| California becomes the first state in the nation to outlaw fur trapping Posted: 04 Sep 2019 10:27 PM PDT  Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation Wednesday banning the controversial fur industry in California.
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| Erdogan says it's unacceptable that Turkey can't have nuclear weapons Posted: 04 Sep 2019 12:20 PM PDT ![Erdogan says it's unacceptable that Turkey can't have nuclear weapons]( "Erdogan says it's unacceptable that Turkey can't have nuclear weapons") Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday it was unacceptable for nuclear-armed states to forbid Ankara from obtaining its own nuclear weapons, but did not say whether Turkey had plans to obtain them. "Some countries have missiles with nuclear warheads, not one or two. "There is no developed nation in the world that doesn't have them," Erdogan said.
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| The Latest: Dorian lashes southern North Carolina coast Posted: 05 Sep 2019 06:00 PM PDT  The worst weather from Hurricane Dorian is lashing parts of southern North Carolina. It appears Dorian's eye will miss making landfall in North Carolina at least until it reaches the Outer Banks early Friday. Fran Mitteness says the power was still on at her house about three blocks from the Atlantic Ocean on Carolina Beach.
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| Woman sets herself on fire after being charged for illegally entering football match in Iran Posted: 04 Sep 2019 12:44 PM PDT  An Iranian woman has set herself on fire outside a court in Tehran after being tried for resisting arrest by morality police for trying to enter a football stadium disguised as a male spectator. According to Rokna news agency, the woman, named only as Sahar, has been taken to a local hospital with life-threatening burns. A spokesperson for Iran's judiciary has said the woman "had been engaged in a physical confrontation with security forces in February" after resisting arrest on charges of and insulting police and bad-hejabi, refusing to abide by strict Muslim dress codes. She had been detained but later released to appear in court on charges of "insulting the public by defying the dress code for women", according to court papers. Ahead of a court hearing on Monday she says she was told by a source that she faces six months in prison. She asked the judge to postpone her trial so she could attend a funeral. When she came out of the building she set herself on fire in front of the usually crowded complex that houses several courts. Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979 Iranian women have been banned from attending football stadiums as the clerical regime regards watching men playing football in shorts "promoting promiscuity". Dr. Mustafa Dehmardi, the head of accident and emergency at Motahari hospital in Tehran, told Rokna news agency that Sahar had burns caused by petrol fire on 90 per cent of her body. She is currently in the hospital's intensive care unit. Iranian women's rights activists have long been campaigning to enter sports stadiums, and in recent years they have been allowed to attend volleyball matches only if accompanied by their spouses in designated areas.
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| Trudeau says China uses detentions as political tool Posted: 05 Sep 2019 02:06 PM PDT  Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Thursday accused Beijing of using "arbitrary detentions" as a tool in pursuit of political goals -- the latest broadside in a diplomatic and trade row with China. Canada's relations with China soured after its arrest of Chinese Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou on a US warrant last December. Nine days later, Beijing detained two Canadians -- former diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor -- accusing them of espionage in a move widely viewed as retaliation.
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| Home of Hong Kong Media Tycoon Jimmy Lai Hit With Firebombs, Says Cable TV Posted: 04 Sep 2019 05:24 PM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- The home of media tycoon and Hong Kong democracy advocate Jimmy Lai was attacked by firebombs and no one was hurt in the incident, Hong Kong's Cable TV news reported.Two masked men threw firebombs at the gate of Lai's home at around 1 a.m. local time Thursday before leaving, Cable TV news reported people at the scene as saying, adding Lai's security guard put out the fire and called police.Police put out a statement concerning a firebomb incident but didn't mention whose residence was attacked. Police said they received a report from a security guard at the site, saying that the suspects had thrown what are believed to be petrol bombs before fleeing by motorcycle.Lai, whose publications such as the Apple Daily newspapers have championed Hong Kong's three-month-old democracy movement, has been labeled a traitor by Chinese state media over the months-long protests in the Asian financial center.Hong Kong Protests Fuel Media Tycoon's Turnaround PlanSince protesters took to the streets in June, Apple Daily has been sending people with cameras to the front lines of clashes with police and broadcasting live online from tear gas battles, night vigils, and peaceful marches.After three months of at-times violent demonstrations, Hong Kong's leader Carrie Lam made her most significant concession yet on Wednesday evening. In a somber televised address, she told an anxious city that she was meeting a demand from protesters to officially scrap a proposal that ended up sparking the worst unrest since the former colony's return to Chinese rule in 1997.To contact the reporter on this story: Dominic Lau in Hong Kong at dlau92@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Brendan Scott at bscott66@bloomberg.net, Jon HerskovitzFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| So...Why Did This Underwater Data Station Suddenly Just Disappear? Posted: 05 Sep 2019 12:01 PM PDT  The scientific instruments have vanished. Only questions remain.
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| A Mississippi Wedding Venue Refused to Serve Gay or Interracial Couples. Amid Backlash, the Owner Is Now Apologizing Posted: 04 Sep 2019 11:25 AM PDT  The alleged owner of the event hall cited her "Christian belief"
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| AOC, Texas Rep. Crenshaw duel over background checks: 'Why are you "lending" guns to people unsupervised?' Posted: 04 Sep 2019 09:04 AM PDT  Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., on Wednesday called out a Republican congressman who complained that implementing stricter gun laws would prevent him from letting friends borrow his handgun.
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| 'Over the top:' McConnell still mad about #MoscowMitch, calls attention to 2020 election Posted: 04 Sep 2019 03:17 AM PDT  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was first called "Moscow Mitch" in July by MSNBC host Joe Scarborough on on his "Morning Joe" show
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| Beto O’Rourke: Meghan McCain Is Almost Giving People ‘Permission to Be Violent’ Posted: 05 Sep 2019 09:27 AM PDT  Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily BeastBeto O'Rourke has a message to those warning that his mandatory gun buyback proposal might spark civil unrest: you're part of the problem. The former Texas congressman, whose presidential campaign has been re-animated by his often visceral responses to two mass shootings in Texas, said he was disheartened by commentary from, among others, Meghan McCain, warning that forcing Americans to sell their assault rifles would prompt violence."I just I think that kind of language and rhetoric is not helpful," the former congressman told The Daily Beast prior to joining a Wednesday marathon climate town hall on CNN. "It becomes self-fulfilling; you have people on TV who are almost giving you permission to be violent and saying, 'You know this is this is going to happen.'"O'Rourke brought up McCain's name unprompted after "The View" host had said, earlier this week, that an attempt by the government to compel AR-15 owners to sell back their weapons would prompt "a lot of violence." "When someone says, "If you do this, then this will happen," O'Rourke said, "almost as though that's a natural response or maybe even something that should happen or deserves to happen. When I think the response should be, 'We're doing nothing now and we're seeing people slaughtered in their schools, at work, at a Walmart, in a synagogue, in a church, at a concert. There is violence right now and it is horrifying and it is terrifying and it is terrorizing.'.... We should be worried about that kind of violence right now."McCain responded Thursday on Twitter by saying: "Beto is the only man in all of Texas who would revise 'Come and Take It' to 'Please, Come and Take It.'"O'Rourke's comments came after a tour of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in Midtown Manhattan on Wednesday, where he met with immigrants and asylum seekers participating in the congregation's legal clinic which assists in the completion of asylum applications. After touring the synagogue, O'Rourke spoke exclusively with The Daily Beast about his gun control plans, during which he urged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to call Congress back into session to vote on gun control legislation. "If the urgency that people feel on this issue is not reflected in the leadership that they see in this country, then they begin to give up hope," he said. "I think that can lead to more of the cynicism, can force people to give up hope, stop them from having faith in our ability to actually get something done and you know when you lose that faith, when you lose that hope and when you lose that drive, then you're no longer working towards that solution. I think that's a dangerous place for the country to be." Since returning to the campaign trail, O'Rourke has made an effort to go to traditionally redder parts of the country, including a gun show in Arkansas and the most Trump-friendly part of Virginia. The approach has mirrored his somewhat improvisational Texas Senate run that took him to Republican territory throughout the Lone Star state. He maintains that in these face-to-face conversations, there is more openness to the issues he's discussing than what many in conservative media say. That includes things like a mandatory buyback program, which was implemented in Australia following that country's worst mass shooting and has resulted in a dramatic drop of gun-related deaths there. "I think in a mandatory buyback, the vast majority of people will follow the law," O'Rourke said. "Not everyone will agree with it, not everyone will like it. But I think that ultimately, they'll follow the law. And I think many will see this in the national interest. I listen to gun owners and non-gun owners alike who just who say that this current level of bloodshed and violent death in this country is unacceptable. Worries them, it worries their kids and they want to do something about it. And I can't escape the conclusion that even universal background checks and red flag laws and ending the sale of weapons of war would not be enough to significantly change the outcome."Exclusive: Beto O'Rourke Apologizes to Campaign Staff for Being a 'Giant Asshole'O'Rourke had not specifically built his presidential campaign around a push for national gun policy. The issue, instead, found him after his home city of El Paso witnessed a deadly mass shooting earlier this month. But the congressman also is maintaining his focus on other policies, as was evident by his decision to meet with asylum seekers before jetting off to the CNN climate town hall. Asked which of these issues, among the many others, he would prioritize first in the Oval Office, the Texas Democrat rejected the premise of the question and said it was vital to make progress on everything as soon as possible; though he specifically said "it's hard for me to think of a more important issue," than climate change. "It is existential," O'Rourke told The Daily Beast. "If we cannot get this right—I think the trajectory now is by 2100, we will have warmed another four or four-and-a-half degrees Celsius—my youngest son will be 88 years old and he'll be fucked."This story has been updated to include McCain's response.Meghan McCain Clashes With 'View' Co-Hosts: 'I'm Not Living Without Guns'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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| Judge dismisses wrongful death lawsuit over abortion Posted: 03 Sep 2019 07:41 PM PDT ![Judge dismisses wrongful death lawsuit over abortion]( "Judge dismisses wrongful death lawsuit over abortion") An Alabama judge has dismissed a wrongful death lawsuit filed on behalf on an aborted embryo by a man who was upset that his ex-girlfriend ended her pregnancy. Madison County Circuit Judge Chris Comer ruled Friday that Ryan Magers could not bring a wrongful death claim over a legal abortion. Magers had sued the Alabama clinic where he believed his ex-girlfriend obtained the abortion pill, on behalf of himself and the estate of the aborted embryo.
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| Everything we know about the California boat fire victims Posted: 04 Sep 2019 11:06 AM PDT  Three sisters who were helping celebrate their father's birthday are thought to be among the 34 people killed when a diving boat caught fire off the coast of Southern California.Susana Rosas of Stockton, California, posted on social media that her three daughters, their father and stepmother were on board.
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| Trump displays incorrectly altered map of Hurricane Dorian path Posted: 04 Sep 2019 08:55 PM PDT  Trouble is raining down on US President Donald Trump, who appears to have given Americans incorrect information on Hurricane Dorian's trajectory. During an Oval Office press conference Wednesday, Trump displayed a map from the National Hurricane Center (NHC) showing the devastating storm's initial predicted path. As he held up the poster board to give the journalists present a better view, it became clear the map had been edited: Dorian's cone had been extended with what appeared to be black marker to include the state of Alabama.
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| Amazon's Ring camera raises civil liberties concerns: U.S. senator Posted: 05 Sep 2019 02:14 PM PDT  U.S. Democratic Senator Edward Markey raised concerns on Thursday that law enforcement use of Amazon.com Inc's Ring doorbell camera in investigations could disproportionately affect people of color and encourage racial profiling. In a letter to Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, Markey said sharing information from Ring's at-home camera systems with police departments "could easily create a surveillance network that places dangerous burdens on people of color" and stoke "racial anxieties" in communities where it works with law enforcement. Markey, the ranking member on the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Security, said he was "alarmed to learn that Ring is pursuing facial recognition technology" and that Amazon was marketing its facial recognition technology Rekognition to police departments.
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| Every Angle of the 2019 Range Rover Sport HST Posted: 05 Sep 2019 12:59 PM PDT |
| Tropical Storm Fernand makes landfall in Mexico as Gabrielle spins in the Atlantic Posted: 04 Sep 2019 02:00 PM PDT ![Tropical Storm Fernand makes landfall in Mexico as Gabrielle spins in the Atlantic]( "Tropical Storm Fernand makes landfall in Mexico as Gabrielle spins in the Atlantic") Tropical Storm Fernand made landfall along the Mexico coast just south of the U.S. border, and Tropical Storm Gabrielle is spinning in the Atlantic.
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| Tropical Storm Fernand forms in Gulf as it moves toward Mexico Posted: 04 Sep 2019 07:32 AM PDT  The low spinning in the Gulf near Mexico has intensified into a tropical storm. It is expected to move into Mexico Wednesday evening.
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| Zimbabwe's Catholic Church launches bid to make British missionary its first saint Posted: 05 Sep 2019 08:56 AM PDT  A British lay missionary could be declared Zimbabwe's first ever saint, as the Catholic Church on Thursday began a three-day ceremony to determine whether John Bradburne qualifies for canonisation on the 40th anniversary of his death. Bradburne worked among lepers in what was then known as Rhodesia, and refused to leave his post even as the civil war intensified. The country's Catholic Church will hear arguments for and against Bradburne's sainthood. Many Catholics from Zimbabwe and beyond make an annual pilgrimage to the site where he lived, worked and died, and several people say they have been healed after praying to him. Bradburne arrived in Rhodesia in 1969, just before the war began and became warden of the Mutemwa mission station about 90 miles north east of Harare, not far from the border with Mozambique. Supporters claim Bradburne's miracles include curing brain tumour patient Credit: John Bradburne Memorial Society He worked at the Mutemwa Leprosy and Care Centre which was established 30 years earlier. Even after the Catholics evacuated its white priests from north eastern Zimbabwe earlier in the year, Mr Bradburne, a tall, thin, long-haired man, who colleagues say spoke like a British aristocrat, refused to leave, and continued to attend to lepers, write poetry and play his harmonium in the tin hut in which he lived. He was abducted and shot dead on a road in the bush. John Bradburne was killed in Zimbabwe Credit: Paul Grover Earlier this year, one of Bradburne's colleagues at that time, Father Fidelis Mukonori, said he was in Mutemwa about two weeks before Bradburne was killed. "I never thought at that time that this could happen," he said. "It was the most shocking news." Father Mukonori was a senior Jesuit who had a special relationship with former President Robert Mugabe, and ended up mediating during the coup d'état in 2017. Mr Mugabe, 95, who is a Catholic, was leader of guerrilla forces in Mozambique that killed Bradburne. Other senior church leaders were also killed by both sides in the war.
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| Why Boris Johnson Lost His Bid for a New Election Before Brexit Posted: 04 Sep 2019 04:19 PM PDT  U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson had been pinning his hopes on public fatigue with Brexit, betting it would help him unite "leave" voters.
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| The 102 Most Delish Ways To Eat Potatoes Posted: 05 Sep 2019 01:21 PM PDT |
| The Latest: Dive boat owners seek to head off lawsuits Posted: 05 Sep 2019 03:49 PM PDT  The owners of the California dive boat where 34 people died in a fire have filed a lawsuit to avoid liability in the case. Truth Aquatics Inc., which owned the Conception, filed suit Thursday in U.S. District Court under a pre-Civil War provision of maritime law that allows it to limit its liability. Investigators say the crew of the dive ship that sank off the Southern California coast made several attempts to save the 34 people who were trapped by fire and died.
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| Trump forced to deny personally doctoring map to support false hurricane claim after sharpie spotted on his desk Posted: 05 Sep 2019 12:42 AM PDT  Donald Trump has denied personally altering a map to support a false claim about Hurricane Dorian after a sharpie pen was spotted lying close-by on his desk.In a White House video released on Wednesday, Mr Trump points to an official weather chart dated 29 August showing the states that could be hit in what the National Hurricane Center (NHC) calls the "cone of uncertainty".
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| Russian, Italian charged with stealing GE Aviation secrets Posted: 05 Sep 2019 02:53 PM PDT  A Russian with government ties and an Italian aerospace expert have been charged with the theft of jet engine technology from leading American manufacturer GE Aviation, the US Justice Department announced Thursday. Alexander Yuryevich Korshunov, 57, and Maurizio Paolo Bianchi, 59 were charged in a just-unsealed criminal complaint with stealing trade secrets in the latest case involving theft of US aviation industry intellectual property. The Justice Department said that from 2013 to 2018, Korshunov hired Bianchi, a former director for GE Aviation's Italian subsidiary, to help with the design of jet engine gearboxes for Aviadvigatel, a subsidiary of Russian state-owned aerospace company United Engine Corp.
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| U.S. slaps record fine on Michigan State University over Nassar abuse scandal Posted: 05 Sep 2019 10:26 AM PDT  The U.S. Department of Education has imposed a record $4.5 million fine on Michigan State University for what it called a failure to protect students from sexual abuse and ordered the university to make changes. The Education Department had launched two separate investigations into the university after the former sports doctor for the school and USA Gymnastics, Larry Nassar, was accused of sexual abuse by more than 350 women. Nassar was sentenced https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-gymnastics-usa-nassar-fallout/sexual-abuse-scandal-weighs-on-us-gymnastics-centres-idUKKBN1FL6L8 in two different trials to 300 years in prison for having abused young female gymnasts.
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| Southern California fire grows to 2,000 acres; evacuations expanded Posted: 05 Sep 2019 04:35 PM PDT  Tenaja Fire prompts mandatory evacuations for homes along The Trails Circle in La Cresta and the Copper Canyon neighborhood in Murrieta, officials said.
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| China found a mysterious 'gel-like' substance on the moon's uncharted far side Posted: 05 Sep 2019 02:31 AM PDT  Researchers have suggested that the strange substance could be "melt glass," formed from meteorites crashing into the lunar surface.
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| Britain Can’t Fix Brexit Until It Drafts a Constitution Posted: 04 Sep 2019 09:30 PM PDT  (Bloomberg Opinion) -- Democracy, Winston Churchill once famously said, was the worst way to run a country "apart from all the others that have ever been tried." Unfortunately, he did not make clear what kind of democracy he favored.Britain's dreadful Brexit impasse has divided the country into roughly equal camps, both convinced democracy has been traduced. And they both have a point. What started as an argument over the European Union's democratic deficit, and the way in which it encroached on Britain's unwritten constitution, has degenerated into something more fundamental: an argument about the nature of democracy itself in the U.K.This crisis is in turn the bequest of generations of making minor tweaks to an unwritten constitution while avoiding the extremely difficult decisions needed to write a new one. In the void, two forms of democracy are attempting to co-exist in Parliament -- representative democracy and direct democracy.On the one hand, Britain is a representative democracy, leaving decisions to elected MPs. Yet those same MPs sanctioned a Brexit referendum, or an act of direct democracy. The current crop of representatives, elected a year after the referendum, cannot agree on a way to enact it. The House of Cards-style intrigue plainly shows the limits of representative democracy. Within the Commons there is no majority for any one course of action, and nobody has managed to thrash out a workable compromise. Two prime ministers – Theresa May, and now Boris Johnson – have tried to paint the issue as Parliament thwarting the will of the people. But the imbroglio also shows the weakness of direct democracy. Britain's membership in the EU, we now know, was far too complicated and subtle to be framed as an either/or question. One tribe says that nobody voted for a "no-deal" Brexit, while the other says that a majority is for a Brexit in some form. Both are right.To deal with this, either the people should be asked ever more questions to help their representatives sort out the mess, which is impractical. Or they must trust their representatives to sort it out. Neither is happening.And the problem runs deeper. Time and again in the last few decades, politicians have confronted anachronisms in Britain's political apparatus and made changes while shirking the far harder task of devising new institutions. The result is a political system in gridlock.Under Britain's unwritten constitution, the monarch is absolutely powerful but faces a duty of eternal self-restraint. In this way, Britain has avoided arguments attending any attempt to write a constitution and abolish the monarch. The Queen worked on the assumption that she had no right to turn down Johnson's request to suspend Parliament. For a hereditary monarch to say no to a prime minister would have introduced an even deeper constitutional crisis. But the incident revealed that the prime minister enjoyed monarchical powers to suspend Parliament – and it is not surprising that it triggered a rebellion.Next look at the House of Lords which, it is whispered in the parliamentary lobbies, might yet try to stage a filibuster of the bill barring Johnson from accepting a "no-deal" Brexit. The Lords has been stripped of hereditary peers but it is still an unelected body. It is hard to believe it has the the legitimacy to thwart the will of elected MPs. Now turn to the parties. Until a generation ago, MPs alone chose their leaders. Both Labour and the Conservatives have moved toward a looser model like the American system, where all party members have a vote. But the result has been half-baked. Johnson was elected by 140,000 Conservative activists far more strongly opposed to the EU than the rest of the country. Labour's Jeremy Corbyn was elected by an expanded party that allowed anyone to be a voting member after paying a modest fee. An influx of enthusiastic ideological left-wingers swung the result. Neither party's leader has anything like the broad mandate of a U.S. presidential nominee. Both represent unrepresentative electorates while failing to command the support of their own MPs in Parliament. So the major parties lack the legitimacy to sort the Brexit mess.Would a general election help, as Johnson suggests? Probably not. The "first past the post" system works well in a purely representative democracy where MPs as individuals have great latitude. It is useless if there is any hope that Parliament should reflect the "will of the people." In that scenario, results are affected by the geographic distribution of votes and distorted by the presence of major alternative parties. There is no reason to think that MPs in a new Parliament would accurately reflect the broad spread of opinions about Brexit. So it looks hard for the U.K. to sort Brexit without reforming its parties and its electoral system (while also possibly agreeing on an elected upper chamber and even limiting or replacing the power of the monarch). Moreover, nothing will be solved until Britain drafts a written constitution. The nation's democratic deficit appears at least as serious as that of the EU, and resolving it may require turning the U.K. into something far more like a continental European country.And that is not what anyone thought they were voting for back when the Brexit referendum first surfaced. To contact the author of this story: John Authers at jauthers@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Timothy L. O'Brien at tobrien46@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.John Authers is a senior editor for markets. Before Bloomberg, he spent 29 years with the Financial Times, where he was head of the Lex Column and chief markets commentator. He is the author of "The Fearful Rise of Markets" and other books.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Scientists monitoring new marine heat wave off West Coast Posted: 05 Sep 2019 02:48 PM PDT  Federal scientists said Thursday they are monitoring a new ocean heat wave off the U.S. West Coast, a development that could badly disrupt marine life including salmon, whales and sea lions. The expanse of unusually warm water stretches from Alaska to California, researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Thursday . It resembles a similar heat wave about five years ago that was blamed for poorer survival rates for young salmon, more humpback whales becoming entangled in fishing gear as they hunted closer to shore, and an algae bloom that shut down crabbing and clamming.
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| Mexico president says El Chapo's drug wealth should go to Mexico Posted: 05 Sep 2019 10:47 AM PDT ![Mexico president says El Chapo's drug wealth should go to Mexico]( "Mexico president says El Chapo's drug wealth should go to Mexico") Mexico's president on Thursday welcomed a proposal to give the alleged fortune of drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman to the country's indigenous people, and said the wealth of Mexican criminals in the United States should be returned to Mexico. Jose Luis Gonzalez Meza, a lawyer for Guzman, said this week his client had proposed that billions of dollars in revenue that U.S. authorities had attributed to his business operations should be handed to indigenous communities in Mexico. Speaking at his regular morning news conference, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who earlier this year announced the creation of a "Robin Hood" institute to return ill-gotten wealth to the Mexican people, gave his approval to the idea.
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| Sears and Kmart corporate workforce is shrinking with around 250 layoffs Posted: 04 Sep 2019 07:42 PM PDT  Sears has laid off approximately 250 workers from its corporate headquarters in Illinois, according to a notice filed with the state Aug. 29.
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| Nunes: The courts are going to have to come in and clean up Fusion GPS Posted: 04 Sep 2019 07:04 PM PDT  House Intelligence Committee ranking member Rep. Devin Nunes on his lawsuit against Fusion GPS on 'Hannity.'
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| Most Accurate 2016 Poll Shows Biden, Warren, Sanders Beating Trump Posted: 04 Sep 2019 07:17 AM PDT  The poll that most closely predicted the outcome of the 2016 presidential election shows Joe Biden and several other Democratic candidates beating President Trump in a 2020 general-election matchup.Biden would beat Trump by twelve points in a general election, garnering 54 percent support to Trump's 42 percent, according to the September IBD/TIPP poll. Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and Kamala Harris of California also lead Trump by three to four points, close to within the margin of error.Among voters who lean Democratic, Warren currently has 24 percent support, up from 17 percent last month, according to the poll. Biden meanwhile slipped two points from August to 28 percent among the same voters. Support for Sanders remained level at 12 percent, keeping him in third place. Harris saw her support drop this month from 11 percent to 6 percent. South Bend, Ind. mayor Pete Buttigieg and New Jersey senator Cory Booker trailed them, polling at 5 percent and 4 percent respectively.Despite Biden's slight slip in the polls, the former vice president remains a strong front-runner in the crowded field of contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination. Trump, meanwhile, has begun to appear vulnerable. His job approval sank to 40 percent in August, its lowest level in six months.The IBD/TIPP poll, which has correctly predicted the last four presidential elections, was the only national poll to predict Trump's 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton in a four-way matchup. Its final pre-election numbers placed him two points above Clinton.The poll surveyed 903 respondents from August 22–30 and has a margin of error of 3.3 percent.
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| Boris Johnson Has Badly Miscalculated Posted: 04 Sep 2019 09:01 PM PDT ![Boris Johnson Has Badly Miscalculated]( "Boris Johnson Has Badly Miscalculated") (Bloomberg Opinion) -- After just 43 days in office, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has gotten himself into a dire fix. Unfortunately, there's no easy way out — for him or for the country he nominally leads.Thanks to a series of miscalculations, Johnson's party is cracking up, his government is collapsing, and his political strategy is backfiring. This week, he ejected 21 rebels from the parliamentary Conservative Party after they joined the opposition to stop him from forcing the country out of the European Union without an exit agreement. To restore his authority and a workable majority, the prime minister then called for a prompt general election — and lost that vote as well, failing to muster the necessary two-thirds support.All politicians have bad weeks. But the first part of this one has set some kind of record. Its consequences will extend far beyond the operatic disarray in Westminster. Most immediately, Johnson has made resolving Brexit — the gravest challenge the country has faced in decades — far harder. Britain is still scheduled to leave the EU on Oct. 31. Holding a general election in the meantime, as Johnson presumably still hopes to do, could conceivably ease that process by securing a clearer majority for the prime minister's plans. The problem is that no one can say what those are.By nearly all accounts, negotiations with the EU on a revised deal have gone nowhere. Johnson can't even identify what he hopes to achieve in these talks. He wants to ditch the "backstop" arrangement intended to prevent a hard border with Ireland, but can't specify what should take its place. Meanwhile, in purging his party of no-deal opponents, he's ousted the very lawmakers who would've been most likely to support any new compromise.In proceeding so heedlessly, Johnson is not only shooting himself in the foot, but also maximizing the long-term damage Brexit is doing to Britain's constitutional order and political norms. Unelected and lacking a mandate, he has nonetheless pressed the executive's power to its limits. He seems to view Parliament as an irritant; his ministers seem to regard the rule of law as one option among many. They should all try to imagine what the opposition might do with such an expansive interpretation of the prime minister's authority.Perhaps most damaging, though, is the cost of this endless misadventure. Britain is on the verge of a recession. Business investment — the most obvious victim of Brexit uncertainty — has been in a severe funk. Services growth is stalling while manufacturing and construction are most likely in contraction. Johnson is meanwhile spending millions on an advertising campaign to convince businesses to prepare for no-deal even while assuring everyone that it's highly unlikely — a strategy that has not exactly alleviated the uncertainty.Is there any way out of this?A general election would offer one potential escape route. Yet it will also present voters with a dismal choice. On one hand, there's Johnson, and the renewed threat of his delivering a chaotic exit. On the other, there's Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, whose modest agenda includes nationalizing much of the economy, eviscerating property rights, and otherwise expunging the counterrevolution. In any event, another hung Parliament seems all too likely.The unfortunate fact is that the machinery of British politics has become stuck on Brexit. As the process grinds on — chewing through two prime ministers and counting — it is doing worsening damage without producing any forward momentum. More of the same will hardly help. Even at this late date, the best and most democratic way out of this morass is to let the public decide the matter in a second referendum. The alternatives look bleaker by the day.\--Editors: Timothy Lavin, Clive Crook.To contact the senior editor responsible for Bloomberg Opinion's editorials: David Shipley at davidshipley@bloomberg.net, .Editorials are written by the Bloomberg Opinion editorial board.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| America's 'democratic experiment' is inextricably tied to the history of slavery Posted: 05 Sep 2019 07:10 AM PDT  The year 1619 laid out rough boundaries of citizenship, freedom, and democracy that are still being policed'What we politely refer to as the 'legacy' of slavery is a political and economic system built on racial exploitation and the theft of black labor.' Photograph: Carlos Barría/ReutersThis year marks 400 years since enslaved Africans from Angola were forcibly brought to Jamestown, Virginia. This forced migration of black bodies on to what would become the United States of America represents the intertwined origin story of racial slavery and democracy. This year also marks what would have been the 90th birthday of Martin Luther King, the most well-known mobilizer of the civil rights movement's heroic period between 1954 and 1965.While Americans are quick to recognize Jamestown as the first episode of a continuing democratic experiment, the nation remains less willing to confront the way in which racial slavery proved crucial to the flourishing of American capitalism, democratic freedoms, and racial identity. The year 1619 laid out rough boundaries of citizenship, freedom, and democracy that are still being policed in our own time.Although we hardly remember this today, King often discussed how the imposing shadow of slavery impacted the civil rights struggle, perhaps most notably on 28 August 1963, during the March on Washington.Addressing a quarter of a million people in front of the Lincoln Memorial, King acknowledged racial slavery's uncanny hold on the American imagination. A century earlier, Abraham Lincoln, whom King called "a great American", signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Yet 100 years later, black people remained marginalized from the American dream. "Instead of honoring this sacred obligation," King said, African Americans had received a "bad check" – one that the nation would have to pay in full to overcome the tragic dimensions of a racial past that continued to constrain its future.King longed to reconcile the fundamental contradiction of American democratic traditions: the existence of racial slavery alongside individual freedom and liberty. What King interpreted as a contradiction, Malcolm X recognized as ironic symmetry. According to Malcolm, racial slavery in America helped to undergird a system of racial democracy that became the exclusive provision of whites.In his stinging denunciations of white supremacy and his bold support for revolutionary violence against anti-black racism, Malcolm often invoked African Americans' experience of 400 years of racial oppression. 2019 is the exact anniversary of the date that Malcolm often extolled in speeches, televised debates, and jaw-rattling interviews.Both Malcolm and Martin understood the intimate connection between the struggle for black dignity and citizenship during the civil rights and Black Power era and the movement to end racial slavery in the nineteenth century.Perhaps no single figure more elegantly represents that century's struggle over racial slavery, freedom, and citizenship than Frederick Douglass, whose reputation has swelled in the aftermath of the historian David Blight's recent Pulitzer-winning biography.A former enslaved African American from Maryland's Chesapeake Bay, Douglass narrated his escape from slavery to freedom as a journey emblematic of the nation's entire democratic experiment. A brilliant writer and public speaker, Douglass became the 19th century's most-photographed American, the nation's leading abolitionist, and a proponent of the violent overthrow of slavery by any means necessary. Douglass, no less than Abraham Lincoln, came to represent the freedom dreams that animated not only the struggle for black citizenship but the destiny of democracy.Racial slavery – a ruthless system of bondage closely tied to the rise of global capitalism – collapsed in 1865 only after the deaths of over 700,000 Americans in the civil war. Black soldiers' patriotism in the face of white supremacy was only begrudgingly, if ever, acknowledged by northern politicians. New constitutional amendments designed to settle the debate over black freedom by abolishing slavery and establishing birthright citizenship and the vote competed with the rise of political, economic, and racial terror against black Americans.Reconstruction between 1865 and 1896 found black women and men on the cutting edge of new interracial democratic experiments that helped to establish public education, historically black colleges, churches, businesses, civic groups, and mutual aid societies and elect black officials. Yet those triumphs were challenged by violence, political betrayal, and legal and legislative assaults on black citizenship. In 1896, the supreme court's Plessy v Ferguson decision made segregation the law of the land and ushered in a dark period of history.Contemporary black-led social movements such as Black Lives Matter confront not only the racial ghosts of the Jim Crow south memorialized in popular culture. They face the larger specter of racial slavery that our society often still refuses to acknowledge. What we politely refer to as the "legacy" of slavery represents the evolution of a political and economic system built on racial exploitation, the theft of black labor, and the demonization and dehumanization of black bodies.What is all the more remarkable is the way in which black folk have embraced an expansive vision of democracy even when the nation refused to recognize it as legitimate. Ida B Wells, the 19th-century anti-lynching crusader, was a trailblazing social justice activist whose work anticipated the rise of mass incarceration in America. Ella Jo Baker, the founder of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), understood the sit-in movement to be less about gaining access to white lunch counters than about eradicating oppressive and anti-democratic systems that had flourished since the bullwhip days of antebellum slavery.Similarly, King's Letter From Birmingham Jail extolled the heroism of black schoolchildren jailed for violating Jim Crow laws in Alabama. Those young people, King argued, would be one day recognized as heroes for having transported the entire nation back to those "great wells of democracy" that were dug deep by the founding fathers.The relationship between slavery and freedom and our contemporary understanding of this history remains at the core of the American democratic experiment, one that has global reverberations for a sprawling communities of indigenous and immigrant people around the world who, in the best of times, have looked to America as a beacon of liberty. Barack Obama's extraordinary rise to the presidency in 2009 burnished the United States as a symbol of racially transcendent freedom even as Trump has tempered such celebrations as premature.Perhaps the most important lesson from Jamestown for the present is the indefatigable nature of the black freedom struggle. Courageous individual acts of resistance during slavery inspired collective rebellions that transformed American democracy. Yet this change, as we are painfully experiencing today, remains fraught with the weight of a history rooted in racial slavery. Contemporary debates over racial privilege, white supremacy, and identity politics flow from political, economic, and social relations that have become normalized by our history but are far from normal.Confronting slavery's indelible impact on conceptions of freedom, citizenship, and democracy offers us essential tools for confronting our contemporary age – what might be considered a Third Reconstruction – where efforts to embrace racial justice and an expansive vision of democracy compete alongside movements for racial bigotry rooted in ancient hatreds dressed up in new clothes. * Peniel E Joseph is the founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin
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| Make Your Sweet Tooth Happy With These Apple and Caramel Recipes Posted: 05 Sep 2019 11:57 AM PDT |
| Amid Tensions With U.S., China Is Solidifying Relationships in Latin America Posted: 05 Sep 2019 12:18 PM PDT ![Amid Tensions With U.S., China Is Solidifying Relationships in Latin America]( "Amid Tensions With U.S., China Is Solidifying Relationships in Latin America") China's decadeslong economic has fueled its growing presence around the world, funding programs and infrastructure projects across Asia, Africa and into Latin America. Trade between China and Latin America reached a reported $306 billion in 2018, a dramatic increase from the $12 billion figure in 2000. Factor in the White House seeking to build walls and reduce foreign aid to Latin America and it becomes clear that Central and South American leaders need to craft trade strategies that balance their country's relations with both Washington and Beijing, regional experts say.
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| Man who ran conversion therapy to give people ‘freedom from homosexuality’ comes out as gay Posted: 04 Sep 2019 12:38 AM PDT  The founder of one of America's largest homosexual conversion therapy programmes, has called the practice "harmful" and come out as gay.McKrae Game spent more than 20 years promising to give clients "freedom from homosexuality" at his Hope for Wholeness centres, where the widely discredited practice designed to suppress or change a person's sexuality through counselling or religion was carried out. It is currently banned in 18 American states.
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| An ICE Agent Opened Fire at Truck During an Apprehension Near Nashville Posted: 05 Sep 2019 11:19 AM PDT  An ICE agent fired a gun during an attempted apprehension in the Antioch neighborhood of Nashville on Thursday morning, according to police.
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| Israeli-Palestinian peace deal architect Greenblatt resigns Posted: 05 Sep 2019 09:23 AM PDT  Jason Greenblatt, a key architect of President Donald Trump's much-delayed Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, announced his resignation Thursday. Greenblatt, who worked alongside Trump's powerful son in law Jared Kushner, said in a statement it had been "the honor of a lifetime" to work in the White House.
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| Kamala Harris wants to ban plastic straws but says paper straws too 'flimsy' Posted: 05 Sep 2019 04:05 AM PDT  During CNN's climate change town hall Wednesday, the California senator said that she believes single-use plastics like plastic straws need to be banned, but that the paper alternative breaks too often and is ripe for some innovation.
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| Hurricane Dorian vs. East Coast: How popular destinations from Florida to Maryland are faring Posted: 05 Sep 2019 11:08 AM PDT  A preliminary look at how Hurricane Dorian is affecting popular East Coast destinations, from Florida to Maryland.
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| Do Americans Really Support Roe v. Wade ? Posted: 05 Sep 2019 02:30 AM PDT  Anew poll from the Pew Research Center purports to show that Americans tend to support the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, as well as that a majority agrees more with Democrats than with Republicans on abortion policy.The results indicate that 70 percent of respondents do not want to see Roe overturned, while 28 percent say they do; this is little different from the results Pew found in its 2016 survey. The poll also found that 42 percent of respondents agree with the Democratic party's abortion policies, compared to 32 who say they agree with those of the GOP. About a quarter of respondents said they don't agree with either party's policies.As is often the case with public-opinion polls, especially those dealing with abortion, it's a good idea to examine the survey questions a little more closely before entirely buying into the results.Consider, for instance, the way the poll describes the ruling in Roe when asking respondents whether they'd like to see it overturned: "In 1973 the Roe versus Wade decision established a woman's constitutional right to an abortion, at least in the first three months of pregnancy."In reality, the decision in Roe permitted women to obtain an abortion well past the first three months of pregnancy, especially when given the Supreme Court's ruling in Roe's companion case Doe v. Bolton, which required states to offer a "maternal health" exception to any abortion restriction. The decision in Doe defined the health exception expansively: "all factors — physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman's age — relevant to the wellbeing of the patient." In other words, states must ensure that abortion be available to women essentially on demand.Most Americans are unaware of these details of how Roe changed abortion policy in the U.S. A Pew poll in 2013, for instance, found that only 62 percent of Americans even knew Roe had to do with abortion; among respondents under 30, that percentage fell to 44 percent. How much less must they understand that Roe and Doe essentially legalized abortion on demand for the entire country? And how much more unaware must the respondents to Pew's survey be, given that the question itself presents them with inaccurate information?What's more, when the new Pew poll asks respondents whether they agree more with the Democratic or the Republican party on abortion policy, it offers no specifics about what those policies are. It's left entirely up to each respondent to define for herself, drawing on her potentially limited knowledge, what abortion policies each party favors, a factor that obviously complicates how we should understand the survey's results.Especially in light of habitually inaccurate media coverage of legislation that expands abortion rights — as well as the demonstrated tendency of mainstream outlets to focus intensely on pro-life heartbeat bills while offering relatively little information about bills such as those in Illinois and Vermont that define abortion on demand as a "fundamental right" — it makes sense to be skeptical of whether the respondents in this survey were operating from an accurate understanding of where each party stands on abortion.To judge from the information available in popular media about how each party wishes to regulate abortion, it's likely that most people know neither that the Democratic party's platform demands that taxpayers fund abortion procedures nor that every Democratic politician currently running for president has failed to articulate a single restriction that they support on abortion.Finally, it's worth contrasting the framework used in the Pew survey with other, more useful public-opinion polls about abortion. When asking broadly about views on abortion, the Pew poll asks respondents to say whether they believe abortion ought to be "legal in all or most cases" or "illegal in all or most cases." These are fairly broad categories with little room for specific line-drawing or consideration of actual regulations on abortion rights.Compare this with the annual Marist–Knights of Columbus poll, which asks respondents about abortion within the trimester framework created by Roe. Though the Marist poll most often finds that Americans tend to describe themselves as "pro-choice" rather than "pro-life," it has also found consistently that most Americans would limit abortion to the first three months of pregnancy, if they would permit it at all. Marist has found dramatically decreasing levels of public support for legal abortion as pregnancy progresses, and Gallup polls have documented a similar phenomenon.The Marist poll also asks respondents about specific types of abortion regulations that pro-life lawmakers have proposed, such as the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection act, which would prohibit abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, as research suggests that unborn children begin to feel pain at that stage. Marist has also polled Americans on the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, bills prohibiting taxpayer funding of abortion and prohibiting abortion for the reason that an unborn child has been diagnosed with Down syndrome.Because of the complexity of the ethical, legal, and political questions surrounding abortion, imprecise surveys like the one Pew released last week are of limited use in sorting through Americans' views on the complicated details of abortion policy.
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| A high school teacher in Mexico has been suspended after he allegedly forced students to wear cardboard boxes on their heads to stop them from cheating Posted: 05 Sep 2019 09:26 AM PDT  Parents said the practice violated the students' human rights. The school claimed the boxes were part of a "dynamic exercise."
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