| Not much for Trump to be thankful for in latest impeachment news Posted: 27 Nov 2019 02:12 PM PST  While House Democrats concluded their public hearings last Thursday in the impeachment inquiry of Donald Trump, a flurry of new developments and disclosures this week appeared to increase the odds that he will become the third U.S. president to face a trial in the Senate that could (although most likely won't) end with his removal from office.
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| Dutch prosecutors charge isolated farm father with sex abuse Posted: 28 Nov 2019 04:23 AM PST  A Dutch father accused of holding six of his children against their will on an isolated farm for nine years is now also suspected of sexually abusing two of his other children, prosecutors said Thursday. The abuse allegations add a grim new element to a case that is shrouded in mystery and garnered huge attention across the Netherlands. The 67-year-old father and a 58-year-old man, who is reportedly an Austrian national and rented the farm to the family, are suspected of illegal deprivation of liberty and abuse for their alleged detention of six young adults on a farm in the rural farming village of Ruinerwold.
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| Unhappy Thanksgiving: Explosions at Texas chemical plant keep more than 50,000 out of their homes Posted: 28 Nov 2019 04:15 PM PST  More than 50,000 people in southeast Texas remain under evacuation orders on Thanksgiving after two powerful explosions at a chemical plant.
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| Russia says it showed nuclear missile system to U.S. inspectors Posted: 27 Nov 2019 08:43 AM PST  Russia's Ministry of Defense said on Tuesday it had shown the country's new Avangard nuclear missile system to U.S. inspectors for the first time, a development that Moscow said showed a key arms control treaty was still effective.
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| Fire in Minnesota High-Rise Apartment Building Leaves 5 Dead, 4 Injured Posted: 27 Nov 2019 08:49 AM PST  "It's a very tragic night at the beginning of the holiday weekend," said fire chief John Fruetel.
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| Leaked Chinese documents give unprecedented insight into how Muslim detention centers in Xinjiang control detainees' every move Posted: 27 Nov 2019 12:06 AM PST  Uighur activities, including indoctrination classes, mealtimes, family visits, medical treatments, and even bathroom breaks are "strictly managed."
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| 21 of the Most Beautiful Sacred Sites That Every Traveler Must Visit Posted: 28 Nov 2019 05:00 AM PST |
| Forty years on, New Zealand apologizes for Antarctic plane disaster Posted: 27 Nov 2019 08:18 PM PST  New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern apologized on Thursday for the then-government's handling of a plane crash in Antarctica 40 years ago that took the lives of 257 people in the country's worst peacetime disaster. On 28 November 1979, Air New Zealand flight 901 was on a sightseeing tour from Auckland when it crashed into the side of Mount Erebus, a 3,794 meter (12,448 ft) volcano near the U.S. Antarctic research base of McMurdo Station. Originally the crash was blamed on the pilots, but following a public outcry, a Royal Commission of Inquiry was set up to investigate the disaster.
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| Trump peddles 'war on Thanksgiving' that he probably heard about on Fox News Posted: 27 Nov 2019 09:18 AM PST  Like the so-called war on Christmas, the rhetorical assault on Thanksgiving is being led by the president's favorite cable news network.
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| Row over Chinese 5G equipment further strains U.S.-German relations Posted: 27 Nov 2019 07:43 PM PST  U.S. Ambassador Richard Grenell called a German official's remarks this week "an insult to the thousands of American troops who helped ensure Germany's security."
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| Customs agents seize $95M in counterfeit goods along with thousands of fake IDs Posted: 27 Nov 2019 08:38 PM PST  Customs officials said in a statement that counterfeiting sales can be traced to organized crime, drug trafficking and terrorist organizations.
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| TikTok Blocks Teen Who Posted About China's Detention Camps Posted: 27 Nov 2019 05:15 AM PST  SHANGHAI -- The teenage girl, pink eyelash curler in hand, begins her video innocently: "Hi, guys. I'm going to teach you guys how to get long lashes."After a few seconds, she asks viewers to put down their curlers. "Use your phone that you're using right now to search up what's happening in China, how they're getting concentration camps, throwing innocent Muslims in there," she says.The sly bait-and-switch puts a serious topic -- the mass detentions of minority Muslims in northwest China -- in front of an audience that might not have known about it before. The 40-second clip has amassed more than 498,000 likes on TikTok, a social platform where the users skew young and the videos skew silly.But the video's creator, Feroza Aziz, said this week that TikTok had suspended her account after she posted the clip. That added to a widespread fear about the platform: that its owner, Chinese social media giant ByteDance, censors or punishes videos that China's government might not like.A ByteDance spokesman, Josh Gartner, said Aziz had been blocked from her TikTok account because she used a previous account to post a video that contained an image of Osama bin Laden. This violated TikTok's policies against terrorist content, Gartner said, which is why the platform banned both her account and the devices from which she was posting."If she tries to use the device that she used last time, she will probably have a problem," Gartner said.Aziz, a 17-year-old Muslim high school student in New Jersey, said in an email on Tuesday that her TikTok videos tried to make light of the racism and discrimination she experienced growing up in the United States. In one video, she addressed a slur that she said she and other Muslims heard regularly: that they would marry bin Laden."I think that TikTok should not ban content that doesn't harm anyone or shows anyone being harmed," Aziz said.In recent months, U.S. lawmakers have expressed concerns that TikTok censors video content at Beijing's behest and shares user data with Chinese authorities.The head of TikTok, Alex Zhu, denied those accusations in an interview with The Times this month. Zhu said that Chinese regulators did not influence TikTok in any way and that even ByteDance could not control TikTok's policies for managing video content in the United States.But episodes such as Aziz's show how difficult it might be for TikTok to escape the fog of suspicion that surrounds it and other Chinese tech companies.China's government rigidly controls the internet within the nation's borders. It exerts influence, sometimes subtly, over the activities of private businesses. The concern is that, when companies like ByteDance and telecom equipment maker Huawei expand overseas, Beijing's long arm follows them.China would certainly prefer that the world did not talk about its clampdown on Muslims. Over the past few years, the government has corralled as many as 1 million ethnic Uighurs, Kazakhs and others into internment camps and prisons.Chinese leaders have presented their efforts as a mild and benevolent campaign to fight Islamic extremism. But internal Communist Party documents reported by The Times this month provided an inside glimpse at the crackdown and confirmed its coercive nature.On Tuesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said at a news conference in Washington that the documents showed "brutal detention and systematic repression" of Uighurs and called on China to immediately release those who were detained. President Donald Trump, however, has refused to impose sanctions on Chinese officials deemed responsible, despite recommendations from some U.S. officials to do so.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company
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| 7 People Sentenced to Death for Bangladesh’s Worst Terrorist Attack Posted: 26 Nov 2019 11:08 PM PST  (Bloomberg) -- A trial court sentenced seven people to death for their roles in Bangladesh's worst terrorist attack, which killed 20 diners, most of them foreigners, in a cafe in 2016.Judge Mojibur Rahman pronounced the verdict in a packed Dhaka courtroom on Wednesday, Dhaka Metropolitan Chief Public Prosecutor Abdullah Abu said at a briefing. The decision brings to a close the year-long trial that followed a two-year investigation, which saw one accused being acquitted. The indicted have the right to appeal."They wanted to destabilize the country and destroy the economy by forcing foreigners and investors to leave Bangladesh," prosecutors said in case documents.Nine Italians, seven Japanese, one Indian and three Bangladeshis were killed by terrorists who stormed the Holey Artisan restaurant in the diplomatic area of Dhaka in 2016. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the 12-hour hostage crisis.Security forces shot dead five attackers and also, reports say mistakenly, a pizza chef during the rescue operation codenamed "Thunderbolt."The convicts yelled "Allahu Akbar," or "Allah is the greatest," in the courtroom, according to prosecutor Abu.At least two suspected militants tied to the attack are at large, according to Monirul Islam, chief of the police's counterterrorism unit.To contact the reporter on this story: Arun Devnath in Dhaka at adevnath@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Arijit Ghosh at aghosh@bloomberg.net, Jeanette Rodrigues, Abhay SinghFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Europeans fear climate change more than terrorism, unemployment or migration Posted: 28 Nov 2019 06:30 AM PST ![Europeans fear climate change more than terrorism, unemployment or migration]( "Europeans fear climate change more than terrorism, unemployment or migration") Almost half of all Europeans fear climate change more than losing a job or of a terrorist attack, a study by the European Investment Bank (EIB) showed on Thursday as EU lawmakers declared a "climate emergency". The symbolic vote by lawmakers was designed to pressure for action against global warming at an upcoming United Nations summit.. The EIB survey of 30,000 respondents from 30 countries, including China and the United States, showed 47% of Europeans saw climate change as the number one threat in their lives, above unemployment, large scale migration and concerns about terrorism.
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| Gaza protests cancelled for third week: statement Posted: 28 Nov 2019 03:16 AM PST  Palestinian protests along the Gaza-Israel border have been cancelled for the third week, organisers said on Thursday, amid declining turnout and fears of a fresh conflict in the Gaza Strip. A statement by the organising committee said it had decided to postpone this Friday's marches to "avoid giving an opportunity to the Zionist enemy (Israel)" and due to "the very dangerous security conditions" after a deadly flareup in Gaza earlier this month. It argued that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was looking for an opportunity to divert attention after being indicted on corruption charges and a new conflict with Gaza could help him do so.
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| Your talking points for the 2020 race, in time for Thanksgiving dinner Posted: 27 Nov 2019 01:30 PM PST  Frequently asked questions — and some straightforward answers — about every candidate still in the race for the White House.
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| Dubai police adding Tesla's new Cybertruck to their fleet? Posted: 27 Nov 2019 02:36 AM PST  After a botched demonstration of the Cybertruck's armor glass windows – which shattered – the Dubai Police still seem impressed with Elon Musks' latest invention
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| UN expert: Zimbabwe hunger ‘shocking’ for country not at war Posted: 28 Nov 2019 05:29 AM PST ![UN expert: Zimbabwe hunger 'shocking' for country not at war]( "UN expert: Zimbabwe hunger 'shocking' for country not at war") Zimbabwe is on the brink of man-made starvation and the number of people needing help is "shocking" for a country not in conflict, a United Nations special expert on the right to food said Thursday. Hilal Elver said she found stunted and underweight children, mothers too hungry to breastfeed their babies and medicine shortages in hospitals during her 10-day visit to the economically shattered country. Zimbabwe's food crisis has the potential to spark fighting, the U.N. expert said.
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| ICE arrested an estimated 250 people who enrolled in a fake university set up by federal authorities as part of an immigration sting operation Posted: 27 Nov 2019 09:02 AM PST  A grand-jury indictment from January alleged that "the University was being used by foreign citizens as a 'pay to stay' scheme" to obtain visas.
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| No F-35, But a Real Killer: Don't Underestimate China's J-20 Stealth Fighter Posted: 27 Nov 2019 01:00 PM PST  Just because it isn't as powerful as an F-22 or F-35, doesn't mean it isn't a tough plane.
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| Founders wanted a powerful president Posted: 27 Nov 2019 08:48 PM PST  Many on the left have made it their mission to hinder and undermine Trump's government: Opposing view
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| 47 Nigerian men plead not guilty to homosexuality charge Posted: 27 Nov 2019 09:51 AM PST  Forty-seven Nigerian men pleaded innocent on Wednesday to a charge of public displays of affection with members of the same sex, an offence that carries a 10-year jail term. Homosexuality is outlawed in many socially conservative African societies where some religious groups brand it a corrupting Western import. The Nigerian men, who appeared at a court in the commercial capital Lagos, were among 57 arrested in a police raid on a hotel in the impoverished Egbeda district of the city in 2018.
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| Spain 'narco-sub' carried 100 mn euros of cocaine: officials Posted: 27 Nov 2019 10:05 AM PST  A submarine seized off the Spanish coast over the weekend was carrying three tonnes of cocaine worth 100 million euros ($110 million), officials said Wednesday. Police intercepted the 20-metre (65-foot) submarine -- thought to be the first of its kind captured in Europe -- off the northwestern region of Galicia on Saturday. While traffickers, especially from Colombia, have been caught using submarines to transport cocaine into Mexico and the United States, police said Saturday's seizure was "the first time that this system of transporting drugs has been detected in Europe".
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| GOP's closed-door conspiracy theory led to Hill's public rebuke Posted: 27 Nov 2019 10:29 AM PST  Russia expert Fiona Hill rebuked Republicans during the impeachment hearings for pushing a narrative about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election. It was the false equivalence between Russia's systematic, government-driven campaign and the actions of a few Ukrainian individuals that created Hill's concern.
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| Beijing accuses developing countries, the U.S. of not doing enough to curb global warming Posted: 27 Nov 2019 09:07 AM PST  Beijing on Wednesday accused developed countries including the US of doing too little to curb global warming, ahead of a UN summit discussing controversial issues including climate compensation. China is the world's second-largest economy and the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, but has repeatedly argued that developed nations should lead on tackling international climate obligations.
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| 30 Clever-Approved Sofas That Won't Blow Your Budget Posted: 28 Nov 2019 05:00 AM PST |
| The Secret of China's Aircraft Carriers Posted: 28 Nov 2019 12:30 AM PST  "China understands that if conflict with the United States comes, its carriers' warfighting capability would—like the rest of its arsenal—have to be employed based on the principle of calculated risk. It would be wise for strategists in the United States to remember these same principles."
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| Israel says envoy's 'GOOD LUCK' to Myanmar for genocide case was a mistake Posted: 28 Nov 2019 01:52 AM PST ![Israel says envoy's 'GOOD LUCK' to Myanmar for genocide case was a mistake]( "Israel says envoy's 'GOOD LUCK' to Myanmar for genocide case was a mistake") The Israeli ambassador was mistaken to have sent a "GOOD LUCK" message to Myanmar ahead of World Court hearings on accusations the state committed genocide against Rohingya Muslims, Israel's foreign ministry said on Thursday. Israel's Haaretz newspaper reported that the ambassador to Myanmar wished authorities good luck in tweets that have since been deleted ahead of the hearings next month at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague.
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| North Korea fires two 'unidentified projectiles' on Thanksgiving Posted: 28 Nov 2019 01:35 PM PST  North Korea fired two "unidentified projectiles" on Thursday -- the Thanksgiving holiday in the US -- Seoul said, as nuclear talks between Pyongyang and Washington remain deadlocked. The projectiles were fired eastwards from South Hamgyong province and came down in the Sea of Japan, also known as the East Sea, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said. It was also one day short of the two-year anniversary of the North's first test of its Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile, which analysts say is capable of reaching the entire US mainland.
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| New toll road cuts Moscow-Saint Petersburg drive in half Posted: 27 Nov 2019 07:54 AM PST  President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday opened what has been billed as Russia's first modern motorway, almost halving the driving time between the two biggest cities of Moscow and Saint Petersburg. The "Neva" toll road, running 669 kilometres (416 miles) and named after Saint Petersburg's main river, is Russia's first long-distance toll road. It boasts no traffic lights and a higher maximum speed limit of 130 kilometres per hour (81 miles per hour) versus 110 kph on other roads.
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| Private investigators focused on frat party in Cornell University freshman’s death Posted: 28 Nov 2019 02:30 AM PST  Another element of the parents' search for answers is the history of Cornell student suicides connected to the gorges in Ithaca.
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| Hong Kong activists call for global support after US laws Posted: 27 Nov 2019 04:36 PM PST  Chanting "Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong," pro-democracy activists on Thursday urged the world to follow U.S. footsteps in supporting human rights in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory, as police teams began a cleanup of a university earlier occupied by demonstrators. Waving U.S. flags, thousands crowded a public square in central Hong Kong for a night "Thanksgiving" rally to thank the United States for passing two Hong Kong laws and vowed to "march on" with their fight, now entering its sixth month. Prominent activist Joshua Wong, who was among those who lobbied for the new U.S. laws, said it was remarkable that human rights had triumphed over crucial U.S.-China trade talks.
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| U.S. Fertility Rate Falls for Fourth Consecutive Year in 2018, Reaching Record Low Posted: 27 Nov 2019 06:00 AM PST  The U.S. fertility rate declined in 2018 for the fourth consecutive year, reaching a record low 59.1 births for every 1,000 women able to bear children, the National Center for Health Statistics announced on Wednesday.The fertility rate has been on the decline since the 2008 recession, with a slight rebound in 2014. Typically, economic crises lead to a decline in fertility rates, but the current decline has not reversed even as the economy has recovered."It is hard for me to believe that the birthrate just keeps going down," University of New Hampshire demographer Kenneth Johnson told to the New York Times."The data suggest that people want to establish themselves before having children," Alison Gemmill, a demographer at Johns Hopkins University, told the Times. "They also want to make sure they have adequate resources to raise quality children."The median age at which women give birth has increased continuously over the past several decades. William Frey, a senior demographer at the Brookings Institution, said the median childbearing age in the 1970's was 21 for women and 23 for men, while data from the Census Bureau show that the median childbearing age in 2018 was 28 for women and 30 for men. The number of women giving birth under the age of 35 has also steadily declined, with more women giving birth in their 30's and 40's.The annual rate of births per woman, which for 2018 was 59.1/1000 is known as the general fertility rate. A different metric, the total fertility rate, measures the likely number of children the average woman will have during her lifetime, if current fertility patterns hold.For 2018 the TFR stood at 1.73, according to a Pew study released in May. This means that women are having fewer than two children on average, below replacement level for the general population.
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| UPS workers allegedly trafficked 1,000s of pounds of drugs and fake vape pens across the country Posted: 28 Nov 2019 06:56 AM PST  "They've been doing it for so long that they were truly comfortable that they were never going to get caught."
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| Why NATO Is Stronger Than Ever Posted: 27 Nov 2019 02:37 AM PST  The twenty-nine countries of the Western military alliance are now responsible for 53 percent of the global GDP. Half of that total is American, but the other half comes from countries like the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy.
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| New retrial ordered for South Korea ex-leader Park Posted: 27 Nov 2019 07:33 PM PST  South Korea's top court on Thursday ordered a second retrial for disgraced former president Park Geun-hye, seeking heavier punishment for illegally taking money from the country's spy agency. Park, the country's first female president, was impeached in 2017 after huge street protests over a sprawling scandal, and already faces a separate retrial for corruption and abuse of power that could add to her 25-year jail term. Thursday's ruling came after an appeals court reduced Park's sentence by one year to five years in prison in proceedings for pocketing money from the National Intelligence Service.
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| U.S. planned to separate 26,000 migrant families in 2018 Posted: 27 Nov 2019 11:47 PM PST  The estimate was revealed by a watchdog report, which also found the U.S. can't calculate how many families it separated due to unreliable data.
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| Daughters of late Rep. Elijah Cummings endorse father's aide, not widow, in race to fill his seat Posted: 27 Nov 2019 05:40 AM PST  Jennifer Cummings and her sister, Adia, "are supporting Harry Spikes for Congress because for the past 15 years he's worked alongside our father."
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