| Before a notorious phone call, the Trump administration was lauded for helping Ukraine Posted: 04 Oct 2019 03:00 PM PDT  A central irony of the controversy over President Trump's alleged efforts to condition military aid to Ukraine on political favors is that Trump has presided over the shipment of more lethal weaponry to Ukraine than had his predecessor, President Barack Obama.
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| 'I've never had a crystal': Marianne Williamson demands to be taken seriously Posted: 04 Oct 2019 12:05 PM PDT  Marianne Williamson wants you to know she's not a "crystal woo woo lady."
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| Texas execution halted over claims judge was anti-Semitic Posted: 04 Oct 2019 03:58 PM PDT  A Jewish death row inmate who was part of the "Texas 7" gang of escaped prisoners and faced execution in less than a week won a reprieve on Friday after claiming the former judge at his trial was anti-Semitic and frequently used racial slurs. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted a stay of execution for Randy Halprin, who had been scheduled to receive a lethal injection on Oct. 10. The appeals court ordered Halprin's case be sent back to the Dallas County court that convicted him, so it can review his claims that his trial judge was biased against him because he is Jewish.
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| China is filling a 'strategic vacuum' in the Pacific left by the US and its allies, and that's bad news for Taiwan Posted: 05 Oct 2019 07:38 AM PDT  The benign neglect of the US and its partners in the Pacific created an opening for China, according to Dr. Anna Powles.
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| Andrew Yang Shouldn’t Retreat from His Past Success in Revitalizing Depressed Cities Posted: 04 Oct 2019 01:22 PM PDT  As Peter Beinart has trenchantly observed in The Atlantic, formerly moderate Generation X Democratic candidates Cory Booker and Kamala Harris have chosen to turn their backs on policies they once championed. Booker no longer talks up his successful expansion of charter schools as mayor of Newark, while Harris has run away from her common-sense decision, as San Francisco district attorney, to enforce truancy laws as a means to get the attention of parents of disadvantaged students. But there's another Gen X candidate, unmentioned by Beinart, who's run away from past successes: Andrew Yang.While he promotes government-led efforts to redistribute income, Yang has been silent about his own groundbreaking efforts to help declining cities — not through government, but through civil society. In 2011, after a successful career as corporate lawyer and business-school test-prep entrepreneur, Yang founded Venture for America (VFA). Modeled on Teach for America, VFA aimed to attract applicants from elite colleges to work as paid interns at start-up companies in poor cities such as Detroit, Cleveland, Birmingham, and Baltimore. Its funding came entirely from philanthropists, most importantly Detroit's Dan Gilbert, the founder of Quicken Loans. Like Dan Markowits, the author of the new The Meritocracy Trap, Yang saw the best and brightest as having "too limited a vision of what career success looks like," and got to work fixing the problem.Today, VFA is still in operation, with fellowships in 14 different cities around the country. The organization has supported more than 1,000 fellows, working in business incubators and often going on to found start-ups of their own. It says that 51 percent of them continue to live in the cities where their fellowship was based, and they've been involved in starting 129 new companies.Bringing graduates of some 300 colleges to cities that ambitious young people have long been fleeing is nothing to sneeze at. It's a record of success that gives Yang, if he'd only use it, a ready-made, positive message on the stump: Talented people can start new businesses, help power established ones, and in the process, make cities thrive. This message is all the more powerful when juxtaposed with generations of failed local, state, and federal policies based on the idea that subsidies to attract business are the best way of rejuvenating cities in decline.Indeed, what is striking about Yang's Venture for America is its fundamental separation from those failed government policies and from government itself. This is a private organization, fueled by philanthropic dollars and private start-up seed money. And its economic underpinnings are sound, as the work of Harvard's Ed Glaeser on the key impact of the "divergence" of human capital on urban economies has shown. Seattle never recruited Starbucks, Amazon, or Microsoft; those companies grew organically, thanks to talented founders and a skilled labor pool.It is depressing, then, that Yang has downplayed VFA's record of success in favor of a campaign built on a more dispiriting message: American capitalism is so broken, he says, that only a universal basic income, funded by a national value-added sales tax, can mitigate its destructive impact. One wishes that he would point to his own record in teaching Democrats that government is not the best route to prosperity. Indeed, government — through cumbersome permitting processes, high taxes, and burdensome licensing requirements — often holds back the fortunes of down-on-their-luck cities such as those Venture for America has helped revitalize. To be sure, this would be a more politically fraught path: Yang is a Democrat, and redistribution is the coin of his party's realm. But if he were braver, he could do quite a lot to change that state of affairs.
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| India-Pakistan Nuclear War Could Destroy the Ozone Layer and Kill Millions Posted: 04 Oct 2019 12:34 AM PDT  Soot particles may also deplete between 30 to 50 percent of the ozone layer, allowing more of the sun's radiation to penetrate the atmosphere, causing increased sunburns and rates of cancer. Oh, and that is just the beginning.
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| UPDATE 1-Grenade attack in Kashmir injures 10 amid India clampdown Posted: 05 Oct 2019 12:24 AM PDT ![UPDATE 1-Grenade attack in Kashmir injures 10 amid India clampdown]( "UPDATE 1-Grenade attack in Kashmir injures 10 amid India clampdown") A grenade attack on Saturday in Kashmir's southern city of Anantnag injured 10 people, including a traffic policeman and a journalist, police said on Twitter, blaming "terrorists". Many people in Kashmir have been seething since India stripped its portion of the Muslim-majority region of autonomy on Aug. 5, shutting off phone networks and imposing curfew-like restrictions in some areas to dampen discontent. Some of those curbs have been slowly relaxed, but mobile and internet communications in the Kashmir valley are largely still blocked.
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| Pro-Trump group takes credit for woman talking about eating babies at AOC town hall Posted: 04 Oct 2019 10:41 AM PDT  At a town hall for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., a woman in a T-shirt that read "Save the planet Eat the Children" stood up and suggested people should eat babies to fight climate change. A pro-Trump group, LaRouchePAC, took credit for the stunt.
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| Greta Thunberg tells Yahoo News: Powerful men like Trump 'want to silence' young climate activists Posted: 04 Oct 2019 01:09 PM PDT  Greta Thunberg tells Yahoo News that youth climate activists are "making a difference."
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| Ethiopia's largest ethnic group marks thanksgiving festival Posted: 05 Oct 2019 12:01 AM PDT  Members of Ethiopia's largest ethnic group chanted and waved flags as they gathered for the first time to celebrate their thanksgiving festival in the capital -- a city that prominent members of the group claim belongs to them. The annual Irreecha festival of the Oromo people marks the end of the rainy season and the start of the harvest season. It is traditionally held in the city of Bishoftu, located in the Oromia region some 50 kilometres (30 miles) southeast of the capital, Addis Ababa.
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| Jury convicts man in killing of Chicago boy lured into alley Posted: 03 Oct 2019 08:37 PM PDT  Prosecutors contended that Dwright Boone-Doty and fellow gang member Corey Morgan planned the November 2015 killing of Tyshawn Lee before Boone-Doty took a gun Morgan gave him and shot the boy. The Cook County jury that found Boone-Doty guilty deliberated for a little more than two hours after a long day of closing arguments. A separate jury will decide Morgan's fate, and the judge ordered those jurors sequestered for the night after they didn't reach a verdict.
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| 2020 Lincoln Continental Coach Door Edition Priced at $116,645 Posted: 05 Oct 2019 10:05 AM PDT  High-dollar, old-school American opulence is back for 2020, suicide doors and all.
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| Sunk U.S. Battleships During the Gulf War? Saddam Could Have Pulled It Off. Posted: 05 Oct 2019 01:34 AM PDT  A difficult task.
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| If the House Won’t Vote, Impeachment Inquiry Is Just a Democratic Stunt Posted: 05 Oct 2019 11:53 AM PDT  'The House of Representatives . . . shall have the sole Power of Impeachment."It's right there in black-and-white: In article I, section 2, clause 5, our Constitution vests the entirety of the power to call for removal of the president of the United States in a single body — the House.Not in the Speaker of the House. In the House of Representatives. The institution, not one of its members.To be sure, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is a very powerful government official: second in the line of succession to the presidency; arguably, the most powerful member of Congress. She wields decisive influence on the business of her chamber. She even has the power to induce the House to vote on whether to conduct an impeachment inquiry.But she does not have the power to impeach on her own.In the end, Speaker Pelosi is just one member, a representative elected biannually by one district (in her case, the 12th district of California, centered in San Francisco and not particularly representative of the nation at large). Sure, she enjoys primus inter pares status because she is chosen by a majority of the House's 435 members. But like each of those other members, her vote counts as just one — in a body that generally requires 218 votes to get the important things done.She is the Speaker. She is not the House. She does not have the authority to call for the president's removal. She can argue for it, like the other members. She can vote on it, like the other members. But she cannot do it by herself. Only the House, acting as an institution, can do that.The House acts by voting. It has never voted to conduct an inquiry into whether President Trump should be impeached. Consequently, there is no House impeachment inquiry. There is a partisan exhibition of synchronized dyspepsia.This exhibition includes strident letters from a cabal of committee chairs, all Democrats, falsely claiming that a refusal by Trump-administration officials to comply with their demands for information and testimony "shall constitute evidence of obstruction of the House's impeachment inquiry."In point of fact, the House has no impeachment inquiry; congressional Democrats have an impeachment political campaign.Under federal law, the offense of obstructing Congress applies when "any inquiry or investigation is being had by either House, or any committee of either House." Again, neither the House nor any of its committees has voted to conduct an impeachment inquiry. There is no formal impeachment proceeding to obstruct. Furthermore, the letters in question are not actually demands carrying the compulsory force of law; technically, they are just informal requests. No one is required to comply with a mere request, and refusing to do so is not evidence of anything, let alone obstruction.The House has issued some subpoenas. For example, the House Oversight Committee has just directed a subpoena to the White House, addressed to chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, reportedly demanding the production of a vast array of records (documents, communications, etc.) pertaining to the president's conduct of relations with Ukraine.Typical of the Democrats' legerdemain in this matter, the Oversight Committee has not voted to conduct an impeachment inquiry, nor did it vote to issue subpoenas (as, by contrast, the Oversight Committee voted to subpoena the White House just a few weeks ago for records germane to a suspected violation of federal recordkeeping laws). Instead, Chairman Elijah Cummings (D., Md.) strategically waited until the House closed for a two-week recess; then issued a memo on Wednesday, absurdly claiming that there was too much urgency to wait so a vote could be taken; then issued the subpoena late Friday, thus ensuring that no Republican could object and no Democrat would be forced to go on record supporting impeachment, which much of the public strongly opposes. Under House rules, the Oversight chairman has been delegated unilateral authority to issue subpoenas, so the subpoena is valid, but it is also pure gamesmanship.So is the explanation for the subpoena — offered in a letter that Chairman Cummings jointly signed with Chairmen Adam Schiff and Eliot Engel, respectively of the Intelligence and Foreign Affairs Committees. After a couple of pages of throat-clearing about the purported "impeachment inquiry," the chairmen observe that, even without such an inquiry, the Oversight Committee has its own independent authority to conduct oversight investigations and issue subpoenas. In other words, information is actually being demanded under Congress's routine authority to scrutinize executive activities. There would be nothing extraordinary about it . . . except that senior Democrats have decided to hang an "impeachment" sign on the exercise, hoping you won't notice that the House has not voted to explore impeachment, and that its Democratic leaders are going out of their way to avoid such a vote.In their letter, Cummings, Schiff, and Engel give Mulvaney the Democrats now standard admonition about obstruction. It is nonsense. Even when a formal House committee proceeding is underway, such that the obstruction statute could clearly apply, there is no legal presumption that the recipient's refusal to comply with a subpoena is evidence of obstruction.Obstruction happens when there is tampering with documents or witnesses. Presumptively, a person who refuses to comply with a lawful document demand is not tampering with the documents; to the contrary, the subpoena recipient is asserting a legal claim of privilege that excuses compliance. If I am a lawyer, for example, and a congressional committee subpoenas notes from my meeting with a client, my refusal to surrender the notes is not an obstruction of the House's investigation. It is an assertion that the attorney–client privilege justifies my withholding of confidential communications. If I am right about that, the legal wrong is Congress's issuance of a subpoena, not my refusal to honor it.But am I right about it? We won't know until we go to court and sort it out. Until a subpoena is litigated, it is scurrilous to claim, as Democrats do, that noncompliance with it amounts to felony obstruction. And equally scurrilous is the Democratic chairmen's extortionate claim that noncompliance creates "an adverse inference" against the president and his chief-of-staff. If a prosecutor claimed that a suspect's refusal to answer questions created an adverse inference of guilt, Democrats would likely have the prosecutor brought up on disciplinary charges for flouting the Fifth Amendment. There is no adverse inference drawn against a person who, in good faith reliance on a lawful privilege that plausibly applies, refuses to comply with a government demand.Congressional Democrats are well aware of this. What do you suppose would happen if the Justice Department or a litigant in a civil case decided to issue a grand-jury or trial subpoena to a member of Congress, or a House staffer? Actually, you need not suppose, because the House has elaborate rules for this situation (they've been in place for years, with each new Congress essentially reaffirming them — see, e.g., here, pp. 5–6). The House prescribes a thorough review, with paramount consideration of all "the privileges and rights of the House" to withhold information from the executive branch, the grand jury, the courts, and the public. The demand is examined so that the House may make its own determination of whether the information sought is relevant and material to the investigation or proceeding in question (i.e., do they really need this information? Is the demand overly broad and intrusive?). And most significantly, the House weighs its constitutional immunity, particularly under the Speech or Debate Clause, to refuse compliance even if the evidence in question is critical. As any lawmaker will tell you, when the House relies on its privileges to tell an investigator to go pound sand, that is not obstruction; it's the law.So, too, for the president. The conduct of foreign relations is a near-plenary power of the chief executive. We are not talking here about oversight of executive agencies created by Congress. The committees are aiming their subpoena demands at the place where the president's constitutional power and privileges are at their most formidable. Of course the White House is not going to start surrendering records just because Chairman Cummings wrote a subpoena. This is going to be a protracted court battle, not because anyone is obstructing but because both sides have legitimate interests to protect.Now, let's be clear about something.None of us should object in principle to the Democrats' position that they are entitled to explore whether the president should be impeached. I do not agree that President Trump has committed high crimes and misdemeanors. But to the extent Democrats do, or at least say they do, they have the authority to make that case to the country.In 2014, I wrote a book called Faithless Execution, which explored the case for impeaching President Obama. Naturally, I was castigated in Democratic (and many Republican) circles for having the temerity to mention the I-word in connection with The One. But that was to be expected — which, essentially, was my point.The Framers designed impeachment as a political remedy, not a legal one. I argued not that President Obama was a bad person but that he was behaving as the kind of chief executive the Framers feared — i.e., defying, in several ways, the separation-of-powers structure of the Constitution. Nevertheless, because impeachment is political, it is not enough to have acts that arguably qualify as impeachable abuses of power; there must also be a public consensus that gives Congress the political will to remove the president from power.That will does not spontaneously appear. It is up to Congress to build a political case that convinces Americans. It must be a strong case that cuts across partisan lines, because impeaching a president is a profound challenge to national cohesion, and because the two-thirds' supermajority vote required in the Senate for removal ensures that impeachment is reserved for only truly egregious misconduct.Therefore, if lawmakers have a genuine belief that the president should be removed, it is their obligation to make that political case to the public, and they must have the opportunity to do so. I concluded that it would be foolish to attempt to impeach Obama absent public support for his removal. If you're really worried about abuse of power, an unsuccessful impeachment attempt is apt to encourage more of it. My point, though, was to stress how essential impeachment was in the Framers' design — "indispensable," as Madison put it. If congressional Republicans believed it would be too politically damaging to try to build the case for impeachment, that was a rational choice, but one that had real downsides — namely, if there is no credible threat of impeachment, a president has no incentive to modify his behavior; the president is free to ignore laws and constitutional restraints, limited only by his own sense of political vulnerability.While I don't share their conclusions, I have a grudging admiration for the Democrats' willingness to do what Republicans would not: Make the public case that a president they see as deeply objectionable should be ousted. Making the case does not oblige congressional Democrats to vote on articles of impeachment; they are entitled to explore whether there should be articles of impeachment.But the question is: Do the Democrats have a good-faith belief that President Trump has engaged in high crimes and misdemeanors, or are they engaged in a political stunt, the objectives of which are to appease irrational elements of their base and to batter Trump for 2020 election purposes?If they have a good-faith belief that the president's impeachment must be considered, they owe it to the country to vote on conducting an impeachment inquiry, rather than continue dodging accountability. Indeed, if Democrats really believe what they say — if they really believe there have been appalling abuses of power, rather than mere missteps or political disputes — then they should be proud to vote on it.Only the House can impeach the president. If there is to be an inquiry about invoking this most solemn and consequential of the House's powers, the House must vote to conduct it. It is not for the Speaker and her adjutants to decree that there is an inquiry. If the inquiry is to be legitimate, the House as a whole must decide to conduct it.Members of the House are the representatives of the sovereign — the People. In November 2020, the People are scheduled to vote on whether Donald Trump should keep his job. If Democrats, who control the House, truly believe the president has committed impeachable offenses and is so unfit for his duties that we can't wait just 13 months for the sovereign to render that verdict, then they should vote to conduct an impeachment inquiry. If they are afraid to vote on it, then they shouldn't be doing it. And, as their committee chairmen are fond of saying, we should draw a negative inference against them.
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| The Oldest Building In Your State Says A Lot About Its History Posted: 04 Oct 2019 09:00 AM PDT |
| South African attacks on foreigners shame the continent, says Buhari Posted: 04 Oct 2019 05:59 AM PDT  Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari said on Friday that a wave of deadly violence against Nigerians and other foreign nationals in South Africa last month was an embarrassment to the continent. "The recent acts of xenophobic attacks on our compatriots and other Africans in South Africa are shocking to me, Nigerians and indeed Africa.
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| Exclusive: Trump Shows 'No Interest' in New North Korea Missile Threat, Prepares Diplomatic Offer Posted: 04 Oct 2019 12:02 PM PDT  Sources tell TIME that President Trump "didn't care" about a new North Korea missile threat and wants to move forward with talks with North Korea.
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| Former 'Fixer Upper' stars Chip and Joanna Gaines to open boutique hotel in Waco, Texas Posted: 04 Oct 2019 11:11 AM PDT  Chip and Joanna Gaines, owners of Magnolia Homes and the former stars of HGTV's show 'Fixer Upper,' have a new project.
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| Woman charged with false rape report faces trial in Kansas Posted: 04 Oct 2019 02:18 PM PDT  A University of Kansas student who is charged with making a false rape report will go on trial this month after a judge denied motions to dismiss charges and suppress portions of the case, much to the chagrin of defense attorneys who say police botched the investigation. Judge Amy Hanley's ruling on Thursday means the trial will begin as scheduled on Oct. 28, The Kansas City Star reported.
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| Turkey detains five Germans on terror charges: report Posted: 05 Oct 2019 06:17 AM PDT  Turkish authorities have detained five Germans over alleged links to Kurdish militants, pro-Kurdish media reported. The PKK is considered to be a terror group by Ankara, the United States and the European Union. The five, who were detained this week, were being held in Ankara, the agency said.
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| WKD: Russia Is Giving Its Su-57s Anti-Ship Missiles To Fight The U.S. Navy Posted: 05 Oct 2019 02:00 AM PDT  The Navy has its hands full.
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| Six elephants die while trying to save each other in 'Hell's Abyss' Thai waterfall Posted: 05 Oct 2019 10:45 AM PDT  Six wild elephants drowned after slipping off a waterfall in northeast Thailand, authorities said on Saturday, with two others saved after they became stranded while apparently trying to rescue one of those that fell into the current. Officials in the northeastern Khao Yai national park were alerted to elephants "crying" for help at 3am, the Thai Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation said in a statement. Hours later, they found six bodies at the bottom of the gushing Haew Narok ("Hell's Abyss") waterfall. Two of the elephants had apparently attempted to save one of those that fell, but they found themselves trapped on a thin, slippery sliver of rock above the churning waters. Video showed another of the hulking animals struggling desperately to get back up to where the pair stood. Park officials tossed food laced with nutritional supplements in an attempt to boost their energy and give them the strength to climb back up into the forest. They later said the two had been rescued but were extremely distressed. Parks department spokesperson Sompoch Maneerat said it was unclear what caused the accident. "No one knows for sure the real cause of why they fell, but there was heavy rain there last night," he told AFP. The waterfall was closed to tourists as the rescue took place. Elephants are Thailand's national animal and live in the wild in parts of the country, but their numbers have dwindled to only a few thousand. Deforestation has pushed the wild population into closer contact with humans in recent decades and away from their natural habitats.
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| Giuliani gives bizarre interview before posting angry 4:54 a.m. tweet Posted: 05 Oct 2019 11:05 AM PDT  President Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani said his mission was "to disrupt the world" as he attempted to defend his involvement in the Ukraine scandal.
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| Ruth Bader Ginsburg says people will see this period in American history as 'an aberration' Posted: 05 Oct 2019 05:14 AM PDT  US Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has said people will look back at this period of American politics as "an aberration".The 86-year-old judge made the comment during an event at Amherst College, Massachusetts, according to The Boston Globe.
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| Sasse Breaks with Republicans to Condemn Trump’s Suggestion China Should Investigate Biden Posted: 04 Oct 2019 06:52 AM PDT  Senator Ben Sasse offered the strongest criticism yet from a Senate Republican of President Trump's suggestion that China investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's son's business dealings."Hold up: Americans don't look to Chinese commies for the truth. If the Biden kid broke laws by selling his name to Beijing, that's a matter for American courts, not communist tyrants running torture camps," the Nebraska Republican said in a statement to the Omaha World-Herald.Sasse's condemnation came a day after Trump accused the former vice president's son, Hunter Biden, of engaging in "crooked" business dealings with Ukraine and China.Trump accused the younger Biden of flying on Air Force Two in 2013 with his father, then the vice president, in order to obtain $1.5 billion from Chinese investors for his private equity fund."China should start an investigation into the Bidens," the president told reporters Thursday outside the White House. "He got kicked out of the Navy. All of the sudden he's getting billions of dollars. You know what they call that? They call that a payoff."The president added that "if [Ukraine] were honest about it they'd start a major investigation into the Bidens."Sasse did not spare House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff in his remarks either, accusing the California Democrat of partisanship in the House's formal impeachment inquiry against the president."Congressman Schiff is running a partisan clown show in the House — that's his right because the Constitution doesn't prohibit clown shows, but fortunately, in the Senate, we're working to follow the facts one step at a time," Sasse said.Sasse sits on the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee, which is working on its own investigation into the whistleblower complaint accusing Trump of a potential quid pro scheme with Ukraine involving the temporary withholding of U.S. military aid on the condition that Ukraine investigates the Bidens.Another Republican senator, Ron Johnson, defended Trump's comments on China."First of all one of my comments would be as a member of the Democratic Party wouldn't you want to know if there's some real corruption before you choose Joe Biden," the Wisconsin senator said.
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| Baltimore prosecutor wants 790 'tainted' convictions erased Posted: 04 Oct 2019 01:16 PM PDT  Baltimore's top prosecutor has begun asking judges to throw out nearly 800 convictions that she said were tainted by officers linked to a corruption scandal. The Baltimore Sun reported Friday that State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby's review found 790 criminal cases handled by 25 city officers whom she says she has reason to distrust. Mosby updated the number of officers being scrutinized on Friday, saying it could fluctuate as her office investigates.
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| Denver policeman fired for saying he was raped by woman he impregnated Posted: 03 Oct 2019 06:18 PM PDT ![Denver policeman fired for saying he was raped by woman he impregnated]( "Denver policeman fired for saying he was raped by woman he impregnated") A Denver policeman has been fired for falsely claiming that he was raped by a woman he impregnated in what authorities said was an effort by the officer to avoid paying child support, a disciplinary letter released on Thursday showed. Samuel Sheppard, a six-year veteran of the force, was dismissed for fabricating a sexual assault by the unnamed woman, and lying to internal affairs investigators about the nature of the couple's relationship, according to an order signed by Denver's Deputy Director of Public Safety, Mary Dulacki. "The evidence presented is that Officer Sheppard made an unfounded sexual assault claim against the complainant seemingly to avoid or limit his financial obligations," Dulacki wrote.
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| Turkey Boosts Syria Border Troops as Erdogan Flags Incursion Posted: 05 Oct 2019 02:48 PM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Turkey reinforced army units at the Syrian border hours after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signaled an imminent cross-border operation against U.S.-backed Kurdish militants in Syria.Turkey sent additional armored vehicles and troops to the border town of Akcakale late Saturday, across from Tal Abyad in Syria, according to state TV television TRT.Erdogan said earlier in the day that Turkey was ready to start a military operation in northern Syria to claim areas from the Kurdish militant group YPG and may act "as soon as today or tomorrow." "We have made our preparations, completed our operation plans," Erdogan said at an AK Party meeting in Kizilcahamam in Ankara Province. "We have given the necessary orders." The operation in the east of the Euphrates river in northern Syria will be carried out by land and air, he said.Erdogan has vowed to create a buffer zone inside Syria by pushing back Kurdish militants and settling Syrian refugees in the country's north. Turkey suspects that the U.S. is backing Kurdish aspirations for self-rule in Syria and is prepared to use military force to prevent what it perceives as an attempt to redraw the region's map.Turkey wants to act before winter conditions make it difficult for tanks to operate in muddy terrain, leaving little room for a last-minute agreement with the U.S.Erdogan has repeatedly called on the U.S. to join forces in expanding a previously negotiated security zone in Syria -- designed to be off-limits to American-backed Kurdish YPG forces -- while threatening an incursion if he didn't get his way by the end of last month.The YPG, which helped defeat Islamic State, has been at the heart of Turkey-U.S. tensions. Turkey sees the fighters as a critical threat given their link to the separatist PKK, an autonomy-seeking Kurdish group. It's considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the European Union.Erdogan wants to resettle some of the more than 3.6 million Syrians who fled their country's civil war in the buffer area to alleviate the burden on Turkey's economy and defuse social tensions over hosting the world's largest refugee population.(Adds context starting with fifth paragraph)To contact the reporter on this story: Selcan Hacaoglu in Ankara at shacaoglu@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Onur Ant at oant@bloomberg.net, ;Alaa Shahine at asalha@bloomberg.net, Tony CzuczkaFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| A 3.5 magnitude earthquake hit south of San Francisco Posted: 05 Oct 2019 10:07 AM PDT  A 3.5 magnitude earthquake hit west of Colma, which is just south of San Francisco. Colma is known as "The City of the Dead" because of its cemeteries
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| Border Agent Harasses Journalist at U.S. Customs—Again Posted: 04 Oct 2019 03:53 PM PDT  REUTERSA U.S. Customs and Border Protection official reportedly refused to allow a reporter through customs on Thursday unless he answered the repeated question "You write propaganda, right?" in the affirmative, at least the third such incident involving harassment of a journalist by a passport official this year.Ben Watson, a news editor at Defense One, was returning to the United States from a reporting assignment in Denmark when a USCBP official, after asking whether Watson was carrying any undeclared foods, inquired into his profession. When Watson responded that he worked in journalism, the official began repeatedly badgering him into "admitting" that he writes propaganda, Watson wrote of his experience."So you write propaganda, right?" Watson recalled the official asking, a question posed at least four times before the passport officer returned Watson's passport and allowed him to enter the country.Watson, who covers national security and homeland security, eventually told the official that the closest he came to writing propaganda was during his time as a public affairs officer for the U.S. Army. The official was, apparently, unamused. Watson finally told the officer that he wrote propaganda, "for the purposes of expediting this conversation," before being asked the question one more time."I've honestly never had a human attempt to provoke me like this before in my life," Watson told his colleagues after the incident. "This behavior is totally normal now, I guess?"In response to questions from The Daily Beast about the incident, a CBP spokesperson said that the agency is aware of Watson's allegations and is investigating the incident."We hold our employees accountable to our core values of vigilance, integrity and service to country, and do not tolerate inappropriate comments or behavior by our employees," the spokesperson said, adding that travelers have the right to ask to speak with a supervisor to address concerns they have.Harassment of non-citizen reporters on visas by USCBP officials calling them "fake news" has been a persistent issue within the agency. In February, BuzzFeed News reporter David Mack, an Australian citizen, received a personal apology from then-USCBP Assistant Commissioner for Public Affairs Andrew Meehan, after Mack was interrogated at John F. Kennedy International Airport for ten minutes about the outlet's coverage of Michael Cohen and the special counsel investigation into President Donald Trump."The immigration agent at JFK just saw that I work for BuzzFeed and just grilled me for 10 minutes about the Cohen story, which was fun given he gets to decide whether to let me back into the country," Mack tweeted at the time. (Disclosure: Mack is a personal friend of this reporter.)British journalist James Dyer, who writes about pop culture, tweeted in August that he was harassed as "fake news" by a USCBP official upon arriving at Los Angeles International Airport. "He wanted to know if I'd ever worked for CNN or MSNBC or other outlets that are 'spreading lies to the American people,'" Dyer said at the time, adding that he was only let go "after I said that I was just here to write about Star Wars, and would keep the fake news about that to a bare minimum."After Watson shared his story on Friday, TIME Washington Correspondent Vera Bergengruen shared a similar story."This has happened to me coming back into the country too, last year," Bergengruen said. "A pretty aggressive questioning about who I worked for and 'fake news.'"After Dyer's experience, a USCBP spokesperson told The Daily Beast that "unappropriated comments or behavior are not tolerated, and do not reflect our values of vigilance, integrity and professionalism."After the incident with Mack in February, USCBP said that the officer's comments "do not reflect CBP's commitment to integrity and professionalism of its workforce," and vowed to immediately review the event."I hope—I can only hope that you treat this incident as incidental," said Meehan. "It does not reflect the agency, and certainly not the professionalism that its officers strive to maintain."Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Trump told China he would keep quiet on Hong Kong protests, report says Posted: 04 Oct 2019 04:15 AM PDT  Donald Trump reportedly told China's president he would remain quiet on protests in Hong Kong as trade talks between Washington and Beijing progressed.The US president pledged not speak out over the months-long unrest in the Chinese territory during a phone call with Xi Jinping in which he also discussed his political rivals Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren, according to US broadcaster CNN.
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| Theranos founder accused of bilking lawyers in civil case Posted: 04 Oct 2019 03:02 PM PDT  The founder of scandalized blood-testing startup Theranos is now being accused of skipping out on bills owed to the lawyers defending her against fraud charges in a civil lawsuit. Elizabeth Holmes, who ran Theranos until its 2018 collapse, hasn't paid her Palo Alto, California, attorney John Dwyer and his colleagues for the past year, according to documents filed Monday in Phoenix federal court. The documents cited Holmes "current financial situation" without elaborating.
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| Jury finds Chicago gang member guilty in the murder of 9-year-old Tyshawn Lee Posted: 03 Oct 2019 07:22 PM PDT  A jury found gang member Drwight Boone-Doty guilty Thursday in the murder of Tyshawn Lee, a 9-year-old boy was shot and killed.
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| National Geographic journalist injured in shootout in Mexico: local authorities Posted: 05 Oct 2019 07:58 AM PDT ![National Geographic journalist injured in shootout in Mexico: local authorities]( "National Geographic journalist injured in shootout in Mexico: local authorities") A National Geographic journalist was shot in the leg in Mexico late Friday while interviewing an alleged drug dealer, who was killed when four armed men stormed in on the interview, local prosecutors said. It said the journalist was taken to a local hospital for treatment and that the rest of the team were being protected by the Attorney General's office. Representatives from National Geographic did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
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| Iraq Set to Join China’s Belt and Road Project amid Violent Anti-Government Unrest Posted: 04 Oct 2019 11:03 AM PDT  Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi announced during a state visit to Beijing on Sept. 23 that Iraq will sign on to China's "Belt and Road" international infrastructure project, according to the Asia Times."Iraq has gone through war and civil strife and is grateful to China for its valuable support," Mahdi said during a visit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. According to Chinese state news agency Xinhua, trade between the two countries recently exceeded $30 billion."China would like, from a new starting point together with Iraq, to push forward the China-Iraq strategic partnership," Xi stated. He said the two countries would collaborate on oil and infrastructure projects. Iraq is China's second biggest oil supplier, while Beijing has become Baghdad's biggest trade partner over the last few years.The news comes in the midst of a turbulent time for Iraq, where violent anti-government protests have resulted in over 40 deaths and internet access being cut throughout much of the country.The protests organically emerged after thousands, mostly young men, took to the streets to demand jobs, improved utilities such as electricity and water, and an uprooting of corruption in the oil-rich countryIn a televised address to the nation Friday, Mahdi urged the nation to "return life to normal" and "respect the law," and told the people their demands would be recognized."We will not make empty promises . . . or promise what we cannot achieve," Mahdi said.
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| How 1 Parade Proves China's Military Is Becoming Very Dangerous Posted: 04 Oct 2019 10:00 AM PDT  Drones, missiles and much more.
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| 10 Parking Feats That Are Completely Next Level Posted: 04 Oct 2019 08:27 AM PDT |
| A Jeffrey Epstein accuser blames Victoria's Secret owner Les Wexner for sexual assault that she says occurred on his Ohio property Posted: 05 Oct 2019 01:04 PM PDT  In New Albany, Ohio, Maria Farmer says Jeffrey Epstein assaulted her in a home owned by CEO Les Wexner, with guards who wouldn't let her leave.
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| Ukraine, a DNC Server and a Tale of Sabotage That Seeped Into the Oval Office Posted: 04 Oct 2019 05:15 AM PDT  In an April 2017 interview with The Associated Press, President Donald Trump suddenly began talking about the hack of the Democratic National Committee a year earlier, complaining that the FBI had not physically examined the compromised server."They brought in another company that I hear is Ukrainian-based," the president said."CrowdStrike?" the surprised reporter asked, referring to the California cybersecurity company that investigated how Russian government hackers had stolen and leaked Democratic emails, disrupting Hillary Clinton's campaign."That's what I heard," Trump resumed. "I heard it's owned by a very rich Ukrainian; that's what I heard."More than two years later, Trump was still holding on to this false conspiracy theory. In his July call with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine, he summed it up in a sort of shorthand -- at least according to the White House memorandum, labeled "not a verbatim transcript.""I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike … I guess you have one of your wealthy people …," the president said. It is unclear whether the ellipses indicate that words were omitted or that Trump's voice was trailing off.Then he added one novel detail: "The server, they say Ukraine has it."Now, Trump's call for Ukraine to look into his CrowdStrike story forms the background to the House impeachment inquiry, which is focused on the second request he made: that Zelenskiy investigate Trump's possible 2020 opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden. Trump has placed a concoction of disprovable claims, of the kind usually found on the fringes of the web, squarely in the middle of American politics and diplomacy.The tale of the supposedly hidden server may have appealed to Trump because it undercut a well-established fact that he has resented and resisted for three years: The Russian government interfered in the 2016 election to help him win, an effort thoroughly documented by American intelligence agencies and amply supported by public evidence.By contrast, there is no evidence to support the president's vague suggestion that Ukraine, not Russia, might be responsible for the hacking, or that CrowdStrike somehow connived in it. But his alternate history has provided a psychological shield for the president against facts that he believes tarnish his electoral victory.Trump has long called for better relations with Vladimir Putin's Russia and brushed aside complaints about its conduct. So there is a certain symmetry to his suggestion that Ukraine, Russia's opponent and the victim of its territorial grab, may somehow have framed Russia for the 2016 election activity."Ukraine is the perfect scapegoat for him, because it's the enemy of Russia," said Nina Jankowicz, a fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington who regularly visits Ukraine and is writing a book called "How to Lose the Information War."She noted that a number of Ukraine-linked stories, some of them distorted or exaggerated, have been pulled together by Trump's supporters into a single narrative.For example, there is the idea, promoted by the president's lawyer Rudy Giuliani, that Ukraine's government actively sabotaged Trump's 2016 campaign. A Ukrainian-American lawyer who consulted for the DNC looked into the finances of Paul Manafort and spoke with Ukrainian embassy officials. But there appears to have been no organized Ukrainian government effort to intervene -- certainly nothing comparable to the activities of Russian intelligence agencies ordered by Putin.It is true that a Ukrainian legislator helped publicize documents on Manafort's multimillion-dollar payments from a Ukrainian political party, leading to his resignation as Trump's campaign chairman. But the claim of Manafort's wrongdoing turned out to be justified. He is now serving seven and a half years in prison for financial fraud and other crimes.In May, Trump recalled the American ambassador to Kyiv, Marie Yovanovitch, appointed by President Barack Obama in 2016, telling others she was scheming against his administration. She has denied it.And Trump has repeatedly charged that Biden, who handled Ukrainian affairs as vice president, tried to get a prosecutor fired for investigating a Ukrainian energy company that paid his son, Hunter, handsomely as a board member despite a lack of experience in Ukraine. In fact, multiple countries were pressing for the firing of the prosecutor, who they thought was turning a blind eye to corruption."Now it seems like all of these conspiracy theories are merging into one," Jankowicz said. She studies disinformation, she said, but Trump produced one claim she'd never come across."I do this for a living, and I'd never heard anyone say the servers were in Ukraine," she said.In the 27 months between Trump's two citations of the CrowdStrike-Ukraine conspiracy theory, it has survived despite many denials from CrowdStrike, the FBI and people directly involved in the investigations. It has survived despite the fact that the DNC put one of its hacked servers on display -- not in Ukraine but in its Washington offices beside the filing cabinet pried open in 1972 by the Watergate burglars (and a photo of the two artifacts ran on The Times's front page). It has survived despite the indictment prepared last year by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, laying out in extraordinary detail the actions of 12 named Russian military intelligence officers who hacked the DNC and other election targets.The speculation springs from what Trump has called a "big Dem scam" -- the false notion that the FBI never really investigated the DNC hack. In fact, according to people directly involved, CrowdStrike was in regular contact with the bureau in spring 2016 as it examined dozens of servers used by both the DNC and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.It is true, as Trump has often tweeted, that FBI agents never took physical possession of the Democrats' servers. But CrowdStrike supplied the FBI with digital copies of the servers so that the bureau could assess the Russian malware infecting them. The Mueller investigation later confirmed CrowdStrike's findings.Still, the president has clung to the theory linking CrowdStrike, Ukraine and the DNC servers despite the repeated efforts of his aides to dissuade him, Thomas Bossert, his former homeland security adviser, said on Sunday on ABC's "This Week." "The DNC server and that conspiracy theory has got to go," he said. "If he continues to focus on that white whale, it's going to bring him down."To go in search of the roots of Trump's CrowdStrike-Ukraine conspiracy theory is to travel the internet's most peculiar provinces and the darkest threads on Twitter and Facebook. On 4chan and pro-Trump spaces on Reddit, on websites like ZeroHedge.com and Washington's Blog, you can find plenty of speculation about evil manipulation by CrowdStrike and secret maneuvers by Ukrainians -- often inflamed by Trump's own statements.Until the president's statements, however, even internet speculation did not attribute CrowdStrike's ownership to a rich Ukrainian or suggest that the DNC servers were hidden in Ukraine.George Eliason, an American journalist who lives in eastern Ukraine where pro-Russian separatists fought Ukrainian forces, has written extensively about what he considers to be a "coup attempt" against Trump involving American and Ukrainian intelligence agencies and CrowdStrike. He said he did not know if his writings for obscure websites might have influenced the president."CrowdStrike and Ukrainian Intel are working hand in glove," he wrote in an email. "Is Ukrainian Intelligence trying to invent a reason for the U.S. to take a hard line stance against Russia? Are they using CrowdStrike to carry this out?"Eliason and other purveyors of Ukraine conspiracies often point to the Atlantic Council, a research group in Washington, as the locus of the schemes. The Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk has made donations to the council and serves on its international advisory board; Dmitri Alperovitch, CrowdStrike's co-founder, who was born in Russia and came to the United States as a child, is an Atlantic Council senior fellow.That connection seems slender, but it may be the origin of Trump's association of a wealthy Ukrainian with CrowdStrike.Pro-Trump media leaped last week to defend the president's Ukraine theories. Rush Limbaugh said on his radio show that Trump's "reference to CrowdStrike, mark my words, is momentous," though he did not say why.And Russian state news outlets are always ready to cheer on Trump's efforts to point the blame for the 2016 hack away from Moscow. On Sept. 25, after the White House released its memo on the Zelenskiy call, Russia's Sputnik news website ran a story supporting Trump's remarks.The Sputnik article cited Eliason's writings and suggested that CrowdStrike might have framed Russia for the DNC hack -- if it occurred at all. It quoted a Twitter account called "The Last Refuge" declaring: "The DNC servers were never hacked."All this mythmaking about the 2016 hack frustrates Robert Johnston, who was the lead investigator for CrowdStrike on the DNC inquiry. Johnston, a former Marine and Cyber Command operator, said he could make no sense of Trump's assertions."It doesn't connect with anything in my experience," he said. "I'd be interested in the president of Ukraine's impression."Johnston, now chief executive of the cybersecurity company Adlumin, said he was weary of the conspiracies surrounding what he considered a straightforward conclusion. Having seen the digital fingerprints of Russian intelligence in earlier hacking cases, he felt there was little doubt about the identity of the perpetrators."I don't know how you get to this point," Johnston said of the fantasies Trump has promoted. "This is a story that just won't die."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company
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| NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn't happen this week Posted: 04 Oct 2019 12:14 PM PDT  None of these is legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. CLAIM: So-called "climate change" is mostly driven by factors unrelated to human activity, NASA scientists say. THE FACTS: Articles circulating online in early October wrongly suggest that NASA has rejected human responsibility for climate change and, instead, attributed the phenomenon to variations in Earth's axis and tilt.
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| Tucker Carlson turns on Trump for asking Ukraine to investigate Biden: ‘There’s no way to spin this’ Posted: 05 Oct 2019 07:24 AM PDT  Fox News host Tucker Carlson criticized President Trump for encouraging Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden in a rare break from his devoted support for the president.
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| China removes former head of securities regulator from government post after corruption probe Posted: 04 Oct 2019 06:03 AM PDT ![China removes former head of securities regulator from government post after corruption probe]( "China removes former head of securities regulator from government post after corruption probe") SHANGHAI/SINGAPORE (Reuters) - The former head of China's top securities regulator, Liu Shiyu, has been removed from a government position following an investigation by the country's anti-corruption watchdog, the watchdog said on Friday. Liu "severely violated political discipline and political rules", received gifts and used his power and position to seek personal gains for others, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said in a statement. Liu will remain a member of the Chinese communist party, the watchdog said.
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