| British PM to hold emergency meeting on seized tanker Posted: 21 Jul 2019 02:26 PM PDT ![British PM to hold emergency meeting on seized tanker]( "British PM to hold emergency meeting on seized tanker") Prime Minister Theresa May will hold a meeting of Britain's emergencies committee on Monday to discuss Iran's seizure of a UK-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf. In one of her final important acts as prime minister before resigning on Wednesday, May will chair a meeting of Britain's COBR emergencies committee at around 10:30 am (0930 GMT), her Downing Street office said. "As well as receiving the latest updates from ministers and officials, the COBR meeting will discuss the maintenance of the security of shipping in the Persian Gulf," a spokeswoman said in a brief statement.
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| Meet the woman who ties Jeffrey Epstein to Trump and the Clintons Posted: 21 Jul 2019 04:00 AM PDT  Heiress Ghislaine Maxwell paved the way to presidents.
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| Vatican college space holds bones of dozens, expert says Posted: 20 Jul 2019 11:38 AM PDT  The expert, Giorgio Portera, said the "enormous" size of the collection under the Teutonic College was revealed when Vatican-appointed experts began cataloguing the remains, which were discovered last week . "We didn't expect such an enormous number" of bones and other remains which "had been thrown into a cavity," Portera said. "We want to know why and how" the bones ended up there.
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| Universal Orlando reopens after police respond to report of a gunman in parking garage Posted: 21 Jul 2019 07:51 AM PDT  Universal Orlando went under temporary lockdown Saturday night after police received a report of a gunman spotted in a parking garage.
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| Japan undecided on response to U.S. plan for Mideast maritime coalition -PM Abe Posted: 21 Jul 2019 07:17 AM PDT ![Japan undecided on response to U.S. plan for Mideast maritime coalition -PM Abe]( "Japan undecided on response to U.S. plan for Mideast maritime coalition -PM Abe") Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Sunday he had not yet decided on how to respond to an expected U.S. request to send its navy to join a military coalition to safeguard strategic waters off Iran and Yemen. "We've started to hear the United States' thinking on this and we want to keep listening carefully," he said on national television as votes were being counted for the upper house election. "At the same time, Japan also has friendly ties with Iran," Abe added.
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| Tsai Says Taiwan’s 2020 Election Will Be a Test of Its Democracy Posted: 20 Jul 2019 07:37 PM PDT ![Tsai Says Taiwan's 2020 Election Will Be a Test of Its Democracy]( "Tsai Says Taiwan's 2020 Election Will Be a Test of Its Democracy") (Bloomberg) -- Taiwan's presidential election next year will be a test of its democracy and value system, President Tsai Ing-wen said at the end of a U.S. trip that drew rebuke from China."Voters in Taiwan will be focused on the future of our country, especially whether we can keep our democratic and freedom way of life," she said at a press conference in Denver on Saturday, and televised at the Presidential Office in Taipei.Seeking a second term, Tsai will face Kuomintang nominee Han Kuo-yu -- a firebrand mayor who advocates closer ties with China -- in the election on Jan. 11. She, on the other hand, dismisses Beijing's claims to sovereignty over Taiwan and has strengthened the island's informal alliance with America.The president has also sought to bolster Taiwan's defense capabilities against a potential Chinese invasion with a series of military-hardware purchases. Taiwan and China have been governed separately since 1949, and only 17 countries have formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Tsai's Democratic Progressive Party advocates formalizing Taiwan's independence.Tsai stopped over in Denver after an official trip to four Caribbean countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan. She was also in New York City before visiting Haiti, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent & the Grenadines and Saint Lucia.To contact the reporter on this story: Chinmei Sung in Taipei at csung4@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Samson Ellis at sellis29@bloomberg.net, Shamim Adam, Stanley JamesFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| O'Rourke and de Blasio spar over 'Medicare for All' Posted: 20 Jul 2019 04:22 PM PDT ![O'Rourke and de Blasio spar over 'Medicare for All']( "O'Rourke and de Blasio spar over 'Medicare for All'") Health care policy has become a primary focus among the Democratic candidates ahead of the second set of debates July 30-31.
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| The Return of the Godfather: The Old Mafia Is New Again Posted: 20 Jul 2019 02:47 AM PDT  Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/GettyROME–Five fleshy, bare-chested men in tight swimsuits on a dinghy doesn't normally garner much attention in the bay of Palermo, Sicily. But it did last August when American mobster Thomas Gambino, 47, and Italian mafioso Tomasso Inzerillo, 72, were among those on board. They were overheard discussing how to divvy up the profits from the suspicious sale of Caribbean property that New York-based Gambino crime family boss Francesco "Franky Boy" Cali had recently unloaded. Hitman Handed License Plate to Mob Boss Before Shooting Him to DeathItalian investigators working with the FBI had planted bugs to catch anything they might say. Now, finally, the joint operation had a solid lead to a connection between the once omnipotent American crime family and the power-hungry Sicilian clan.Central command for the joint operation sent officers to the Dominican Republic and redoubled their surveillance in New York and Sicily, launching the investigation dubbed "New Connection" that netted 19 men in raids of both crime syndicates this week in Palermo, Brooklyn, Staten Island and New Jersey. Among those arrested in Italy was Thomas Gambino who happened to be back in Sicily for a "family vacation."The police used WhatsApp, the encrypted international messaging service, to launch the raids. "In Palermo, it's 3am, and muggy. In New York, it's 9pm and looks like it might rain," the Palermo anti-mafia police said at a press conference about the arrests. "A WhatsApp message is sent to the joint squad. It's the sign the Italian police and their FBI colleagues have been waiting for because from Sicily to the U.S., the old Mafia has returned."What the cops uncovered during the investigation that led to this week's arrests was a growing link between the Sicilian and New York mobs that centered on money laundering, drugs and extortion. At one point in phone taps over the last year Gambino can be heard telling his Sicilian counterparts, "We can definitely do business here," according to police transcripts seen by The Daily Beast. But the criminal collaboration—and the joint Italian-FBI investigation—was nearly thrown into chaos when Cali was gunned down in front of his Staten Island, New York, home last March. In the hours after the hit, investigators on both sides of the Atlantic were concerned that it could have been a Sicilian mobster warning the American clan to stay away. But as it turned out Cali was gunned down by a Donald Trump-supporting MAGA flunky, Anthony Comello, who allegedly just wanted to date his daughter."It was a huge relief that it was so random," an Italian anti-Mafia investigator told The Daily Beast.The Boss of Bosses Dies. Will Sicily's Mafia Turn to the U.S. for Leadership?Cali, who was born in Sicily and married into the Inzerillo family at a young age, was known as the "Ambassador" between clans in New York and Palermo. He was the tie that bound the Gambino crime family and the Cosa Nostra's once powerful Inzerillo clan, and police waited to find out what his death ultimately would mean. With Cali's support from America, the Inzerillo family was on a trajectory back to power after the boss of bosses Salvatore 'Toto' Riina died in prison in late 2017. In the 1980s, before his arrest, Riina launched what is known as the Second Mafia War, ordering deadly hits on the heads of the strongest Palermo crime families who threatened his dictatorial power. Among those he killed was the then-powerful Palermo crime boss Salvatore Inzerillo, whose family then fled in self-imposed exile to New York. While in the States, investigators say, the Inzerillo mobsters worked covertly with the Gambino crime family to line their pockets and help fund their return to power in Sicily one day—all the while allegedly promising the Gambino crime family its due reward for the help. Riina was serving out several life sentences in solitary confinement when he died, but he still held sway among the Cosa Nostra's fractious clans, and he still wanted all the Inzerillos dead. Riina's death finally provided the opening the Inzerillos had been waiting for to make a grab for power. Several Gambino crime family members had already moved to Palermo permanently after Riina's death to reap the benefits of the close ties that were sure to come with the Inzerillo clan's return to power. It was all going to plan until "Franky Boy" Cali was killed. "It could have gone either way, they could have severed ties or made them stronger in his memory," the anti-Mafia police source said. "In the end they worked harder 'for Franky'."The merged clans soon strengthened their hold on companies dealing with wholesale food supplies, gambling outlets and online betting through which they engaged in extortion, loan sharking and money laundering. More than a dozen businesses, from casinos to car dealerships in Sicily and New York state, were sequestered as part of the "New Connection" joint operation. "The investigation has registered the strong bond established between Cosa Nostra of Palermo and U.S. organized crime, with particular reference to the powerful Gambino crime family of New York," Italian investigating prosecutor Roberto Tartaglia said in a statement after this week's arrests. "Those Riina wanted dead were creating a special link between Palermo and New York."Even with the 19 arrests, no one assumes the battle against organized crime is over. "They were the losers who ran away so they wouldn't be killed by Riina," Palermo police commissioner Renato Cortese said when he announced the arrests. "They continue to be losers." 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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| Polish Gay Pride marchers defy stone-throwing hooligans Posted: 20 Jul 2019 11:42 AM PDT  The first-ever Gay Pride parade was held in the eastern Polish city of Bialystok on Saturday, but the march was marred by violence from soccer hooligans and conservative campaigners staged counter protests, local police said. Some 800 supporters of LGBT+ rights marched through the city some 200 kilometres (124 miles) northeast of Warsaw, waving rainbow-coloured flags and banners with slogans such as "love is not a sin".
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| 1 killed, 4 injured when Alaska flight aborted on takeoff Posted: 19 Jul 2019 06:53 PM PDT ![1 killed, 4 injured when Alaska flight aborted on takeoff]( "1 killed, 4 injured when Alaska flight aborted on takeoff") A Maryland man visiting Alaska with his family was killed and one of his three children was critically injured Friday after their floatplane's takeoff was aborted. Alaska State Troopers identified the deceased man as Joseph Patenella, 57. The critically hurt child was flown to Anchorage for treatment, along with two other family members.
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| Poll: 78 Percent of Americans Say Toxic Rhetoric Could Inspire Violence Posted: 19 Jul 2019 05:49 PM PDT  Large majorities of Democrats and Republicans agree that inflammatory political rhetoric could inspire acts of violence, according to a new poll published by the Pew Research Center.91 percent of Democrats and voters who lean Democratic say that aggressive or heated rhetoric by elected officials could lead to violence against the groups or people the rhetoric targets, while 61 percent of those who lean Republican say the same, according to the study. 73 percent of respondents want politicians to avoid using such aggressive rhetoric, while only a quarter say officials "should be able to use heated language to express themselves without worrying about whether some people may act on what they say."President Trump has frequently been criticized for inflaming American political discourse since he launched his presidential campaign in 2015. Over half of voters, 55 percent, say he has shifted the tone of political rhetoric for the worse, and only 24 percent say he has shifted it in a positive direction, according to the poll.The past week was rife with barbed insults between the president and his opponents, including a spat with four progressive congresswomen of color whom the president suggested should "go back" to their ancestral homelands if they have problems with America.In the aftermath of the clash, Democrats called for upped security for Representative Ilhan Omar, who was born in Somalia and became the target of chants of "Send her back!" at a Trump campaign rally. Trump disavowed the chants, saying he was "not happy" with them.Omar, meanwhile, responded that she is "not deterred" by the charged attacks."We are going to continue to be a nightmare to this president because his policies are a nightmare to us," she told a crowd in Minneapolis.
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| Compton boy loses arm after neighbor hands him firework on 10th birthday Posted: 20 Jul 2019 07:07 PM PDT  A man is in custody after handing his young neighbor a firework that blew up, causing the boy to lose his arm on his 10th birthday.
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| 10 Surprising Moon Facts! (That Were Totally Wrong) Posted: 21 Jul 2019 06:00 AM PDT |
| The Air Force Has Sent Stealth F-22 Raptors to Qatar to Deter Iran Posted: 20 Jul 2019 09:00 AM PDT  Since becoming operational in 2005, the F-22 has achieved roughly a 50-percent readiness rate, on average -- one of the lowest rates of all U.S. fighter types. The Raptor's complex systems and delicate, radar-absorbing coating require intensive maintenance.The U.S. Air Force on June 27, 2019 deployed F-22 Raptor stealth fighters for the first time to Qatar as part of a build-up of forces ahead of a possible clash with Iran.The Air Force did not specify how many F-22s traveled to Qatar. Photographers spotted 12 of the radar-evading jets with "FF" tailcodes indicating they belong to the 1st Fighter Wing at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia.The F-22s could fly alongside stealthy F-35s that the Air Force deployed to the United Arab Emirates in April 2019.(This first appeared in June 2019.)Raptors previously flew from the UAE for missions over the Persian Gulf, Syria and Iraq. But a readiness crisis in March 2019 compelled the Air Force to return the F-22s to the United States.Since becoming operational in 2005, the F-22 has achieved roughly a 50-percent readiness rate, on average -- one of the lowest rates of all U.S. fighter types. The Raptor's complex systems and delicate, radar-absorbing coating require intensive maintenance.Hurricane Michael didn't help. The October 2018 storm devastated Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida's panhandle region. Tyndall at the time housed two squadrons together flying 55 F-22s. the 43rd Fighter Squadron is a training unit. The 95th Fighter Squadron is a combat unit.
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| France braces for second heatwave amid fears of pollution spike Posted: 21 Jul 2019 11:11 AM PDT  As France braces for its second heatwave this summer, with air pollution expected to spike again, Marseille has imposed speed limits on ships entering its port in an effort to curb emissions. Cruise liners cause more nitrogen dioxide pollution in the Mediterranean city than cars, according to a recent survey by a government-approved air quality monitoring organisation. Marseille has lowered the speed limit for ships entering its port from 10 to 8 knots. Jean-Marc Fornieri, the head of the port authority, claimed: "A reduction of two knots is equivalent to one third less pollution." However, he acknowledged that in practice it would be difficult to measure the impact of the lower speed limit. France's second-largest city is also investing €20 million (nearly £18m) on a plan to offer all ships electrical connections from the quayside, so they do not keep their engines running to supply onboard power while docked. Hundreds of cruise liners visit Marseille each year, carrying 1.7 million passengers, compared to only 19,000 in 1996. It is an increasingly popular destination for cruise passengers on Mediterranean tours. Tourists visit its spectacular calanques, or narrow inlets along the coast, and travel on to historic towns elsewhere in Provence such as Avignon and Arles. Heatwaves exacerbate air pollution because intense sunshine produces higher levels of ozone, a pollutant. Scientists say there is a direct correlation between extremely high temperatures and respiratory problems. Last month a record temperature of 46 degrees Celsius was recorded in Vérargues, a southern village. This week most of France will again swelter in temperatures of at least 40 degrees Celsius. Brittany alone will be spared, with relatively balmy temperatures in the high 20s.
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| Iraq Kurds arrest two suspects in killing of Turkish vice consul Posted: 20 Jul 2019 09:19 AM PDT  Iraqi Kurdish authorities announced Saturday they had arrested two suspects involved in the murder of three people, including a Turkish diplomat, in the regional capital Arbil this week. The autonomous region's security council first said its counterterrorism unit had arrested "the main perpetrator" Mazloum Dag, a 27-year-old from Turkey's Diyarbakir region. The council had put out a wanted notice for Dag a day earlier in connection to Wednesday's killing of Turkish Vice Consul Osman Kose and two Iraqi nationals.
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| 2020 Democrats Are Starting to Turn Obama’s Legacy Against Biden Posted: 21 Jul 2019 02:09 AM PDT  Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/GettyFormer Vice President Joe Biden has used Barack Obama's beloved status among Democratic voters to insulate him from criticism from the massive field of candidates jockeying to be the next president. But in recent weeks, the Democratic frontrunner has had that legacy used against him, with his competitors pointing the to shortcomings of the last Democratic administration as evidence that Biden's not up to the task of leading the next one. "Barack Obama, personally, is incredibly popular among Democratic primary voters," Karthik Ganapathy, a progressive consultant now running his own firm, told The Daily Beast. "And also at the same time, there's a growing recognition that income and wealth inequality got worse under his eight years, the climate crisis got worse during his eight years, deportations went up during his time in office, and so on."Can the Obama Coalition Outlast Obama?The idea that the Obama legacy would be anything other than a massive positive for Biden as he navigates the 2020 Democratic party has been treated as indisputable within Democratic circles. And for good reason. A CNN poll taken in early 2018 found that he had a 97 percent favorable rating among Democrats. For a while, fellow Democrats running for the White House seemed content to simply avoid challenging the former VP as he repeatedly referenced his time in the Obama administration when touting his work on health care and beating back attacks over his record on race relations. But that hesitancy has softened in recent weeks. On issues stemming from immigration to health care and foreign policy, the 2020 candidates have been increasingly critical in their public assessments of the Obama administration. And they've used opportunities from the debate stage to candidate forums to try and turn Biden's ties to the former president from an overwhelming asset into something more complicated.Senator Bernie Sanders' (I-VT) campaign has used Obama's own words to challenge Biden's notion that Obamacare simply needs to be built upon. Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) challenged Biden over the Obama administration's deportation policies. Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.) backed off support for the Obama administration's 2015 Iran nuclear deal as originally written. And Governor Jay Inslee (D-WA) has attacked Biden for a naivete about dealing with Republicans—in what has been interpreted as an implicit rebuke of Obama's own failure to fully grasp GOP recalcitrance. The subtle targeting of Biden has come as Democratic activists and progressives have continued to grapple with the Obama legacy as well. In particular, the Trump administration's family separation policy and inhumane conditions in detention facilities has sparked a broader conversation among Democratic voters about whether the Obama administration's own deportation policies laid the groundwork for the current controversies. Biden to Get Rematch With Harris in Detroit Democratic DebateAt least two times in the last month, protesters have faced down Biden to demand an apology for the three million deportations that occurred during the Obama administration. Activists with Movimiento Cosecha, an immigrants rights organization, held a protest at Biden's Philadelphia campaign headquarters over a week ago and subsequently confronted him at a New Hampshire campaign stop. Through their "Dignity 2020" plan, they called on Biden and his other competitors in the field to pledge to end detention and deportation, immediately legalize the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States and reunite families separated during the current and past administration. "We wanted the general public to understand that just defeating Trump in 2020 is only part of the solution," Carlos Rojas Rodriguez, an organizer with the group, told The Daily Beast. "And there's a lot of people that think that if Trump was no longer in the White House that the immigration crisis would go away and that's just not true." Rodriguez, who is now a citizen but lived undocumented for 10 years, said they're closely tracking how other candidates have been responding to questions about Obama's immigration record and are tentatively planning to have a presence in Detroit leading up to the next Democratic presidential debate. Already, they've seen some candidates take a harder look at the legacy. During the first Democratic debate in Miami in late June, Sen. Harris made a point of voicing dissent with President Obama's use of the Secure Communities program, which allowed for local authorities to share fingerprints of those in jail with federal authorities. Obama ended the practice in 2014 but Trump restored it in 2017. "On this issue, I disagreed with my president, because the policy was to allow deportation of people who by ICE's own definition were non-criminals," Harris said, though the degree to which she did is somewhat questionable. More recently, Julián Castro who served as the secretary of housing and urban development under Obama, said that he believed the administration had been too harsh when it came to immigration, a shift from prior stances. "I have learned the lessons of the past. It seems like Vice President Biden hasn't," he was quoted as saying at the League of United Latin American Citizens convention last week. Warren, Biden Campaigns Appear to Find Loophole Around Paid InternshipsBut the criticism has extended beyond the issue of immigration. In the first debate, Booker said that the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, a landmark foreign policy achievement in Obama's second term, could have been better. Many, including Biden, have also introduced sweeping climate change plans with hallmarks of the Green New Deal and taken a No Fossil Fuel Money pledge, which activists have seen as a necessary corrective to the Obama administration's lack of action on the drastic threat of climate change. "We would love to see candidates pressure Biden on that legacy, specifically looking at the increase in oil and gas drilling on public lands, in the U.S. in general," Garrett Blad, a spokesperson for the climate action group Sunrise Movement, said, noting that a climate-only debate could foster these kinds of discussions. "And question him on those things. We're glad to see that Biden has taken the No Fossil Fuel money pledge and has done what Obama didn't do in denying that influence of the oil and gas executives and lobbyists on his campaign." And this past week, as Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have offered differing plans for the nation's health-care system, the latter has pointed to Obama's own language about Medicare for All being a "good new idea" and hit the former vice president for being too timid in his desire to build off of Obamacare. Biden's campaign declined to respond on the record. But some Obama veterans have not been surprised that the legacy they build is now being more directly challenged. But while they encouraged candidates to have a conversation about improving on the Obama administration, they also cautioned that it needed to be done carefully. "It's imperative for all candidates to offer an agenda that builds on what Barack Obama accomplished and there is room for good faith criticism of the things we didn't do or could have done better," Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to the president said. "However, Obama has a 96-percent approval rating among Democrats so a strategy to beat Biden by going after the Obama legacy seems unlikely to succeed."But the demands of the moment, from inequality to mounting student loan debt and a global climate crisis, have led a majority of the field to aim even higher than the lofty ambitions of Obama's first presidential campaign."If in 2008, we needed change, in 2020 we need results," Rebecca Katz, a longtime progressive Democratic consultant, said. "That's the difference." 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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| Trump Says ‘NASA’s Back’ Thanks to ‘Rich Guys’ Paying U.S. Rent Posted: 20 Jul 2019 09:11 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump pledged to re-establish U.S. dominance in space, a day after he welcomed the surviving Apollo 11 astronauts to the White House to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing."Sustained exploration that extends from our Earth to the Moon and on to the Martian surface will usher in a new era of American ingenuity," Trump said in a message on Saturday, which he declared Space Exploration Day.Trump on Friday invited retired astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, and the family of Neil Armstrong -- the first man to walk on the moon -- to the White House to mark the space milestone. "NASA's back," Trump said. "We're having rich guys use it and pay us rent."The U.S. lost its domestic capability to put humans in orbit after the shuttle program was shut down in 2011 without a replacement, and relied on Russia to send astronauts to work in the International Space Station. Trump has waffled on NASA's priorities. In December 2017, he directed the space agency to return astronauts to the moon by 2025, then in a June tweet made Mars the priority.On Saturday, he said few moments "spark more pride" than the Apollo 11 mission, which helped inspire generations of scientists and engineers and was the catalyst for a technological revolution."My administration is committed to reestablishing our Nation's dominance and leadership in space," he said, adding that NASA was directed to "send the next man and first woman to the Moon and to take the next giant leap -- sending Americans to Mars."The space agency recently announced it would allow "private astronauts" to pay to visit the International Space Station.At the White House on Friday, the president said: "We are going to the moon and then we're going to Mars.""We don't know what we're going to find on Mars but it's certainly a trip that's going to be very interesting," he said.NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told Trump they'll eventually get to Mars from a space station orbiting the moon.Vice President Mike Pence said that "within the next year" American astronauts will return to space on rockets launched from U.S. soil.Trump in February signed an order to clear the way for creation of a new branch of the military called Space Force. He said the administration is "very close to getting that completed and operating."To contact the reporters on this story: Margaret Talev in Washington at mtalev@bloomberg.net;Josh Wingrove in Washington at jwingrove4@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Steve Geimann, Andrew DavisFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Military studies 'hyperfit' women who pass grueling courses Posted: 21 Jul 2019 09:31 AM PDT  In the nearly four years since the Pentagon announced it was opening all combat jobs to women , at least 30 have earned the Army Ranger tab, two have graduated Marine infantry school and three have passed the grueling initial assessment phase for Green Beret training. Army medical researchers hope to uncover answers in a just-launched voluntary study. "We're really interested in those elite women that are the first to make it through physically demanding training," said Holly McClung, a nutritional physiologist at the Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine in Massachusetts.
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| 'Alter your course': Dramatic audio released of Iran seizing British ship Posted: 21 Jul 2019 12:51 PM PDT  An audio recording reveals the tense moments before a British-flagged oil tanker was seized by Iranian forces rappelling to the ship's deck.
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| Murders in Mexico surge to record in first half of 2019 Posted: 21 Jul 2019 03:10 PM PDT ![Murders in Mexico surge to record in first half of 2019]( "Murders in Mexico surge to record in first half of 2019") Murders in Mexico jumped in the first half of the year to the highest on record, according to official data, underscoring the vast challenges President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador faces in reducing violence in the cartel-ravaged country. There were 14,603 murders from January to June, versus the 13,985 homicides registered in the first six months of 2018, according to data posted over the weekend on the website of Mexico's national public security office. Mexico is on course to surpass the 29,111 murders of last year, an all-time high.
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| Electric Cars 101: The Answers to All Your EV Questions Posted: 21 Jul 2019 03:00 AM PDT  Electric vehicles (EVs) are becoming increasingly common, with many manufacturers currently offering models that plug in. There are dozens more models expected to hit the market over the next few...
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| Hong Kong actor stabbed in mainland China Posted: 20 Jul 2019 04:08 AM PDT  Hong Kong actor Simon Yam was stabbed in the stomach while appearing on stage for a promotional event in southern China on Saturday. A man ran onto the stage and stabbed and slashed the veteran actor, video broadcast on local media showed. "We are extremely shocked by this incident," Yam's management company said Saturday evening in a statement released on the Twitter-like Weibo platform.
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| 9-year-old girl dies after bounce house blown into power lines Posted: 20 Jul 2019 02:27 AM PDT ![9-year-old girl dies after bounce house blown into power lines]( "9-year-old girl dies after bounce house blown into power lines") A 9-year-old Reno girl has died from injuries she suffered when strong winds blew an inflatable bounce house with three children inside into power lines last weekend.
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| New German defence chief pledges to speed up race to Nato 2pc spending target Posted: 21 Jul 2019 12:05 PM PDT  Germany's new defence minister has picked an early fight inside the country's troubled coalition, pledging to beef up military spending against the will of junior partners the Social Democrats. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer will make it a priority to allocate a budget equivalent to 2 percent of the German economy to the Bundeswehr, the 56-year-old told the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper in an interview published on Sunday. The woman known as "mini-Merkel" due to her loyalty to the Chancellor, took over as leader of the Christian Democrats from Angela Merkel at the end of 2018 and is set to take a run at the Chancellery in 2021 at the latest. "We made a clear commitment to NATO's two percent goal. I know that we can't get there from one day to the next, but I'm just as clear on the fact that we must get there in the end," she said. Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer, who took over as defence minister on Wednesday, is likely to ignite yet another fire under Berlin's tinder-dry coalition with her first concrete pledge in the role. After she struggled for popularity and recognition early on though, Ms Merkel parachuted her into the defence ministry after it was vacated by new European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen last week. Nato defence expenditure and major annual exercises involving US troops The defence ministry is a notoriously tricky portfolio in Germany. Chronic under-spending on equipment has left the Bundeswehr overstretched, while the army has been dogged recently by allegations it has done too little to tackle extremism in its ranks. Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer appears to have come to the conclusion that a bigger budget is the only way to avoid embarrassing headlines about malfunctioning helicopters while also appeasing the US over defence targets. Germany committed itself to spending 2 percent of GDP on defence at a Nato conference in 2014. But its actual spending stills lags back at 1.3 percent with the Social Democrats reluctant to support a significant increase. Berlin's foot dragging has been a source of fury for Donald Trump, the US president, who has repeatedly lambasted his NATO ally on Twitter. The Social Democrat-run treasury has set out the defence budget up until 2023 and plans to lower spending by a billion euros to €44 billion at the end of that timeline. Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer said she would use her influence "as party leader and defence minister" to fight for more spending at an autumn debate in the Bundestag on the budget.
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| Booming Philippine Markets Pin Hopes on Duterte for Next Rally Posted: 21 Jul 2019 03:00 PM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- When President Rodrigo Duterte delivers his annual speech to the nation on Monday, he'll have plenty to brag about. The Philippine economy is among the fastest-growing in the world and markets are booming.But global risks are rising amid the prolonged trade war, and investors looking for the next leg of the market rally will scrutinize Duterte's economic priorities as he embarks on the last half of his six-year term. Top on their minds are the $180 billion infrastructure program and new tax policies."If Duterte hits the right notes, markets would have another leg to rally on," said Jonathan Ravelas, chief market strategist at BDO Unibank Inc. "There's great interest in these measures to be prioritized to sustain the kind of growth rates we've been seeing."Duterte is scheduled to speak before lawmakers at about 4 p.m. in Manila., after market close.PesoIf history is any guide, there's a big chance the peso will rise the day after the State of the Nation Address. The currency has risen in nine of the last 10 years, posting an average gain of 0.15%."We remain bullish on peso and we would like to sell the dollar-peso on rallies," said Qi Gao, a Singapore-based currency strategist at Scotiabank. The currency is among those that will benefit the most as the Federal Reserve's dovish stance lures inflows, he said.The peso closed at 51.04 per dollar on Friday, near its strongest level since January 2018. The currency's next resistance is at the 50 pesos a dollar, Gao said.StocksFor stocks traders, it may be bad news first before good news, according to three decades of data. On the day of the president's speech, the benchmark Philippine Stock Exchange Index retreated about two-thirds of the time, and posted an average loss of 0.4%.The gauge recovered more than half of the time the day after since Congress was restored in 1987, posting an average gain of 0.3%. The trend will likely hold and given the current market momentum, the index will hit 8,500 sooner than later, according to Jun Calaycay, head of research at Philstocks Financial Inc., who called the bull market a week before it happened."The market is used to Duterte's controversial antics," Calaycay said. "But should he start talking about policy, regulation and his legislative agenda then that would be a plus."Local BondsPhilippine peso bonds are outperforming peers in emerging-markets as the central bank embarks on interest-rate cuts. Ten-year bond yields fell below 5% this month from more than 8% in October."Relative to the rest of EM world, the Philippines is an island of stability, continuing a pace of high growth and foreign investment," said Edwin Gutierrez, head of emerging-market sovereign debt at Aberdeen Standard Investments in London, who remains long on Philippine bonds.Meanwhile, the government's push to cut corporate income taxes will attract more foreign investors while the move to tax foreigners working in the offshore gaming sector will generate additional annual revenue, said Alan Atienza, treasurer at Philippine Bank of Communications in Manila.\--With assistance from Lilian Karunungan.To contact the reporters on this story: Ditas Lopez in Manila at dlopez55@bloomberg.net;Ian Sayson in Manila at isayson@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Cecilia Yap at cyap19@bloomberg.net, ;Tomoko Yamazaki at tyamazaki@bloomberg.net, Karl Lester M. Yap, Lianting TuFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| US hotels caught in fight over housing detained migrants Posted: 21 Jul 2019 01:52 PM PDT  Advocacy groups and unions are pressuring Marriott, MGM and others not to house migrants who have been arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. For decades, the U.S. government has occasionally detained migrants in hotels, and Acting ICE Director Matthew Albence says it might have to split up families if hotels don't help. American and United Airlines said last year they didn't want to fly migrant children separated from their parents.
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| Bernie Sanders' campaign staff demanding a 'living wage' and health care Posted: 20 Jul 2019 05:07 AM PDT  Bernie Sanders pushes for a $15 minimum wage during his campaign; reaction from 2016 Sanders campaign staffer Tezlyn Figaro.
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| Good News for Trump and GOP: RNC Stomped DNC In June Fundraising Posted: 21 Jul 2019 01:39 AM PDT  The Democratic National Committee raised $8.5 million in June and has $9.3 million in the bank, according to campaign finance records released late Friday.Both figures are far behind what the Republican National Committee said it has raised. The GOP said it raised $20.8 million in June, and has $43.5 million cash on hand, Fox News reported Wednesday. Republicans also said the party has no debt, while the DNC has $5.7 million in debt, according to FEC records. (RELATED: Bad News For DNC: The Democrats' And GOP's Money, By The Numbers)June doesn't appear to be an anomaly. Republicans say they've raked in $51 million in the past three months. The RNC has been posting record fundraising numbers so far in 2019. In February, the party raised $14.6 million, a record high for that month in a non-election year.The RNC, which has yet to file its official campaign finance documents, shared its strong showing in an email blast Saturday.
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| UPDATE 1-Suspected Japan arsonist a reclusive, quarrelsome gamer, neighbour says Posted: 20 Jul 2019 07:34 PM PDT ![UPDATE 1-Suspected Japan arsonist a reclusive, quarrelsome gamer, neighbour says]( "UPDATE 1-Suspected Japan arsonist a reclusive, quarrelsome gamer, neighbour says") The man suspected of killing 34 people in an arson attack in Japan lived alone, hundreds of kilometres from the torched Kyoto Animation studio, where he played video games non-stop and had "terrified" his neighbour just days earlier. Police late on Saturday issued an arrest warrant for 41-year-old Shinji Aoba, suspected of causing Japan's worst mass killing in two decades on Thursday when he went to the studio in western Japan, poured fuel around the entrance and shouted "Die" as he set the building ablaze, according to public broadcaster NHK. Aoba lived alone on the ground floor of a two-floor apartment building on the outskirts of Omiya, a commuter suburb of Tokyo and some 500 km (310 miles) east of Kyoto.
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| Miss Michigan stripped of title over 'offensive' social media posts Posted: 21 Jul 2019 12:53 PM PDT  Kathy Zhu received an email Thursday dismissing her as a Miss World America pageant participant and revoking her Miss Michigan World America title.
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| Father of 6 dies after wave breaks his neck in 'freak accident' on North Carolina coast Posted: 21 Jul 2019 12:58 PM PDT  A Raleigh man was killed Friday after he was hit by a strong wave at Oak Island, his family said.
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| Libya halts loading at key oil terminal as pipeline closed Posted: 21 Jul 2019 10:16 AM PDT  Libya's National Oil Company said it had stopped loading crude at a key government-controlled shipping terminal, declaring "force majeure" after a pipeline closure halted operations at its main oil field. The NOC "hereby declares a state of force majeure on crude oil loadings at Zawiya port," it said in a statement on its website late Saturday. "This is the result of an unlawful Sharara pipeline valve closure by an unidentified group between Hamada and the Zawiya port (on Friday evening), resulting in production being suspended," it said.
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| Vigilante Armies Are Fighting Mexican Drug Cartels, but Whose Side Are They Really on? Posted: 21 Jul 2019 02:27 AM PDT  Jorge Lopez/ReutersFILO DE CABALLOS, Mexico—The assault force rolls through this small mountain town not long after dark. Traveling in a fleet of pick-ups with about 15 men in each truck, they are dressed in pixelated camouflage uniforms and ballistic vests and at first glance they look like official army units, but their weapons give them away. Many of these commandos carry AK-47 model assault rifles, which aren't used by the Mexican armed forces.The logo stamped on the doors of the trucks shows a figure from the Mexican Revolution wearing a sombrero and brandishing a rifle astride a charging horse. Below that are the words Policia Comunitaria, or community police, and a phrase which, roughly translated from Spanish, reads: "Death before surrender or humiliation."The men in the trucks are members of the United Front of Community Police of Guerrero State, better known by its Spanish acronym of FUPCEG. Tonight FUPCEG's shock troops are on their way to assault the nearby town of El Naranjo, which is currently held by the forces of an organized crime group called the Cartel del Sur."We fight to free communities that have been isolated by the criminals," says a squad leader who asks to be identified only as "El Burro" in an interview with The Daily Beast. "Everyone has a right to security. And to economic freedom. Campesinos [small farmers] and their children shouldn't suffer under the rule of bandits," Burro says. "The people of this town have asked us for help, and so that's what we're going to do."El Burro says he got his nickname, which means "the donkey," because he can bear heavy loads a great distance despite his slight stature. In his backpack he carries several cans of tuna and crackers and canteens of water. His battle harness holds some 300 rounds of ammunition for his AK-47. Later tonight he'll lead his squad on foot through the dense pine forests that surround El Naranjo, until they reach the pre-assigned rendezvous point. From there the coordinated strike force will crawl on their bellies until they're in sight of the cartel stronghold, then wait for dawn to attack.Burro is a veteran of a dozen such engagements with the comunitarios and says he's personally registered 20 confirmed kills of sicarios, the cartels' contract killers. A former farmer, he joined the movement "because I was tired of hearing the people's cries for help go unanswered."The Cartel del Sur is known for its brutal tactics, including torturing prisoners, and for that reason Burro says he prefers death on the battlefield to being captured by los contras, as he calls members of the Cartel del Sur."Will I come back from where I go tonight?" he asks rhetorically. "And if I don't," he says, "will my family understand what I died for?" * * *'We Have To Protect Ourselves'* * *FUPCEG is an alliance of civilian autodefensas, or self-defense groups, that boasts about 11,700 fighters across 39 municipalities in Guerrero, meaning they're now present in about half the state. Similar communitario movements have sprung up across Mexico over the last decade, but FUPCEG is by far the largest of its kind.The spike in vigilante militias has polarized public opinion. Some observers see them as noble freedom fighters who succeed where traditional law enforcement has failed. Critics claim the autodefensas and comunitarios (the words are often used interchangeably in Mexico) are at best undisciplined mobs and at worst cartel patsies who do the criminals' grunt work for them. Either way, their power is growing. A new study by Mexico's National Human Rights Commission suggests vigilante activity is up by more than 300 percent since the start of 2018, and blames the increase on "insecurity, violence, and impunity."Mexico's Game of BonesIn fact, violence in Mexico has reached historic levels this year, with the country averaging an all-time high of 94 killings a day through the first half of 2019. Both 2017 and 2018 also broke previous murder records. As one autodefensa fighter put it, repeating what has become a kind of mantra, "If the government can't protect us, then we have no choice left but to protect ourselves."FUPCEG's founder and leader is 40-year-old Salvador Alanis. A Guerrero native, Alanis is something of a polymath. An economist by training, he's also worked as an electrical engineer in North Carolina, and at one time owned several successful fruit and cattle ranches in his home state. Those ranches are gone now. Some were sold off to help fund Alanis's crime-fighting endeavors, while others have been seized by the mafia groups he opposes."I spent 12 years working in the U.S.," Alanis says during an interview in the FUPCEG base in the strategically vital town of Filo de Caballos, high in the sierra of central Guerrero. "In the States I came to know a better life, a better world. I came to take safety for granted," he says, "but there's no security like that in Mexico."The lack of security is even more pronounced in Guerrero, which is Mexico's leading exporter of opium and heroin, and perennially listed as one of the country's most dangerous and politically corrupt regions. It doesn't help that government law enforcement here is undermanned."We have an insufficient number of police officers to go around," says Roberto Álvarez Heredia, the state's security spokesperson. "We need about three times as many cops and public prosecutors as we have," he says, "and the ones we do have need better salaries."Recently elected President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known as AMLO, has touted his newly created Guardia Nacional as a solution to peacekeeping efforts in places like Guerrero, but Alanis remains unimpressed:"So they just sent 3,500 Guardias to Guerrero," he says, when asked about the new policing initiative. "The last president sent 5,000 soldiers and they couldn't do anything against the cartels, because the criminals just paid them off. Everyone has a price," he adds.Still, Alanis is willing to give the Guardia a chance."We're going to let them in [to our territory] and see if they behave themselves. See if they're corrupt, or if they abuse their power. In the past the soldiers used to enter and search any house they pleased, and that's why we had to run them out. We're glad to be friends [with the Guardia], but we won't be their slaves."* * *A Question of War* * *As protection against a cartel counter thrust, FUPCEG troops man fortified checkpoints at regular intervals all along State Road 196. Here in Filo, Alanis and his command crew are headquartered in what used to be the largest hotel in town. The long, two-story building was abandoned when FUPCEG occupied Filo after a prolonged firefight back in November of 2018. Pocked by bullet holes inside and out, the building no longer has running water, and electricity is intermittent, but the community kitchen in the lobby is always full of gossip and the smell of spicy cooking. During this interview, Alanis sits in what was once the hotel's main office. He's stockily built, dressed in a sky-blue Oxford shirt left open at the throat and wearing square-rimmed photochromic glasses. Clear mountain sunshine drifts in through the shot-up windows. In one corner of the room stands a derelict arcade game titled, coincidentally enough, Streetfighter II.When he came back in 2010, Alanis says he found his home town of Ocotito overrun by organized crime."Murder, kidnapping, extortion, theft. The cartels ruled the state and they'd packed the government and police forces with corrupt officials, so there was no one to challenge them," he says. After surviving two kidnapping attempts, Alanis decided to take matters into his own hands to "restore justice" to Guerrero.At first it was just himself and a handful of other ranchers, but slowly the movement gathered support. By 2015 their forces numbered several hundred comunitarios operating out of a string of liberated communities around the state capital of Chilpancingo. But he'd made a number of powerful enemies in the process, including capos from the Rojos, Tequileros, and Guerreros Unidos cartels. When those crime groups launched a series of counter-attacks aimed at taking back the newly freed townships, Alanis' civilian militias were quickly overwhelmed. "We had an army of shop owners and farm workers," he says in the office of the ramshackle hotel. He unholsters a chrome-plated 10 mm pistol to make himself more comfortable and sets it on the desk before him. "Many of our men didn't really know how to use their weapons. Meanwhile, we were facing off against experienced and well-armed sicarios, and we couldn't beat them in battle. It was a question of war, and we weren't up to the task. We were weak and lacking strategy."Those factors—along with the defection of some of his most trusted officers, one of whom ran off with his wife—combined to spell defeat for Alanis. His forces scattered and, still hunted by the cartels, he fled to the mountains and went into hiding."They took everything from him," says Jackie Pérez, an independent journalist based in Chilpancingo, and an expert on the state's autodefensa groups. "Salvador lost his livestock, his farmland, even his wife," she says. "But he's very intelligent and very patient. He was able to persevere, and come back stronger than ever."Pérez goes on to compare Alanis to Mexican freedom fighters of the past like Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa, at least in terms of tactics. "He doesn't want to overthrow the government," she says. "But he is willing to go outside the system to fight for the people's right to freedom from certain forms of oppression."In order to continue that fight after being drubbed by the contras, Alanis knew he'd have to change his game plan."We'd been outnumbered and defeated," he says. "Now it was time to change strategies." Part of that strategic shift involved developing a broad network of spies and informants, many of them women, to keep him informed of his enemies' movements and activities."Know your enemy as you know yourself," he quotes Sun Tzu from memory, "and in a hundred battles you will never be defeated."* * *Controlling The Sierra* * *Alanis isn't the first comunitario leader forced to revamp his approach after an initial setback. Many other grassroots vigilante groups have cropped up in Mexico to oppose organized crime, only to find they lack the manpower and budget to keep up the fight over time. Unfortunately, that often leads to alliances with well-heeled drug lords, who then use the militias as proxy groups to wage war on their rivals.Guerrero expert Chris Kyle, a professor of anthropology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, says that pattern has been in play for years."Since 2013 there's been an explosion of community policing groups in Guerrero," says Kyle in a phone interview with The Daily Beast. While villages with native indigenous populations that pre-date the Spanish conquest are legally allowed to form such units under Mexico's constitution, the proliferation of non-indigenous figures "claiming to be community police has baffled authorities."The swift spread of the comunitarios is related directly to a lack of effective security measures, according to Kyle."If the state would provide security, many of these groups would likely stand down," he says. In the absence of state power, however, and due to a lack of sufficient resources to operate long-term on their own, many vigilante squads become co-opted."The drug trafficking organizations take advantage of them," Kyle says, because the community police provide the cartels with "a semi-legitimate wing that extends their reach."Alanis's FUPCEG umbrella group includes both indigenous and mestizo, or mixed race, cells from all over the state, including the Regional Coordinator for Community Authorities (CRAC), the oldest and most respected such organization in Mexico. Even so, Alanis admits that part of his revised strategy involved aligning with certain deep-pocketed backers. He claims that instead of working on behalf of a crime syndicate, he's merely defending free enterprise.This may strike drug enforcement authorities in the United States as a distinction without a difference, but here in Guerrero such distinctions matter.Alanis says that in fact he is not opposed to campesinos growing poppies, since that's the only crop that pays enough to support many families in the sierra. What he's opposed to, as he puts it, is how the Cartel del Sur seeks to drive out competitors, keep prices low, and control poppy farmers through violence and intimidation."The people should be able to grow [poppies] if they want to. Or not, as they see fit. That's up to them. But nobody should be forced to sell [opium gum] at an unfair price to a single buyer. Nobody should be threatened or forced to worry about their family's safety. All we want is for the people to live in peace," he says, back in his bullet-riddled HQ."The Cartel del Sur wants to control the whole sierra," he adds. "They want to own a monopoly on poppy gum and heroin production, and also extort from shop owners, taxi drivers, you name it. Other businessmen I know want an open market for poppies up here, and they understand that requires healthy local economies. So that's why they help us fight the contras."To launch a full-scale assault like the one that liberated Filo would be impossible without outside financial support, according to Alanis. The Filo battle involved some 3,000 comunitarios and hundreds of trucks to ferry them, he explains. When the cost of ammunition, gas, and fighters' salaries are factored in, a single campaign can cost about 300,000 pesos [about $15,700] per hour. And the Filo firefight alone last for more than seven hours."We need their help," he says, referring to those independent opium gum buyers who help fund FUPCEG's efforts, "but they need us too. If part of the money to liberate the people must come from opium, I'm willing to accept that equation," the economist by training says.* * *Terrorizing The Resistance* * *During a series of independent interviews conducted in Filo de Caballos and surrounding communities it becomes clear that, prior to liberation by Alanis and his cohorts, local citizens had suffered greatly under rule by the Cartel del Sur.Run by Isaac Navarette Celis, one of Mexico's most wanted men, the Cartel del Sur specializes in the production and northbound transport of China White, a particularly potent form of heroin. Navarette is a relative newcomer to Guerrero's populous criminal underworld, first announcing his arrival back in 2016. Younger drug lords like Navarette often are especially bloodthirsty as they attempt to carve out a competitive niche against established rivals. Residents in the swath of towns and villages formerly under Navarette's control describe a reign of terror that included kidnappings for ransom, forcing young people to work as sicarios under threat of death, mass killings, crippling extortion rates, and random violence that caused schools, clinics, and small businesses to be shuttered indefinitely."We denounced the criminals to the police many times but they never did anything to help us," says Reina Maldonado, 53. Maldonado was married to the comisario, or sheriff, of a village called Corralitos. Last June several sicarios from the Cartel del Sur kidnapped Reina's husband from their home and brought him to a local safehouse. "He wouldn't back down from them. He defied their orders and bribes, so they took him," she said. When Maldonado's husband's body was found, she explains, he showed signs of having been tortured and had been shot multiple times."They killed him to terrorize the village against resistance," the sheriff's widow says, "but that didn't work." Hours after the comisario was reported missing, Alanis arrived with hundreds of comandos to battle it out with those responsible for his murder. Four cartel members were killed in the ensuing firefight, and the rest fled in armored vehicles. According to Maldonado, they haven't been back to Corralitos since."Life here is much better now," she says, as she walks around the ruins of the house where her husband's body was found. Many of the families that had fled Corralitos under cartel rule have since returned, and the shops and fruit stands that line the small main street are again open for business."We're still poor," Maldonado says, "but at least now we're safe."* * *Government Silence* * *Ruperto Pacheco Vega, 44, the mayor of Filo de Caballo, agrees with Maldonado's assessment:"Many businesses were completely shut down under [Navarette's] cartel," he says. "There was no commerce, nobody could move. The store owners couldn't make a profit due to extortion, and many people were out of work."Even worse, Vega says, was the cartel's habit of impressing young men into its service. "They wanted our boys to join them, put on their colors, and fight against Salvador and the comunitarios." To decline the cartel's "invitation," he says, was punishable by death. In contrast, the mayor explains that Alanis has helped local communities diversify their economies. The financial backbone of the region has long been poppy cultivation to produce opium gum to sell to the cartels to make heroin. But a recent drop in the price of heroin (apparently due to U.S. users preferring synthetic opioids like Fentanyl) has caused a backlash among growers. According to Vega, Alanis has been instrumental in helping the farmers develop detailed crop substitution plans in order to replace illicit poppy plots with legal alternatives like avocado, peaches, pears, and lemons."The government says we mustn't grow poppies, and that's fine with us. So we sent them precise and detailed petitions asking for basic subsidies until the [fruit] trees reach maturity," says Vega, riffing through signed and stamped copies of the official documents addressed to various politicians in Mexico City, including President López Obrador. As with local authorities who ignore cartel malfeasance, it seems the bid for federal assistance to produce legal crops has also fallen on deaf ears."Their offices acknowledged receipt of our requests," Vega says, "but we never heard anything back from them."* * *A Question Of Ethics* * *For all the careful planning put into it, El Burro's assault on the cartel-held town of El Naranjo didn't go as expected."Somebody must've talked because they were waiting for us," says El Burro, in the aftermath of the failed offensive. "They had a damned mortar and belt-fed machine guns. We killed a few of them but we then we had to pull back."Now rumors are swirling around town that Navarette's men are planning a counter-attack to retake Filo. Comunitarios run in and out of the lobby of the bombed-out hotel, fetching weapons and ammunition from stockpiles in the armory. Meanwhile Alanis sits surrounded by cell phones and a half-dozen radios, diligently coordinating with units in the field and his mysterious financial backers.In answer to a question about the ethics of his current line of work, Alanis waxes philosophical."I used to have a different idea about ethics," he says, putting down his phone. "I never accepted any drug money back when I first began to oppose [the cartels]." But, he adds, that's also why he lost the first time around. "You see suffering like this," and he waves his hand as if to take in the whole sierra: "You see people without work. People without health care. Children starving. Kids with no future. And you ask me about ethics?"In Alanis's estimation, "Our worst enemy is the state, due to their alliance with organized crime. There is no democracy in Guerrero" because the cartels "rig elections" and "control the politicians," he says."We came up with a plan to eliminate 65 percent of the poppy plants in our territories and replace them with legal orchards, but the politicians never even answered our letters." Alanis picks up his phone again. "Why don't you ask them about ethics?" he says.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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| Putin Hints at Rapprochement With Ukraine on Eve of Vote Posted: 20 Jul 2019 05:28 AM PDT ![Putin Hints at Rapprochement With Ukraine on Eve of Vote]( "Putin Hints at Rapprochement With Ukraine on Eve of Vote") (Bloomberg) -- Virtually on the eve of Ukraine's parliamentary elections, the Kremlin released comments by President Vladimir Putin, saying that the two countries will mend ties despite their five-year conflict.Putin went as far as to say that Russians and Ukrainians are one people. "We have many things in common, we can use this as our competitive advantage during some form of integration," Putin said, according to the transcript of a June 19 interview with American film director Oliver Stone. "Rapprochement is inevitable."Ties between the former allies deteriorated after protesters in Kiev unseated the country's Kremlin-backed leader in 2014 and Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea before fomenting a war in which he still denies involvement. A party backed by Ukrainian businessman Viktor Medvedchuk, whose daughter counts Putin as her godfather, is campaigning for the Sunday elections and he met with Putin on Thursday to discuss potential cooperation.President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a former comedian elected in April, entered into his first negotiations with Putin earlier this month as he seeks to diffuse the conflict and negotiate the release of 24 Ukrainian sailors detained by Russia in 2018.Speaking about another election, Putin said it was "nonsense" to assume that comments by Russians on social networks could have influenced the result of the 2016 U.S. presidential vote."No matter what our bloggers –- or whoever's job it is to comment on the internet -– might say about the situation in the U.S., this could not have played a decisive role," he said. But Russia's "sympathies" were with Donald Trump "because he said he wanted to restore normal relations with Russia," Putin said.To contact the reporter on this story: Anatoly Medetsky in Moscow at amedetsky@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Lynn Thomasson at lthomasson@bloomberg.net, Andrew Davis, James AmottFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| 5 shot dead, 6 wounded in Acapulco bar near beach Posted: 21 Jul 2019 03:11 PM PDT ![5 shot dead, 6 wounded in Acapulco bar near beach]( "5 shot dead, 6 wounded in Acapulco bar near beach") Gunmen killed five men and wounded six other people at a popular bar in Acapulco on Sunday, the latest in a string of violent incidents for the once-glamorous Pacific Coast resort city that has fallen on hard times. The Guerrero state prosecutor's office said the shootings took place in the morning at a watering hole called Mr. Bar, which is on the city's broad coastal avenue across the street from high-rise beachside hotels. Acapulco is full of summer vacationers, and days earlier authorities launched a security operation for the tourist season.
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| Amid Dangerous Heat Wave, Hundreds of Thousands of Michigan Homes Are Without Power After Severe Storms Posted: 21 Jul 2019 12:36 PM PDT  DTE Energy says it hopes to restore power to 80% of affected customers by Monday
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| Voice Of America Ignores Reasons For Trump’s Criticism Of Rep. Ilhan Omar Posted: 21 Jul 2019 03:39 AM PDT  Ilhan Omar, but failed to include most of the reasons for the criticism.VOA wrote "Trump has found his latest target for acerbic ridicule — a hijab-wearing Muslim newcomer to Congress named Ilhan Omar."The news agency mentioned briefly only two instances of Omar's anti-Semitic remarks, referring to one as playing "off tropes questioning the influence of Jewish money in American politics."Trump began tweeting Sunday about how the "'Progressive' Democrat Congresswomen…should go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it's done."The tweets were likely aimed at Democratic Reps. Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.The article explains how Omar is a refugee from Somalia who has worked her way up to become "the first Somali-American Muslim legislator in U.S. history." It also stated that Trump "vilified" Omar and three other congresswomen after he tweeted suggesting they "go back" to their home countries.The article briefly mentions that Omar apologized to some Jewish communities after backlash from both Democrats and Republicans, and that the House of Representatives approved resolutions to "indirectly rebuke Omar."VOA's article avoids giving most of the reasons for Trump's criticism of Omar, but details the aggressive commentary used by Trump in his attacks against her and other congresswomen.Omar has made several anti-Semitic and anti-Israel comments, almost all of which were not reported by VOA in the article.
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| UPDATE 1-UK PM front-runner Boris Johnson says trade deal can break Brexit deadlock Posted: 21 Jul 2019 02:15 PM PDT ![UPDATE 1-UK PM front-runner Boris Johnson says trade deal can break Brexit deadlock]( "UPDATE 1-UK PM front-runner Boris Johnson says trade deal can break Brexit deadlock") Boris Johnson, favoured to become Britain's new prime minister, said on Sunday the country could agree a free trade deal to leave the European Union that would remove the need for one of the more problematic parts of a previous agreement. In his weekly column in The Telegraph newspaper, Johnson said technology could avoid having to stick to the so-called Northern Irish backstop, a part of an agreement with the EU that many lawmakers in Britain's parliament reject. The backstop, an insurance policy to ensure there will be no return to a hard border between the British province of Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland, has become one of the biggest stumbling blocks in the lengthy Brexit talks.
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| How the Moon Landing Was Filmed Posted: 20 Jul 2019 06:00 AM PDT  A half-pint camera and a mere whisper of power were teamed to beam clear, strong images across 230,000 miles of space. Here's how the remarkable setup worked.
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| SOS Mediterranee relaunches migrant rescue missions off Libya Posted: 21 Jul 2019 08:44 AM PDT  Humanitarian group SOS Mediterranee said Sunday it has relaunched rescue efforts off Libya seven months after it abandoned operations using its ship Aquarius and despite a refusal by European ports to accept the migrants. The Norwegian-flagged Ocean Viking will "conduct search and rescue activities in the central Mediterranean" for SOS Mediterranee and Doctors Without Borders (known by its French initials MSF), the group said in a statement.
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| Explosion in popularity of hemp products leaves Texas unable to bust marijuana users Posted: 20 Jul 2019 12:30 PM PDT  Texas politicians thought they were clear: the bill they overwhelmingly passed allowing the growth and sale of hemp had nothing to do with legalising cannabis."This is no slippery slope towards marijuana," Charles Perry, a Republican state senator who sponsored the bill, said in May, according to The Dallas Morning News.But since Greg Abbott signed the measure into law in June, county prosecutors around Texas have been dropping some marijuana possession charges and declining to file new ones, saying they do not have the time or the laboratory equipment needed to distinguish between legal hemp and illegal marijuana.Collectively, the prosecutors' jurisdictions cover more than 9 million people — about a third of Texas' population — including in Houston, Austin and San Antonio.The accidental leniency represents one of the unintended consequences states may face as they race to cash in on the popularity of products made with or from hemp.Interest has surged in oils, gummies and other goods infused with CBD, or cannabidiol, which is processed from cannabis plants but does not produce a psychoactive effect.The police and prosecutors in Florida are facing the same problem as their Texan colleagues after the Sunshine State legalised hemp in July."This is not just Texas," said Peter Stout, president of the Houston Forensic Science Centre, which runs tests for the Houston Police Department and other agencies."Everybody is struggling with this."In Texas, prosecutors have already dropped scores of possession cases, and they're not just throwing out misdemeanours.The Travis County district attorney, Margaret Moore, announced this month that she was dismissing 32 felony possession and delivery of marijuana cases because of the law.Ms Abbott and other state officials, including the attorney general, pushed back on Thursday, saying prosecutors should not be dropping cases because of the new legislation, known as H.B. 1325."Marijuana has not been decriminalised in Texas, and these actions demonstrate a misunderstanding of how H.B. 1325 works," the officials, all Republicans, wrote in a letter to prosecutors.Kim Ogg, the Harris County district attorney and a Democrat, shot back by saying that laboratory confirmation "has long been required" to prove someone's guilt.Before the legislation went into effect, laboratories had to identify hairs on marijuana flowers and test for the presence of cannabinoids, a process that required just a few minutes and a test strip that turned purple when it was positive.Because the new law distinguishes between hemp and illicit marijuana, prosecutors say labs would now be required to determine the concentration of THC in the seized substance.Mr Stout said he has been able to identify only two labs in the country that can make the fine distinction necessary and that are accredited in Texas. Both of them are private.Prosecutors would need to pay the labs to run the tests — sometimes hundreds of dollars for each sample — and to testify about the results at trial.Sending all of the state's suspected marijuana to a small number of labs would likely overwhelm them, prosecutors have said, and would result in severe backlogs.Still, many prosecutors agree with the governor and are continuing to charge and prosecute marijuana cases as usual.The district attorney in El Paso, Jaime Esparza, a Democrat, said this month that the law "will not have an effect on the prosecution of marijuana cases in El Paso" and a spokeswoman confirmed that he had not thrown out any cases because of the law.The sudden dismissals in other districts have been a welcome surprise for those who had been facing charges.Brandon Ball, a lawyer, said one of his clients in Fort Bend County had been distraught about the possession charge she faced until it was unexpectedly dismissed.She kept thanking him, but it wasn't her lawyer who beat the case."I was trying to explain, it wasn't me, it was this law," Mr Ball said, referring to the hemp legislation.Mr Ball, now an assistant public defender in Harris County, explained that test results are vital for prosecutors trying to prove that someone had an illegal substance."The law is constantly changing on what makes something illegal, based on its chemical makeup," Mr Ball said."It's important that if someone is charged with something, the test matches what they're charged with."New York Times
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| Do Democrats believe in open borders? By not enforcing immigration law, it looks that way. Posted: 21 Jul 2019 01:30 PM PDT  For months, Republicans have falsely claimed that Democrats believe in open borders. But that's starting to have the ring of truth.
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| Puerto Rico gov will not seek re-election, leaves his party Posted: 21 Jul 2019 03:59 PM PDT  Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló said Sunday evening that he will not resign in the face of public furor over an obscenity-laced leaked online chat, but he will not seek re-election or continue as head of his pro-statehood political party. Protesters said they were not satisfied by Rosselló's concessions, and pledged to continue demonstrations that have filled the streets of Old San Juan for more than a week. In a brief video posted on Facebook, Rosselló also said he looked forward to defending himself against the process of impeachment, whose initial stages are being explored by Puerto Rico's legislature.
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