| New York attack: Man arrested after five people stabbed at rabbi’s house during Hanukkah celebration Posted: 29 Dec 2019 06:44 AM PST  A suspect has been arrested after five people were stabbed at a Hasidic rabbi's New York home during a Hanukkah celebration, an attack Governor Andrew Cuomo has branded "domestic terrorism".One person was very seriously wounded, the governor told reporters, and remains in critical condition. The rabbi's son was also injured, Mr Cuomo said. His status and that of the other victims was not immediately clear.
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| Elizabeth Warren's campaign is 30% behind in quarterly fundraising 4 days before deadline Posted: 28 Dec 2019 01:57 PM PST  The campaign said it was doing "something different" as it "probably won't" raise as much as last quarter by the December 31 FEC reporting deadline.
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| Winter weather: Storm to hit nation's middle from north to south, delaying flights Posted: 28 Dec 2019 08:59 AM PST ![Winter weather: Storm to hit nation's middle from north to south, delaying flights]( "Winter weather: Storm to hit nation's middle from north to south, delaying flights") Weather forecasters warn of flight delays across the Midwest, with some white-out conditions. Road travelers should pack a flashlight and food.
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| Turkey evacuates wounded after deadly Mogadishu blast Posted: 29 Dec 2019 01:48 AM PST  A Turkish military cargo plane landed in the Somali capital on Sunday to evacuate people badly wounded in a devastating truck bombing that killed at least 90 people including two Turkish nationals. The plane also brought emergency medical staff and supplies, the Turkish embassy said in a tweet, adding these had been taken to a Turkish-run hospital in Mogadishu. Somali Information Minister Mohamed Abdi Hayir Mareye told state media that 10 Somalis who were badly wounded in Saturday's blast would be evacuated to Turkey.
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| In China's Crackdown on Muslims, Children Have Not Been Spared Posted: 29 Dec 2019 08:37 AM PST  HOTAN, China -- The first-grader was a good student and beloved by her classmates, but she was inconsolable, and it was no mystery to her teacher why."The most heartbreaking thing is that the girl is often slumped over on the table alone and crying," he wrote on his blog. "When I asked around, I learned that it was because she missed her mother."The mother, he noted, had been sent to a detention camp for Muslim ethnic minorities. The girl's father had passed away, he added. But instead of letting other relatives raise her, authorities put her in a state-run boarding school -- one of hundreds of such facilities that have opened in China's far western Xinjiang region.As many as 1 million ethnic Uighurs, Kazakhs and others have been sent to internment camps and prisons in Xinjiang over the past three years, an indiscriminate clampdown aimed at weakening the population's devotion to Islam. Even as these mass detentions have provoked global outrage, though, the Chinese government is pressing ahead with a parallel effort targeting the region's children.Nearly a half-million children have been separated from their families and placed in boarding schools so far, according to a planning document published on a government website, and the ruling Communist Party has set a goal of operating one to two such schools in each of Xinjiang's 800-plus townships by the end of next year.The party has presented the schools as a way to fight poverty, arguing that they make it easier for children to attend classes if their parents live or work in remote areas or are unable to care for them. And it is true that many rural families are eager to send their children to these schools, especially when they are older.But the schools are also designed to assimilate and indoctrinate children at an early age, away from the influence of their families, according to the planning document, published in 2017. Students are often forced to enroll because authorities have detained their parents and other relatives, ordered them to take jobs far from home or judged them unfit guardians.The schools are off-limits to outsiders and tightly guarded, and it is difficult to interview residents in Xinjiang without putting them at risk of arrest. But a troubling picture of these institutions emerges from interviews with Uighur parents living in exile and a review of documents published online, including procurement records, government notices, state media reports and the blogs of teachers in the schools.State media and official documents describe education as a key component of President Xi Jinping's campaign to wipe out extremist violence in Xinjiang, a ruthless and far-reaching effort that also includes mass internment camps and sweeping surveillance measures. The idea is to use the boarding schools as incubators of a new generation of Uighurs who are secular and more loyal to both the party and the nation."The long-term strategy is to conquer, to captivate, to win over the young generation from the beginning," said Adrian Zenz, a researcher at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington who has studied Chinese policies that break up Uighur families.To carry out the assimilation campaign, authorities in Xinjiang have recruited tens of thousands of teachers from across China, often Han Chinese, the nation's dominant ethnic group. At the same time, prominent Uighur educators have been imprisoned, and teachers have been warned they will be sent to the camps if they resist.Thrust into a regimented environment and immersed in an unfamiliar culture, children in the boarding schools are only allowed visits with family once every week or two -- a restriction intended to "break the impact of the religious atmosphere on children at home," in the words of the 2017 policy document.The campaign echoes past policies in Canada, the United States and Australia that took indigenous children from their families and placed them in residential schools to forcibly assimilate them."The big difference in China is the scale and how systematic it is," said Darren Byler, an anthropologist at the University of Colorado who studies Uighur culture and society.Public discussion in China of the trauma inflicted on Uighur children by separating them from their families is rare. References on social media are usually quickly censored. Instead, the state-controlled news media focuses on the party's goals in the region, where predominantly Muslim minorities make up more than half the population of 25 million.Visiting a kindergarten near the frontier city of Kashgar this month, Chen Quanguo, the party's top official in Xinjiang, urged teachers to ensure children learn to "love the party, love the motherland and love the people."Science vs. ScriptureAbdurahman Tohti left Xinjiang and immigrated to Turkey in 2013, leaving behind cotton farming to sell used cars in Istanbul. But when his wife and two young children returned to China for a visit a few years ago, they disappeared.He heard that his wife was sent to prison, like many Uighurs who have traveled abroad and returned to China. His parents were detained too. The fate of his children, though, was a mystery.Then in January, he spotted his 4-year-old son in a video on Chinese social media that had apparently been recorded by a teacher. The boy seemed to be at a state-run boarding school and was speaking Chinese, a language his family did not use.Tohti, 30, said he was excited to see the child and relieved he was safe -- but also gripped by desperation."What I fear the most," he said, "is that the Chinese government is teaching him to hate his parents and Uighur culture."Beijing has sought for decades to suppress Uighur resistance to Chinese rule in Xinjiang, in part by using schools in the region to indoctrinate Uighur children. Until recently, though, the government had allowed most classes to be taught in the Uighur language, partly because of a shortage of Chinese-speaking teachers.Then, after a surge of anti-government and anti-Chinese violence, including ethnic riots in 2009 in Urumqi, the regional capital, and deadly attacks by Uighur militants in 2014, Xi ordered the party to take a harder line in Xinjiang, according to internal documents leaked to The New York Times earlier this year.In December 2016, the party announced that the work of the region's education bureau was entering a new phase. Schools were to become an extension of the security drive in Xinjiang, with a new emphasis on the Chinese language, patriotism and loyalty to the party.In the 2017 policy document, posted on the education ministry's website, officials from Xinjiang outlined their new priorities and ranked expansion of the boarding schools at the top.Without specifying Islam by name, the document characterized religion as a pernicious influence on children and said having students live at school would "reduce the shock of going back and forth between learning science in the classroom and listening to scripture at home."By early 2017, the document said, nearly 40% of all middle-school and elementary-school age children in Xinjiang -- or about 497,800 students -- were boarding in schools. At the time, the government was ramping up efforts to open boarding schools and add dorms to schools, and more recent reports suggest the push is continuing.Chinese is also replacing Uighur as the main language of instruction in Xinjiang. Most elementary and middle school students are now taught in Chinese, up from just 38% three years ago. And thousands of new rural preschools have been built to expose minority children to Chinese at an earlier age, state media reported.The government argues that teaching Chinese is critical to improving the economic prospects of minority children, and many Uighurs agree. But Uighur activists said the overall campaign amounts to an effort to erase what remains of their culture.Several Uighurs living abroad said the government had put their children in boarding schools without their consent.Mahmutjan Niyaz, 33, a Uighur businessman who moved to Istanbul in 2016, said his 5-year-old daughter was sent to one after his brother and sister-in-law, the girl's guardians, were confined in an internment camp.Other relatives could have cared for her, but authorities refused to let them. Now, Niyaz said, the school has changed the girl."Before, my daughter was playful and outgoing," he said. "But after she went to the school, she looked very sad in the photos."'Kindness Students'In a dusty village near the ancient Silk Road city of Hotan in southern Xinjiang, nestled among fields of barren walnut trees and simple concrete homes, the elementary school stood out.It was surrounded by a tall brick wall with two layers of barbed wire on top. Cameras were mounted on every corner. And at the entrance, a guard wearing a black helmet and a protective vest stood beside a metal detector.It wasn't always like this. Last year, officials converted the school in Kasipi village into a full-time boarding school.Kang Jide, a Chinese language teacher at the school, described the frenzied process on his public blog on the Chinese social media platform WeChat: In just a few days, all the day students were transferred. Classrooms were rearranged. Bunk beds were set up. Then, 270 new children arrived, leaving the school with 430 boarders, each in the sixth grade or below.Officials called them "kindness students," referring to the party's generosity in making special arrangements for their education.The government said children in Xinjiang's boarding schools are taught better hygiene and etiquette as well as Chinese and science skills that will help them succeed in modern China."My heart suddenly melted after seeing the splendid heartfelt smiles on the faces of these left-behind children," said a retired official visiting a boarding elementary school in Lop County near Hotan, according to a state media report. He added that the party had given them "an environment to be carefree, study happily, and grow healthy and strong."But Kang wrote that being separated from their families took a toll on the children. Some never received visits from relatives, or remained on campus during the holidays, even after most teachers left. And his pupils often begged to use his phone to call their parents."Sometimes, when they hear the voice on the other end of the call, the children will start crying, and they hide in the corner because they don't want me to see," he wrote."It's not just the children," he added. "The parents on the other end also miss their children, of course, so much so that it breaks their hearts and they're trembling."The internment camps, which the government describes as job training centers, have cast a shadow even on students who are not boarders. Before the conversion of the school, Kang posted a photo of a letter that an 8-year-old girl had written to her father, who had been sent to a camp."Daddy, where are you?" the girl wrote in an uneven scrawl. "Daddy, why don't you come back?""I'm sorry, Daddy," she continued. "You must study hard too."Nevertheless, Kang was generally supportive of the schools. On his blog, he described teaching Uighur students as an opportunity to "water the flowers of the motherland.""Kindness students" receive more attention and resources than day students. Boarding schools are required to offer psychological counseling, for example, and in Kasipi, children were given a set of supplies that included textbooks, clothes and a red Young Pioneer scarf.Learning Chinese was the priority, Kang wrote, though students were also immersed in traditional Chinese culture, including classical poetry, and taught songs praising the party.On a recent visit to the school, children in red and blue uniforms could be seen playing in a yard beside buildings marked "cafeteria" and "student dormitory." At the entrance, school officials refused to answer questions.Tighter security has become the norm at schools in Xinjiang. In Hotan alone, more than $1 million has been allocated in the past three years to buy surveillance and security equipment for schools, including helmets, shields and spiked batons, according to procurement records. At the entrance to one elementary school, a facial recognition system had been installed.Kang recently wrote on his blog that he had moved on to a new job teaching in northern Xinjiang. Reached by telephone there, he declined to be interviewed. But before hanging up, he said his students in Kasipi had made rapid progress in learning Chinese."Every day I feel very fulfilled," he said.'Engineers of the Human Soul'To carry out its campaign, the party needed not only new schools but also an army of teachers, an overhaul of the curriculum -- and political discipline. Teachers suspected of dissent were punished, and textbooks were rewritten to weed out material deemed subversive."Teachers are the engineers of the human soul," the education bureau of Urumqi recently wrote in an open letter, deploying a phrase first used by Stalin to describe writers and other cultural workers.The party launched an intensive effort to recruit teachers for Xinjiang from across China. Last year, nearly 90,000 were brought in, chosen partly for their political reliability, officials said at a news conference this year. The influx amounted to about one-fifth of Xinjiang's teachers last year, according to government data.The new recruits, often ethnic Han, and the teachers they joined, mostly Uighurs, were both warned to toe the line. Those who opposed the Chinese-language policy or resisted the new curriculum were labeled "two-faced" and punished.The deputy secretary-general of the oasis town of Turpan, writing earlier this year, described such teachers as "scum of the Chinese people" and accused them of being "bewitched by extremist religious ideology."Teachers were urged to express their loyalty, and the public was urged to keep an eye on them. A sign outside a kindergarten in Hotan invited parents to report teachers who made "irresponsible remarks" or participated in unauthorized religious worship.Officials in Xinjiang also spent two years inspecting and revising hundreds of textbooks and other teaching material, according to the 2017 policy document.Some who helped the party write and edit the old textbooks ended up in prison, including Yalqun Rozi, a prominent scholar and literary critic who helped compile a set of textbooks on Uighur literature that was used for more than a decade.Rozi was charged with attempted subversion and sentenced to 15 years in prison last year, according to his son, Kamalturk Yalqun. Several other members of the committee that compiled the textbooks were arrested too, he said."Instead of welcoming the cultural diversity of Uighurs, China labeled it a malignant tumor," said Yalqun, who lives in Philadelphia.There is evidence that some Uighur children have been sent to boarding schools far from their homes.Kalbinur Tursun, 36, entrusted five of her children to relatives when she left Xinjiang to give birth in Istanbul but has been unable to contact them for several years.Last year, she saw her daughter Ayshe Tursun, then 6, in a video circulating on Chinese social media. It had been posted by a user who appeared to be a teacher at a school in Hotan -- more than 300 miles away from their home in Kashgar."My children are so young; they just need their mother and father," Tursun said, expressing concern about how authorities were raising them. "I fear they will think that I'm the enemy -- that they won't accept me and will hate me."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company
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| Police: All 7 killed in Hawaii tour helicopter crash Posted: 27 Dec 2019 10:02 PM PST  Tour helicopter operations in Hawaii have come under increased scrutiny after the deadly crash this week, one of several recent accidents in the state, with a congressman calling the trips unsafe and lacking proper oversight. There were no survivors of a Thursday tour helicopter crash that killed three minors and four adults, officials confirmed Saturday. The helicopter that was set to tour the rugged Na Pali Coast, the picturesque and remote northern shoreline of Kauai that was featured in the film "Jurassic Park," crashed on a mountaintop Thursday.
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| Iran blasts France for 'interference' over jailed academic Posted: 29 Dec 2019 04:49 AM PST  Tehran accused Paris on Sunday of "interference" in the case of an Iranian-French academic held in the Islamic republic, saying she is considered an Iranian national and faces security charges. France said on Friday it summoned Iran's ambassador to protest the imprisonment of Fariba Adelkhah and another academic, Roland Marchal of France, saying their detention was "intolerable". Their imprisonment has added to distrust between Tehran and Paris at a time when French President Emmanuel Macron is seeking to play a leading role in defusing tensions between Iran and its arch-foe the United States. "The statement by France's foreign ministry regarding an Iranian national is an act of interference and we see their request to have no legal basis," Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said in a statement. "The individual in question (Adelkhah) is an Iranian national and has been arrested over 'acts of espionage'," he said, adding that her lawyer had knowledge about the details of the case which is being investigated. Iran does not recognise dual nationality and has repeatedly rebuffed calls from foreign governments for consular access to those it has detained during legal proceedings. France's President Emmanuel Macron is seeking to play a leading role in defusing tensions between Iran and the US Credit: LUDOVIC MARIN/AFP In its statement on Friday, the French foreign ministry reiterated its call for the release of Adelkhah and Marshal. It also reaffirmed France's demand for consular access. In response, Mousavi said Marshal was detained for "conspiring against national security", that he has had "consular access multiple times" and that his lawyer was in touch with the judiciary. A specialist in Shiite Islam and a research director at Sciences Po University in Paris, Adelkhah's arrest for suspected "espionage" was confirmed in July. Her colleague Marchal was arrested while visiting Adelkhah, according to his lawyer. A judge had decided to release the two on bail this month, as they had been entitled to it after six months in detention, their lawyer said. But this was opposed by the prosecution, and as a result the case was referred to Iran's Revolutionary Court to settle the dispute, Iran's semi-official news agency ISNA reported. The Revolutionary Court typically handles high-profile cases in Iran, including those involving espionage. The university and supporters said this week that Adelkhah and another detained academic, British-Australian Kylie Moore-Gilbert, had started an indefinite hunger strike just before Christmas. British-Australian national, Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert, has gone on indefinite hunger strike in Iranian prison Credit: Nicholas Razzell The French statement said the ministry had made clear to the ambassador "our grave concern over the situation of Mrs Fariba Adelkhah, who has stopped taking food". "Creating hype cannot stop Iran's judiciary from handling the case, especially considering the security charges the two face," Mousavi said. Mousavi had previously dismissed similar calls from France, saying it should remember that "Iran is sovereign and independent" and interference in its affairs is "unacceptable". The latest tensions come after Xiyue Wang, an American scholar who had been serving 10 years on espionage charges, was released by Iran this month in exchange for Massoud Soleimani, an Iranian who had been held in the US for allegedly breaching sanctions. Iran has said it is open to more such prisoner swaps with the United States. Tehran is still holding several other foreign nationals in high profile cases, including British-Iranian mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Iranian-American businessman Siamak Namazi and his father Mohammad Bagher Namazi. US-Iran tensions have soared since Washington pulled out of a landmark nuclear agreement with Tehran last year and reimposed crippling sanctions.
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| How Did Britain Plan To Stop A Surprise Russian Invasion? Nuke Their Path Posted: 28 Dec 2019 04:00 PM PST  A crazy plan.
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| Politicians and celebrities spoke out after the New York machete attack that shook the Jewish community to its core Posted: 29 Dec 2019 01:53 PM PST  Five people were stabbed in a rabbi's home in Monsey, New York during a Hanukkah celebration on Saturday.
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| Chinese man charged with taking photos of US Navy base Posted: 29 Dec 2019 03:24 PM PST  A Chinese man has been arrested by US authorities while he photographed an American Navy base in the Florida Keys.
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| Islamic State group says it beheaded Christian prisoners in Nigeria Posted: 28 Dec 2019 10:55 AM PST  The Islamic State group released a video purporting to show its militants beheading 10 Christian men in Nigeria, saying it was part of a campaign to avenge the deaths of its former leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and its spokesman.
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| Slippery salvation: Could seaweed as cow feed help climate? Posted: 29 Dec 2019 07:28 AM PST  Coastal Maine has a lot of seaweed , and a fair number of cows. The researchers — from a marine science lab, an agriculture center and universities in northern New England — are working on a plan to feed seaweed to cows to gauge whether that can help reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. The concept of feeding seaweed to cows has gained traction in recent years because of some studies that have shown its potential to cut back on methane.
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| Twitter system 'outage' briefly blocked Trump whistleblower tweet Posted: 29 Dec 2019 02:57 PM PST  A tweet from U.S. President Donald Trump that identified an intelligence analyst as the alleged whistleblower who helped spark his impeachment was temporarily blocked at the weekend, with Twitter blaming an outage that affected a number of user accounts. In recent days, Trump shared an unsubstantiated media report and a second post that appeared to name the intelligence community member. It was visible again on Sunday afternoon, although the original account that shared the alleged whistleblower's name had been deleted.
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| "I was taken": 7-year-old torn from dad at U.S. border Posted: 28 Dec 2019 11:28 PM PST  CBS News documentary "The Faces of Family Separation" follows the harrowing journey of four migrant families fleeing violence in Central America, only to be split apart after arriving in the U.S.
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| Nazi Germany Could Have Won World War II, Until It Invaded Russia Posted: 29 Dec 2019 06:00 AM PST  Then it was all over.
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| 2020 will likely be a groundbreaking year in space. Here's a calendar of the biggest rocket launches, meteor showers, eclipses, and more. Posted: 28 Dec 2019 05:47 AM PST  If all goes well next year, SpaceX and Boeing will launch their first astronauts for NASA, and Mars will gain three new rovers.
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| Municipal police chief arrested over Mexican Mormon massacre Posted: 28 Dec 2019 06:22 AM PST  Mexican authorities have arrested a municipal police chief for his suspected links to the killing of three women and six children of U.S.-Mexican origin in northern Mexico last month, local media and an official said on Friday. Suspected drug cartel hitmen shot dead the nine women and children from families of Mormon origin in Sonora state on Nov. 4, sparking outrage in Mexico and the United States. Several Mexican media outlets reported that law enforcement agents arrested Fidel Alejandro Villegas, police chief of the municipality of Janos, which lies in the neighboring state of Chihuahua, on suspicion of involvement in the crime.
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| U.S. strikes hit Iraq militia blamed in defense contractor’s death Posted: 29 Dec 2019 12:04 PM PST  The U.S. blames the militia for a rocket barrage Friday.
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| The Democratic candidates whose supporters are most pro-impeachment are not who you expect Posted: 28 Dec 2019 09:00 AM PST  There's some variation in support for impeachment among the Democratic presidential candidates' supporters, according to recent Insider polling.
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| Russia claims to have deployed Avangard hypersonic missiles that 'cannot be intercepted' Posted: 27 Dec 2019 07:26 PM PST  Russia says it has deployed its first hypersonic missiles which President Putin claims are capable of transporting nuclear warheads at 27 times the speed of sound. The location of the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle has not been confirmed but has been widely reported to be the Urals, a mountain range in western Russia. Sergei Shoigu, Russia's defence minister confirmed that the missiles entered service at 10am Moscow time on Friday, describing their deployment as a "landmark event". Vladimir Putin said that the missiles put Russia ahead of the rest of the world. "Not a single country possesses hypersonic weapons, let alone continental-range hypersonic weapons," he said, arguing that the West was "playing catch-up with us". "The Avangard is invulnerable to intercept by any existing and prospective missile defence means of the potential adversary." Vladimir Putin said that the West is now "playing catch-up" Credit: REUTERS Moscow said the Avangard is launched on top of an intercontinental ballistic missile but it can make sharp manoeuvres on the way to its target, making it more difficult to intercept. The Russian government had announced the missiles last year and in March 2018 Mr Putin likened the missile to a "meteorite" and a "fireball" in a state address. The Avangard, which Mr Putin said could penetrate current and future missile defence systems, can carry a nuclear weapon of up to two megatons. The Pentagon responded to the deployment by saying it would "not characterise the Russian claims" about the Avangard's capabilities. The United States has its own hypersonic missile programme, as does China, which in 2014 said it had carried out a test flight. The US has been developing hypersonic weapons in recent years. In August, Mark Esper, the defence secretary, said the Pentagon was some years from deploying its own missiles.
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| Aladdin proposes to Jasmine during curtain call Posted: 28 Dec 2019 03:10 AM PST  A shining, shimmering, splendid ring was placed on Jasmine's finger.
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| Trump retweets post naming alleged whistleblower Posted: 29 Dec 2019 06:38 AM PST  President Trump retweeted, then deleted, a post that included the alleged name of the anonymous whistleblower whose complaint ultimately led to Trump's impeachment by the House.
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| The 'lathi': India's colonial vintage anti-protest weapon Posted: 28 Dec 2019 06:35 PM PST  As Indian protests against a new citizenship law have intensified, so has police use of "lathis", sturdy sticks used to whack, thwack and quell dissent since British colonial times -- to sometimes deadly effect. At least 27 people have died in the past two weeks of protests, mostly from bullets, but hundreds more have been injured in clashes between demonstrators and riot police wielding the bamboo canes. "From being used as means to regulate crowds, lathi has turned into a lethal weapon," said V. Suresh, the secretary general of the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), a non-profit rights group.
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| Drawn-out sex crimes case rattles Israel-Australia ties Posted: 27 Dec 2019 10:06 PM PST  Nicole Meyer endured years of sexual abuse allegedly at the hands of her former school principal. The lengthy, Kafkaesque legal saga over the sex crimes suspect's fate has not only agonized Meyer but is testing the relationship between Israel and one of its closest allies, Australia. Malka Leifer's case is still far from resolved and even Australia's pro-Israel Jewish community is losing patience.
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| Joe Biden walks back his remarks about defying a congressional subpoena, but adds he is 'not going to pretend' that it isn't a Republican-led stunt Posted: 28 Dec 2019 02:08 PM PST  Joe Biden previously said he "wouldn't" testify as a witness and characterized it as a Republican-led diversion "to take the focus off" of Trump.
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| Jim Beam fined after massive bourbon spill killed fish Posted: 28 Dec 2019 12:39 PM PST  Jim Beam has been fined $600,000 (£458,000) after a warehouse fire sent a nearly 23-mile stream of alcohol into the Kentucky and Ohio rivers, killing fish.The distiller agreed to the fine earlier this month following an order from the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet, the Courier-Journal reports.
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| Secrets Revealed: America Almost Stockpiled Nuclear Weapons In Iceland Posted: 29 Dec 2019 12:02 AM PST  Why didn't it happen?
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| Russia’s Richest Man Gains $8.5 Billion Leading Wealth Rebound Posted: 29 Dec 2019 04:00 PM PST  (Bloomberg) -- It has been a very good year for Russia's richest, despite the threat of heightened sanctions against the country.The 23 titans on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index added $52.9 billion to their fortunes in 2019, the most in four years, and a rebound after a decline the prior year. Metal magnate Vladimir Potanin, 58, led the group with an $8.5 billion gain.Currencies, stocks and bonds rallied in 2019 as the Federal Reserve led global central banks in lowering rates to support flagging growth.But Russia's equity market, despite sanctions, has performed best globally on a total-return basis in dollar terms, while its currency is the second-best worldwide.Potanin, Russia's richest person, derives most of his net worth from MMC Norilsk Nickel PJSC, the world's largest producer of refined nickel.Vagit Alekperov added $6.2 billion since the start of the year. The 69-year-old is the chairman of Lukoil PJSC, Russia's largest independent oil producer. He has a $22.3 billion fortune.He's followed by energy moguls Leonid Mikhelson and Gennady Timchenko, who hold Novatek PJSC, Russia's biggest liquefied natural gas producer.The gains have come despite the threat of increased U.S. sanctions. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved a long-discussed bill this month on Russia for meddling in the 2016 election. South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham has called the legislation the "sanctions bill from hell." It's unclear if the measure will proceed to a full vote in the Senate.\--With assistance from Jack Witzig.To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Sazonov in Moscow at asazonov@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Pierre Paulden at ppaulden@bloomberg.netFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Scuffles break out in Paris as pensions protesters, 'yellow vests' march Posted: 28 Dec 2019 09:08 AM PST  Protesters marching against the French government's planned pension reform clashed with the police in Paris on Saturday as police fired tear gas to disperse some groups of demonstrators. French trade unions have spearheaded nationwide strikes since early December in an outcry over President Emmanuel Macron's pensions overhaul, disrupting schools, railways and roads, while lending support to regular protests. On Saturday "yellow vests" - an anti-government movement that sprung up a year ago as a backlash against the high cost of living - joined a rally of several thousand people against the pensions shake-up.
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| 2019 was supposed to be a landmark 'Year of Tolerance' in the UAE. It didn't turn out that way. Posted: 29 Dec 2019 01:21 AM PST  The UAE cracked down on dissidents, did nothing to counter the oppression of Muslims in Kashmir and Xinjiang, and saw the wife of its leader flee.
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| Louisa May Alcott’s Courageous Career as a Civil War Nurse Posted: 29 Dec 2019 02:13 AM PST  The Christmas release of director Greta Gerwig's new film version of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women presents a fresh opportunity for Alcott's 19th-century classic to be read as a book that speaks to the present feminist moment. But it will be a shame if the renewed interest in Alcott that Gerwig has sparked does not also lead to a long-overdue appreciation of Alcott's heroism in the Civil War.In 1862, two weeks before Christmas, Alcott left her home in Concord, Massachusetts, to serve the Union cause by working in a military hospital in Washington, D.C. In Little Women Alcott made the Civil War the background for her story of the March sisters and their mother, but in 1862 the Civil War became central to Alcott's life.In the Union Hotel Hospital, a former Georgetown tavern in which she worked, Alcott saw death firsthand, and, like the doctors and nurses in the hospital, became vulnerable to the disease and infection the wounded troops brought with them.Men Will Love 'Little Women' Too. I Can't Believe I Have to Say That.Walt Whitman's account in Specimen Days of his work at the modern Union hospital in Washington, D.C., is far better known than Alcott's. When we think of the suffering experienced by the soldiers of the Civil War, the quote most often cited is Whitman's "the real war will never get in the books."Alcott's stories of her Civil War experiences appeared serially in May and June 1863 in the Commonwealth, a Boston anti-slavery newspaper. They are as moving as anything Whitman wrote about the war and were published together in August 1863 under the title Hospital Sketches long before Specimen Days appeared in book form.Alcott began her Civil War nursing service as a novice. On Dec. 16, 1862, the carts she saw drawing up to the hospital to which she had been assigned were not, as she first thought, farmer's market carts carrying produce. They were carts bearing wounded and dying men from the battle of Fredericksburg, where the Union Army endured one of its worst defeats of the war, suffering 13,000 casualties. There was no time for Alcott to absorb the war gradually or get used to the sight of a veteran "with an arm blown off at the shoulder."Alcott soon realized her duties were as much psychological as physical: "Having got the bodies of my boys into something like order, the next task was to minister to their minds," she observed early in Hospital Sketches. The doctors, after doing their best for their patients, had no hesitation in giving Alcott the unwelcome task of telling men who were dying that they would not survive their hospital stay."I could have sat down on the spot and cried heartily, if I had not learned the wisdom of bottling up one's tears for leisure moments," Alcott wrote of an especially painful assignment to deliver the bad news. She did as told. Then she stayed with the soldier to the end.When the soldier died, he was holding Alcott's hand so tightly that she needed help prying open his grip. Even when her hand got back its color, the white marks of the dead soldier's fingers remained. "I could not but be glad that through its touch, the presence of human sympathy, perhaps had lightened that hard hour," Alcott remarked.Over the course of her time in Washington, Alcott became better at learning to deal with the suffering around her, but she never shut her eyes to the wrongs she saw. She was especially sensitive to the racism of the North. "The nurses were willing to be served by the colored people, but seldom thanked them, never praised, and scarcely recognized them in the street," she noted. In her postscript to Hospital Sketches, she observed that the next hospital she hoped to work in would be one for "colored regiments."That next assignment never came. As a result of her hospital work, Alcott contracted pneumonia and typhus. At the end of six weeks at the military hospital that she called Hurly-burly House because of its disorganization, Alcott's father, the famed educator Bronson Alcott, came to Washington to take her home. As her biographer Susan Cheever has written, "She left for the war a vigorous and energetic woman; she returned a true casualty."Alcott suffered from mercury poisoning that came from the doses of calomel medicine the doctors in Washington prescribed for her, and the physician treating her at her home in Concord added to her difficulties, ordering her head shaved on the grounds the shaving would lower her fever. Sick as she was, Alcott thought she had no grounds for complaint given the horrors she had witnessed in Washington. As she wrote in her understated conclusion to Hospital Sketches, "I shall never regret the going, though a sharp tussle with typhoid, ten dollars and a wig are all the visible results of the experiment; for one may live and learn much in a month."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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| DR Congo Ebola death toll 2,231 to date -- monitoring agency Posted: 29 Dec 2019 09:26 AM PST  A total of 2,231 people have died out of 3,373 declared cases of Ebola in the current epidemic in the DR Congo, according to the agency overseeing the response, health officials said Sunday. Deadly unrest in the fragile state has hampered the fight against the disease during the latest epidemic, which broke out on August 1, 2018, with the eastern provinces of North Kivu and Ituri particularly badly hit. Both areas, beset by violence for two decades, have seen repeated attacks on Ebola health workers by dozens of armed groups as well as on health sites set up to treat victims.
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| Focus Turns to DNA Evidence in College Student's Death Posted: 28 Dec 2019 07:00 AM PST  NEW YORK -- Investigators are focusing on DNA evidence in their efforts to build a case in the killing of Tessa Majors, the Barnard College student who was stabbed during a park mugging in Manhattan early this month, officials said Friday.The push for conclusive evidence comes a day after detectives detained and then released a 14-year-old believed to have wielded the knife that killed Majors.An official with knowledge of the investigation said that police were banking on pending DNA results they hoped would allow prosecutors to charge all three of the minors suspected of attacking Majors on Dec. 11 in Morningside Park, near the Columbia University campus.Investigators have tested Majors' mouth and the clothes she was wearing the night she was killed, as well as pieces of clothing they managed to recover from the suspects, who are ages 13 and 14, said an official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.The New York Police Department's chief of detectives, Rodney Harrison, said Friday that a Manhattan judge had issued an order to obtain forensic evidence from the 14-year-old who was detained Thursday. He would not say whether that evidence would include a DNA sample.Harrison said he expected to get results from the forensic evidence testing in three to seven days. Investigators are monitoring the teenagers, he added.Police charged a 13-year-old with second-degree felony murder the day after the killing and tried to interview one of the two 14-year-olds. But the 14-year-old -- who is not the teenager who police believe stabbed Majors -- requested a lawyer and declined to give a statement, officials said.The 13-year-old, whom The New York Times is not naming because he is not being charged as an adult, will be prosecuted in family court on the felony murder charge, meaning he is accused of taking part in the attack and not of stabbing Majors.On Thursday, police announced a break in the case, saying they had found the second 14-year-old at a family member's home in the Bronx. But a few hours later, he was released. He had been questioned in the presence of a lawyer, police said.Authorities believed that the teenager's family was shielding him until a mark on his hand fully healed. An official described the mark as consistent with a bite.Majors, who had moved to New York from Virginia to attend Barnard months earlier, was walking in Morningside Park the night of Dec. 11 when at least three teenagers tried to rob her, police said. She stumbled out of the park and, investigators said, collapsed on a sidewalk. Sometime later, a campus security guard found her bleeding to death.The next day, police arrested the 13-year-old. In an interview with detectives, the teenager implicated himself and two 14-year-old middle school classmates in the attack, police said.The 13-year-old told police that his classmates grabbed Majors from behind, according to two detectives who have testified during court hearings. During a struggle, the 13-year-old said, the 14-year-old wielding a knife stabbed her so forcibly that feathers from her winter coat flew into the air.Majors' killing struck a chord in a city experiencing record-low violent crime rates and evoked an era when many people avoided going into parks after sunset.The shadow of the April 1989 attack on a jogger in Central Park has also loomed over the murder investigation. Thirty years ago, police and prosecutors relied on tough interrogation techniques to obtain confessions from five teenagers accused of the attack. The confessions were later proven to be false.From the beginning, police officials have said they have taken extra steps to safeguard the teenagers' legal rights in Majors's case. All three teenagers, police officials said, have answered questions in the presence of a guardian or lawyer.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company
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| Trump condemned for tweets pointing to name of Ukraine whistleblower Posted: 27 Dec 2019 09:10 PM PST  President posted link to article that identifies official – then sent a further tweet containing the nameDonald Trump has retweeted material that publicly names the purported whistleblower whose complaint about the US president's dealings with Ukraine led to his impeachment.The president on Friday night sent a retweet from one of his supporters containing the alleged name of the individual. Trump drew the attention of his 68 million Twitter followers to the post which, along with publicising the name, inaccurately claimed that the whistleblower "committed perjury by making false statements" and is being protected by Adam Schiff, chairman of the House intelligence committee. There is no evidence to support these assertions. Earlier, on Thursday, Trump had also retweeted a post by his re-election campaign's "war room" that linked to an article by the conservative Washington Examiner news website. The article, published on 3 December, has the name of the alleged whistleblower in its headline.Trump's retweet quickly drew sharp criticism. Amy Siskind, president of the New Agenda, a nonpartisan advocacy organisation, posted on Friday: "This is not acceptable behavior from the so-called leader of our country, and he must be called to task for it!"The whistleblower is reportedly a CIA analyst . They filed an anonymous complaint in August alleging Trump pressured Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy to announce an investigation into a political rival – a violation of laws against seeking foreign help in US elections.The nine-page memo was based on secondary sources, but the whistleblower's colleagues in the intelligence and diplomatic communities corroborated and fleshed out the account in closed-door and public hearings. This culminated in last week's House of Representatives vote to impeach Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, setting the stage for a Senate trial in the coming weeks.With so much evidence on the record, Democrats have largely moved on from the whistleblower, who has become something of a rightwing obsession. Their alleged name and photograph have been circulating in conservative media for months. Despite whistleblower protection laws, they have to be driven to work by security detail to protect their safety.The president was following in the footsteps of his own son, Donald Trump Jr, who last month tweeted an article that contained the name and was then grilled about it on the TV talk show The View. Trump Jr claimed he was a "private citizen" sharing information on social media. The show's hosts argued this was disingenuous considering that he is the president's son.Yet for all his sense of raw grievance and righteous indignation over impeachment, Trump himself had been showing uncharacteristic restraint. Last month the Guardian asked him if he was thinking about tweeting out the name of the whistleblower. The president replied: "Well, I'll tell you what. There have been stories written about a certain individual – a male – and they say he's the whistleblower."Trump went on to claim, without evidence, that the whistleblower is linked to John Brennan, the former director of the CIA, and Susan Rice, the ex-national security adviser. "If he's the whistleblower, he has no credibility because he's a Brennan guy, he's a Susan Rice guy, he's an Obama guy, and he hates Trump, and he's a radical. Now, maybe it's not him. But if it's him, you guys ought to release the information."Trump has made several more appeals for the media to out the whistleblower, amplified by Republican allies in in Congress, who allege the person is a Democrat pursuing a vendetta. At a Trump rally in Kentucky, the US senator Rand Paul urged reporters: "Do your job and print his name!" Trump applauded.Trump himself has never come closer to doing it himself than Thursday's retweet. The Daily Beast reported: "Several people close to the president, such as Ivanka Trump and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, had privately cautioned him against saying or posting the name in public, arguing it would be counterproductive and unnecessary."Legal experts disagree on whether identifying a whistleblower is a crime. Some argue the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act of 1998 forbids retaliation against an employee for blowing the whistle on perceived wrongdoing but does not prevent a president or member of Congress from identifying a whistleblower.But Robert Litt, former general counsel for the office of the director of national intelligence, told National Public Radio last month: "Anybody who is thinking about outing the whistleblower has to take into account the possibility that if something happens to the whistleblower, there would be some civil liability for causing that to happen. And while disclosing the identity of the whistleblower isn't necessarily unlawful, creating a hostile work environment might be viewed as retaliation."With few public engagements, Trump, based at his private club in Palm Beach, Florida, has spent the Christmas period furiously tweeting and retweeting false claims and conspiracy theories related to Ukraine and impeachment.
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| US Rep John Lewis of Georgia says he has pancreatic cancer Posted: 29 Dec 2019 04:07 PM PST  Congressman John Lewis of Georgia announced Sunday that he has stage IV pancreatic cancer, vowing he will stay in office and fight the disease with the tenacity with which he fought racial discrimination and other inequalities dating to the civil rights era. Lewis, the youngest and last survivor of the Big Six civil rights activists in a group once led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., said in a statement that the cancer was detected earlier this month during a routine medical visit.
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| Police chief caught on camera chasing down and arresting suspect Posted: 29 Dec 2019 05:42 AM PST  Fort Worth Police Chief Ed Kraus is seen on chopper video chasing down a hit-and-run suspect and arresting them.
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| Rather Than Retiring, The Air Force's B-2 Bomber Is Being Upgraded (For Nuclear War) Posted: 29 Dec 2019 04:00 AM PST  The B61-12 adds substantial new levels of precision targeting and consolidates several different kinds of attack options into a single weapon.
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| Saudi Arabia sentences Riyadh concert stabber to death: state TV Posted: 29 Dec 2019 03:01 AM PST ![Saudi Arabia sentences Riyadh concert stabber to death: state TV]( "Saudi Arabia sentences Riyadh concert stabber to death: state TV") A Saudi Arabian court on Sunday sentenced to death a man accused of stabbing three performers at a live show in the capital Riyadh in November, state television said. The Nov. 11 attack occurred at King Abdullah Park, one of several venues hosting a months-long entertainment festival as part of government efforts to open up Saudi society and diversify its economy away from oil. Saudi Arabia intervened in Yemen's civil war in 2015 against the Iran-aligned Houthis.
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| New WeWork co-chiefs would reportedly each receive an $8.3-million golden parachute if they were fired or choose to leave Posted: 29 Dec 2019 01:45 PM PST  Co-chief executives Artie Minson and Sebastian Gunningham would cost WeWork almost $17 million if ousted, documents reportedly show.
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| NYU doctor Joseph Wiesel claims Apple used his patented heartbeat-monitoring tech without permission in lawsuit Posted: 29 Dec 2019 01:26 PM PST  Cardiologist Joseph Wiesel says Apple used his patented heartbeat-monitoring technology without permission and integrated it into Apple Watches.
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