| Australian Jews decry Israeli health minister's appointment Posted: 30 Dec 2019 01:54 AM PST  Australia's Jewish community has slammed an Israeli government decision to promote to the post of health minister a legislator who is suspected of aiding an alleged sexual abuser wanted in Australia. The Israeli government on Sunday appointed Yaacov Litzman as health minister, sparking a litany of condemnations from Australia's staunchly pro-Israel Jewish community. In an open letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Jeremy Leibler, the president of the Zionist Federation of Australia, called the decision "a slap in the face to the Australian Jewish community, the Australian people," as well as to the survivors of the alleged abuse.
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| Bernie Sanders Condemns Rise of Anti-Semitism in Iowa Menorah Lighting Posted: 30 Dec 2019 04:14 AM PST  (Bloomberg) -- Bernie Sanders helped light a menorah at a "Chanukah on Ice" event at an Iowa ice skating rink Sunday night, and condemned a rise in anti-semitism in America and "all over the world."It's rare to see the U.S. senator from Vermont, who is a secular Jew, in a religious setting while running for the Democratic presidential nomination.The annual Hanukkah event, organized by Des Moines Rabbi Yossi Jacobson, came less than 24 hours after an intruder stabbed five people at a rabbi's home in the New York City suburb of Monsey Saturday night."What we're seeing right now -- we're seeing it in America, we're seeing it all over the world -- is a rise in anti-semitism. We're seeing a rise in hate crimes," Sanders said."We're seeing somebody run into a kid here in Des Moines because that child was a Latino. We're seeing people being stabbed yesterday in New York City because they were Jewish. We are seeing people being assaulted because they are Muslim," he told an audience of about 90 gathered on a frigid Iowa winter night."And as the rabbi indicated, if there was ever a time in American history where we say no to religious bigotry, this is the time," he said.Sanders talked about his father immigrating at age 17 from Poland, "fleeing anti-semitism and fleeing violence and fleeing terrible, terrible poverty."Sanders joked about not burning down the ice skating rink before lighting the menorah candles with a blowtorch provided by the event organizers. He joined in, reading the words, as the rabbi sang a blessing. An icy wind blew his borrowed kippah off his head at one point.As Jacobson and his wife, Chana, who run Maccabee's Kosher Deli in Des Moines, handed out latkes and doughnuts, the rabbi noted that Sanders rarely talks about Judaism on the campaign trail.That has raised questions about whether he's uncomfortable with his Jewish identity, Jacobson said.Jacobson said Sanders was reluctant at first to accept the invitation to light the menorah candles, but once he did, he embraced the evening with enthusiasm.Jacobson said he asked Sanders his Hebrew name. Binyamin, Sanders answered.The rabbi said he gave Sanders a blessing, "for his health."To contact the reporter on this story: Jennifer Jacobs in Washington at jjacobs68@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net, Elizabeth Wasserman, Kasia KlimasinskaFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Homeowners in North Carolina called 911 to report an intruder. It turned out to be a rogue Roomba Posted: 30 Dec 2019 06:44 AM PST  A man and his wife in North Carolina called 911 after hearing noises coming from downstairs. It wasn't an intruder.
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| US carries out first strikes in a decade against Iran-backed Kataib Hizbollah in Iraq and Syria Posted: 29 Dec 2019 05:04 PM PST  The United States has launched its first airstrikes in nearly a decade against the Iran-backed militia forces in Iraq and Syria. The Pentagon said it hit five bases used by the Iraqi Hizbollah militant group following a rocket attack in Iraq that killed a US civilian contractor. Three of the bases were in Iraq, and two in Syria, where the militia has been trying to bolster the regime of President Assad. "US forces have conducted precision defensive strikes against five KH facilities in Iraq and Syria that will degrade KH's ability to conduct future attacks against OIR coalition forces," the Pentagon said. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the strikes send the message that the US will not tolerate actions by Iran that jeopardise American lives. The strike is the first direct confrontation between US and Iranian-backed forces in Iraq since 2011, when President Obama withdrew some of his forces. "I would note also that we will take additional actions as necessary to ensure that we act in our own self-defence and we deter further bad behavior from militia groups or from Iran," said Defence Secretary Mark Esper, who was accompanied by Mr Pompeo and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A combination of images depicts what the U.S. military says are bases of the Kataib Hezbollah militia group that were struck by U.S. forces, in the city of Al-Qa'im Credit: Reuters The delivered the brief statement to reporters in a ballroom at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club, where the president is on a more than two-week winter break. According to the Al Arabiya news network, the US evacuated dozens of staff from its embassy in Baghdad on Sunday night amid concerns of retaliation. The targets of the US bombs included weapons storage facilities and command locations used to plan and execute attacks, the statement added. On Friday, terrorists fired a barrage of 30 rockets at an Iraqi military base in Kirkuk, an oil-rich region north of Baghdad. A US civilian contractor died in the strike. Iraq's Joint Operations Command said in a statement that three U.S. airstrikes on Sunday evening Iraq time hit the headquarters of the Hezbollah Brigades at the Iraq-Syria border, killing four fighters. Iraq's Hezbollah Brigades, a separate force from the Lebanese group Hezbollah, operate under the umbrella of the state-sanctioned militias known collectively as the Popular Mobilization Forces. Many of them are supported by Iran. The Popular Mobilization Forces said Sunday that the U.S. strikes killed at least 19 of Kataeb Hezbollah's members. Kataeb Hezbollah is led by Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, one of Iraq's most powerful men. He once battled US troops and is now the deputy head of the Popular Mobilization Forces. Washington had recently promised "a decisive US response" to a growing number of unclaimed attacks on its interests in Iraq, which it blames on pro-Iran factions. US-Iran tension levels have soared since Washington pulled out of a landmark nuclear agreement with Tehran last year and imposed crippling sanctions.
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| Greta Thunberg: 'I wouldn't have wasted my time' speaking to Trump Posted: 30 Dec 2019 08:12 AM PST  * Swedish activist and president attended UN climate summit * 'He's not listening to experts … why would he listen to me?'Greta Thunberg has said she wouldn't have wasted her time talking to Donald Trump about climate change at the UN climate change summit in New York earlier this year – the same event she was pictured glaring at the one of the world's leading climate-change deniers.The Swedish climate activist made the comment during an interview on BBC Radio 4 on Monday morning, where she had been invited to guest-edit the programme.Thunberg, 16, was asked what she would have said to the leader who pulled the US – one of the world's leading carbon emitters – out of the Paris climate accord, and who has taken radical steps to undo decades-old US pollution standards.She said: "Honestly, I don't think I would have said anything. Because obviously he's not listening to scientists and experts, so why would he listen to me?"She added: "So I probably wouldn't have said anything, I wouldn't have wasted my time."Thunberg's comments came several weeks after Trump attacked her for being named Time magazine's person of the year."So ridiculous. Greta must work on her Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend! Chill Greta, Chill!" Trump tweeted at the time.She has also been attacked by Brazil's far-right president Jair Bolsonaro."It is staggering, the amount of coverage the press gives that brat," Bolsonaro said at the time.Invited to respond to her critics, Thunberg told the program "those attacks are just funny because they obviously don't mean anything".She said: "I guess of course it means something – they are terrified of young people bringing change which they don't want – but that is just proof that we are actually doing something and that they see us as some kind of threat."
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| Ousted Renault-Nissan boss Ghosn leaves Japan for Lebanon Posted: 30 Dec 2019 01:20 PM PST  Carlos Ghosn, the ousted boss of the Renault-Nissan <7201.T> carmaking alliance who was awaiting trial in Japan on charges of financial misconduct, flew into Lebanon on Monday evening, several newspapers reported. France's Les Echos newspaper cited an unidentified source and a report in Lebanese newspaper L'Orient-Le Jour, but there was no immediate confirmation from official sources. The Wall Street Journal and New York Times said Ghosn had fled Japan.
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| Make No Mistake: China Would Destroy U.S. Cities In A Nuclear War Posted: 30 Dec 2019 07:00 AM PST  No one wins in a nuclear war.
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| Iraq militia chief warns U.S. airstrikes could bring tough response Posted: 30 Dec 2019 08:42 AM PST  A top Iraqi militia leader warned of a strong response against U.S. forces in Iraq following airstrikes in Iraq and Syria overnight that hit several bases of his Iranian-backed group and killed at least 25 people.
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| Legal marijuana sales may spark Midwest interstate tension Posted: 29 Dec 2019 09:43 AM PST  Retailers legally selling marijuana for the past month in Michigan say they have drawn customers from surrounding Midwestern states where the drug remains illegal and, as Illinois prepares to joins the recreational market on Wednesday, officials are renewing warnings to consumers against carrying such products over state lines. The dynamic is familiar for states on the West and East coasts where the sale and use of marijuana has been broadly allowed since Colorado's market opened in 2014, despite a federal ban that created a patchwork of legal and cultural snares. Nebraska and Oklahoma went so far as to file an unsuccessful lawsuit against Colorado, arguing that its marijuana law would have ill effects for surrounding states.
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| Saudi Arabia Sentences Man to Death for Theater Stabbings: TV Posted: 29 Dec 2019 04:00 AM PST ![Saudi Arabia Sentences Man to Death for Theater Stabbings: TV]( "Saudi Arabia Sentences Man to Death for Theater Stabbings: TV") (Bloomberg) -- A Saudi Arabian court sentenced a Yemeni man to death for stabbing three performers at a theater show in the capital last month in an attack ordered by al-Qaeda, state-run TV reported.Another defendant was jailed for 12 1/2 years, Al Ekhbariya channel reported, citing the criminal court. The attack, in which three people were injured, was ordered by al-Qaeda in neighboring Yemen, the broadcaster said. It didn't specify where it got the information.The mid-November attack in Riyadh came as the conservative kingdom undergoes a drastic overhaul of its social norms spearheaded by its young crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. Saudis have been granted freedoms that include the loosening of rules on women's attire and travel as well as the mixing of genders in conjunction with a plan to wean the economy off oil.The court rulings were preliminary and both defendants can file appeals.\--With assistance from Sarah Algethami.To contact the reporter on this story: Reema Alothman in Riyadh at ralothman1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Donna Abu-Nasr at dabunasr@bloomberg.net, Michael Gunn, Bruce StanleyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Andrew Yang has a simple idea for how the DNC can increase diversity at the next debate Posted: 30 Dec 2019 09:47 AM PST  Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang has a suggestion for the Democratic National Committee.There's been a lot of wariness as the field whittles down about the lack of diversity among the party's top presidential candidates. So far, the only five candidates to have qualified for January's debate in Iowa — Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), former Vice President Joe Biden, and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg — are all white. And Yang, who has yet to qualify for the January event, was the only minority at the last debate in December.In a letter sent to DNC Chair Tom Perez obtained by The Daily Beast, Yang provided a pretty simple idea for how to increase diversity at the January debate. He just thinks the DNC should commission more qualifying polls.Of course, that would go a long way toward helping Yang, who has met the individual donor requirement, but is three qualifying polls short of reaching the threshold. Still, in the letter he tried to appeal to the party at large, saying that the an all-white debate stage was a "troubling prospect" for the DNC, and could even lead to "unfounded claims of bias and prejudice." More polls, he told Perez, "would provide an accurate snapshot of the current state of the race and where voters' hearts and minds are." Read more at The Daily Beast.More stories from theweek.com Giants, Browns fire head coaches on otherwise quiet 'Black Monday' The White House always knew Trump's order to freeze Ukraine aid could blow up, New York Times details The best headlines of 2019
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| Greta Thunberg said it would be a waste of time for her to talk to Trump about climate change Posted: 30 Dec 2019 12:51 PM PST  President Donald Trump, who is withdrawing the US from the Paris climate accord, has a long record of expressing skepticism on climate science.
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| Turkey arrests 94 Islamic State suspects ahead of New Year Posted: 30 Dec 2019 12:22 AM PST ![Turkey arrests 94 Islamic State suspects ahead of New Year]( "Turkey arrests 94 Islamic State suspects ahead of New Year") Turkish police detained 94 people suspected of ties to Islamic State in nationwide raids on Monday ahead of New Year celebrations, police and state media said, two months after the group's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed. Counter-terror police carried out the operations in the central provinces of Ankara, Kayseri and Adana, and Batman in the southeast, state-owned Anadolu news agency reported. At 5 a.m. (0200 GMT) in Batman, some 400 police officers detained 22 people in simultaneous raids on various addresses, seizing weapons, ammunition and documents, Anadolu said.
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| Chinese doctor who claimed first genetically edited baby is jailed for three years and handed heavy fine Posted: 30 Dec 2019 02:40 AM PST  A Chinese scientist who set off an ethical debate with claims that he had made the world's first genetically edited babies was sentenced Monday to three years in prison because of his research, state media said. He Jiankui, who was convicted of practicing medicine without a license, was also fined 3 million yuan ($430,000) by a court in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, China's official Xinhua News Agency said. Two other researchers involved in the project received lesser sentences and fines. Zhang Renli was sentenced to two years in prison and fined 1 million yuan. Qin Jinzhou received an 18-month sentence, but with a two-year reprieve, and a 500,000 yuan fine. Chinese scientist He Jiankui speaks at the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing in Hong Kong on November 28, 2018. Credit: AFP He, the lead researcher, shocked the scientific world when he announced in November 2018 that he had altered the embryos of twin girls who had been born the same month. He described his work in exclusive interviews with The Associated Press. The announcement sparked a global debate over the ethics of gene editing. He said he had used a tool called CRISPR to try to disable a gene that allows the AIDS virus to enter a cell, in a bid to give the girls the ability to resist the infection. The identity of the girls has not been released, and it isn't clear if the experiment succeeded. The CRISPR tool has been tested elsewhere in adults to treat diseases, but many in the scientific community denounced He's work as medically unnecessary and unethical, because any genetic changes could be passed down to future generations. The U.S. forbids editing embryos except for lab research. Targeted genome editing | What does it all mean? He told the AP in 2018 that he felt a strong responsibility to make an example, and that society would decide whether to allow the practice to go forward. He disappeared from public view shortly after he announced his research at a conference in Hong Kong 13 months ago, apparently detained by authorities initially in an apartment in Shenzhen. The Xinhua report, citing the court's verdict, said the researchers were involved in the births of three gene-edited babies to two women, confirming reports of a third baby. The court said the three researchers had not obtained qualification as doctors to practice medicine, pursued fame and profits, deliberately violated Chinese regulations on scientific research and crossed an ethical line in both scientific research and medicine. It also said they had fabricated ethical review documents. He studied in the U.S. before setting up a lab at the Southern University of Science and Technology of China in Shenzhen, a city in Guangdong province that borders Hong Kong. The verdict accused him of colluding with Zhang and Qin, who worked at medical institutes in the same province.
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| The 25 Best Small Towns in America Posted: 30 Dec 2019 06:00 AM PST |
| Mexican Police Chief Arrested in Mormon Massacre Case Posted: 30 Dec 2019 01:47 AM PST  CALI, Colombia—A municipal police chief in northern Mexico has been arrested for an alleged role in the deaths of three women and six children—all dual U.S.-Mexican citizens—on November 4.Fidel Alejandro Villegas, aka El Chiquilín (The Kid), is the police chief of Janos, Chihuahua. The municipality borders the U.S. and sits about 105 miles across the state line from the site of the massacre in neighboring Sonora. It's also on the same route the families had planned to travel on the day they were ambushed.Why the Drug War Can't Be Won—Cartel Corruption Goes All the Way to the TopThe victims were members of the LeBaron and Langford clans, which are part of a breakaway sect of Mormons long established in both Chihuahua and Sonora. Villegas, who was detained on Thursday, is now awaiting trial in Mexico City. He is the fifth person to be arrested as part of an investigation that has at times seemed scattershot, since the other suspects have all been picked up under questionable circumstances. Mexican federal officials claim the mothers and children were accidental victims in a turf war between rival crime groups. And prosecutors allege Villegas is tied to one of those groups, called La Línea, which is the armed enforcement wing of the Juárez Cartel and has a strong presence in Janos. Surviving members of the Mormon families reject the official "accident hypothesis" and claim they were targeted deliberately on a remote stretch of highway last month, and family spokesperson Julián LeBaron says he was less than surprised by the alleged involvement of a high-level police officer in the region."The entire northwest [of Mexico] has a reputation that all police officers work for organized crime," he said in an interview with Aristegui News, shortly after Villegas' arrest. "And that's what high school kids tell you. It's not a mystery."* * *'ENDEMIC' CORRUPTION* * *Villegas' detention raises as many questions as it answers. How was a police chief from a jurisdiction more than a hundred miles away from the crime scene, and in another state, actually involved? So far authorities have released scant details.Robert Bunker, an expert on international security at the University of Southern California, told The Daily Beast that corruption among security forces in Mexico has "metastasized over decades" to the point where it is "endemic." The most infamous case of cops working with organized crime was the disappearance of 43 students in Guerrero state in September 2014, when police and soldiers allegedly teamed up with cartel sicarios to do away with the victims.Bunker noted that a law officer like Chief Chiquilín Villegas could have provided "departmental resources—vehicles, uniforms, intelligence, weapons or even personnel—to help facilitate the ambushes." Another possibility, as Bunker noted, is that the investigation of Police Chief Villegas will be used to expose people who have "more intimate knowledge of the cartel and its operations."Emmanuel Gallardo, an independent Mexican journalist who specializes in organized crime, agrees. "They're going to investigate his bank accounts and his financial history for evidence of bribes and paybacks and where they might have come from."A similar background investigation led to another high-profile arrest earlier this month, when Genaro García Luna, the central government's former National Security Minister and mastermind of the country's ongoing Drug War, was arrested by U.S. authorities on charges of conspiring with the Sinaloa Cartel."First Luna and now Chiquilín," Gallardo said. "This shows again the relationship the cartels have with the state. We cannot think of Mexican authorities and organized crime as separate entities. They are part of the same problem, part of the same world." "This is why Mexicans are frustrated. Why they are afraid," Gallardo said. "When a violent crime happens you can't go to the police because there is a high probability the same cops who are listening to your complaint are working with drug traffickers and assassins. This is the reason that 98 percent of homicides go unsolved in Mexico."* * *TORTURE, DEATH THREATS, STARVATION* * *Added to the persistent failure to nail the killers is the equally persistent inclination of authorities to round up "the usual suspects," then let them go. The first man arrested in the LeBaron case, just two days after the shooting, already has been released. Three other men were rolled up in Janos the first week of December, amid government claims that they were high-ranking members of La Línea. But protests erupted after friends and family members claimed the men had been framed. Janos Mayor Sebastián Efraín Pineda also backed the families, telling news outlets he knew the arrestees personally and that "they're not criminal leaders." In that incident, authorities stand accused by the families of planting evidence and of trying to force confessions from the detained suspects."Scapegoating to create guilty parties" remains a frequent problem in Mexico, journalist Gallardo said, citing the case of French national Florence Cassez, who was imprisoned for seven years in Mexico on trumped up kidnapping charges before judges overturned her sentence."They can make you confess with several techniques," said Gallardo. These including physical torture, death threats to loved ones, even starvation. "This is not like the States, where you can complain of human rights abuses. Here they can torture with impunity. They know how to push prisoners to say anything they want them to say," Gallardo said. After the LeBaron killings, which made headlines around the world, the administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is "throwing suspects at the problem as it engages in damage control," said USC's Bunker. "At this level of Mexican politics it is not about getting the perpetrators or championing the rule of law—it is about making the problem go away as quickly as possible." * * *AN ALL-OUT CARTEL WAR* * *Whatever comes of Chiquilín's involvement—or the lack thereof—the killing of those nine women and children continues to cause ripples throughout the Mexican underworld.The area of eastern Sonora where the attack took place is said to be controlled by a faction of the Sinaloa Cartel under the rule of Iván Guzmán, 36, and Alfredo Guzmán, 30. These two sons of jailed kingpin Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán are known collectively as Los Chapitos. The other principal bloc of the Sinaloa Cartel is dominated by Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, a shadowy figure often referred to as "El Capo de Capos," the Boss of Bosses, due to his power and longevity.As The Daily Beast reported shortly after the massacre, Zambada was none too happy about the bad publicity and the major heat brought down on the supposedly sovereign territory of the Sinaloa Cartel. The tension between El Mayo and Los Chapitos has continued to worsen, and could result in Mayo taking over the whole outfit from the Guzmán family.A source within one of the cartels that operate in the area, who agreed to speak only under condition of anonymity, described El Mayo as "an old-school man with Old Testament laws," who has little time for the "Narco Juniors'" seeming frivolity. "A couple of weeks ago the little Chapo boys were supposed to attend a meeting [with Mayo] on the mountain. They were 'too busy to go.'"Yet they have "plenty of time to post on Facebook about cars and pictures of money," the source said, and added the Chapitos were "too impressed" with their position to be good bosses due to their "immaturity.""They are getting weaker every day," he said.Reporter Gallardo agreed with that assessment, saying: "El Mayo is respected. The Chapitos are young and spoiled." Gallardo added that their growing vulnerability could have far-reaching consequences, in part due to a botched and bloody attempt to arrest two other, younger Guzmán brothers this fall. "The eyes of the federal government and of Washington are on them all now," he said. "They can handle local authorities, but not the White House [or] joint operations with the DEA."If Mayo, sensing weakness and ineptitude, moved against the younger faction, Gallardo said, the Chapitos "would just be killed. El Mayo has more resources and experience." However, conflict like that could bleed both sides, and "open the door for other groups to move in and start taking over their territory," including arch rivals like the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and La Línea's parent group, the Juárez Cartel. Smelling blood, such enemies "would move in like hyenas," touching off a kill-or-be-killed conflict between high-powered, paramilitary gangs, resulting in even higher levels of civilian deaths and collateral damage."The last thing the Mexican government wants," Gallardo said, "is an all-out cartel war." But the savage murder of those women and children on a lonely road in northern Mexico could lead to exactly that.Trump Labeling Mexico's Cartels 'Terrorists' Makes Things WorseRead 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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| Giuliani reportedly defied White House policy to oust Maduro from office Posted: 30 Dec 2019 08:25 AM PST  Rudy Giuliani, a personal lawyer of President Trump, defied White House foreign policy to ease Venezuela's socialist President Nicolás Maduro out of office last year, the Washington Post reported.
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| PSA: REI is Having an Epic End-of-the-Year Sale Right Now Posted: 30 Dec 2019 01:27 PM PST |
| Russia warns Iran nuclear deal in danger of 'falling apart' Posted: 30 Dec 2019 04:29 AM PST  Iran's nuclear deal with world powers is in danger of "falling apart" without the compliance of the United States and the European Union, Russia's foreign minister warned Monday after meeting with his Iranian counterpart in Moscow. The 2015 deal between Iran and Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States lifted sanctions on Iran in exchange for limits on its nuclear program. The U.S. withdrew from the accord last year and imposed crippling economic sanctions that block Iran from selling crude oil abroad.
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| Donald Trump and Barack Obama are tied for 2019's most admired man in the US Posted: 30 Dec 2019 08:00 AM PST  18% of respondents named Trump as the man they admired the most with an additional 18% choosing Obama, who has been the most admired man for 12 years.
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| Iraq Resumes Oil Output at Field Halted by Protesters Posted: 30 Dec 2019 06:18 AM PST  (Bloomberg) -- Iraq resumed pumping at the Nasiriya oil field a day after protesters forced it to halt operations, the government said, as widespread unrest starts to take a toll on the country's most important industry.Employees returned to work at the field in southern Iraq after authorities cleared away protesters who had cut roads to the area, Oil Ministry spokesman Asim Jihad said Monday in a statement. OPEC's second-biggest producer maintained its overall output level during the halt by pumping more oil at its Basra fields to offset the loss of about 80,000 to 85,000 barrels a day from Nasiriya, Jihad said earlier.Nasiriya's oil refinery, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the field, also restarted after shutting down on Sunday when about 700 protesters blocked worker access to the plant, according to a person familiar with the operations. The refinery in the southern province of Thiqar processes crude into gasoline, fuel oil and kerosene sold mostly in the province. All three of its units are back on line, the person said, asking not to be identified due to the matter's sensitivity.Protesters -- most of them unemployed and some of them recent graduates -- have rallied repeatedly over the past two months near southern oil fields and refineries, though Nasiriya was the first field to be closed due to the disturbances. Iraq is the largest producer, after Saudi Arabia, in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. It pumps most its oil at deposits in the south, exporting cargoes by sea through the Persian Gulf.Iraq's oil production is in line with limits set by OPEC and the group's global allies, Jihad said. The so-called OPEC+ coalition has decided to reduce its collective output until the end of March in an effort to balance the market and prop up crude prices.Around 500 people have died and more than 22,000 others have been wounded in clashes between security forces and protesters since Oct. 1. Iraqis, mostly from the Shiite majority population, are protesting against government corruption, poor services, and wide-ranging Iranian political influence, calling for an overhaul of the ruling class.(Updates with refinery restarting in third paragraph)\--With assistance from Salma El Wardany.To contact the reporter on this story: Khalid Al-Ansary in Baghdad at kalansary@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Bruce Stanley at bstanley5@bloomberg.net, James HerronFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Ukraine holds big prisoner swap with pro-Russian separatists Posted: 29 Dec 2019 01:00 AM PST  KIEV/MOSCOW (Reuters) - Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatists in the east completed a large-scale prisoner swap on Sunday after bussing scores of detainees in the five-year conflict to an exchange point in the breakaway Donbass region. The swap should help build confidence between the two sides, who are wrangling over how to implement a peace deal after the loss of more than 13,000 lives, but major disagreements remain and full normalization is far off. Ukraine said 76 pro-government detainees were handed over, while separatists said they took 120 of their prisoners during the swap at a checkpoint near the industrial town of Horlivka.
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| The bushfires in Australia are so big they're generating their own weather — 'pyrocumulonimbus' thunderstorms that can start more fires Posted: 30 Dec 2019 05:47 AM PST  The "front" between the calm air outside the fire zone and the stormcloud is so sharp that it can generate lightning — and that can start new fires.
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| Hanukkah candles burn in Iraqi Kurdistan Posted: 30 Dec 2019 10:40 AM PST  Al-Qosh (Irak) (AFP) - In the glow of the nine-candled menorah, with kippa skullcaps on their heads and tallit prayer shawls around their shoulders, a small association is working to revive Hanukkah in Iraq. The country has been nearly emptied of its Jewish community amid regional conflict and violence within its borders, but this year, the town of Al-Qosh hosted its first Hanukkah celebrations. Al-Qosh is a majority Christian town around 50 kilometres (30 miles) north of Mosul, the former self-proclaimed "capital" of the Islamic State group (IS) in Iraq.
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| Swiss Embassy worker detained in Sri Lanka gets bail Posted: 30 Dec 2019 02:04 AM PST  A Sri Lankan Court on Monday granted bail to a Swiss Embassy employee who was detained pending charges that she made statements to create disaffection toward the government and fabricated evidence. Before her arrest, the employee, a Sri Lankan national, had reportedly said she was abducted, held for hours, sexually assaulted and threatened by captors who demanded that she disclose embassy-related information. Sri Lankan authorities have said they investigated her complaint but found no evidence to file charges against anyone.
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| Bank's Secret Campaign to Win Entry to U.S. for Shah of Iran Posted: 29 Dec 2019 08:29 AM PST  One late fall evening 40 years ago, a worn-out white Gulfstream II jet descended over Fort Lauderdale, Florida, carrying a regal but sickly passenger almost no one was expecting.Crowded aboard were a Republican political operative, a retinue of Iranian military officers, four smelly and hyperactive dogs and Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the newly deposed shah of Iran.Yet as the jet touched down, the only one waiting to receive the deposed monarch was a senior executive of Chase Manhattan Bank, which had not only lobbied the White House to admit the former shah but had arranged visas for his entourage, searched out private schools and mansions for his family and helped arrange the Gulfstream to deliver him."The Eagle has landed," Joseph V. Reed Jr., chief of staff to the bank's chairman, David Rockefeller, declared in a celebratory meeting at the bank the next morning.Less than two weeks later, on Nov. 4, 1979, vowing revenge for the admission of the shah to the United States, revolutionary Iranian students seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and then held more than 50 Americans -- and Washington -- hostage for 444 days.The shah, Washington's closest ally in the Persian Gulf, had fled Tehran in January 1979 in the face of a burgeoning uprising against his 38 years of iron-fisted rule. Liberals, leftists and religious conservatives were rallying against him. Strikes and demonstrations had shut down Tehran, and his security forces were losing control.The shah sought refuge in America. But President Jimmy Carter, hoping to forge ties to the new government rising out of the chaos and concerned about the security of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, refused him entry for the first 10 months of his exile. Even then, the White House only begrudgingly let him in for medical treatment.Now, a newly disclosed secret history from the offices of Rockefeller shows in vivid detail how Chase Manhattan Bank and its well-connected chairman worked behind the scenes to persuade the Carter administration to admit the shah, one of the bank's most profitable clients.For Carter, for the U.S. and for the Middle East it was an incendiary decision.The ensuing hostage crisis enabled Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to consolidate his theocratic rule, started a four-decade conflict between Washington and Tehran that is still roiling the region and helped Ronald Reagan take the White House. To American policymakers, Iran became a parable about the political perils in the fall of a friendly strongman.Although Carter complained publicly at the time about the pressure campaign, the full, behind-the-scenes story -- laid out in the recently disclosed documents -- has never been told.Rockefeller's team called the campaign Project Eagle, after the code name used for the shah. Exploiting clubby networks of power stretching deep into the White House, Rockefeller mobilized a phalanx of elder statesmen.They included Henry A. Kissinger, a former secretary of state and chairman of a Chase advisory board; John J. McCloy, former commissioner of occupied Germany after World War II and an adviser to eight presidents as well as a future Chase chairman; a Chase executive and former CIA agent, Archibald B. Roosevelt Jr., whose cousin, CIA agent Kermit Roosevelt Jr., had orchestrated a 1953 coup to keep the shah in power; and Richard M. Helms, a former director of the CIA and former ambassador to Iran.Charles Francis, a veteran of corporate public affairs who worked for Chase at the time, brought the documents to the attention of The Times."Today's corporate campaigns are demolition derbies compared to this operation," he said. "It was smooth, smooth, smooth and almost entirely invisible."Records of Project Eagle were donated to Yale by Reed, the campaign's director. But he deemed the material so potentially embarrassing to his patron that Reed, who died in 2016, stipulated that the records remain sealed until Rockefeller's death. Rockefeller died in 2017 at the age of 101.Some of the information may embarrass others as well. Hawkish critics have often faulted Carter as worrying too much about human rights and thus failing to prop up the shah.But the papers reveal that the president's special envoy to Iran had actually urged the country's generals to use as much deadly force as needed to suppress the revolt, advising them about how to carry out a military takeover to keep the shah in power.A spokeswoman for Carter did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Carter at the time of the crisis was not immediately available.After the hostages were taken, the Carter administration worked desperately to try to free the captives, and on April 24, 1980, authorized a rescue mission that collapsed in disaster: A helicopter crash in the desert killed eight service members, whose charred bodies were gleefully exhibited by Iranian officials.The hostage crisis doomed Carter's presidency. And the team around Rockefeller, a lifelong Republican with a dim view of Carter's dovish foreign policy, collaborated closely with the Reagan campaign in its efforts to preempt and discourage what it derisively labeled an "October surprise" -- a preelection release of the American hostages, the papers show.The Chase team helped the Reagan campaign gather and spread rumors about possible payoffs to win the release, a propaganda effort that Carter administration officials have said impeded talks to free the captives."I had given my all" to thwarting any effort by the Carter officials "to pull off the long-suspected 'October surprise,'" Reed wrote in a letter to his family after the election, apparently referring to the Chase effort to track and discourage a hostage release deal. He was later named Reagan's ambassador to Morocco.Rockefeller then personally lobbied the incoming administration to ensure that its Iran policies protected the bank's financial interests. The records indicate that Rockefeller hoped for the restoration of a version of the deposed government.At the start of the Iranian upheaval, the papers show, Kissinger advised Rockefeller that the probable conclusion would be "a sort of Bonapartist counterrevolution that rallies the pro-Western elements together with what was left of the army."Kissinger, in a recent email, acknowledged that the prediction "reflects my thinking at the time" but said "it was a judgment, not a policy proposal."But Rockefeller evidently continued to advocate for some form of restoration long after the shah fled Tehran.As late as December 1980, Rockefeller personally urged the incoming Reagan administration to encourage a counterrevolution by stopping "rug merchant type bargaining" for the hostages and instead taking military action to punish Iran if the hostages were not released. He suggested occupying three Iranian-controlled islands in the Persian Gulf."The most likely outcome of this situation is an eventual replacement of the present fanatic Shiite Muslim government, either by a military one or a combination of the military with the civilian democratic leaders," Rockefeller argued, according to his talking points for meetings with the Reagan transition team.An heir to his family's oil fortune, Rockefeller styled himself a corporate statesman and personally knew many White House officials, including Carter. He had known the shah since 1962, socializing with him in New York, Tehran and St. Moritz, Switzerland.As Tehran's coffers swelled with oil revenues in the 1970s, Chase formed a joint venture with an Iranian state bank and earned big fees advising the national oil company.By 1979, the bank had syndicated more than $1.7 billion in loans for Iranian public projects (the equivalent of about $5.8 billion today). The Chase balance sheet held more than $360 million in loans to Iran and more than $500 million in Iranian deposits.Rockefeller often insisted that his concern for the shah was purely about Washington's "prestige and credibility." It was about "the abandonment of a friend when he needed us most," he wrote in his memoirs.His only advocacy for the shah, Rockefeller wrote, had been in a brief aside to Carter during an unrelated White House meeting in April 1979."I did nothing more, publicly or privately, to influence the administration's thinking."Yet the Project Eagle papers show that Rockefeller received detailed updates on the risks to Chase's holdings, and that even his aside to Carter in April had been planned out the previous day with Reed, McCloy and Kissinger.Over lunch at the Knickerbocker Club in New York, Carter's special envoy to Tehran, Gen. Robert E. Huyser, told the Project Eagle team that he had urged Iran's top military leaders to kill as many demonstrators as necessary to keep the shah in power.If shooting over the heads of demonstrators failed to disperse them, "move to focusing on the chests," Huyser said he told the Iranian generals, according to minutes of the lunch. "I got stern and noisy with the military," he added, but in the end, the top general was "gutless."Rockefeller had his own special envoy to try to help the shah: Robert F. Armao, a Republican operative and public relations consultant who had worked for Rockefeller's brother Nelson, a former governor of New York and former vice president.Armao became one of the shah's closest advisers, and after Nelson Rockefeller died at the start of 1979, he reported to the Project Eagle team at Chase nearly every day for more than two years."Everybody had the hope that there would be a repeat of the 1953 events," Armao recalled recently, referring to the U.S.an-backed coup that restored the shah the first time he fled.When the shah's rule became untenable at the start of 1979, the State Department first turned to David Rockefeller for help relocating the Iranian monarch in the U.S."Not large enough for my very special client," Reed wrote to a Greenwich, Connecticut, broker who had offered two estates priced at around $2 million each -- about $7.4 million today.But while the shah tarried in Egypt and Morocco, an Iranian mob briefly seized the U.S. Embassy in February. Diplomats warned that admitting the shah risked another assault, and Carter changed his mind about offering haven.Rockefeller refused to deliver this bad news to the shah, afraid that it would hurt the bank by alienating a prized client."The risks were too high relating to the CMB position in Iran," he responded, referring to Chase Manhattan Bank, according to the records.Instead, Rockefeller scrambled to find accommodations elsewhere -- first in the Bahamas, and then in Mexico -- while strategizing with Kissinger, McCloy and others about how to persuade the White House to let in the shah.During a three-day push in April, Kissinger made a personal appeal to the national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and a follow-up phone call to Carter. Rockefeller buttonholed the president at the White House.And in a speech, Kissinger publicly accused the Carter administration of forcing a loyal ally to sail the world in search of refuge, "like a flying Dutchman looking for a port of call" -- the seed of what became a "who lost Iran" campaign theme for the Republicans.McCloy flooded the White House with lengthy letters to senior officials, often arguing about the danger of demoralizing other "friendly sovereigns." "Dear Zbig," he addressed his old friend Brzezinski.Finally, in October, Reed sent his personal doctor to Cuernavaca, Mexico, "to take a 'look-see'" at the shah.He had been hiding a cancer diagnosis. The doctor, Benjamin H. Kean, determined that the shah needed sophisticated treatment within a few weeks -- in Mexico, if necessary, Kean later said he had concluded.But when Reed put the doctor in touch with State Department officials, they came away with a different prognosis: that the shah was "at the point of death" and that only a New York hospital "was capable of possibly saving his life," as Carter described it at the time to The Times.With that opening, the Chase team began preparing the flight to Fort Lauderdale."When I told the customs man who the principal was, he almost fainted," the waiting executive, Eugene Swanzey, reported the next morning.The plane's bathroom was malfunctioning. The shah and his wife hunted in vain for a missing videocassette to finish a movie. And their four dogs -- a poodle, a collie, a cocker spaniel and a Great Dane -- jumped on everyone. The Great Dane "hadn't been washed in weeks," Swanzey said. "The aroma was just terrible."When Reed met the plane on its final arrival in New York, he recalled the next day, the shah seemed to be thinking, "'At last I am getting into competent hands.'"But as he checked the shah into New York Hospital, Reed was circumspect."I am the unidentified American," he told the inquisitive staff.Reed, Rockefeller and Kissinger met again three days after the hostages were taken."Noted was the feeling of indignation as being high and nothing useful to say," read the minutes.The White House said the shah had to depart as soon as possible, but Project Eagle continued."The ideal place for the Eagle to land," Reed wrote to Armao on Nov. 9, forwarding a brochure for a 350-acre Hudson Valley estate.A week later, Rockefeller personally urged Carter in a phone call to direct the secretary of state to meet with the shah about "the current situation." Carter did not and the shah soon departed, for Panama, then Egypt.Only after the death of the shah, on July 27, 1980, nine months after his landing in Fort Lauderdale, did the Project Eagle team shift to new objectives. One was protecting Rockefeller from blame for the crisis.Over roast loin of veal and vintage wine at the exclusive River Club in New York, Rockefeller and nine others on the team gathered on Aug. 19. Amid discussion of a laudatory biography of the shah by a Berkeley professor that the team had commissioned, some warned that a Rockefeller link to the embassy seizure would be hard to escape.Why was the shah admitted? "Medical treatment/DR recommended," one said, using Rockefeller's initials, according to minutes of the dinner. "This association cannot be ignored."But Kissinger was reassuring. Congress would never hold an investigation during an election campaign."I don't think we are in trouble any more, David," Kissinger told him.The hostages were released on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 1981, and a few days later Carter's departing White House counsel called Rockefeller to inquire about how the release deal affected Chase bank."Worked out very well," Rockefeller told him, according to his records. "Far better than we had feared."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company
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| 'Worst foreign policy decision' in my lifetime: Pete Buttigieg criticizes Joe Biden's 2002 Iraq War vote Posted: 29 Dec 2019 04:50 PM PST  Mayor Pete Buttigieg made the remark about former Vice President Joe Biden in response to a question about his own foreign policy experience.
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| Trump to Counter-Program Next Democratic Debate: Campaign Update Posted: 30 Dec 2019 01:40 PM PST  (Bloomberg) -- Democrats seeking to replace Donald Trump in the White House will have some competition for television viewers during their next debate: The incumbent president himself.Trump's campaign announced Monday that his next rally would be in Milwaukee on Jan. 14. That's the same day as the Democratic candidates' seventh debate, in Des Moines, Iowa.Trump's impeachment could complicate matters. It's unclear whether the Democratic debate will proceed if the Senate is holding a trial on articles of impeachment the U.S. House passed earlier this month. Three senators -- Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota -- have qualified for the debate so far.The Milwaukee rally would be the second of the new year for the president. He is to hold a rally Jan. 9 in Toledo, Ohio. Trump won both of the Midwestern states in 2016 and his campaign regards them as critical for his re-election next year.A Trump campaign spokesman, Tim Murtaugh, said the timing wasn't an accident. "What better counter-programming could there be?" he said.Sanders in 'Good Health' Despite Heart AttackDemocratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is in good health and fit to lead the U.S. despite suffering a heart attack in October, according to letters from his doctors that his campaign released on Monday.Sanders, 78, suffered "modest heart muscle damage" after the Oct. 1 heart attack, one of his doctors said, but "has been doing very well since." Congress's attending physician Brian Monahan pronounced Sanders "in good health currently," and his campaign said in a statement that he is "fit and ready to serve as president of the United States."The Vermont senator's heart attack was caused by a blockage in the midportion of his left anterior descending coronary artery, Monahan's letter said. But since then, his "heart muscle strength has improved" and the senator doesn't have symptoms of congestive heart failure, a life-threatening condition, Monahan wrote.Sanders's campaign didn't immediately disclose that he had suffered a heart attack, at first describing the episode as a fleeting episode of chest pain. The more serious diagnosis was revealed three days afterward, though even then the campaign did not describe the severity of the heart attack.Monday's brief report, consisting of three letters from his physicians, didn't divulge Sanders's ejection fraction, a measure of how much damage was done by the heart attack. His ability to exercise was 50% higher than other men his age with a "similar diagnosis" and comparable to men his age without heart disease, according to a letter by a doctor at the University of Vermont Medical Center's cardiac rehabilitation department. -- Mario ParkerBloomberg Touts Plan to Improve Maternal HealthDemocratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg is calling for measures including a free health insurance plan for low-income women and standardizing data collection to improve maternal health and reduce deaths, especially among women of color.The former New York mayor released his plan Monday during a campaign stop in Alabama, which he said has one of the highest maternal- and infant-mortality rates in the U.S.Bloomberg would require training for doctors to address any racial bias in maternal care and centralize collection of maternal mortality data at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to facilitate treatment programs. He said he would also provide a free public-option insurance plan for low-income women, especially in Alabama and other states that did not expand Medicaid under Obamacare. The campaign said it can't yet provide a formal cost estimate.Bloomberg said he also would seek to encourage better care options in rural areas, repeal the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding for abortions, and support other abortion-rights measures opposed by President Donald Trump.Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News. -- Mark NiquetteCOMING UP:Joe Biden is campaigning in New Hampshire on Monday. He will attend community events in Exeter and Derry.Pete Buttigieg is in Iowa through Monday.Cory Booker will return to northern Nevada Monday for an event at the California Building in Reno and then for a roundtable with Latino community leaders in Sparks.On Tuesday, Elizabeth Warren will deliver a New Year's Eve address from Boston's historic Old South Meeting House about fighting corruption.Five Democratic candidates -- Warren, Bernie Sanders, Biden, Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar have qualified for the next debate, on Jan. 14, in Iowa.(Michael Bloomberg is also seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.)To contact the reporter on this story: Mario Parker in Washington at mparker22@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net, Alex Wayne, John HarneyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| A survivor of the Kazakhstan plane crash that killed at least 12 said the aircraft was crushed 'like a tin can' Posted: 29 Dec 2019 10:39 AM PST  Aslan Nazaraliyev told Sky News that the Bek Air plane started "swaying" and "vibrating" seconds after taking off from Almaty.
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| France waits on Macron as pension strike stretches on Posted: 30 Dec 2019 04:28 PM PST  French union leaders upped their calls on Monday for President Emmanuel Macron to give ground on a planned pension overhaul, amid signs that support is flagging for a gruelling transport strike now in its 26th day. Macron will address the nation Tuesday in his annual New Year's Eve speech, having largely left it to his government to defend one of the most contested reforms of his term. The president will reaffirm his "determined ambition (for) a project of social progress that corrects a number of inequalities," an official at the Elysee Palace told AFP on condition of anonymity.
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| Alligators, pricey bananas and naked people: 2019 in Florida Posted: 29 Dec 2019 08:48 AM PST  In 2019, Florida Banana managed to eclipse Florida Man. From alligator antics to naked people doing wacky things, Florida did not disappoint in the weird news department this year. In December, a Miami couple spent more than $100,000 on the "unicorn of the art world" — a banana duct-taped to a wall — during Art Basel. Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan sold three editions of "Comedian," each in the $120,000 to $150,000 range.
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| As Betelgeuse Dims, Scientists Wonder If We're Watching a Star Die Posted: 30 Dec 2019 10:46 AM PST  The star is fading, and scientists are trying to figure out what that means.
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| War and Corruption Made Ukraine a Terrorist Twilight Zone Posted: 29 Dec 2019 02:03 AM PST  KYIV—Ukraine arrested one of the world's most dangerous international terrorists last month in a special operation conducted by local, Georgian and American special services. Al-Bara Shishani, the former commander of the so-called Islamic State and deputy head of its intelligence operations, was detained on the outskirts of Kyiv. Shishani had been presumed dead for more than a year, but was hiding here and plotting international terrorist attacks, according to Ukrainian authorities. The Secret Life of an ISIS WarlordIn fact, this country torn by a Russian-backed separatist war has become a kind of Twilight Zone for terrorists of many stripes who have found ways to cross its borders and take advantage of a deeply divided society where law and order have been undermined by official corruption and public confusion.The terrorist's real name is Cezar Tokhosashvili, from the Pankisi Gorge region of the Republic of Georgia. The largely impoverished population of those rough mountains includes many Muslims of Chechen extraction who have embraced radical Salafi teachings and, in several cases, became enthusiastic recruits for violent jihadist organizations.Al-Bar Shishani reportedly was a deputy for the former "minister of war" of the so-called Islamic State, Abu Omar al-Shishani, real name Tarkhan Batirashvili, reported killed by an American airstrike in Syria in 2016.Katerina Sergatskova, a researcher specializing in Ukraine-based Islamic State fighters, told The Daily Beast, "What Ukrainian authorities do not explain to us is which hole in the border Tokhosashvili used to get in, who he bribed, what passport he used here, and which particular terrorist attacks he helped to organize while living in Ukraine." According to Sergatskova there are holes in the borders of Ukraine in the Kharkiv, Odessa, and Lviv regions as well as the seceding provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk in the Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine. The biggest "hole," as she put it, comes from the fact "the entire border patrol system is affected by corruption." At least 200 other suspected ISIS fighters have been arrested in Ukraine, said Sergatskova, and dozens are still free. More than two years ago, The Daily Beast reported on the problem of Chechen fighters who had crossed into Ukraine since 2014. Some came legally, some illegally, in the early months of the war in Donbas. Dozens of Chechen militia from the Islamic State Caucasus Emirate, recognized as a "specially designated global terrorist group" by the U.S. State Department, have crossed Ukraine's border with their families. Many of them joined Ukrainian volunteer troops fighting in Donbas, including the Right Sector militia, fighting against the Russian-supported separatists. "Our authorities have very poor or no knowledge of radical Islam," said Sergatskova, who notes that ISIS cadres have not carried out any attacks inside Ukraine, apparently preferring to use it as a "haven."* * *A JOURNEY TO THE GRAY ZONE* * *Earlier this month we traveled to Ukraine's most problematic border, first taking the night train from Kyiv to the town of Pokrovsk, in the government-controlled part of the Donetsk region, then a car from there to the Marinka checkpoint where people cross into and out of the separatist's self-declared Donetsk People's Republic. The first thing sleepy train passengers hear upon arrival in Pokrovsk is the taxi drivers shouting, "Who needs a lift to Marinka checkpoint, get in!" And many do. They carry bags heavy with all kinds of goods, even milk, which is commonly believed to be better in government-controlled parts of Ukraine than in the separatist zone. The battered road to Marinka took us through thick fog for about 30 miles until we reached a line of cars that had been growing since hours before dawn. The wait to get to the actual checkpoint can last longer than three hours, but you can speed it up as long as you have enough cash in your pocket to cheat the system before the checkpoint closes at 5 p.m.Adults in Donbas talk matter-of-factly in front of children about death and destruction and about bribes they pay to go in and out of the separatist part of Ukraine, as if discussing a weather forecast. There is a general feeling that the war here has become a permanent, dreary, sometimes deadly status quo. It has gone on now for almost six years and killed more than 12,000 people. Those who remain in these precincts live without central heating, without gas, with brown water coming out of the faucets.When the war began in 2014, the front separated Liza, a 30-year-old Kyiv-based social worker, from her parents and grand-parents living in Donetsk. To see them, she has to return to the separatist region at least once a year and witnesses every time the kind of corruption, big and small, that opens up the country to crime and, yes, terrorists seeking safe havens. "There are sleazy people who come to the checkpoint at 3 a.m. to get in line, then sell you the spot for 200 UAH ($8.50) and if you have no state pass, you can still cross by paying thousands more UAH to the guards on both sides of the checkpoint."Smugglers of meat or weapons pay much bigger bribes, " Liza said. "All sorts of criminals get into Ukraine but unfortunately our government is not catching big thugs who deal in big business, committing serious crimes."In the fog and cold of the checkpoint, she said what many people waiting in line believed, "Because of this profitable corruption, the war is never going to end." Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky faced each other in person for the first time in Paris on Dec. 9, along with the leaders of France and Germany, to try and find a way to end the war and save human lives. But just as many had predicted in war-torn Donbas, no peace deal was signed."We have not found the magic wand, but we have relaunched talks," French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters afterward. Meanwhile, it's a measure of the hardened posture on both sides that Ukrainian law enforcement agencies are investigating former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko amid allegations that he committed treason in 2015, when he signed the original peace accord with Putin in Minsk, a 13-point road map for resolving the war in Donbas which experts consider hopeless.During the meeting in Paris, Putin and Zelensky agreed to continue to enlarge disengagement zones, de-mine Donbas fields and roads and exchange all prisoners before the end of the year. But there was no agreement reached about the "dividing line." The frontier that people have to cross in and out of the "gray zone" is still lost in the twilight.The latest public surveys show that up to 24 percent of the Donbas population struggle to protect their property from criminals, 17 percent suffer from bribes and threats by officials on both sides of the "dividing line," and 20 percent have no communication with relatives. "My brother is in Donetsk, less than 20 km away from me, I have not seen him since the war started," Andrey Shapochka, manager at Krasnohorivka power station told The Daily Beast. "Separatists do not let him out and I am banned on his side, so our mother is growing very old without seeing my brother." A group of women were waiting in line for their pensions outside of the Oshad bank in Marinka in the afternoon. Most of them had crossed the front line that morning from separatist Donetsk, where Russia pays them pensions. Indeed, most pensioners in the rebellious Donetsk and Luhansk regions get paid by both sides.With the Children on the Ukraine War's Front Lines Praying for PeaceWith the Children on the Ukraine War's Front Lines Praying for PeaceYevdokiya Fedorova, a fragile 77-year-old woman in a worn woolen hat who is a resident of Donetsk, said it took her three hours to get across, and the return trip will take her from five to 12 hours more, but she says it is worth it: "My daughter and grand-daughter pay hundreds of hryvnias to skip the line. I cannot afford that, I am helping my unemployed son." She said he entered Donetsk last year to see her, but has been prevented from leaving by the self-proclaimed government there. "We'll always remain a gray zone, like one more Abkhazia," she said, referring to a Russian-backed separatist region of Georgia. But when asked who she blames for it, she turned her tear-filled eyes away: "You expect me to say I blame Putin, but I blame my horrible fate."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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| Police say a Florida Grubhub driver attacked 2 Burger King workers by swinging a 3-foot ashtray after being told his order wasn't ready Posted: 30 Dec 2019 07:25 AM PST  A Grubhub deliveryman was charged with assault, with police saying he attacked two employees at a Florida Burger King.
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| Trump says he has been denied due process. But the Constitution does not afford him that. Posted: 30 Dec 2019 01:04 AM PST  Like Bill Clinton and Andrew Johnson before him, President Trump does not have the same constitutional protection afforded to criminal defendants.
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| Duterte Renews Attacks on TV Network, Urges Owners to Sell Posted: 30 Dec 2019 12:26 AM PST ![Duterte Renews Attacks on TV Network, Urges Owners to Sell]( "Duterte Renews Attacks on TV Network, Urges Owners to Sell") (Bloomberg) -- Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte continued his attacks on a local television network he's accused in the past of bias, and urged owners of ABS-CBN Corp. to sell before its franchise expires in March.In a televised speech delivered in the local language at Davao City on Monday, Duterte suggested the media firm's franchise renewal is uncertain. He had earlier threatened to block the network's bid to extend the franchise for 25 years."Your contract is expiring. I'm not sure what will happen if you renew," he said. "If I were you, I would just sell."Duterte has accused ABS-CBN as well as privately-owned Philippine Daily Inquirer of unfair reporting, allegations that the media companies have denied. The president's criticisms of ABS-CBN pushed its share price to a decade low earlier this month. The stock ended 2019 with a 21% loss compared with the local benchmark index's 4.7% gain for the year.Duterte also resumed his criticism of water utilities for alleged corruption, threatening to arrest and jail the owners of Manila Water Co. and Maynilad Water Services Inc. He reiterated a plan for a military takeover of the operations.Manila Water of Ayala Corp. and Maynilad owners Metro Pacific Investments Corp. and DMCI Holdings Inc. are among the worst-performing Philippine stocks this year, plunging since early December when Duterte started his censure."For those of you asking where are the big fish in my fight against corruption, I'll deliver them: Ayala and Pangilinan," he said. "If they do something wrong, I'll really jail them," Duterte said, referring to the family of Jaime Augusto Zobel, which owns Manila Water and Manuel Pangilinan, who chairs Metro Pacific.The two tycoons didn't immediately respond to requests for comments.Manila Water plunged 63% this year despite a rebound in the final week of trading ending Dec. 27. Metro Pacific was down 25%, while DMCI tumbled 48%.To contact the reporters on this story: Andreo Calonzo in Manila at acalonzo1@bloomberg.net;Clarissa Batino in Manila at cbatino@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Sam Nagarajan at samnagarajan@bloomberg.net, ;Cecilia Yap at cyap19@bloomberg.net, Clarissa BatinoFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Earthquake Bombs: How Britain Killed Hitler's Most Powerful Battleship Posted: 29 Dec 2019 05:00 AM PST  They may have led to this super bomb.
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| Greece proposes World Court if maritime dialogue with Turkey fails Posted: 29 Dec 2019 03:12 AM PST ![Greece proposes World Court if maritime dialogue with Turkey fails]( "Greece proposes World Court if maritime dialogue with Turkey fails") Greece's Prime Minister said in remarks published on Sunday that if Athens and Ankara cannot solve their dispute about maritime zones in the Mediterranean they should turn to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague to settle the disagreement. Turkey signed an accord with Libya's internationally recognized government last month that seeks to create an exclusive economic zone from Turkey's southern Mediterranean shore to Libya's northeast coast. Greece and Cyprus, which have long had maritime and territorial disputes with Turkey, say the accord is void and violates the international law of the sea.
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| Juul employees vape at desks despite company threat to dock bonuses for e-cigarette use, report says Posted: 30 Dec 2019 10:02 AM PST  Juul banned vaping at its offices last year, but some employees continue to use e-cigarettes at their desks, in hallways and in meetings, according to the Wall Street Journal.
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| After ICE Raids, a Reckoning in Mississippi's Chicken Country Posted: 29 Dec 2019 08:27 AM PST  MORTON, Miss. -- Juan Grant strode into the Koch Foods chicken processing plant for his new job on a Wednesday morning, joining many other African Americans in a procession of rubber boots, hairnets and last cigarettes before the grind.At 20, Grant was too young to remember the days of a nearly all-white workforce in Mississippi's poultry industry or the civil rights boycotts and protests that followed. He was too young to have seen how white workers largely moved on after that, leaving the business of killing, cutting and packing to African Americans.He did not know the time before Hispanic workers began arriving in the heart of chicken country by the thousands, recruited by plant managers looking to fill low-paying jobs in an expanding industry.But Grant clearly remembered Aug. 7, the day the Trump administration performed sweeping immigration raids on seven chicken plants in central Mississippi. He remembered the news flashing on his phone: 680 Hispanic workers arrested. He remembers seeing an opportunity."I figured there should be some jobs," he said.He figured right.The raids were believed to be the largest statewide immigration crackdown in recent history and a partial fulfillment of President Donald Trump's vow to deport millions of workers living in the U.S. illegally. The impact on Mississippi's immigrant community has been devastating. For nonimmigrant workers, the aftermath has forced them into a personal reckoning with questions of morality and economic self-interest: The raids brought suffering, but they also created job openings.Some believe that the immigrant workers had it coming. "If you're somewhere you ain't supposed to be, they're going to come get you," said a worker named Jamaal, who declined to give his full name because Koch Foods had not authorized him to speak. "That's only right."But there was also Shelonda Davis, 35, a 17-year veteran of the plant. She has seen many workers -- of all backgrounds -- come and go. But she was horrified that so many of her Hispanic colleagues were rounded up. Some of them, she said, wanted to work so badly that they tried to return the next day."I'm glad that I see my people going to work," she said of her fellow African Americans. "But the way they came at the Hispanic race, they act like they're killing somebody. Still, they were only working, you know?"Some of the new replacement hires also felt conflicted. While the roundup "gave the American people their jobs back," said Cortez McClinton, 38, a former construction worker who was hired at the plant hours after the raids, "how they handle the immigration part is that they're still separating kids from their families."Devontae Skinner, 21, denounced the raids one recent morning while finishing up his first turn on the night shift. "Everybody needs a job, needs to work, provide for their families."Then there was Grant, only two years out of high school and still finding his way in the world. He said it felt good to be earning $11.23 an hour, even if the new job entailed cutting off necks and pulling out guts on a seemingly endless conveyor of carcasses. It was about $4 better, he said, than what he used to earn at a Madison County cookie factory.But he also called the raids "cruel" and "mean." There were moments when the necks and guts and ambivalence and guilt all mixed together so that he wondered whether he wanted to stick with the job."It's like I stole it," he said, "and I really don't like what I stole."The New Cotton FieldsThe story of poultry work tracks closely with the 20th-century story of race relations in Mississippi.White women dominated the lines until the 1960s, when African Americans pressed for their rights. In Canton, African Americans called for a boycott of the local chicken plant over its refusal to hire black workers, according to Angela Stuesse, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina and author of the 2016 book "Scratching out a Living: Latinos, Race, and Work in the Deep South."By the end of the 1960s, black workers predominated on the lines.It was an important win for African Americans looking for an alternative to housework in wealthy white homes, or for those who had seen fieldwork dry up in an increasingly mechanized agricultural sector."The chicken plant," Stuesse quoted a civil rights veteran saying, "replaced the cotton field."But as U.S. chicken consumption boomed in the 1980s, manufacturers went in search of "cheaper and more exploitable workers," Stuesse wrote -- chiefly Latin American immigrants.At the time, the Koch plant in Morton was owned by a local company, B.C. Rogers Poultry, which organized efforts to recruit Hispanics from the Texas border as early as 1977. Soon, the company was operating an effort it called "The Hispanic Project," bringing in thousands of workers and housing them in trailers.A 2016 study on the effects of immigration on the U.S. economy found that immigration had "little long run effect" on U.S. wages. But some wonder whether Hispanic immigrants displaced black workers in central Mississippi, the heart of the state's multibillion-dollar chicken industry.Some black Mississippi workers, Stuesse said, took advantage of less dangerous new job opportunities in retail, fast food, construction and auto parts. But "an eager pool of black labor did indeed exist," she wrote, noting that a black labor force moved in when a large number of Hispanics were fired from a Carthage chicken plant in the mid-2000s.And yet much of the outrage over the August raids has come from leaders in Mississippi's black community. Constance Slaughter-Harvey, a renowned local lawyer and civil rights activist who was the first black woman to receive a law degree from the University of Mississippi, called the raids a "Gestapo action."Wesley Odom, 79, president of the Scott County NAACP, spoke of the family members separated -- the Hispanic mothers and fathers who remain in custody -- as well as the moments, on the day of the raids, when some schoolchildren must have wondered whether they would walk into empty homes."The blacks were witness to that same thing as slaves," he said.Jere Miles, a special agent in charge with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, recently told a congressional committee that the Mississippi raids would deter future illegal immigration. He also said authorities discovered 400 instances of identity theft that had been perpetrated against legal U.S. residents. Conservative columnist Henry Olsen, citing high poverty rates and low incomes in the area, argued that the Mississippi workers living in the country illegally were taking jobs from Americans.Koch Foods representatives did not return requests for comment. The company, which has said it did not knowingly hire workers without legal status, has challenged the raid on its Morton plant in federal court, calling it an "illegal search" and demanding the return of seized property and records.Bryan Cox, a spokesman for ICE, said there was a continuing criminal investigation into the operation and hiring practices at all of the Mississippi plants. No executives from the targeted companies have been charged.'The Smell of Money'The Koch Foods plant is in the heart of Morton, a rural community with about 3,600 residents, about one-quarter of whom are Hispanic. The parking lot at shift change can feel like the most social place in town, outside of church and school sporting events.A sleepy clutch of downtown blocks hugs the opposite side of the highway. There are a few fast-food places, trailers and ranch houses, and several markets and businesses that cater to what has been for several decades a growing Hispanic population. A smaller chicken processing plant, owned by the company PH Food, was also raided in August.Sometimes the smell of chicken hangs over the place. But longtime residents hardly notice anymore. "Of course, the joke in Mississippi is, that's the smell of money," said David Livingston, a real estate appraiser who grew up in town.Today, the unknowable future for the Hispanic workers and their families hangs heavy over Morton and the nearby city of Forest, the county seat roughly a 15-minute drive away. Signs of pain and fear are everywhere; most of the people affected declined to give their full names for fear of government retribution.On a recent afternoon in a quiet Latin grocery, a 46-year-old immigrant named Mariela said she had no choice but to shut down the taco truck she once stationed at a workplace that had been raided. She burst into tears as she realized she was unable to afford a basket of cilantro, radishes and pumpkin seeds.At the Trinity Mission Center, a church in Forest that serves as a crisis response center, a man who was swept up in the raids stood by his van, rifling through confusing legal papers, unsure of his next court date. The man, Victoriano Simon-Gomez, 32, said he had a disabled child and was afraid she would receive insufficient care if he was forced to return to Guatemala.At the church entrance, a 31-year-old Guatemalan mother of two named Eva waited to pick up a donated lunch. She had been detained at a chicken plant in Carthage and was wearing an electronic ankle monitor, now a common sight around Scott County. She referred to it as "la grilleta" -- "the shackle." She said she was going to fight to remain in the United States with her children, 13 and 9, who are U.S. citizens.She knew it was going to be difficult. "The president doesn't want us here," she said. But she said she harbored no ill will toward the people who have taken jobs like hers. "I'm not mad."More than one-third of the 680 arrested workers across Mississippi were picked up at the Koch plant in Morton. In an affidavit taken a few weeks after the raid, Robert Elrod, a vice president of human resources, said 272 of the 1,170 employees there were Hispanic.Marquese Parks, who works for a staffing agency that helped Koch Foods find new employees after the raids, said applicants included "a lot of African American, a lot of white, Caucasian. Latinos, not so much."He said potential hires were being subjected to strict identification checks.Parks, who is black and grew up in Morton, said he never wanted to work in the chicken plants. He went away to college but later found himself in the industry anyway, first as a poultry supervisor and now at the staffing agency. He said he did not know how long the new non-Hispanic recruits would last on the job."I honestly don't think they will stay because of the simple fact that the jobs are that hard," said Parks, 28. "It's something they didn't see themselves doing growing up, something they don't want to do."The opportunity to earn more than $11 an hour can still turn heads in this part of Mississippi. Grant was not the only person to jump at the chance the raids provided. Niah Hill, manager of the Sonic Drive-In in Morton, said 10 of her workers quit soon after the raid at Koch Foods."When they heard about the raids, they all went over there and got jobs right away," Hill said. Carhops at this Sonic make $4.25 an hour -- $3 less than the state's minimum wage -- plus tips, she said.Yet the belief that native-born Americans are not sufficiently motivated to work persists, even among some African Americans. Jeff White, a Morton-based builder and rental property owner, said so many chicken plant jobs became available in the 1980s because American-born residents "didn't want to work, period."He added that he quickly learned he was not chicken plant material after landing a job at one shortly after high school. "I worked there 3 hours and 20 minutes," he said, chuckling. "I didn't even get the check. It's too hard."For a while, Grant said the hard work was worth it. With his better wage, he was starting to finally save a little. He talked about buying a used Honda and about getting serious with his girlfriend.But Morton was 75 miles from his trailer home in rural Holmes County, and after a while it proved to be too much. He showed up late one too many times, and in November, he said, Koch let him go.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company
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