| Iran tried to seize British oil tanker: report Posted: 10 Jul 2019 05:26 PM PDT  Armed Iranian boats attempted to seize a British tanker in strategic Gulf waters on Wednesday but were driven off by a Royal Navy frigate, CNN reported. The Iranians ordered the British Heritage oil tanker, which was crossing into the Strait of Hormuz area, to change course and stop in Tehran's nearby waters, CNN said, citing two American officials. A US aircraft shot video of the incident, which ended when the HMS Montrose -- which was escorting the tanker -- trained its guns on the boats and successfully warned them to back off, the channel said.
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| Florida deputy arrested for planting meth, other drugs in nearly 120 cases: what we know Posted: 11 Jul 2019 10:18 AM PDT  Former Jackson County, Florida deputy Zach Wester was arrested for allegedly planting drugs on unsuspecting motorists before arresting them.
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| New Orleans area braces for first hurricane of the season Posted: 11 Jul 2019 12:51 PM PDT  Thousands of Louisianans broke out sandbags or fled to higher ground Thursday as Tropical Storm Barry threatened to turn into the first hurricane of the season and blow ashore with torrential rains that could pose a severe test of New Orleans' improved post-Katrina flood defenses. National Guard troops and rescue crews in high-water vehicles took up positions around the state as Louisiana braced for the arrival of the storm along its swampy southern tip Friday night or early Saturday. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, who declared an emergency earlier in the week as the storm brewed in the Gulf of Mexico, warned that the storm's blow could form a dangerous combination with the already-high Mississippi River, which has been swelled by heavy rain and snowmelt upriver this spring.
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| Some of Putin’s Top Cops Are Mobsters. Even KGB Vets Are Ashamed. Posted: 10 Jul 2019 01:35 AM PDT  Michael Klimentyev/RIA Novosti/Kremlin/ReutersMOSCOW—Crime scandals involving Russia's most powerful law enforcement agency have rocked this capital, exposing some phenomenal corruption at the heart of President Vladimir Putin's power structure. Ranking officers of the Federal Security Service, known as the FSB, are allegedly involved, as are members of some of its most elite units. In April, authorities arrested three officials from the FSB's Department K, which deals with economic crimes and financial counterintelligence. Kirill Cherkalin, the former head of the unit, and Andrey Vasilyev and Dmitry Frolov, his associates, were jailed on suspicion they took huge bribes from banks and other commerce they were supposed to supervise. A video purported to show the equivalent of $185.5 million being hauled out of Cherkalin's residence. The initial charge against him involved a single bribe worth $850,000.The Liberation of Ivan Golunov Felt Like a Burst of Freedom in Russia, but Not for LongOne might think those arrests made by the internal affairs division of the FSB would make other criminals in the security force lie low. But no. Others were allegedly robbing banks. Last week RBC, one of Russia's most respected newspapers, reported the arrests of four FSB agents from the Alfa and Vympel special forces units, and two more from Department K. The number has since grown to 15 suspects, according to press reports. But the FSB has confirmed only two arrests.While supposedly conducting legitimate searches, or shepherding shipments of currency, the accused are supposed to have removed the heavy ballistic plates from their bullet-proof vests and stuffed them with money instead, but such details have not been confirmed officially.There must be massive turmoil in the depths of the gloomy FSB headquarters, the nerve center of Russia's police power located just across Lubyanka Square from the buildings of the Kremlin's administrative offices. All of Russia's leading newspapers reported that Instead of providing security, FSB agents robbed the Metallurg Bank, reportedly controlled by a former officer in Military Intelligence (the GRU) named Yury Karasev. If true, that's an interesting wrinkle since the FSB and GRU are rival secret services.Moscovskij Komsomolets, a newspaper with a circulation approaching one million copies, says in its Friday report: "Generals of the special services were shocked to hear about the arrests of FSB agents accused of a bank robbery on Ivan Babushkin Street and of stealing 140 million rubles ($2.2 million.)" Veteran agents of the Soviet KGB, the predecessor of the FSB, said they were disgusted by the scandal."This is the first time in the entire history of the Russian secret police when we see the triumph of greed that surpasses greed—so many officers of elite departments committing crimes," retired Maj. Gen. Aleksei Kandaurov told The Daily Beast. "The FSB is not a security service any longer, it has changed its status completely: it is now a service that enforces Putin's rule, and in exchange abuses its authority for purposes of enrichment."Gen. Kandaurov remembers the last days of the KGB, which had an infamous heritage dating back to the Cheka at the time of the revolution, and the NKVD under Joseph Stalin. As the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 there was popular rage against the Communist regime's symbols and its obsession with secrecy, but the officers of the KGB—among them one Vladimir Putin—saw themselves as defenders of a regime and indeed an empire that they had served all their lives. They worked on fixed salaries.On the night of August, 22, 1991, Kandaurov watched from the window of his office as thousands of protesters demanded the removal of the statue of Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the Bolshevik leader Vladmir Lenin appointed to be the director of the All-Russia Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counter-revolution and Sabotage (Cheka). Dzerzhinsky is seen as the symbol of the Bolseviks' political repressions and mass killings. "We represent in ourselves organized terror—this must be said very clearly," Dzerzhinsky proclaimed during the period known as the Red Terror that began in 1918.The modern state security agency, FSB, has been reviving the memory of Dzerzhinsky just as Putin has burnished the reputation of Joseph Stalin. Today many officials hang portraits of the secret police founder on their walls. In 2017 the agency celebrated the 100th anniversary of Cheka-NKVD-KGB-FSB, as a proud successor. But veterans see the current organization as an inglorious pretender to the fame of the older ones."FSB agents should stop hiding behind the KGB reputation, behind Dzerzhinsky. If he were alive, he would have executed most of these corrupt officers as his ideological enemies," Kandaurov told The Daily Beast. When the KGB Wanted You Dead, This Is How They Killed YouRussia has glorified "Alfa" and "Vympel" as legendary, heroic special operators who saw service in the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan during the 1980s and many other more secretive theaters. At the Balashikha Cemetery near Moscow there are sad rows of tombstones where each is marked with an "A" or "V" for the soldiers of these units who gave their lives rescuing hostages during the Beslan school siege in September 2004. In the past few years Russian special operators have died anonymously in secret operations in Ukraine."Today's thugs in the special forces put shame on all the past heroes," a retired KGB officer and corruption fighter, Gennady Gudkov, told The Daily Beast. "The FSB violates its authority for 'operative activities,' which was given to them to stop transactions for terrorism or drug deals. Now a group of elite FSB and special forces units used their authority to rob a bank; but the bank informed Moscow police investigators and the organized criminal group was arrested."A channel on the Telegram messaging service covering the latest news about Russian gangsters, oligarchs and bureaucrats, said on Monday that authorities fired the head of Moscow's FSB Directorate, Alexey Dorofeyev.Last month police tried to stop an investigation by a Medusa Project reporter, Ivan Golunov, into Dorofeyev's links to a corrupt funeral business. After spending months researching figures and beneficiaries of the funeral industry, Golunov discovered some links connecting shadowy figures and senior FSB officers. But somebody decided to stop the reporter from publishing: police planted drugs on Golunov and kept him behind bars for five days, while thousands of people joined protests in support of the journalist.Russian veterans of secret services gossip about three "towers" of FSB power: the richest one is allegedly supported by the almighty Putin's ally, Igor Sechin, the head of the vast Rosneft energy company; the second one also enjoys enormous financial resources and is backed by another of Putin's long-time friends, Sergey Chemizov, the head of the Russian arms export agency; the third, the weakest financially, nonetheless has the best network of secret agents and is backed by the head of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Sergey Naryshkin. Some see a connection between these rivalries and the revelations about high-level criminality."It feels like everything is falling down," a major general of the FSB reserve, Alexander Mikhailov, told reporters last week. "I want to tell you that all the old employees are shocked by what is happening. During my entire service in the Moscow KGB, and I worked there for 20 years, there were only three criminal cases.""None of the people from the old guard understands where that number of criminals in the system came from," said Mikhailov. "It is also disturbing that today we are confronted with the widest range of units that are involved in criminal activity. We repair it in one spot and it breaks down in another one."There are no checks and balances at FSB management, Gudkov pointed out. "The Soviet KGB was massively repressive, you can blame that service for anything, but not for corruption. The worst we could hear about was a colleague sleeping with somebody's wife or some secret agent bringing a pair of sneakers for a colleague from abroad—that was already a big enough scandal to write a report," Gudkov remembered. "Even in our worst nightmare we could not imagine officers stealing millions of dollars, robbing banks. What will we hear next? The Russian Federal Security Service robbing the Kremlin's treasury or the Central Bank's reserves?" 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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| View 2019 Mazda MX-5 Miata RF Photos Posted: 10 Jul 2019 05:00 AM PDT |
| Pete Buttigieg unveils agenda to help black Americans Posted: 11 Jul 2019 07:35 AM PDT  Facing dismal poll numbers among black voters, Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg released a multipronged plan addressing everything from promoting black history and culture and ensuring Washington, D.C., statehood to tackling the racial wealth gap.
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| When the U.S. puts a border between migrant kids and their caretakers Posted: 11 Jul 2019 03:07 AM PDT  Since crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally two months earlier with his 14-year-old son, he had been separated from the boy and forced to wait in Mexico for his hearing. After they crossed into the United States, a border patrol agent declared the boy's photocopied birth certificate to be fake, casting doubt on their father-son relationship. Despite Gerardo's protestations in broken Spanish, officers took the boy, Walter, away.
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| 'Criminal act' caused Crete death of likely American victim Posted: 10 Jul 2019 10:08 AM PDT  Antonis Papadomanolakis told The Associated Press Wednesday that final confirmation was still needed to confirm the identity of the body found Monday outside the port city of Chania, but he added it was highly likely it was Suzanne Eaton, a 59-year-old molecular biologist, who was reported missing last week. "The only thing we can say is that the (death) resulted from a criminal act," the coroner said. Eaton, who worked at the Max Planck Institute in Dresden, Germany, had been attending a conference in Crete.
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| UK Labour under pressure over anti-Semitism after BBC doc Posted: 11 Jul 2019 03:25 AM PDT  Britain's Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn came under renewed pressure over anti-Semitism on Thursday after a string of former officials spoke out about the party's failure to tackle discrimination in a BBC documentary. Former officials, including the main opposition's former general secretary Iain McNicol, broke non-disclosure agreements to allege that members of Corbyn's inner circle had interfered with investigations into anti-Semitism in the left-wing party. Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson, who has been critical of Corbyn, said the revelations were "harrowing".
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| Jeffrey Epstein, a onetime associate of Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, is in legal trouble: Here's what we know Posted: 10 Jul 2019 01:48 PM PDT  Here are answers to five questions about the case against Jeffrey Epstein, who was arrested Saturday on sex-trafficking charges.
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| This Is Iran's Sad Attempt at Reverse-Engineering an Old F-5F Fighter Posted: 10 Jul 2019 07:00 PM PDT  Rouhani called on the Iranian military to strengthen their readiness in the face of enemy threats in a speech during Tuesday's defense show. Iran says its new Kowsar fighter jet has flown. President Hassan Rouhani was on scene to see the jet – which is a carbon copy of the American F-5F – undergoing flight trials.Test flights of the Kowsar, took place on Aug. 21, 2018 on the eve of the National Day of the Defense Industry, according to semi-official Mehr News Agency. It was unclear whether the jet's first public display flight has yet taken place.The Kowsar can be used for "short aerial support missions" and is equipped with systems that "promote precision targeting," according to state media.Rouhani called on the Iranian military to strengthen their readiness in the face of enemy threats in a speech during Tuesday's defense show."When we say we are ready for defense, it means that we seek the establishment of sustainable peace," Rouhani said.
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| Bosnian Muslims mark 1995 massacre of thousands with burials Posted: 11 Jul 2019 11:29 AM PDT  SREBRENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Thousands of mourners gathered Thursday to commemorate the 24th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, the worst mass killing in Europe since World War II, as Serbian officials continued to dispute that genocide was committed in the eastern Bosnian enclave. Relatives of the more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys killed by Bosnian Serb troops were among those attending a ceremony at a memorial site that included the burial of 33 newly identified victims of the killings that took place July 11-22, 1995. More than 1,000 are still considered missing from the mass slaughter during the Bosnian civil war.
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| The Jeep Gladiator Has No Competition Posted: 10 Jul 2019 06:00 AM PDT  It's a four-door convertible. It's a pickup truck. It'll tow a boat. Now let me tell you which one to get.
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| How one freshman congresswoman plans to save the Affordable Care Act Posted: 10 Jul 2019 02:00 AM PDT  Nobody in Washington seems to like the Affordable Care Act. Republicans want to repeal it, claiming it gives too much power to the federal government. Democrats argue that it doesn't go far enough: Sen. Bernie Sanders wants to replace the ACA with Medicare for All, which would get rid of private insurance entirely.
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| CORRECTED-World's major cities to face 'unknown' climate conditions by 2050 Posted: 10 Jul 2019 11:00 AM PDT ![CORRECTED-World's major cities to face 'unknown' climate conditions by 2050]( "CORRECTED-World's major cities to face 'unknown' climate conditions by 2050") A fifth of the world's major cities will face "unknown" climate conditions by 2050, researchers warned on Wednesday, as rising temperatures heighten the risks of drought and flooding. Climate scientists at the Crowther Lab, a research group based at ETH Zurich, a science and technology university, analysed 520 cities across the world, including all capitals and most urban centres with a population of more than 1 million. Looking at current climate conditions in these cities - including precipitation and seasonal data - scientists projected what would happen as temperatures rise another half degree, to near the lower 1.5 degree Celsius target set in the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.
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| Small leak found from nuclear Soviet sub that sank in 1989 Posted: 11 Jul 2019 02:06 AM PDT ![Small leak found from nuclear Soviet sub that sank in 1989]( "Small leak found from nuclear Soviet sub that sank in 1989") A small radiation leak from a Soviet nuclear submarine that sank 30 years ago has been found, Norwegian researchers said Thursday, but it poses no risk to people or fish. The institute said that findings were around 100 Becquerel (Bq) per liter as opposed to around 0.001 Bq per liter elsewhere in the Norwegian Sea. Several samples taken in and around a ventilation duct on the wreck of the submarine contained far higher levels of radioactive cesium than you would normally find in the Norwegian Sea, the institute said in a statement.
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| Afghan warrior Massoud's image becomes national icon Posted: 09 Jul 2019 07:11 PM PDT  In Kabul, it is hard to miss the late Ahmad Shah Massoud. More than 17 years since his assassination, the legendary fighter who battled the Soviets and the Taliban has become something of an Afghan icon. The feats of the "Lion of Panjshir", named for his home valley north of Kabul, has earned him a devoted following in war-weary Afghanistan.
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| Mexican President Warns Others May Leave Government After Urzua Posted: 10 Jul 2019 06:15 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, under pressure after the resignation of his finance minister, warned other officials may quit his government as part of the deep policy changes he is leading."In a democratic government there are always differences and disagreements," Lopez Obrador said Wednesday at his daily press conference. "You have to get used to the changes and there could even be other resignations."The Mexican peso dropped as much as 0.8%, leading emerging markets currency losses for a second straight session. It fell 0.4% to 19.2344 per dollar at 9:01 a.m. in New York.AMLO, as the Mexican leader is known, said the resignation of Carlos Urzua on Tuesday stems from disagreements over the country's national development plan. Urzua also disagreed about the management of Mexico's state-owned banks, the president said, adding that the former finance minister had clashed with his Chief of Staff Alfonso Romo and with the head of Mexico's tax collection agency."This is a government of free men and women. Suddenly someone can say 'I don't agree with the government's path'," AMLO said, adding that no other resignation has been presented to him so far. "What I want to make clear is that the way of doing politics won't change at all."To contact the reporters on this story: Carlos Manuel Rodriguez in Mexico City at carlosmr@bloomberg.net;Cyntia Barrera Diaz in Mexico City at cbarrerad@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Juan Pablo Spinetto at jspinetto@bloomberg.net, Walter BrandimarteFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Toddler cruise ship death: Grandfather thought window was closed, lawyer says Posted: 10 Jul 2019 12:49 PM PDT  An attorney said that Chloe Wiegand's grandfather sat the 1-year-old girl on a railing in a play area near what he believed was a closed window.
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| Meet India's BrahMos II: The World's Fastest Supersonic Cruise Missile? Posted: 10 Jul 2019 12:47 AM PDT  With the BrahMos II venture put on indefinite hold, the Indian military is forging ahead with new, long-range and deep-dive versions of their BrahMos supersonic cruise missile.Earlier this week, BrahMos CEO Sudhir Kumar Mishra announced that vertical deep-dive and 500 kilometer-range BrahMos variants are ready to enter India's missile arsenal: "India has successfully test-fired a vertical deep dive version of BrahMos, the world's fastest supersonic cruise missile, that can now change the dynamics of conventional warfare...the upgraded version of the missile with enhanced range of up to 500 km is also ready." Both of these new variants will feature the Mach 2.8 speed of the original BrahMos missile, roughly three times the speed of sound.As the name implies, vertical deep-capability allows the missile to be fired at a "near-vertical" trajectory of 90 degree, climbing fourteen 14 kilometers before making making a steep dive toward its target. Mishra asserts that this will make BrahMos more effective on mountainous terrain and against bunkers as well as large surface vessels, suggesting that these improvements are aimed at bolstering Indian missile strike capability vis-à-vis China amid ongoing tensions over the Tibet region.
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| U.S. officials push for sanctions on China over oil purchases from Iran Posted: 11 Jul 2019 11:08 AM PDT  Such a move would complicate trade talks between the two countries and further strain the relationship.
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| 2 adults shot; 2 children died from smoke; man in custody Posted: 10 Jul 2019 02:56 PM PDT  Two neighbors died from gunshots while two children found dead in one of the victim's home died from smoke inhalation from a fire set in the house, a coroner said Wednesday. Relatives said the two neighbors, a man and a woman, didn't really know each other. Officers first found David Cousin Jr. shot to death in a vacant lot and then found the bodies of the three others in a nearby house where they smelled smoke inside, police said.
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| Second Couple Sues in Scrambled Embryo Snafu Posted: 10 Jul 2019 07:07 PM PDT  Peiffer Wolf Carr & KaneAn alleged fertility clinic foul-up that resulted in a woman giving birth to the biological sons of two other couples—and then having to give them up—has spawned a second lawsuit.Los Angeles residents Anni and Ashot Manukyan said in court papers they were horrified to learn that a New York City stranger mistakenly received their embryo and the embryo of another couple, carried them for eight months, and then gave birth—believing they were her own babies.While the Manukyans eventually won custody of one of the twins, they were "devastated that they never were able to experience the wonder of their son's childbirth," they said in the lawsuit filed against CHA Fertility on Wednesday."They never saw their baby's entrance into the world or cuddled him in his first seconds of life—moments that other parents treasure for the rest of their lives."Couple Forced to Give Up Babies After Embryo Mixup, Lawsuit SaysLast week, the New York City woman and her husband also sued CHA Fertility, saying doctors there transferred the wrong embryos when they underwent in vitro fertilization last year.The couple accused the clinic of covering up its mistake until the twins were born and it was clear they were not of Asian descent like their parents—and a DNA test confirmed they were not the biological parents.In their lawsuit, filed in federal court in Brooklyn, the couple then described the heartbreak of losing custody of the newborns the wife had carried in her womb for eight months.Now, one of the couples whose embryos ended up in the New York woman is also suing and accusing the clinic of misleading her and her husband, too.The Manukyans also underwent IVF at CHA in 2018, and two frozen embryos they believed came from her eggs and his sperm were thawed and transferred to Anni.They said they were crushed no pregnancy resulted and then confused when the clinic called eight months later and asked them to come back "under false pretenses" for a DNA swab."What Anni and Ashot discovered, much to their horror, was that their son had been stolen from them when he was still an embryo and implanted into a stranger that later became his birth mother," according to the lawsuit filed Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court against CHA. "Anni and Ashot did not know of their son's existence until he was nearly two weeks old. From then, it took more than a month, including an expensive legal battle, to ensure that they would gain custody of their son and ultimately bring him home.""During those weeks of uncertainty, Anni and Ashot had zero assurance that they would ever even be able to meet their child."The Manukyans say they now realize the two embryos that were implanted in Anni by CHA could not have been their own since one was actually given to the New York woman—who unwittingly became their surrogate.They said that while they eventually were reunited with their son, their joy at being parents was ruined."They cry every day. They continue to see mental-health professionals," the lawsuit says. "They no longer trust anyone, and their guard is always up. Their ordeal has not ended; it is just beginning. This is something that they will live with for the rest of their lives."Lawsuit Claims Connecticut Fertility Clinic Gave Wrong Embryo to Couple Who Had Baby of Different RaceThe New York couple, who filed their lawsuit against CHA anonymously, also had to give up the second twin boy—to biological parents who have not yet been identified. It's unknown if they are taking legal action.CHA declined to comment after the first lawsuit was filed, and could not be reached for comment on the Manukyans' suit. The clinic has not filed a response to the allegations in either case.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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| Democratic U.S. presidential hopeful Kamala Harris unveils plan to tackle rape kit backlog Posted: 11 Jul 2019 11:59 AM PDT  U.S. Senator Kamala Harris on Thursday pledged the nation's backlog of rape kits needing review would be processed by the end of her first four-year term if elected president. Harris estimated she would invest $1 billion to eliminate the backlog, which she said would cover an estimated 225,000 kits that remain untested. Rape kits are collected when a victim reports an assault and DNA or other physical evidence is collected.
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| New Orleans Is Flooding — and There's a Potential Hurricane Coming This Weekend Posted: 10 Jul 2019 09:00 AM PDT  There's a chance a hurricane could form in the Gulf by Saturday
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| Magnitude 3.7 earthquake hits near Barstow Posted: 11 Jul 2019 08:00 AM PDT  A minor earthquake struck Thursday morning near Barstow, less than 100 miles from the epicenter of last week's powerful temblors.
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| Media watchdog slams Pakistan curbs on TV broadcasters Posted: 10 Jul 2019 02:22 AM PDT  A global media watchdog has slammed Pakistani authorities over the removal of three television channels from the country's airwaves, saying the move was "indicative of disturbing dictatorial tendencies" as pressure mounts on journalists in the South Asian nation. The statement from Reporters Without Borders (RSF) comes days after AbbTakk TV, 24 News, and Capital TV all had their broadcasts cut, after screening a press conference with opposition leader Maryam Nawaz. Pakistani authorities say the channels were unavailable due to "technical issues", but RSF described the outage as an act of "brazen censorship".
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| Penalizing candidates who interrupt, and other changes coming to the Democratic debates Posted: 10 Jul 2019 01:18 PM PDT  The candidates in the Democratic debates will not be asked to give one-word answers or just raise their hands in response to complex policy issues.
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| View Photos of the 2020 Porsche 911 Carrera S Posted: 10 Jul 2019 05:00 PM PDT |
| Super Weapon? The Air Force Wants a (New) Nuclear Armed Cruise Missile Posted: 10 Jul 2019 04:02 AM PDT  Should major global powers be immersed in a high-stakes, dangerous escalation of tension, raising the possibility of a nuclear confrontation, could the existence of a long-range nuclear-armed cruise missile provide that unique additional variable necessary to keep the peace?Such is the Air Force thinking when it comes to the current developmental trajectory for its emerging Long-Range Standoff Weapon (LRSO) -- a new, aircraft-launched nuclear cruise missile engineered to prevent nuclear conflict by holding enemy targets at risk potentially inaccessible to other methods of attack.The LRSO 'will allow the Air Force to 'counter adversaries' ever-improving integrated air defense with a lethal, tailorable, standoff nuclear strike capability," Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein, told an audience at a recent Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies Nuclear Deterrence event, according to transcripts.The LRSO will be operational by 2030, Goldfein said.The weapon will provide commanders with a wider range of options, as a bomber-launched nuclear cruise missile brings the prospect of deterring nuclear attack without needing to have a stealth bomber actually penetrate the airspace. Naturally, this lowers risk and also increases the deterrence posture by virtue of letting a potential adversary know there are a wide range of methods through which a response might be possible. Interestingly, the existence of nuclear weapons, according to Goldfein and other U.S. Air Force senior leaders, - is entirely based upon the notion of deterrence -- bringing the prospect of massive destructive power to achieve the opposite effect - stopping nuclear war before it happens.
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| Cambodian police arrest 7 marking death of government critic Posted: 10 Jul 2019 05:37 AM PDT ![Cambodian police arrest 7 marking death of government critic]( "Cambodian police arrest 7 marking death of government critic") Seven people in Cambodia have been detained in connection with activities marking the third anniversary of the killing of a prominent government critic, police said Wednesday. Political analyst Kem Ley was shot dead at a convenience store in the capital, Phnom Penh, on July 10, 2016. The killing took place shortly after he spoke on radio about a report alleging that long-serving Prime Minister Hun Sen's family had taken advantage of its connections for financial gain.
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| Armoured van spills thousands of dollars in cash across major highway. Police are asking for it back Posted: 10 Jul 2019 11:23 PM PDT  An armoured truck spilled thousands of dollar bills onto a busy highway, prompting chaos as commuters pulled over to pick up fistfuls of money.On Tuesday before sunset, a fluttering swirl of cash blowing through the air brought traffic to a halt and people into the street when a side door of an armoured Garda truck suddenly opened on a highway.About $175,000 (£140,000) in bills spilled out and were carried away by the wind over a section of Interstate 285, which encircles Atlanta, Georgia, police said.The bills scattered to the shoulder of the six-lane westbound section of the highway. Some floated across the divider into eastbound lanes. Bills blew into the woods or sank into storm drains.More than a dozen commuters screeched to a halt or veered off to the shoulder of the highway near the Dunwoody Road exits, police said. They scooped up bills from the pavement and returned to their vehicles with fistfuls, and sometimes armloads, of cash.One of them was Randrell Lewis, an Uber Eats driver who was en route to Alpharetta, Georgia."I just saw a cloud full of what looked like leaves," he said in an interview. "No, it was money. I could not believe my eyes. I am not going to lie. The first thing I did was I pulled over and started picking up some money. Everybody started pulling over and it was crazy."Within minutes, Mr Lewis said, he had snatched up about $2,000 in singles, fifties and hundreds. He returned $2,094 on Wednesday, police said."I just wanted to really make sure I am not going to get in trouble for this," he said.As investigators from the Dunwoody Police Department scoured videos on social media of the spontaneous cash grab, reports filtered in on Wednesday of people stopping on their morning drives on the half-mile stretch of highway to see if there was anything left to scavenge, Sergeant Robert Parsons, a department spokesperson, said."If the temptation is there, and you see money falling from the sky, most people would probably take the money," he said.The nation's highways have been accidentally generous before. In 2004, an armoured truck carrying $2 million flipped over on the New Jersey Turnpike during the evening rush, spilling tens of thousands of dollars in coins.Last year, the back door of a Brink's armoured truck swung open during the morning rush on Interstate 70 near Indianapolis, Indiana, losing an estimated $600,000 in cash onto the highway. A few months later, a Brink's armoured truck was driving on Route 3 in East Rutherford, New Jersey, when one of its doors malfunctioned and money blew out onto the roadway.Some returned the money to police, while others made off with sacks of cash. In the East Rutherford incident, police recouped about $6,000.As authorities did elsewhere when the highways were unexpectedly giving, the police in Dunwoody, a suburb north of Atlanta, were watching on Wednesday to see how the limits of ethical behaviour would play out."Heads up Dunwoody, it's cloudy with a chance of cash," the department said on Facebook, adding, "While we certainly understand the temptation, it's still theft and the money should be returned."In an interview, Mr Parsons said that officers received a 911 call around 8pm on Tuesday about people "frantically" scooping up the money near the Ashford Dunwoody Road exit along the highway, which is bordered by creek beds, trees and office towers."Multiple callers said there was cash flying all over the road," he said.By the time officers arrived, people who had pulled over to grab the bills were nowhere to be seen, Mr Parsons said."People likely saw the police lights coming over the highway," he said. "'Oops, time to go! Police are here! Party's over!' "Officers spoke to the Garda employees, who had stopped the truck on the shoulder after passing drivers had gestured to them that a door was open.About $200 was retrieved from the highway and surrounding woods — a small fraction of the estimated $175,000 believed to have gone missing, or into peoples' pockets, he said.Detectives were trying to contact drivers by looking for license plate numbers on mobile phone videos that had been posted on social media. But Mr Parsons said authorities had no intention of prosecuting anyone who returns the money."No harm, no foul," he said. "But you need to turn that money in."The New York Times
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| Leader of armed group at U.S. border seeks psychiatric evaluation ahead of trial Posted: 10 Jul 2019 05:03 PM PDT  A federal judge in Albuquerque will hold a hearing on July 15 to consider the request from an attorney for Larry Mitchell Hopkins, 70, leader of the United Constitutional Patriots. The American Civil Liberties Union and other critics accuse the United Constitutional Patriots of being a "fascist militia" that illegally detained migrants by impersonating law enforcement.
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| Trump Says Deutsche Bank, Now ‘Maligned,’ Wanted His Business Posted: 11 Jul 2019 05:52 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump defended troubled Deutsche Bank AG on Thursday and said the German financial institution wanted his business, which is now the subject of investigations by congressional Democrats.In a Twitter thread attacking media coverage of his past banking practices, Trump said, "A bank that I did use years ago, the now badly written about and maligned Deutsche Bank, was then one of the largest and most prestigious banks in the world! They wanted my business, and so did many others!"Trump comments came after his personal lawyers faulted House Democrats' demand for records from his outside accounting firm as an unauthorized attempt to pry into his business dealings as they prepare for a showdown Friday in an appeals court.Trump's lawyers are trying to convince a three-judge panel that a Washington judge erred in allowing the House Oversight and Reform Committee to demand that Trump's accountant, Mazars USA LLP, turn over records dating back to 2011, including those pertaining to the Trump Organization, his charitable foundation and the operating company for his luxury hotel just blocks from the White House.A New York-based federal appeals court will hear arguments next month as the president's attorneys seek a reversal of a separate court ruling giving a different House panel access to Trump records held by Deutsche Bank and Capital One Financial Corp.The president owes Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank about $300 million for loans related to his Washington hotel, a Chicago tower and Florida golf resort Doral, financial disclosures and property records show. The bank on July 7 said it would slash 18,000 jobs -- about 20% of its workforce -- by 2022 as part of a sweeping overhaul of its operations after years of mismanagement, multibillion-dollar fines and declining revenue eroded profitability.To contact the reporter on this story: Terrence Dopp in Washington at tdopp@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Kasia Klimasinska at kklimasinska@bloomberg.net, Elizabeth Wasserman, Steve GeimannFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| MH370 pilot in control ‘until the end’, French investigators suspect Posted: 11 Jul 2019 08:37 AM PDT  The pilot of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was in control of the plane "until the end", French investigators reportedly suspect, after gaining access to "crucial" flight data. The readouts "lend weight" to suspicions that he crashed into the sea in a murder-suicide, they were cited as saying. The revelations based on Boeing data came days after a new account suggesting the pilot may have been clinically depressed, leading him to starve the passengers of oxygen and then crash the Boeing 777 into the sea. MH370 was on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board, when it vanished and became one of the world's greatest aviation mysteries. In July last year investigators released a 495-page report, saying the plane's controls were probably deliberately manipulated to take it off course but they were not able to determine who was responsible. The only country still conducting a judicial inquiry into the crash is France, where two investigating magistrates are looking into the deaths of three French passengers, the wife and two children of Ghyslain Wattrelos - an engineer who met the judges on Wednesday. According to Le Parisien, they informed him that Boeing had finally granted them access late May to vital flight data at the plane maker's headquarters in Seattle. This included numerous documents and satellite data from Britain-based company Immarsat. They were obliged to sign a confidentiality contract, meaning the documents cannot be cited in court. The investigators also visited Immarsat headquarters in the UK. Investigators say it will take "a year" to scour all the data received from Boeing Credit: Laurent Errera/AP It will take "a year" to sift through all the data and "nothing permits us to say the pilot was involved," according to the plaintiffs' lawyer, Marie Dosé. However, French investigators cited by Le Parisien said the data "lends weight' to the idea that "someone was behind the control stick when the plane broke up in the Indian Ocean". It cited a source close to the inquiry as saying someone was flying the plane "until the end." "Certain abnormal turns made by the 777 can only have been carried out manually. Someone was in control," the source was cited as saying. Asked whether the data pointed to a deliberate crash, the source said: "It's too early to assert it categorically but there is nothing to suggest anyone else entered the cockpit." Mr Wattrelos, who lost family members in the crash, hailed the "incredible" work of the judges, who he said "were able to note that the case was riddled with incoherences". "For example, we know that the data initially provided by Malaysian authorities on the plane's altitude were wrong. And I hope that by analysing all the data collected at Boeing, they will discover a problem that will jump out at them," he told Le Parisien. But he said he remained convinced that the plane was "taken down". "I don't know why or where but I'm convinced of it," he said. Mr Wattrelos said that French investigators could meet FBI agents to discuss the case "over the summer in Paris". More than 30 bits of suspected washed up debris have been collected from various places around the world. A modern mystery | Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Last month, friends of the pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, told aviation specialist William Langewiesche that he had become obsessed with two young models he had seen on the internet after his wife left him, and that he "spent a lot of time pacing empty rooms." Mr Langewiesche wrote: "There is a strong suspicion among investigators in the aviation and intelligence communities that he was clinically depressed." An electrical engineer quoted in the account in The Atlantic magazine said that, after depressurising the plane, the pilot probably made a climb which "accelerated the effects of depressurising, causing the rapid incapacitation and death of everyone in the cabin." The oxygen masks in the main cabin were only designed to last 15 minutes in an emergency descent below 13,000ft. The pilot, however, would have had access to oxygen in the cockpit and could have flown for hours. Writing in the Atlantic, Mr Langewiesche said: "The cabin occupants would have become incapacitated within a couple of minutes, lost consciousness, and gently died without any choking or gasping for air." One theory claims the pilot conducted a series of manouveres to "ditch the plane" - but some experts argue it would have been impossible for him to remain conscious during the emergency landing. Pater Foley, the head of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), has suggested to the Australian Senate the pilot was unconscious when the plane crashed into the Indian ocean. Mr Foley said: "Today we have an analysis of the flap that tells us it is probably not deployed. "We have an analysis of the final two transmissions that say the aeroplane was in a high rate of descent. "We have 30 pieces of debris, some from inside the fuselage, that says there was significant energy at impact ... We have quite a lot of evidence to support no control at the end." He added: "We haven't ever ruled out someone intervening at the end. It's unlikely."
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| French supermarket managers ousted over safari hunting snaps Posted: 10 Jul 2019 08:39 AM PDT  It was meant to be a trophy picture, showing their success on safari, but the photo of a French couple posing beside a lion they had shot ended up costing them their jobs. Managers of a supermarket in L'Arbresle, a small town in eastern France, the pair had in 2015 taken part in a so-called captive hunt that involves shooting at animals kept inside an enclosed area. Such a set-up virtually guarantees a kill for private trophy hunters.
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| Ilhan Omar calls Tucker Carlson 'racist fool' after he says she proves 'immigration has become dangerous' Posted: 11 Jul 2019 10:11 AM PDT  "After everything America has done for Omar, and her family, she hates this country more than ever," Tucker Carlson said on his show Tuesday night.
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| Indiana teacher fired for same-sex marriage sues archdiocese Posted: 10 Jul 2019 12:42 PM PDT  A Catholic high school teacher who was fired because he's in a same-sex marriage sued the Archdiocese of Indianapolis on Wednesday, accusing it of discrimination and interfering with his teaching contract. Joshua Payne-Elliott is suing the archdiocese in Marion County court and seeking unspecified compensatory, emotional distress and other damages. Payne-Elliott taught at Cathedral High School for 13 years and Cathedral renewed his annual teaching contract on May 21, his attorney, Kathleen DeLaney, said in a news release.
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| House to vote next week on criminal contempt against Barr and Ross Posted: 11 Jul 2019 10:16 AM PDT  Democrats are battling Trump over whether to add a citizenship question on the census.
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| Whoops: India's Navy Left Nearly Sunk Its Own $3 Billion Nuclear Submarine Posted: 09 Jul 2019 09:00 PM PDT  Call it a lesson learned for the Indian navy, which managed to put the country's first nuclear-missile submarine, the $2.9 billion INS Arihant, out of commission in the most boneheaded way possible.The modern submarine is not a simple machine. A loss of propulsion, unexpected flooding, or trouble with reactors or weapons can doom a sub crew to a watery grave.Also, it's a good idea to, like, close the hatches before you dive.(This article originally appeared at Task & Purpose. Follow Task & Purpose on Twitter. This article first appeared in 2018.)Call it a lesson learned for the Indian navy, which managed to put the country's first nuclear-missile submarine, the $2.9 billion INS Arihant, out of commission in the most boneheaded way possible.The Hindu reported yesterday that the Arihant has been out of commission since suffering "major damage" some 10 months ago, due to what a navy source characterized as a "human error" — to wit: allowing water to flood to sub's propulsion compartment after failing to secure one of the vessel's external hatches.
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| Teenage rape victim in El Salvador handed 30-year prison sentence over stillbirth to face retrial for murder Posted: 11 Jul 2019 05:34 AM PDT  A teenage rape victim in El Salvador who was convicted for murdering her child and imprisoned for nearly three years after a stillbirth will now face a retrial next week.Evelyn Beatriz Hernandez was given a 30-year jail sentence in 2017 for aggravated murder by a female judge who ruled the teenager had induced an abortion.El Salvador has one of the harshest abortion bans in the world – it is even illegal in cases of rape and incest, when the woman's life is in danger or if the foetus is deformed.Ms Hernandez, now 21 and from a poor rural community, said she was raped and did not realise she was pregnant until she went into labour in a bathroom and gave birth to a stillborn baby.The Citizen Group for the Decriminalisation of Abortion (CDFA) said there was no proof that she tried to kill her baby and that she suffered a pregnancy-related complication.Miscarriages and stillbirths in El Salvador are often treated as suspected abortions, which have been considered murder under Salvadoran law since 1997. Abortion is a crime under any circumstance in the Central American country.The CDFA estimate around 20 women are in prison for abortion crimes in the socially conservative and Catholic majority nation when they suffered miscarriages, stillbirths or pregnancy complications – with some serving sentences of up to 40 years. The local rights organisation are campaigning for these jailed women to be freed.Ms Hernandez's sentence was annulled in February in an appeal before El Salvador's top court – signalling a victory for the CDFA.Ms Hernandez emerged from prison back then to chants of "Evelyn, you are not alone!" – having been allowed to live at home until the fresh trial. On Wednesday, her lawyers announced she would face a retrial next Monday. "We're convinced that Evelyn is innocent," Ana Martinez, one of Hernandez's lawyers at the CDFA, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "We hope that on Monday the rule of law and justice wins in this country."Ms Hernandez gave birth in the latrine of her home in a small rural community in April 2016. She lost consciousness after losing large amounts of blood.During her original trial, she said she had been repeatedly raped – with her lawyers saying she was too scared to report the rapes.Despite being in the third trimester, Ms Hernandez said she had confused the symptoms of pregnancy with stomach ache as she had experienced intermittent bleeding which she presumed to be her menstrual period. "I did not want to kill my son," she told the court.Mariana Ardila, managing attorney at advocacy group Women's Link Worldwide, said: "This new trial is an opportunity for Evelyn to find justice at last, and for El Salvador to stop criminalizing women who have medical complications during pregnancy."Women and girls all over the world deserve better health services, not jail. Judges must set aside their prejudices about women and adequately assess the context in which they live instead of condemning them for being poor and lacking access to health services during their pregnancies". Pro-choice activists say her retrial is key litmus test for El Salvador's new president's position on abortion. Nayib Bukele, who took office in June, has said he believes abortion should only be permitted if the mother's life is at risk."This case would be the first case that would be tried after the new president is in power," Paula Avila-Guillen, director for Latin America initiatives at the Women's Equality Center, a US-based reproductive rights advocacy group, said. "It will also send a message about what is the political mood."Although six other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have absolute bans on abortion, El Salvador stands out for its high number of convictions.The United Nations urged El Salvador in 2017 to issue a moratorium on applying its abortion law and to review all cases where women have been jailed for abortion-related crimes.However, attempts to pass a bill that would ease El Salvador's abortion ban have failed."One of the factors is a very religious and strong evangelical society," Avila-Guillen, a human rights lawyer supporting CDFA cases, said."There's no presumption of innocence. The moment that the word abortion gets thrown in a case, from that moment on women are guilty in the eyes of everyone."Amnesty International has argued El Salvador is "one of the most dangerous countries to be a woman". Women who are convicted of abortion in El Salvador are predominantly from poorer communities and have limited resources to fork out for a lawyer to defend them in court.
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| Norway says Venezuela opposition and government talks to continue Posted: 11 Jul 2019 07:42 AM PDT  Talks between Venezuela's government and the opposition will continue, Norway's foreign ministry said on Thursday, after a top Socialist Party leader announced the end of this week's round of Oslo-backed talks to end a political crisis. Representatives of the ruling Socialist Party met with adversaries of President Nicolas Maduro this week in Barbados as part of talks that began in Norway in May to resolve a stalemate resulting from Maduro's disputed 2018 re-election. "We announce that the representatives of the principal political actors continue the negotiation initiated in Oslo," Norway's foreign ministry said in a statement.
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| Another Woman Has Come Forward Alleging Jeffrey Epstein Sexually Assaulted Her When She Was 15 Years Old Posted: 10 Jul 2019 11:26 AM PDT  "I was terrified and I was telling him to stop, 'please stop.'"
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| Mackenzie Lueck case: Gruesome details revealed in slaying of Utah college student Posted: 11 Jul 2019 08:36 AM PDT  The charred body of slain University of Utah student Mackenzie Lueck was discovered bound in a shallow grave, prosecutors said Wednesday as formal charges were filed against her suspected killer.
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| Six tourists killed by tornadoes and hailstorms in Greece Posted: 10 Jul 2019 06:54 PM PDT  Tornadoes and violent hailstorms killed six tourists in northern Greece late Wednesday, police said. Dozens more were injured when strong winds hit the region of Halkidiki, near the city of Thessaloniki, authorities added. "Six tourists were killed and at least 30 people were injured during this cyclone," Charalambos Steriadis, head of civil protection in northern Greece, said.
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| Here's a fact: We went to the moon in 1969 Posted: 11 Jul 2019 08:07 AM PDT  Fifty years after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon, some people insist it never happened and was all a big hoax by the U.S. government. The suspicions arose even as the lunar landing was taking place in 1969, said Roger Launius, NASA's former chief historian.
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| Democrats tweet Obama-era photo of migrants to promote hearing about mistreatment Posted: 11 Jul 2019 07:58 AM PDT  Trump referred to the use of the "horrible picture" in a tweet of his own on Thursday, calling it "very embarrassing."
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