drug cartels target migrants south of the border. "We encourage these people first of all not to even put themselves in the hands of the cartels to begin with."In the border towns of the Rio Grande Valley, the busiest migrant crossing point into the United States, kidnappers have struck in recent months near shelters, at bus stops and outside grocery stores.A 35-year-old Salvadoran man who was waiting with his family in Tijuana after claiming asylum near San Diego was kidnapped, fatally stabbed and dismembered Nov. 20, Mexican authorities reported. His lawyer said he had been pursued by "criminal organizations" in his home country.A 28-year-old woman from El Salvador and her 3-year-old son were abducted -- not once but twice -- after arriving at the border. The woman, who gave her name as Nora, said that in August they were held hostage until a family member in Houston transferred $2,200 to their captors.Then in October, Nora said, she took her son to use the bathroom outside the encampment where they were staying and encountered three men. She was blindfolded, she said, and the men took turns raping her over several hours, in front of her son, before dumping the two of them on the side of a road."I surrendered to American immigration and thought we would be safe," she said in a recent interview at a shelter in Reynosa.There have been 636 documented cases of violent attacks, including abduction and rape, against migrants who were returned to Mexico by U.S. authorities since the Remain in Mexico policy began in January, with 293 attacks in the last month alone, according to Human Rights First. The advocacy group based its tally on credible reports from researchers, lawyers and media outlets but said the actual numbers were likely higher because most incidents go unreported.The story of Jose and his family began in Honduras earlier this year, when they decided to seek safe haven in the United States. Gang members had demanded a "war tax" to allow him to keep operating his car wash and dropped notes at the family's doorstep, threatening to kill them.Cindy, who had a valid tourist visa, flew to the United States with their older son in June. Jose and their younger child, who lacked visas, made their trek over land. They arrived at the Texas border in July and applied for asylum but were told to wait in Mexico and return for a series of court hearings in the ensuing months.The kidnappers struck in November, after Jose and his son had already attended two court hearings in the United States.His captors ordered him to contact any family he had in the United States, he said, and when he denied knowing anyone there, the beatings began."You're lying. This bat is thirsty for blood," he recalled one of them saying.Jose dictated his wife's number to the men, and they called her from his cellphone. When she did not pick up, they clubbed him, causing him to keel over in pain.When they called again, Cindy answered."'I'm kidnapped,'" Cindy, who, like her husband, did not want her last name published because of fear of reprisals, recalled Jose uttering in agony over the phone.Then the captors hung up, apparently hoping to ratchet up the pressure. When they called again, they told Cindy to come up with $3,000 within an hour if she wanted to spare the lives of her son and husband."I was completely desperate. I could hear my son crying in the background," Cindy recalled. "I told them I didn't have the money; I'd have to borrow it. Give me more time."Cindy sprinted to the home of the babysitter who cares for her 5-year-old son and collapsed there, pleading for help.A fusillade of calls and texts with threats from the kidnappers soon followed."If you don't deposit the money fast, we'll disappear with your son," the men told her.Cindy called her husband's cellphone again and left a voice message."Jose, send me -- send me an audio. I want to know how the child is doing," she said, her voice rising in anguish. "Respond! Respond!"While she was driving to the bank with the babysitter to withdraw cash, one of the men in Reynosa taunted her husband and scraped his neck with the blunt side of an ax, he said, while another put a gun to his head.On the next call, Cindy told the men she could manage no more than $2,000, and they relented. She rushed to a money-transfer kiosk to send the cash, and as the one-hour deadline approached, the captors urged her to hurry. "Si, I am here. Right now," she typed back.There was a problem, though. She could not complete the transaction without their names, so they texted them to her -- unfamiliar names belonging to a man and a woman. In the text, they urged her to use Moneygram or Western Union and send "$1,000 to each.""This is the first one," she texted, sending the kidnappers a photograph of the invoice for $1,009.99, including a $9.99 transfer fee.Because the money-transfer outlet would not allow her to send more than $1,000, she rushed to another shop to send the rest of the money."As soon as all the money is here, we'll free them," one of the captors typed."OK, gracias," Cindy replied.Back at home, though, she received a call from the kidnappers: They had been unable to access the money. "We give you 20 minutes to fix this," a kidnapper typed.Eight minutes later, another text message popped up: "Hurry up. It's getting late."Back in Reynosa, one of the men struck Jose's right arm with the bat and kicked him in the stomach, and he began to vomit. The man brought a bucket and shoved his head inside.After visits to three money senders, Cindy managed to transfer the rest of the money. Jose's abductors stripped the tape from his eyes and put the hood back over his head. They dropped him and his son at the Reynosa bus station, warning that if he notified police, "you're both dead. We have pictures of you."With no phone and no money, Jose said, he staggered across the bridge that leads to the United States to seek out Border Patrol agents. He pleaded to stay in the United States. "Our lives depend on it. I swear I am telling the truth," he told them.He said the agents took him to an office, where he remembers that they photographed his wounds and gave him a tranquilizer before sending them to spend the night at a holding facility.The next day, Jose was escorted to a room where, over the phone, he expressed fear of returning to Mexico to an asylum officer.About 40 minutes later, an immigration official told Jose that they would have to go back to Mexico. He handed him a document that said that Jose "did not establish a clear probability of persecution or torture in Mexico."Recently, Jose described his ordeal from a migrant shelter in Reynosa. He still had bruises and scrapes on his neck, arms and legs, and said his right arm -- the one that received most of the blows from the bat -- was still numb.His son, who just turned 4, was playing with another child near the picnic table where he sat. That day, Jose said, he had been able to borrow a phone to call Cindy, who was crying when she heard his voice. He was crying, too. They did not know when they would meet again.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company
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| Doug Jones says he'll vote to acquit Trump if ‘dots aren't connected’ Posted: 22 Dec 2019 01:30 PM PST  Democratic Sen. Doug Jones dismissed concerns that'll he lose his seat if he votes to remove President Trump in a Senate trial, but said he would acquit the president if "dots aren't connected" over "gaps" in the impeachment case.
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| Convicted SEAL Eddie Gallagher thanks President Trump with a 'little gift' from Iraq Posted: 22 Dec 2019 09:08 AM PST  Retired Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, who kept his Trident pin after President Trump intervened in his war crimes case, met with the commander in chief ahead of the Christmas holiday to "thank" him with a "little gift" from his service in Iraq.
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| McLaren Speedtail Hits 250 MPH More Than 30 Times in Testing at Kennedy Space Center Posted: 23 Dec 2019 08:27 AM PST  Development on McLaren's 1035-horsepower three-seat grand tourer is now complete.
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| China denies forced labour accusations after plea found in Christmas card Posted: 23 Dec 2019 07:10 AM PST  BEIJING/LONDON (Reuters) - China dismissed accusations of forced labour at a Shanghai prison on Monday, a day after media reports that a message had been found in a Christmas card saying it had been packed by inmates. The newspaper said the message urged whoever received it to contact Peter Humphrey, a British former journalist and corporate fraud investigator who was imprisoned in the same jail from 2014-2015. Tesco suspended the Chinese supplier of the Christmas cards on Sunday and said it had launched an investigation.
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| Graft, gangs, bad conditions fuel Honduras prison killings Posted: 23 Dec 2019 11:43 AM PST  A top security official in Honduras said Monday the Mara Salvatrucha gang ordered prison riots that killed 37 inmates since Friday. Assistant Security Minister Luis Suazo said the gang known as MS-13 staged the bloody riots to force the government to back down from emergency measures decreed last week. "We have information that the MS is behind this and gave the orders to carry out these attacks," said Suazo.
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| Saudis Put Jamal Khashoggi’s Murder Behind Them With Death Sentences and a Three-Day Rave Posted: 23 Dec 2019 07:48 AM PST  PARIS—It looks like heads will roll in Saudi Arabia, literally, for the murder last year of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. But they'll be detached from people that few Saudis and fewer Americans have ever heard of, and certainly not Crown Prince Mohammed Salman (MBS), the mercurial and malign monarch-in-waiting beloved of the Trump clan.Never mind the CIA's belief that the elaborately choreographed and gruesomely executed murder of The Washington Post columnist could not have been carried out unless MBS authorized it. Conveniently, the two top aides who would have connected the crown prince to the crime reportedly were cleared.The court statement Monday announcing the sentence named none of the five condemned to death. But Saudi Deputy General Prosecutor Shalaan Al-Shalaan told a press conference "We found that Khashoggi's murder was not premeditated." This travesty is in fact much bigger news outside the kingdom of Saudi Arabia than inside. There, it's party time (or hangover time) in the wake of a high-tech three-day rave meant to titillate the kingdom's young people with hitherto banned music, dancing, and even a few far-from-veiled semi-celebrities from the United States and Britain. As the Associated Press described it, "More than 70 world-renowned DJs were invited to perform across five stages to the backdrop of surrealist performances—including one with a woman in a skintight sky blue leotard writhing from a hot-air balloon over a crowd of young Saudi men."MBS, better than any of his forebears, understands the power of what Roman tyrants used to call "bread and circuses," a phrase attributed to Juvenal and satisfactorily defined on Wikipedia as "the creation of public approval, not through exemplary or excellent public service or public policy, but through diversion; distraction; or the mere satisfaction of the immediate, shallow requirements of a populace."Trump Bet the Whole Middle East on Khashoggi's Alleged Murderer. Now He's Doubling Down.As MBS' decrepit father, King Salman, fades from the scene, the crown prince has made colossal mistakes, including the Yemen war that's become Riyadh's quagmire. But he has managed to crush and intimidate virtually all challenges to his power. Rival princes have been imprisoned and stripped of fortunes. Liberal critics have been jailed, flogged, and in some cases sentenced to death while the once-powerful religious police have been threatened or bribed into submission.(As I write this, I cannot help but think how envious an American president from Queens must be when he looks at this man who will be king—a prince rich beyond even Donald Trump's dreams of avarice, with power as absolute as any tyrant's in the Middle Ages.)But let us return for a moment to the matter of Jamal Khashoggi—the murder that Trump and MBS would like us to forget, and an inconvenient atrocity that most young Saudis already are tossing in the circular file of their well-distracted memories.In Saudi Arabia as elsewhere, as long as people feel prosperous and are allowed to indulge their appetites, the abuse of authority by their rulers is treated as political theater beyond their control, and they respond with a willing suspension of disbelief.Thus it hardly matters that the Saudi prosecutor's claim defies credulity when he says the butchering of Khashoggi—for such it was—"was not premeditated."But permit me to go over a few of the grisly details again as revealed last summer by the United Nations' special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and reported in The Daily Beast. Turkish authorities had bugged the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and various investigators, including the CIA, subsequently were allowed to listen to the recordings. Members of the U.N. team took meticulous notes on the dialogue and the other sounds monitored as Khashoggi was killed and then chopped up for disposal on Oct. 2, 2018.They heard Dr. Salah Mohammed Tubaigy, from the Saudi interior ministry, explaining to the head of the hit team before Khashoggi's arrived how they'd get dispose of the portly journalist, referred to as "the sacrificial animal.""Joints will be separated. It is not a problem," says Tubaigy. "If we take plastic bags and cut it into pieces, it will be finished. We will wrap each of them."A man more or less of Khashoggi's build then dressed in Khashoggi's clothes and walked out the back of the consulate to be seen by closed-circuit cameras, while plastic garbage bags were carried out the front.We don't know at this juncture whether Tubaigy or the man in Khashoggi's clothes were among those sentenced to death, or given lesser penalties, or cleared somehow of the crime. In any case, Khashoggi's remains have never been found, and MBS must have known all along how this would play at home. Out of sight, out of mind. Party on.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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| ‘It is beyond cruel’: Ice refuses to reunite girl with the only family she has left Posted: 22 Dec 2019 08:08 AM PST  María has been waiting to be paroled so she can be with her niece, who was sent to foster care 2,400 miles awayFor more than nine months, María, 23, has been waiting in an immigration detention center in Arizona hoping to reunite with the six-year-old niece she raised as a daughter. When the two asked for asylum at the border last March because they feared for their lives in Guatemala, border officials detained María in the Eloy detention center and sent the girl to foster care in New York, 2400 miles away.The Guardian first reported on the ongoing separation of this family in October. As the story spread, lawmakers and more than 200 clergy asked US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) to grant María parole so she can leave detention and reunite with the girl. A woman in New York volunteered to house them both while María awaits a decision on her appeal for asylum.But despite that public support, Ice denied María's application for parole in mid-December.Parole was once the norm for arriving asylum seekers, but in recent years approvals have become increasingly rare. On a standardized form, Ice officers indicated María failed to prove she was "not a flight risk" or that her "continued detention was not in the public interest".María said the denial was "depressing" because it prolongs her separation from the child. She has regular phone calls with her niece, who says she doesn't want to be apart any more. "But I tell her she has to be patient, wait a little bit longer. Just like I'm doing it myself from here," María said in Spanish during a phone call from detention on Thursday."Why does Ice get to say what the public interest is?" said Suzannah Maclay, one of María's pro bono attorneys. "It's very clear what the public is interested in here. It's helping these people and getting them back together."An Ice spokeswoman emailed a statement reciting the facts of María's case but did not answer why the agency denied parole.Six years ago, a gang in rural Guatemala murdered María's last living relatives except her niece, who was a baby. María raised the child and is the only mother the girl has known. They fled toward the United States last Christmas after the gang murdered María's partner and tried to shoot her.María's case stands out because of the dozens of people who have tried to help.The support began when María and her niece first arrived at a shelter on the Mexican border and met American volunteers. They helped obtain copies of official birth and death certificates that prove her relatives were violently murdered and her relationship to the girl.At that time, a federal judge had halted the Trump administration's policy of separating most families at the border nearly nine months earlier. Yet a US law aimed at protecting child migrants from traffickers requires border officials to separate arriving children from adults who cannot prove they are the child's parents or legal guardians. Officials did not accept the documents María showed as proof of legal guardianship.Once María was detained, some of those volunteers from the shelter found her pro bono attorneys and located her niece in New York."She would have totally lost track of her niece," said Maclay. "But it was because the public stepped up and kept track of where the little girl went that they're even in contact right now."María's supporters are calling on Ice to reverse course and grant her parole. A small crowd of state legislators, clergy and activists gathered on the state capitol on Thursday holding signs that read "Uncage & Reunite" and "Call ICE" with the agency's local phone number.The Rev James Pennington of First Congregational United Church of Christ in Phoenix said by keeping the family apart, Ice is "causing further pain, trauma, mental, physical, spiritual health issues that will extend far beyond just this moment in time".He added, "It is beyond cruel especially at this time of Christmas."Anita, the New York woman who has volunteered to house María and her niece, said she has already sent them photos of the family. "I told her we're all waiting for her," said Anita, who asked for her last name to be withheld to protect María's safety if she is released."We're so anxious to have a good resolution for this case, but at the same time painfully aware that there are so many other people that don't have this kind of support," she said.When the Guardian first wrote about María, she asked to be called Alexa for fear of reprisal. But she has since chosen to use her real first name in the press as a growing number of supporters are calling on Ice to release her.After a federal judge in 2018 ordered most family separations to end, attorneys have been scrambling to reunite families. There are currently about 5,500 known cases of children separated from parents during the Trump administration. But no one has tracked how many children have been split from non-parent relatives, nor is there a formal mechanism for those families to reunify.The logistics of how and when María will see her niece again if she is not paroled are unclear. María's asylum appeal could take up to two years. Sean Wellock, another pro bono attorney representing her, said if María were to lose her appeal, the government would be under no obligation to coordinate a reunion in Guatemala with her niece if they are deported separately.The girl could lag behind María by days, weeks or months.Christie Turner-Herbas, an attorney specializing in reunifying migrant families at Kids in Need of Defense, said when a child is deported alone, US government agencies do not always communicate clearly about the child's travel."There have been complications like a child is leaving and we never get any notice," Turner-Herbas said. "And then we find out, you know, get a panicked call from the family saying that they heard the child is coming in, but they're not able to get [to the airport] in time."María says her days in detention are monotonous until someone visits or she receives a letter. While she says the government has denied all her requests, she still doesn't "feel abandoned"."I have the support of lots of people," she said. "I'm not alone".
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| A nuclear attack would most likely target one of 6 US cities. Simulated images show how a Hiroshima-like explosion would affect each. Posted: 23 Dec 2019 12:06 PM PST  New York City would have the most fatalities from a nuclear blast. San Francisco would have the least.
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| Iran and India agree to speed up major port project Posted: 23 Dec 2019 05:25 AM PST  Tehran and Delhi have agreed to accelerate the development of an important Iranian port, India's foreign minister said during a visit to the sanctions-hit Islamic republic on Monday. Chabahar port -- being jointly developed by India, Iran and Afghanistan -- is on the Indian Ocean about 100 kilometres (62 miles) west of the Pakistan border.
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| Rep. Debbie Dingell says Trump 'crossed a line' about her husband, but she doesn't 'need an apology' Posted: 22 Dec 2019 10:28 AM PST  Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., said Sunday President Trump "crossed a line" when he mocked her late husband at a campaign rally, but said she doesn't need an apology from him either. Instead, the lawmaker said she hopes the episode will be a lesson for the president to "think a little more sometimes."
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| The Air Force Redesigned Santa’s Sleigh for Hypersonic Speed Posted: 23 Dec 2019 12:47 PM PST  No room for Rudolph on this Hypersleigh.
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| Clashes as police try to clear Hong Kong protesters after Uighur support rally Posted: 22 Dec 2019 01:46 AM PST ![Clashes as police try to clear Hong Kong protesters after Uighur support rally]( "Clashes as police try to clear Hong Kong protesters after Uighur support rally") Hong Kong riot police pepper sprayed protesters to disperse crowds in the heart of the city's financial district on Sunday after a largely peaceful rally in support of China's ethnic Uighurs turned chaotic. Dozens of police marched across a public square overlooking Hong Kong's harbor to face off with protesters who hurled glass bottles and rocks at them. A mixed crowd of young and elderly people, dressed in black and wearing masks to shield their identities, held up signs reading "Free Uyghur, Free Hong Kong" and "Fake 'autonomy' in China results in genocide".
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| 8 times suspected 'porch pirates' have been thwarted from stealing holiday packages Posted: 23 Dec 2019 01:39 PM PST  Home surveillance systems and clever police officers have been tackling the issue of thieves stealing peoples' holiday packages.
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| 'A terrible time to be poor': Cuts to SNAP benefits will hit 700,000 food-insecure Americans Posted: 22 Dec 2019 08:43 AM PST  A new Trump administration policy would leave many Americans without food stamps. Food banks are worried they won't be able to make up the difference.
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| Rudy Giuliani claims Soros is 'hardly a Jew' in rambling new interview Posted: 23 Dec 2019 01:55 PM PST  Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has stirred anger online by claiming he is "more of a Jew" than 89-year-old Holocaust survivor George Soros.
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| Obama has reportedly 'gone to bat' for Elizabeth Warren to reluctant wealthy donors Posted: 23 Dec 2019 08:31 AM PST  Former President Obama has reportedly been vouching for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to wealthy donors in an attempt to "rally the troops."Obama, The Hill reports, has in recent months "gone to bat" for the Democratic presidential candidate to "donors reluctant to support her given her knocks on Wall Street and the wealthy," describing her behind the scenes as a capable contender and encouraging them to support her if she's the nominee."He obviously thinks she's very smart," a Democratic donor said. "He thinks her policy ideas matter. And I think he sees her running the campaign with the most depth."Obama has not offered any 2020 endorsement and has made clear he'll stay out of the Democratic primary. Still, the Hill reports that those around Obama say he's concerned Democrats in financial services will, per one ally, "have an issue" with Warren as the nominee, hence his attempt to "rally the troops." One Obama source noted, however, he would do the same for any one of the 2020 Democrats.This comes after a report that Obama in 2015 said that if voters rallied behind Warren, who helped set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in his administration, it would be a "repudiation" of his economic policies. It also comes after a September report on the "far more combative relationship" between Warren and the Obama administration "than she usually discusses on the campaign trail."More stories from theweek.com Pelosi's impeachment endgame The substance of Trump's 2020 campaign Rudy Giuliani thinks the Southern District of New York might be investigating him because they're jealous
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| New poll finds that a majority of Americans support Trump's impeachment and removal from office Posted: 22 Dec 2019 03:22 PM PST  The share of Americans who want Trump removed from office has climbed since the House's impeachment proceedings concluded Wednesday.
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| Back to pre-internet stone age in offline Indian Kashmir Posted: 22 Dec 2019 11:28 PM PST  In remote Indian Kashmir people have been offline since August, queuing for hours to pay bills or using government "internet kiosks". As protests rage in other areas of India, it's something people outside the Himalayan region are also getting a taste of. Indian authorities, who according to activists lead the world when it comes to cutting the internet, snapped Kashmir's access when New Delhi scrapped the region's seven-decade-old autonomy.
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| Kremlin calls Moscow shooting incident 'a manifestation of madness' Posted: 23 Dec 2019 01:28 AM PST  The Kremlin on Monday called a Moscow shooting incident last week in which two officers of Russia's FSB security service were killed by a gunman "a manifestation of madness" of the kind faced by all countries from time to time. Russian investigators on Friday named the man who opened fire on the headquarters of the FSB security service in Moscow as Yevgeny Manyurov, a 39-year-old former security guard from just outside the capital.
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| 'Nothing Has Changed.' 7 Years After a Gang Rape That Shocked a Nation, Brutal Attacks Against Women Continue Posted: 23 Dec 2019 05:03 AM PST  Seven years after a brutal gang rape on a New Delhi bus, sexual violence remains an epidemic in India.
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| Iran rejects 'conditional release' for Iranian-British woman Posted: 22 Dec 2019 04:29 AM PST  The lawyer of an Iranian-British woman convicted on spying charges in Iran has asked that she be released after serving half of her sentence, a request that was immediately rejected by the Tehran prosecutors'office, the state IRNA news agency reported Sunday. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was sentenced to five years for allegedly planning the "soft toppling" of Iran's government while traveling with her young daughter in Iran at the time.
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| Boeing Starliner spacecraft lands in US desert after botched mission Posted: 22 Dec 2019 03:29 PM PST  Boeing's Starliner spacecraft has landed successfully in a US desert after aborting a botched mission.The crewless astronaut capsule landed at the White Sands desert in New Mexico on Sunday after abandoning its milestone test mission.
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| Angela Merkel becomes second-longest serving German chancellor as she faces challenge to beat Helmut Kohl Posted: 22 Dec 2019 10:00 PM PST  Angela Merkel today became the second longest serving Chancellor in modern Germany, overtaking one of the greatest figures in post-war European history. Mrs Merkel's 5,144th day in the Chancellery pulled her in front of Konrad Adenauer, the founder of her Christian Democrat party (CDU) and the man who rebuilt West Germany's international reputation after the war in his tenure that stretched from 1949 to 1963. Now Mrs Merkel, who was sworn in on November 22 2005, only trails another giant of the CDU, Helmut Kohl. But her chances of overtaking the man who groomed her for power seem slim. She would have to stay in office for a further 726 days to beat his 5,869-day rule - a feat which would see her still calling the shots on December 17th 2021, some three months after the next scheduled election. The 65-year-old confirmed last year that she will retire from politics at the next election, saying "this fourth term is my last as Chancellor of Germany. I will not run again as CDU candidate for Chancellor in the 2021 elections, nor as an MP." Profile | Angela Merkel The only scenario under which she would overtake Mr Kohl were if she had to stay on in a caretaker capacity while the parties in Germany's fragmented political system hammer out a coalition deal over several months. Stability is key in German politics - Mrs Merkel is just the eighth Chancellor of the post-war period. Few would have predicted 15 years ago that the East German pastor's daughter would become one of Germany's strongest leaders. She has benefited from the hard work her predecessor Gerhard Schroeder put in modernising the welfare system, and her own talent for building big-tent coalitions combining Left-wing social reforms with conservative economic policies. When she does finally leave office, Mrs Merkel's time in power will likely be remembered as a time of unprecedented economic stability, as well as the era in which a far-Right party - the Alternative for Germany - became a serious force in German politics for the first time since the war.
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| Buttigieg 'wine cave' attendee offers reality check on event Posted: 23 Dec 2019 07:01 AM PST  One of the attendees at South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg's now-infamous "wine cave" fundraiser in Napa Valley, California, wants Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to know what really went down.Bill Wehrle, a vice president of a health-care company in San Francisco, wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post about how the event was not full of billionaires drinking $900 dollars bottles of wine like in the image conjured up by Warren during last week's Democratic presidential debate.Wehrle, who says he is neither a billionaire nor a millionaire, attended with his partner, a professor at a community college. Also in attendance, Wehrle said, were a dean from another local community college, a flight attendant, a local city councilwoman, and a college student. People asked Buttigieg questions about primary care for the uninsured, getting out of Afghanistan, and how he plans on combating hate speech. As for the wine? Wehrle said he looked up the price online — it wasn't paltry at $185 a bottle, but nothing close to the Warren-estimated $900 — and, from what he could see, the mayor didn't have a drop.Wehrle did concede there were certainly wealthy people at the event, but he dismissed the idea that the evening was an attempt by billionaires to join together to pick the next president. Read the full op-ed at The Washington Post.More stories from theweek.com Pelosi's impeachment endgame The substance of Trump's 2020 campaign Rudy Giuliani thinks the Southern District of New York might be investigating him because they're jealous
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| Poll: Majority approve of Trump's impeachment and removal from office Posted: 22 Dec 2019 10:33 AM PST  Forty-one percent said it would make them more likely to vote for their senator, and 36% said it would make them less likely to do so.
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| Cartoon Muslims in India publicity blitz after deadly protest Posted: 23 Dec 2019 11:40 AM PST  India's ruling party launched a video with animated Muslim characters on social media Monday in a publicity blitz aiming to bust "myths" around a new citizenship law that has sparked deadly protests. The law has stoked concerns that Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government wants to marginalise India's Muslim minority. Twenty-five people have died in protests so far, but demonstrations took place Monday in Chennai, Bangalore and Delhi with no violence reported.
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| Three suspected burglars shot dead inside Texas home Posted: 23 Dec 2019 11:19 AM PST ![Three suspected burglars shot dead inside Texas home]( "Three suspected burglars shot dead inside Texas home") The wounded survivor was undergoing surgery and unlikely to face criminal charges as he had the legal right to defend his home, Gonzalez told reporters at the scene in Channelview, about 20 miles (30 km) east of Houston. "The law allows residents inside their own homes to defend themselves," said Gonzalez, adding that the matter would nonetheless be referred to the grand jury for an inquest. "The one with the shotgun was able to shoot at the three males and they were all pronounced dead here at the scene," Gonzalez said.
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| Cooks, Servers and Dishwashers Almost Shut Down a Democratic Debate, Showing That Unions Have Political Clout Posted: 22 Dec 2019 11:24 PM PST  Joe Biden was among the top candidates who met with union workers in Las Vegas.
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| Notre Dame fire wakes the world up to dangers of lead dust Posted: 21 Dec 2019 11:56 PM PST  It took a blaze that nearly destroyed Paris' most famous cathedral to reveal a gap in global safety regulations for lead, a toxic building material found across many historic cities. After the Notre Dame fire in April spewed dozens of tons of toxic lead-dust into the atmosphere in just a few hours, Paris authorities discovered a problem with the city's public safety regulations: There was no threshold for them to gauge how dangerous the potentially-deadly pollution was from the dust that settled on the ground. Officials in other historic European capitals such as Rome and London, as well as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the World Health Organization also have no such outdoor lead dust hazard guidelines.
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| The 10 African Markets to Watch in 2020 Posted: 22 Dec 2019 04:00 PM PST  (Bloomberg) -- Global bond traders who ventured into Africa this year have reaped rich rewards.The continent's sovereign dollar debt has generated total returns of 20% since the start of 2019, more than any other region in emerging markets.Local bonds have also performed strongly. Egyptian pound and Nigerian naira bonds each returned more than 30% in dollar terms.If the world's major central banks remain dovish in 2020, that should sustain a dash for higher yields in emerging markets and mean that African bonds remain in hot demand.The extra yield investors get when buying sovereign dollar bonds in Africa rather than U.S. Treasuries has narrowed almost 100 basis points this year, according to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.'s indexes. Still, at 461 basis points, that spread remains the highest of any emerging-market region and double that of Eastern Europe.Africa is a "land of opportunity" and could be one of the main beneficiaries if the U.S. and China make more progress on trade talks, said Bank of America strategists including London-based David Hauner.But investors face plenty of potential risks in 2020. South Africa could lose its last investment-grade rating, Ghana's government might ramp up spending ahead of elections, Zambia's debt crisis could spiral out of control and Nigeria may be forced to devalue its currency.Here's what to watch for in 10 key markets.AngolaAfrica's second-biggest oil producer is still reeling from a crash in crude prices five years ago. The economy will contract for a fourth straight year in 2019, the International Monetary Fund said this week. Still, investors have been impressed by the central bank's reforms, including the devaluation of the kwanza. Its fall of 32% this year against the dollar -- only Argentina's peso has weakened more -- has increased inflationary pressure. But it's also eased a shortage of foreign exchange that was crippling businesses.EgyptEgypt remains a favorite among portfolio investors. Carry traders, attracted by yields of around 14% on pound bonds, have flocked to the Arab nation. The currency has rallied 12% this year, its best performance in at least 25 years -- and Societe Generale SA forecasts it will gain another 4.5% to 15.35 per dollar in 2020. But the reforms of President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi are yet to translate into the foreign direct investment and jobs that Egypt badly needs. Aware of that, investors will watch to see if there's any repeat of the anti-government protests in September that briefly rocked local markets.EthiopiaThe Horn-of-Africa nation remains one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. But that masks deep problems: inflation has accelerated to more than 20% and shortages of foreign exchange are acute. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, this year's Nobel Peace Prize winner, recently turned to the IMF for a $2.9 billion, three-year loan. Investors welcomed the move, which should speed up plans to open up and modernize the state-controlled economy. The central bank has already started to weaken the overvalued birr, which had been largely pegged to the dollar. "This IMF deal is one of the biggest ideological shifts I've seen in Africa this decade," said Charlie Robertson, Renaissance Capital's London-based chief economist.GhanaWest Africa's second-biggest economy holds general elections in late 2020, with President Nana Akufo-Addo probably seeking a second term. The country has a history of fiscal profligacy in the run-up to polls and investors will watch whether the government is more cautious this time. The cedi has been under pressure and fell to a record low this month. But Renaissance Capital, which recommends that clients buy Ghana's Eurobonds, says it is now one of Africa's most undervalued currencies.Ivory CoastThe Francophone country is set to hold a general election in October. Many analysts hoped it would mark a transition to a younger generation of leaders. But there's a chance it will be a contest between President Alassane Ouattara, who came to power in 2011, and his long-time rivals Henri Konan Bedie and Laurent Gbagbo. If so, "the country risks slipping back into the political turmoil it seemed to have escaped barely 10 years ago," said Teneo Intelligence analysts Anne Fruhauf and Malte Liewerscheidt.KenyaKenya's economy is forecast to grow 5.8% next year, making it one of Africa's most buoyant nations. Bank of America says the removal of a cap on interest rates in November is a further reason for optimism and should help the government obtain a standby loan from the IMF. Key to the East African country's longer-term prospects will be whether it can rein in the budget deficit. Forecast to be 6.6% of gross domestic product this year, it's one of the widest in sub-Saharan Africa.MozambiqueMozambique completed a debt restructuring in October that had dragged on since it defaulted on $727 million of Eurobonds in early 2017. That should pave the way for the government to raise the funding it needs for its portion of multi-billion-dollar gas projects. Once they're finished, the impoverished southern African country is set to become a major exporter of liquefied natural gas.NigeriaNigeria's status as one of the world's best carry trades will probably last as long as central bank Governor Godwin Emefiele keeps the naira stable. That's becoming harder, with Nigerian foreign reserves having dropped 14% to $39 billion since July. Emefiele's signaled he'll let them fall a lot further before loosening his grip on the currency, which barely budges. Fiscal authorities, meanwhile, will try to boost an economy that's been growing more slowly than the population for the past five years.South AfricaPortfolio investors have exited South Africa en masse this year, pulling a net $10 billion from its stock and local-bond markets, according to data from the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. They've been concerned by the deepening crisis at state-owned power company Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., which can't service its $30 billion of debts without government support, and the increasing chance that Moody's Investors Service will cut South Africa's final investment-grade rating to junk. But if President Cyril Ramaphosa makes headway in reforming Eskom, investors will probably be quick to come back. Bank of America and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. both say its inflation-adjusted bond yields are attractive and the central bank has room to cut interest rates.ZambiaZambia's economy has worsened this year, the latest problems being severe drought and electricity outages. The copper producer's dollar-bond yields trade at almost 20%, suggesting investors see a high risk of default. The government still has some time on its hands -- its next Eurobonds don't mature until September 2022. But many analysts believe it will struggle to avoid a restructuring unless it quickly gets debt relief on loans from China and a bailout from the IMF. President Edgar Lungu has so far seemed reluctant to accept the conditions that would come with a loan from the Washington-based lender.To contact the reporter on this story: Paul Wallace in Dubai at pwallace25@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Nicholson at anicholson6@bloomberg.net, Robert Brand, Jacqueline MackenzieFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Chinese pig farm attempts to block criminal drones with signal jammer, accidentally disrupts planes Posted: 23 Dec 2019 06:42 AM PST  One of China's biggest animal feed producers resorted to using a radio transmitter to block drones being used by crooks to spread African swine fever at its farms. But the plan went awry when the device jammed the navigation systems of planes flying overhead. Criminals are said to be faking outbreaks of swine fever on farms, as well as using drones to drop contaminated pork products on them, as part of a racket to profit from the health scare. The aim is to force farmers to sell the animals to them cheaply, before selling them on as healthy stock at much higher prices. African swine fever poses no risk to humans but is fatal to pigs. China - the world's top producer and consumer of pork - has seen its pig herd shrink by 40 percent over the past year as a result of the crisis. That in turn has driven pork prices up, one of the factors behind the country's recent rapid inflation growth. Drones have allegedly been used to drop contaminated meat on pig farms Credit: AP Photo/Rick Bowmer State-backed news website The Paper reported last week that a pig farming unit of Beijing Dabeinong Technology Group had violated civil aviation rules when the transmitter it installed to protect its farm disrupted GPS signal in the area. It was discovered after flights complained about losing signal while flying over the area. The company confirmed the incident on Friday. "To prevent external people from using drones to drop pork with African swine fever virus, [one of our units] violated regulations by using a drone control equipment set," the company said. "We broke related radio regulations, although that was unintentional," it said, adding that it had surrendered the equipment to authorities and was willing to accept a penalty. Authorities called for a crackdown on illegal suppliers of such equipment, saying it can only be used by public security departments, national security agencies and radio regulators.
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| A provocative new book argues we must 'unlearn' race. We absolutely should Posted: 23 Dec 2019 03:15 AM PST  While many on the left now reject gender categories, they seem determined to enshrine racial categories. Let's do better In 2012, writer Thomas Chatterton Williams – a biracial African American expatriate living in Paris – took to the New York Times op-ed page to declare that not only do "mixed-race blacks have an ethical obligation to identify as black", but that interracial couples "share a similar moral imperative to inculcate certain ideas of black heritage and racial identity in their mixed-race children, regardless of how they look".Williams argued that embracing a black identity served as a form of solidarity between biracial African Americans such as himself and those with darker skin. "And so I will teach my children that they, too, are black – regardless of what anyone else may say – so long as they remember and wish to be," he concluded.Then everything changed: he and his wife, a white French woman, had their daughter Marlow. As Williams held Marlow, he took in her blonde hair and blue eyes and his conception of America's strict racial dichotomy between black and white started to collapse before him. He began to see racial categories as an obstacle to social progress.Eventually, he came to see himself as an "ex-black man". What's more, he suggests that the rest of us may be better off if we shed our racial labels as well.> Must our empowerment be tied to skin or blood?Williams chronicled this journey in his recent book Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race, which challenges us to think beyond America's racial binaries.The reaction to the book from many of the author's critics has been unfortunate but predictable. While the left has in recent years sought to unsettle gender categories – noting that gender is a spectrum and that the binary does not fit all people – they have circled the wagons even tighter around the sanctity of exclusionary racial categories.While Williams believes it's a "mistake for any of us to reify something that is as demonstrably harmful as it is fictitious," Ismail Muhammad, writing in The Nation, argues that "no matter how socially constructed racial identities are, our lived experiences of those identities – the cultures, communities, values, prejudices, policies, and socioeconomic obstacles that follow from inhabiting social constructs – is anything but fictitious and cannot simply be willed out of existence." Furthermore, Muhammad argues, Chatterton Williams "fails to see how racial identification … can also be an empowering act."But must our empowerment be tied to skin or blood? As Williams argued at an event I attended in October, when we Americans talk about race, we're often confusing it for another category, such as culture or social class.Discarding race doesn't mean discarding the rich cultural achievements or shared values of human beings we have spent centuries labeling "black" or "white". Culture and values are things that humans create and celebrate together, and there is no reason for these qualities to be defined by the amount of melanin in our skin.> Unlearning race doesn't mean ignoring racismIn my college years I befriended a professor who was a tall white man with a thick beard who had converted to Islam years ago during a decade-long stay in South Asia. Despite his white skin and European name, he knew more about the religion I practiced (Islam) and the country my parents emigrated from (Pakistan) than just about anyone else I had ever met. The culture we shared, and the experiences we reveled in, were not defined by our race, which became as trivial a quality in our interactions as our differing heights.Unlearning race doesn't mean ignoring racism. Too many Americans continue to discriminate against each other on the basis of skin color, and persistent inequality is a feature of American life. In response, we can and must adopt social policy approaches aimed at spreading opportunity far and wide to every corner of society, without adopting the fiction that people are defined by their race.Some would argue that while Chatterton Williams is right on the merits, his proposal to discard race is hopelessly naive.But Pew polling shows 85% of whites, 26% of blacks, and around 40% of Asians and Hispanics say their race is not extremely or very important to them. Many of us are already moving in the direction Williams advises.To those who continue to be skeptical we can shed our racial skins, I would just ask them if they could name my tribe, caste, or sect. In India and Pakistan, these categories trapped my ancestors for centuries, defining every aspect of their lives, from the jobs they held to the people they married.But here in the United States, I live freely outside these boxes, something my ancestors would have seen as unimaginable.In a way, I'm living the future Williams describes. And nothing could be more empowering. * Zaid Jilani writes about olarization for UC Berkeley Greater Good Science Center. He is the co-host of the Extremely Offline podcast
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| McConnell tells Pelosi she can 'go right ahead' and hold onto impeachment papers amid impasse Posted: 23 Dec 2019 09:40 AM PST  Democrats and Republicans are headed into the holidays while facing an impeachment impasse.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) reiterated Monday she can't select impeachment managers until she knows "what sort of trial the Senate will conduct," while Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called her position "absurd," The Washington Post reports.After the House of Representatives last week passed two articles of impeachment charging President Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, the rules of the Senate's trial still need to be agreed upon. Pelosi indicated last week she wouldn't appoint impeachment managers, a step necessary for the trial to move forward, "until we see what the process is on the Senate side." She added, "So far we haven't seen anything that looks fair to us."Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y) has called for White House witnesses like acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney to testify at the trial, CBS News reports. Though McConnell has resisted these calls, he did say Monday that Republicans "haven't ruled out witnesses" while telling Pelosi, "I'm not anxious to have this trial, so if she wants to hold onto the papers, go right ahead."Trump, meanwhile, accused Pelosi in a tweet Monday of "crying for fairness in the Senate, and breaking all rules while doing so."Don't expect any major immediate progress to be made on the issue, with McConnell saying Monday, "Look, we're at an impasse. We can't do anything until the speaker sends the papers over, so everyone enjoy the holidays."More stories from theweek.com Pelosi's impeachment endgame The substance of Trump's 2020 campaign Rudy Giuliani thinks the Southern District of New York might be investigating him because they're jealous
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| 40 years on, veterans still grapple with Soviet-Afghan war Posted: 23 Dec 2019 01:41 AM PST  At his home in the mountains north of Kabul, former mujahideen fighter Shah Sulaiman closed his damaged eyes, took a sip of green tea and thought bitterly of Afghanistan's war against the Soviet Union that started four decades ago. "When we fought against the Soviets, we were expecting a good future," said the 62-year-old father, who was blinded in one eye and suffered a leg wound when he trod on a landmine during the conflict in 1985. This month marks the 40th anniversary of the Soviet Union's "intervention" -- or invasion -- of Afghanistan, the beginning of a decade-long guerilla war that killed up to two million Afghans, forced seven million more from their homes and led to the deaths of more than 14,000 Soviet troops.
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| Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rails against Trump: 'He has a lot of problems' Posted: 23 Dec 2019 12:15 PM PST  Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slammed President Trump in a new interview by laying out all the issues she believes he has.
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| French union workers vote to halt production at key oil facility Posted: 23 Dec 2019 03:25 AM PST  French workers voted on Monday to halt production at a key oil facility that supplies Paris and the surrounding region, joining other petroleum industry shutdowns in a nationwide strike against government pension reforms. Industrial action against President Emmanuel Macron's reforms has also crippled train services over the past two weeks, escalating into clashes between protesters and police in the capital earlier on Monday. Production at Total's Grandpuits oil refinery and petrol depot southeast of Paris will stop as a result of the vote by workers from the hardline CGT union.
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