| Iraq’s Quiet Kingmaker Brings Down a Prime Minister Posted: 02 Dec 2019 09:22 AM PST  Ayatollah Ali Sistani is usually silent about politics. But his whispers brought down Adil Abdul-Mahdi.
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| 2 of the men who took down the London Bridge terrorist were convicted felons, including a murderer in the final stages of his sentence Posted: 02 Dec 2019 02:55 AM PST  A group of civilians including James Ford and Marc Conway fought off London Bridge terrorist Usman Khan, and detained him until police arrived.
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| American flight bound for Miami diverted after woman fakes medical condition, police say Posted: 02 Dec 2019 06:10 AM PST  An American Airlines flight had to be diverted on Friday after a passenger attempted to fake a medical condition to get a bigger seat on the flight.
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| Former Chinese official sentenced to life in prison Posted: 02 Dec 2019 09:33 AM PST  One of China's highest-ranking Uighur officials and the former head of the troubled northwest Xinjiang region was sentenced Monday to life in prison over graft charges, a court said. It is among the most high-profile cases in President Xi Jinping's sweeping campaign against corruption in the ruling Communist Party, which critics have compared to a political purge.
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| Joe Biden nibbled on his wife's finger in a bizarre campaign stop moment Posted: 30 Nov 2019 07:27 PM PST  While Jill Biden's arm was outstretched, her husband leaned forward and bit down on the tip of her index finger for some reason.
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| Prosecution in Israel lines up over 300 witnesses in Netanyahu case Posted: 02 Dec 2019 08:14 AM PST ![Prosecution in Israel lines up over 300 witnesses in Netanyahu case]( "Prosecution in Israel lines up over 300 witnesses in Netanyahu case") An indictment submitted to Israel's parliament on Monday against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu names more than 300 prosecution witnesses, including wealthy friends and former aides, in three graft cases against him. By formally sending the indictment to the legislature, after announcing charges of bribery, breach of trust and fraud on Nov. 21, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit set the clock ticking on a 30-day period in which Netanyahu can seek parliamentary immunity from prosecution.
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| 10 wounded in shooting near New Orleans’ French Quarter Posted: 01 Dec 2019 03:49 AM PST  Ten people were shot and wounded early Sunday near the French Quarter in New Orleans, a popular spot for tourists. Two of the 10 people shot on Canal Street near the French Quarter were in critical condition in local hospitals, Police Superintendent Shaun Ferguson said. "What happened in our city overnight was a cowardly and senseless act that we cannot and will not tolerate," Ferguson said in a statement.
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| Trump's Intervention in SEAL Case Tests Pentagon's Tolerance Posted: 02 Dec 2019 05:10 AM PST  He was limp and dusty from an explosion, conscious but barely. A far cry from the fierce, masked Islamic State fighters who once seized vast swaths of Iraq and Syria, the captive was a scraggly teenager in a tank top with limbs so thin that his watch slid easily off his wrist.Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher and other Navy SEALs gave the young captive medical aid that day in Iraq in 2017, sedating him and cutting an airway in his throat to help him breathe. Then, without warning, according to colleagues, Gallagher pulled a small hunting knife from a sheath and stabbed the sedated captive in the neck.The same Gallagher who later posed for a photograph holding the dead captive up by the hair has now been celebrated on the campaign trail by President Donald Trump, who upended the military code of justice to protect him from the punishment resulting from the episode. Prodded by Fox News, Trump has been trumpeting him as an argument for his reelection.The violent encounter in a faraway land opened a two-year affair that would pit a Pentagon hierarchy wedded to longstanding rules of combat and discipline against a commander in chief with no experience in uniform but a finely honed sense of grievance against authority. The highest ranks in the Navy insisted Gallagher be held accountable. Trump overruled the chain of command and the secretary of the Navy was fired.The case of the president and a commando accused of war crimes offers a lesson in how Trump presides over the armed forces three years after taking office. While he boasts of supporting the military, he has come to distrust the generals and admirals who run it. Rather than accept information from his own government, he responds to television reports that grab his interest. Warned against crossing lines, he bulldozes past precedent and norms.As a result, the president finds himself more removed than ever from a disenchanted military command, adding the armed forces to the institutions under his authority that he has feuded with, along with the intelligence community, law enforcement agencies and diplomatic corps."We're going to take care of our warriors and I will always stick up for our great fighters," Trump told a rally in Florida as he depicted the military hierarchy as part of "the deep state" he vowed to dismantle. "People can sit there in air-conditioned offices and complain, but you know what? It doesn't matter to me whatsoever."The president's handling of the case has distressed active-duty and retired officers and the civilians who work closely with them. His intervention, they said, emboldens war criminals and erodes the order of a professional military."He's interfering with the chain of command, which is trying to police its own ranks," said Peter D. Feaver, a specialist on civilian-military relations at Duke University and former aide to President George W. Bush. "They're trying to clean up their act and in the middle of it the president parachutes in -- and not from information from his own commanders but from news talking heads who are clearly gaming the system."Chris Shumake, a former sniper who served in Gallagher's platoon, said in an interview that he was troubled by the impact the president's intervention could have on the SEALs."It's blown up bigger than any of us could have ever expected, and turned into a national clown show that put a bad light on the teams," said Shumake, speaking publicly for the first time. "He's trying to show he has the troops' backs, but he's saying he doesn't trust any of the troops or their leaders to make the right decisions."Gallagher, who has denied wrongdoing, declined through his lawyer to be interviewed. Trump's allies said the president was standing up to political correctness that hamstrings the warriors the nation asks to defend it, as if war should be fought according to lawyerly rules."From the beginning, this was overzealous prosecutors who were not giving the benefit of the doubt to the trigger-pullers," Pete Hegseth, a weekend host of "Fox & Friends" who has promoted Gallagher to the president both on the telephone and on air, said this past week. "That's what the president saw."'No One Touch Him. He's Mine.'Gallagher, 40, a seasoned operator with a face weathered from eight combat deployments, sometimes went by the nickname Blade. He sought the toughest assignments, where gunfire and blood were almost guaranteed. Months before deploying, he sent a text to the SEAL master chief making assignments, saying he was "down to go" to any spot, no matter how awful, so long as "there is for sure action and work to be done.""We don't care about living conditions," he added. "We just want to kill as many people as possible."Before deployment, he commissioned a friend and former SEAL to make him a custom hunting knife and a hatchet, vowing in a text, "I'll try and dig that knife or hatchet on someone's skull!"He was in charge of 22 men in SEAL Team 7's Alpha Platoon, which deployed to Mosul, Iraq, in early 2017. But his platoon was nowhere near the action, assigned an "advise and assist" mission supporting Iraqi commandos doing the block-by-block fighting. The SEALs were required to stay 1,000 meters behind the front lines.That changed on May 6, 2017, when an Apache helicopter banked over a dusty patchwork of fields outside Mosul, fixed its sights on a farmhouse serving as an Islamic State command post and fired two Hellfire missiles reducing it to rubble.Gallagher saw the explosion from an armored gun truck. When he heard on the radio that Iraqi soldiers had captured an Islamic State fighter and taken him to a nearby staging area, he raced to the scene. "No one touch him," he radioed other SEALs. "He's mine."'Got Him With My Hunting Knife'When the captive was killed, other SEALs were shocked. A medic inches from Gallagher testified that he froze, unsure what to do. Some SEALs said in interviews that the stabbing immediately struck them as wrong, but because it was Gallagher, the most experienced commando in the group, no one knew how to react. When senior platoon members confronted Gallagher, they said, he told them, "Stop worrying about it; they do a lot worse to us."The officer in charge, Lt. Jacob Portier, who was in his first command, gathered everyone for trophy photos, then held a re-enlistment ceremony for Gallagher over the corpse, several SEALs testified.A week later, Gallagher sent a friend in California a text with a photo of himself with a knife in one hand, holding the captive up by the hair with the other. "Good story behind this, got him with my hunting knife," he wrote.As the deployment wore on, SEALs said the chief's behavior grew more erratic. He led a small team beyond the front lines, telling members to turn off locator beacons so they would not be caught by superiors, according to four SEALS, who confirmed video of the mission obtained by The New York Times. He then tried to cover up the mission when one platoon member was shot.At various points, he appeared to be either amped up or zoned out; several SEALs told investigators they saw him taking pills, including the narcotic Tramadol. He spent much of his time scanning the streets of Mosul from hidden sniper nests, firing three or four times as often as the platoon's snipers, sometimes targeting civilians.One SEAL sniper told investigators he heard a shot from Gallagher's position, then saw a schoolgirl in a flower-print hijab crumple to the ground. Another sniper reported hearing a shot from Gallagher's position, then seeing a man carrying a water jug fall, a red blotch spreading on his back. Neither episode was investigated and the fate of the civilians remains unknown.Gallagher had been accused of misconduct before, including shooting through an Afghan girl to hit the man carrying her in 2010 and trying to run over a Navy police officer in 2014. But in both cases no wrongdoing was found.SEALs said they reported concerns to Portier with no result. The lieutenant outranked Gallagher but was younger and less experienced. SEALs said in interviews that the chief often yelled at his commanding officer or disregarded him altogether. After the deployment, Portier was charged with not reporting the chief for war crimes but charges were dropped. SEALS said they started firing warning shots to keep pedestrians out of range. One SEAL told investigators he tried to damage the chief's rifle to make it less accurate.By the end of the deployment, SEALs said, Gallagher was largely isolated from the rest of the platoon, with some privately calling him "el diablo," the devil.A Fox Contributor's CauseGallagher was reported by six fellow SEALs and arrested in September 2017, charged with nearly a dozen counts including murder and locked in the brig in San Diego to await his trial. He denied the charges and called those reporting him liars who could not meet his high standards, referring to them repeatedly in public as "the mean girls" and saying they sought to get rid of him.David Shaw, a former SEAL who deployed with the platoon, said he saw no evidence of that. "All six were some of the best performers in the platoon," he said, speaking publicly for the first time. "These were guys were hand-selected by the chief based on their skills and abilities, and they are guys of the highest character."Gallagher's case was already simmering on the conservative talk show circuit when another service member, Maj. Mathew Golsteyn, an Army Green Beret, was charged last winter with killing an unarmed man linked to the Taliban in Afghanistan. On Dec. 16, barely minutes after a segment on "Fox & Friends," Trump took to Twitter to say he would review the case, repeating language from the segment.In the tweet, Trump included the handle of Hegseth, who speaks regularly with the president and has been considered for top jobs in the administration. An Army veteran, Hegseth served three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan before heading two conservative veterans organizations "committed to victory on the battlefield," as the biography for his speaker's bureau puts it.Upset at what he sees as "Monday morning quarterbacking" of soldiers fighting a shadowy enemy where "second-guessing was deadly," Hegseth has for years defended troops charged with war crimes, including Gallagher, Golsteyn and Lt. Clint Lorance, often appealing directly to the president on Fox News."These are men who went into the most dangerous places on earth with a job to defend us and made tough calls on a moment's notice," Hegseth said on Fox in May. "They're not war criminals, they're warriors."Hegseth found a ready ally in Trump, a graduate of a military high school who avoided serving in Vietnam as a young man citing bone spurs in his foot. Trump has long sought to identify himself with the toughest of soldiers and loves boasting of battlefield exploits to the point that he made up details of an account of a "whimpering" Islamic State leader killed in October.In March, the president twice called Richard Spencer, the Navy secretary, asking him to release Gallagher from pretrial confinement in a Navy brig, Spencer later wrote in The Washington Post. After Spencer pushed back, Trump made it an order.By May, Trump prepared to pardon both Gallagher and Golsteyn for Memorial Day, even though neither had yet faced trial. At the Pentagon, a conservative bastion where Fox News is the network of choice on office televisions, senior officials were aghast. They persuaded Trump to hold off. But that was not the end of the matter.In June, Gallagher appeared before a military jury of five Marines and two sailors in a two-week trial marred by accusations of prosecutorial misconduct. The medic who had been inches away from Gallagher changed his story on the stand, claiming that he was the one who killed the captive.In early July, the jury acquitted Gallagher on all charges but one: posing for a trophy photo with a corpse. He was sentenced to the maximum four months in prison and demoted. Having already been confined awaiting trial, he walked out of the courtroom a free man."Congratulations to Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher, his wonderful wife Andrea, and his entire family," Trump tweeted. "You have been through much together. Glad I could help!"The President IntervenesIn the months afterward, Gallagher was feted on conservative talk shows. Hegseth spoke privately with Trump about the case.As it happened, the president shares a lawyer with Gallagher -- Marc Mukasey, a former prosecutor representing Trump in proceedings against his company. Mukasey said he never discussed Gallagher with anyone in the administration. "I have been religious about keeping matters separate," he said.Another person with ties to Trump who worked on Gallagher's case was Bernard B. Kerik, a New York City police commissioner under former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is now the president's personal lawyer. Like Hegseth, Kerik repeatedly appeared on Fox News pleading Gallagher's case.The much-investigated president saw shades of himself in the case -- Gallagher's lawyers accused prosecutors of improprieties, a claim that advisers said resonated with Trump.Spencer tried to head off further intervention. On Nov. 14, the Navy secretary sent a note to the president asking him not to get involved again. But Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, called to say Trump would order Gallagher's punishment reversed and his rank restored. In addition, he pardoned Golsteyn and Lorance."This was a shocking and unprecedented intervention in a low-level review," Spencer wrote. "It was also a reminder that the president has very little understanding of what it means to be in the military, to fight ethically or to be governed by a uniform set of rules and practices."Spencer threatened to resign. Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy also weighed in, arguing that the country's standards of military justice protected American troops by setting those troops up as a standard around the world.Defense Secretary Mark Esper took the complaints to the president. The Pentagon also sent an information packet to the White House describing the cases, including a primer on why there is a Uniform Code of Military Justice. Esper and Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the president it was important to allow the process to go forward.The Navy Secretary Fights and LosesCaught in the middle was Rear Adm. Collin Green, who took command of the SEALs four days before Gallagher was arrested. He made it a priority to restore what he called "good order and discipline" after a series of scandals, tightening grooming standards and banning unofficial patches with pirate flags, skulls, heads on pikes and other grim symbols used to denote rogue cliques, similar to motorcycle gangs.For Green, the Gallagher case posed a challenge because after his acquittal, the chief regularly undermined the SEAL command, appearing without authorization on Fox News and insulting the admiral and other superiors on social media as "a bunch of morons."The admiral wanted to take Gallagher's Trident pin, casting him out of the force. He called both Spencer and the chief of naval operations, Adm. Michael Gilday, and said he understood the potential backlash from the White House, but in nearly all cases SEALs with criminal convictions had their Tridents taken.Both Spencer and Gilday agreed the decision was his to make and said they would defend his call. Esper briefed Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, on Nov. 19 and the next day the Navy established a review board of fellow enlisted SEALs to decide the question.But a day later, an hour after the chief's lawyer blasted the decision on Fox News, the president stepped in again. "The Navy will NOT be taking away Warfighter and Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher's Trident Pin," Trump wrote on Twitter. "This case was handled very badly from the beginning. Get back to business!"Three days later, Spencer was fired, faulted by Esper for not telling him about an effort to work out a deal with the White House to allow the Navy process to go forward.In an interview with Hegseth this past week, Gallagher thanked Trump for having his back. "He keeps stepping in and doing the right thing," the chief said. "I want to let him know the rest of the SEAL community is not about this right now. They all respect the president."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company
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| The 2019 Los Angeles Auto Show Goes Electric Posted: 02 Dec 2019 02:20 PM PST |
| India gangrape protests mount as schoolgirl killed Posted: 01 Dec 2019 04:24 PM PST  Hundreds of Indian protestors took to the streets on Monday as public anger grew over the brutal gang-rape and murder of a female veterinary doctor, with one MP calling for the perpetrators to be "lynched". The demonstrations in New Delhi, Hyderabad, Bangalore and elsewhere took place as police found the semi-naked body of a six-year-old girl who appears to have been raped and then strangled with her school belt in Rajasthan. The spark for the protests was the gang-rape and murder by four men of the 27-year-old vet next to a busy road in the outskirts of Hyderabad in southern India on Wednesday evening.
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| Wisconsin police officer shoots student who pulled gun, refused to drop it, officials say Posted: 02 Dec 2019 04:44 PM PST  The student reportedly brought the gun to school. The suspect is in custody and the building is secure, according to the Waukesha Police Department.
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| Fact: The Horrific Iran-Iraq War Cost $350 Billion (And 1 Million Dead) Posted: 01 Dec 2019 02:29 AM PST  Here is a quick history of what happened.
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| Chinese government forces people to scan their face before they can use internet as surveillance efforts mount Posted: 01 Dec 2019 10:46 PM PST  China's roughly 854 million internet users need to use facial identification in order to apply for new internet or mobile services.
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| Russia's Putin signs law to label people foreign agents Posted: 02 Dec 2019 10:49 AM PST  Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday signed legislation allowing individuals to be labeled foreign agents, drawing criticism from rights groups that say the move will further restrict media freedoms in the country. An initial foreign agent law was adopted by Russia in 2012, giving authorities the power to label non-governmental organizations and human rights groups as foreign agents - a term that carries a negative Soviet-era connotations. Several rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, had called for the initiative to be dropped as it was being approved by lawmakers.
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| Scientists race to document Puerto Rico’s coastal heritage Posted: 01 Dec 2019 08:18 PM PST  A group of U.S.-based scientists is rushing to document indigenous sites along Puerto Rico's coast dating back a couple of thousand years before rising sea levels linked to climate change destroy a large chunk of the island's heritage that is still being discovered. Scientists hope to use the 3D images they've taken so far to also help identify which historic sites are most vulnerable to hurricanes, erosion and other dangers before it's too late to save the island's patrimony. "It's literally being washed away," said Falko Kuester, director of the Cultural Heritage Engineering Initiative at the University of California, San Diego, which is involved in the project.
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| Ukraine scandal: I know why Trump top dogs — Mulvaney, Pompeo, Perry & Bolton — won't bark Posted: 02 Dec 2019 02:00 AM PST ![Ukraine scandal: I know why Trump top dogs — Mulvaney, Pompeo, Perry & Bolton — won't bark]( "Ukraine scandal: I know why Trump top dogs — Mulvaney, Pompeo, Perry & Bolton — won't bark") Because it would be so easy for these people to clear the president, it's hard to escape the conclusion that their silence is part of a cover-up.
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| Catholic schools in New York City are banning braids on black male students, and it's all perfectly legal Posted: 02 Dec 2019 09:35 AM PST  City and state laws that ban discrimination against natural hairstyles in New York offer exemptions for religious organizations.
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| How an Unsolved Murder Got Legal Weed Lobbyist Eapen Thampy Indicted on Drug Charges Posted: 01 Dec 2019 02:06 AM PST  Photo Illustration by The Daily BeastOn the evening of Sunday, Dec. 10, 2017, residents of a country-club neighborhood in Columbia, Missouri, went to bed unaware that one of their neighbors had nearly 1,000 pounds of high-grade Oregon marijuana parked in the driveway outside his home. The home was being rented by 28-year-old Augustus "Gus" Roberts, the son of a circuit court judge. Under the cover of darkness, several suspects forced their way inside, murdered him, and made off with the weed-filled U-Haul.The killers didn't go far, abandoning the U-Haul at the end of the neighborhood's cul-de-sac. Police arrived to find Roberts outside, near his driveway, dead of an apparent gunshot wound. They also found 94 pounds of weed and 3,000 THC oil pens used for vaping in the trailer and in Roberts' bedroom closet. In the year and a half since, nine people have been arrested as a result of the homicide investigation—though none of them has been charged with committing that crime. Instead, law enforcement officials have rounded up a collection of Roberts' alleged co-conspirators on drug-related counts.The highest-profile bust was Eapen Thampy, a well-known lobbyist around the state Capitol whose chief issue has been marijuana legalization and criminal justice reform—and who is now accused of being part of a network that distributed more than 2,200 pounds of marijuana over three years. The charges—which stem from the Roberts investigation, according to a DEA agent's affidavit—could put Thampy in prison for life.It's not lost on supporters of marijuana policy reform that Roberts' death was precisely the type of violence that they believe legalization would prevent. "Once you have organized crime you have people taking matters into their own hands," says Steve Fox, president of VS Strategies and a longtime D.C.-based marijuana policy reform advocate. "The same issues you had associated with alcohol prohibition in the early part of the last century, with organized crime and violence—those things largely, if not entirely, go away once the substance in question is legal and regulated."In 2015, at the age of 31, Thampy founded Heartland Priorities, an organization that lobbies for marijuana legalization. He occupied a distinctive niche in the effort by arguing for reform from a right-wing and Libertarian perspective to a state legislature controlled by a Republican super-majority. He regularly appeared on talk radio throughout the state and beat the drum for individual liberty as a basis for legal weed and for criminal justice and sentencing reform. He's been photographed with Sens. Rand Paul and Roy Blunt, as well as a former governor and current state attorney general."It breaks my heart that this is happening to him," says Tom Mundell, a Silver Star and Purple Heart recipient who focuses on marijuana reform from a veterans and PTSD perspective. "He was doing a lot to give people who had never had a break in their life the opportunity to have generational wealth through the hemp industry."But authorities allege that Thampy had a side hustle to his political work. They claim in the indictment that between January 2015 and September 2018, he was part of a drug distribution network connected to Roberts.According to a DEA agent's affidavit, before Roberts' death, he was receiving marijuana from Oregon via a middleman who had been a DEA informant in the past and who supplied Roberts "with 280 to 350 pounds of marijuana every three to four weeks" for about nine months up until his death. After Roberts was killed, the middleman began cooperating with the feds again and arranged for an especially large shipment of marijuana to be sent from Oregon to Missouri, according to a DEA agent's affidavit. Authorities intercepted some 1,800 pounds of high-grade weed from a commercial trailer in Wyoming and arrested Craig Smith of Oregon, Roberts' alleged supplier. Among other things, the indictment charges in a separate count that Smith and Thampy sought to sell a smaller amount of marijuana in February of last year.Authorities have charged seven others, including a Columbia mother and son who allegedly used drug-dealing proceeds to purchase, among other things, a flamethrower. Court documents allege one of the defendants donated $1,000 in drug money to Better Way Missouri, a political action committee represented by Thampy. Thampy, who is free pending trial next year, declined to comment for this article, and calls to his attorney were not returned. Even before his arrest, Thampy was a controversial figure for some.New Approach Missouri is the organization most responsible for getting medical marijuana legalized via a statewide vote last year, and multiple people affiliated with that organization say Thampy ran interference on them and sought to tank the amendment until right before the election, when polling clearly showed it would pass. They believe Thampy viewed the effort as a threat to his career lobbying the state legislature. One of Thampy's key issues was curbing civil asset forfeiture, a process in which law enforcement confiscates property it believes was used to facilitate criminal activities. "I don't know anyone who knows the laws around asset forfeiture the way he does," Mundell says.In an ironic twist, the government has now launched a forfeiture action in the case stemming from Roberts' death. The feds are looking to seize an industrial building in White City, Oregon; a gated estate in Central Point; a parcel of land adjacent to an airstrip in Cave Junction; $100,000 of confiscated cash and a Columbia house worth roughly $250,000.Dan Russo, the attorney representing Smith, told the Columbia Daily Tribune he believes the case is an example of law enforcement making a "last-ditch attempt to empty the pockets for anyone involved with marijuana on any level" before what many see as the drug's inevitable legalization at the national level. Meanwhile, as Thampy, Smith and the others face an uncertain fate, one thing is for sure: For now, at least, someone has gotten away with the murder of Gus Roberts.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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| Australia slams China's 'unacceptable' treatment of jailed writer Posted: 02 Dec 2019 12:41 AM PST  Australia's foreign minister on Monday said the treatment of a writer detained in China was "unacceptable", as his lawyer reported he was being shackled and subjected to daily interrogation. Yang Hengjun, an Australian citizen, has been detained in China since January and was recently charged with spying, which could bring a lengthy prison sentence. Letters were also being withheld "to cut off the conduit of information from Dr Yang to the outside world, and from the outside world to Dr Yang", she said.
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| Yes, Britain Is Convoying to Protect Its Ships from Iran Posted: 02 Dec 2019 01:35 AM PST  Will it work?
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| Boris Johnson dismissed criticism of him calling Islamophobia a 'natural reaction' by saying people want to 'drag out bits and pieces of what I have said' Posted: 01 Dec 2019 03:42 AM PST  The BBC's Andrew Marr grilled Johnson about his 2005 Islam comments, and asked about Conservatives kept in the party despite their statements.
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| North Carolina panel of judges rule in favor of new congressional map Posted: 02 Dec 2019 02:27 PM PST  The same three-judge Wake County Superior Court panel several weeks ago blocked the state from using a congressional map created in 2016 in next year's elections, suggesting that map's boundaries were gerrymandered to favor Republicans. Monday's decision clears the way for candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives to file their paperwork to represent new districts drawn on Nov. 15 by North Carolina's Republican-controlled General Assembly. "The net result is the grievous and flawed 2016 map has been replaced," Judge Paul Ridgeway said during a hearing, the Charlotte Observer newspaper reported.
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| The 2010s was a roller-coaster decade for hurricanes. Here's what it means for the future Posted: 02 Dec 2019 01:04 PM PST  The 2010s were a decade of contrasts for Atlantic hurricanes. Despite storms like Sandy, Irma and Michael, it was an era of remarkable luck.
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| Biden says he doesn’t need Obama’s endorsement Posted: 02 Dec 2019 04:09 PM PST  The former vice president also scoffs at the idea Elizabeth Warren is building enthusiasm, and accuses Pete Buttigieg of stealing his plans.
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| Haitian schools reopen after months of unrest Posted: 02 Dec 2019 10:16 AM PST  PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Protected by police patrols, thousands of Haitian children began to return to school Monday after months of violent unrest forced schools to shut around the country. Some schools were about a quarter full in response to the Education Ministry's call last week to reopen public and private schools. Others had only a handful of students or didn't open at all.
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| Trump’s Puzzling Tweets Unmask the Real Foe for U.S. Farmers Posted: 02 Dec 2019 11:51 AM PST  (Bloomberg) -- Terms of Trade is a daily newsletter that untangles a world embroiled in trade wars. Sign up here. President Donald Trump may have bewildered authorities in Argentina and Brazil by announcing on Twitter new steel tariffs as punishment for cheapening their currencies. But the measure does shine a light on how much the hardy dollar is hurting U.S. farmers.There's little evidence those countries have intentionally brought down the value of their currencies; in fact, they've both been grappling to stop the rout, which is fueled largely by the relative strength of the U.S. economy.American corn isn't impacted by U.S.-China trade tensions because the Asian nation doesn't buy much of it. Still, U.S. corn exports are down 60% this marketing year mainly because the strong dollar is making it pricier for overseas buyers at a time when global competition is getting fiercer. Orange juice is another commodity caught in the currency cross-hairs.With the South American countries reaping bumper crops and Ukraine becoming more productive agriculturally, U.S. farmers are facing increasing global competition.If the trade war and tariffs "went away tomorrow, we'd still have a problem in U.S. agriculture, and that's a strong dollar," said Ann Duignan, a JPMorgan Chase & Co. analyst, in an interview with Bloomberg TV last week. "The reality of it is, the Chinese will buy at competitive prices, they're not going to pay up for our commodities."Meanwhile, both Brazil and Argentina have said they're seeking to boost the value of their currency. Argentina's peso plunged earlier this year after election results put a left-wing candidate in the presidency. Brazil has tried to prop up the falling real multiple times in the past month, with the devaluation causing havoc in some parts of the economy.Agriculture isn't one of them. A weaker local currency has pushed up crop profits in the past few years, allowing South American growers to expand. At the same time, demand for Brazilian corn is surging as the spread of African swine fever helps fuel a protein boom."Some Brazilian farmers say this was one of the best seasons in terms of profitability ever," Tarso Veloso, an analyst at Chicago-based ARC Mercosul said. "That's not because of Chicago prices."\--With assistance from Dominic Carey.To contact the reporters on this story: Lydia Mulvany in Chicago at lmulvany2@bloomberg.net;Marvin G. Perez in New York at mperez71@bloomberg.net;Tatiana Freitas in São Paulo at tfreitas4@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: James Attwood at jattwood3@bloomberg.net, Reg GaleFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Existential: 2019 word of the year raises concerns for climate change, gun violence, and threats to democracy Posted: 02 Dec 2019 12:42 PM PST  Climate change, gun violence, the future of democracy around the world, and the plight of an animated character named Forky have all contributed to this year's word of the year, as named by Dictionary.com: "Existential".The word was chosen by the team at Dictionary.com amid several quite alarming top searched words in 2019 — including the chilling term "polar vortex", the uncertainty of "stochastic terrorism", and the relief of "exonerate".
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| Government shutdown in Samoa amid 'cruel' measles outbreak Posted: 01 Dec 2019 11:14 PM PST  Samoa ordered a government shutdown to help combat a devastating measles outbreak Monday, as five more children succumbed to the virus, lifting the death toll in the tiny Pacific nation to 53. The government said almost 200 new measles cases had been recorded since Sunday, with the rate of infection showing no sign of slowing despite a compulsory mass vaccination programme. The scheme has so far focussed on children but Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi said it was time to immunise everyone in the 200,000 population aged under 60.
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| Australia’s Demographic ‘Time Bomb’ Has Arrived Posted: 01 Dec 2019 11:34 AM PST  With politically unpopular reforms consigned to the "too hard" basket, immigration likely will continue propping up economic growth until it too reaches its limits. Time bomb or otherwise, Australia's demographic clock is definitely ticking.
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| The US military is talking about tinkering with soldiers' brains to let them control drones, weapons, and other machines with their minds Posted: 02 Dec 2019 12:48 PM PST  The US military sees a not-too-distant future where "cyborg soldiers" can control drones and other machines with neural implants
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| UPDATE 1-Eleven North Korean defectors detained in Vietnam, seek to block deportation -activists Posted: 02 Dec 2019 03:43 AM PST ![UPDATE 1-Eleven North Korean defectors detained in Vietnam, seek to block deportation -activists]( "UPDATE 1-Eleven North Korean defectors detained in Vietnam, seek to block deportation -activists") Eleven North Koreans seeking to defect to South Korea have been detained in Vietnam since Nov. 23 and are seeking help to avoid being repatriated, a South Korean activist group said on Monday. The eight women and three men were detained by border guards in northern Vietnam two days after crossing from China, and are being held in the city of Lang Son, the Seoul-based Justice for North Korea said in a statement. Peter Jung, the head of the group, which supports North Korean asylum-seekers, said the would-be defectors had requested help from the South Korean Embassy in Hanoi, but he had not heard from them since Friday.
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| 9 family members killed in South Dakota plane crash Posted: 02 Dec 2019 06:04 AM PST  Federal investigators are expected to arrive Monday at the South Dakota site where nine members of an extended Idaho family were killed in a plane crash.
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| Here’s Why the Rejection Rate for Asylum Seekers Has Exploded in America’s Largest Immigration Court in NYC Posted: 02 Dec 2019 01:59 AM PST  ShutterstockThe rate of asylum petitions denied in New York City's busy immigration court has shot up about 17 times times faster than in the rest of the country during the Trump administration's crackdown—and still Ana was there, a round-faced Honduran woman with a black scarf wrapped turban-like over her hair, a look of fright crossing her dark eyes as the judge asked if she faced danger in her home country.Her eyes darted over to her helper, a Manhattan lighting designer with New Sanctuary Coalition volunteers to offer moral support—she couldn't find a lawyer to take her case for free. Then Ana turned back to the judge, or rather, to the video screen that beamed him in from Virginia, and whispered to the court interpreter in Spanish: "My spouse and my son were killed." Tears welled in her eyes as she said a notorious transnational gang had carried out the slaying. "Yes we were receiving threats from them," she added. And that was why, months before her husband and son were slain, she and her 5-year-old daughter had come "through the river," entering the United States near Piedras Negras, Mexico. After ruling that she was deportable, the judge gave Ana—The Daily Beast is withholding her real name because of the danger she faces in Honduras—three months to submit a claim for asylum, a possible defense against her removal. "You should start working on that," the judge told her. As she left the courtroom, Ana hugged the volunteer who'd accompanied her, Joan Racho-Jansen.Imprisoned Immigrants Facing Deportation Fend for Themselves In CourtNew York's immigration court has long been the asylum capital; it has made two out of every five of the nation's grants since 2001, while handling a quarter of the caseload. With approval of 55 percent of the petitions in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, it still grants a greater percentage of asylum requests than any other courts except San Francisco and Guam.But New York's golden door is slamming shut for far more asylum seekers than in the past, especially for women like Ana. The asylum denial rate in the New York City immigration court rose from 15 percent in fiscal year 2016, the last full year of the Obama administration, to 44 percent in fiscal year 2019, which ended Sept. 30. The rest of the country, excluding New York, has been relatively stable, with denials going from 69 percent to 74 percent. That is, the rate of denials in the rest of the country increased by one-ninth, but in New York they almost trebled. There are other courts where the rate of denials has shot up sharply over the same period: Newark, New Jersey (168 percent); Boston (147 percent); Philadelphia (118 percent). But because of the volume of its caseload, what's happening in New York is driving the national trend against asylum. For now, in sheer numbers, New York judges still granted more asylum requests over the last year than those in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Arlington, Virginia, the next three largest courts, combined. An analysis of federal data compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University and interviews with former immigration judges, lawyers, immigrant advocates and experts finds multiple reasons for the sharp shift in the nation's largest immigration court as compared to the rest of the country:—Many more migrants are coming to the New York court from Mexico and the "Northern Triangle" of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, and the judges have been far more likely to deny them asylum than in the past: from two out of five cases in the 2016 fiscal year to four out of five cases in the 2019 fiscal year. —Many veteran New York judges retired, and most of the replacements have a prosecutorial, military, or immigration enforcement background. In the past, appointments were more mixed between former prosecutors and immigrant defenders. Immigration judges are appointed by the U.S. attorney general and work for the Justice Department, not the federal court system. —All the judges are under heavier pressure from their Justice Department superiors to process cases more quickly, which gives asylum applicants little time to gather witnesses and supporting documents such as police reports. New judges, who are on two years of probation, are under particular pressure because numerical "benchmarks" for completing cases are a critical factor in employee evaluations. "You have a huge number of new hires in New York," said Jeffrey Chase, a former New York immigration judge. "The new hires are mostly being chosen because they were former prosecutors. They're normally of the background that this administration thinks will be statistically more likely to deny cases."Judge Jeffrey L. Menkin, who presided in Ana's case via video hookup, began hearing cases in March. He is based in Falls Church, Virginia, the home of the Executive Office of Immigration Review, the Justice Department agency that runs the immigration courts. He'd been a Justice Department lawyer since 1991, including the previous 12 years as senior counsel for national security for the Office of Immigration Litigation.Menkin can see only a portion of his New York courtroom on his video feed and as a result, he didn't realize a Daily Beast reporter was present to watch him conduct an asylum hearing for a Guatemalan woman—we'll call her Gloria—and her three young children, who were not present. Immigration and Customs Enforcement took Gloria into custody at the Mexican border in March. Released on bond, she made her way to New York and had an initial immigration court hearing on June 26, one of many cases on a crowded master calendar. She was scheduled for an individual hearing four months later. At the hearing scheduled three months later on the merits of her case, she decided to present an asylum defense to deportation. Her lawyer asked for a continuance—that is, a new hearing date—while his client waited to receive documentation she'd already requested from Guatemala. The papers were on the way, Gloria said.Judges in such cases—those that the Department of Homeland Security designates as "family unit"—have been directed to complete them within a year, which is about 15 months faster than the average case resolved for the year ending Sept. 30. Down the hall, other types of cases were being scheduled for 2023. Menkin called the lawyer's unexpected request for a continuance "nonsense" and "malarkey" and asked: "Are you and your client taking this case seriously?" The judge then asked if Gloria was requesting a case-closing "voluntary departure," a return to her homeland that would leave open the option she could apply again to enter the United States.'Lawlessness' in Immigration Jails for 250,000 Detainees Finally Allowed to Remain in AmericaBut Gloria had no intention of going back to Guatemala voluntarily. So Menkin looked to the government's lawyer: "DHS, do you want to jump into this cesspool?" The government lawyer objected to granting what would have been the first continuance in Gloria's case.And so Menkin refused to re-schedule, telling Gloria and her lawyer that they had to go ahead right then if they wanted to present an asylum defense. Gloria began testifying about threats and beatings that stretched back a decade, beginning after a failed romance with a man who was influential in local politics. Details are being withheld to protect her identity. She finally fled, she said, when extortionists threatened to hurt her children if she didn't make monthly payoffs that were beyond her means. When she observed that she and her children were being followed, she decided to leave. After she said she had gone to police three times, Menkin took over the questioning. "Are you familiar with the contents of your own asylum application?" he asked, pointedly."No," Gloria responded.Menkin said her asylum application stated she had gone to police once, rather than three times, as she'd just testified. Gloria explained that she had called in the information for the application to an assistant in her lawyer's office, and didn't know why it was taken down wrong. When her lawyer tried to explain, Menkin stopped him, raising his voice: "I did not ask you anything."Later, Menkin came back to the discrepancy he'd picked up on. "I don't know why," Gloria responded."All right, STOP," Menkin told the woman, who cried through much of the two-hour hearing. Again, he sought to terminate the case, asking the DHS lawyer, "Do I have grounds to dismiss this now?""I'm trying to be fair," she replied."We're all trying to be fair," Menkin said.And to be fair, it should be noted that since October 2018, the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) has been evaluating judges' performance based on the numbers for case completions, timeliness of decisions and the percent of rulings upheld on appeal. "In essence, immigration judges are in the untenable position of being both sworn to uphold judicial standards of impartiality and fairness while being subject to what appears to be politically-motivated performance standards," according to an American Bar Association report that assailed what it said were unprecedented "production quotas" for judges. The pressure is especially strong on judges who, like Menkin, are new hires. They are probationary employees for two years.Denise Slavin, a former president of the National Association of Immigration Judges who retired from the bench in April after 24 years of service, said the judges' union had tried to talk EOIR Director James McHenry out of his quotas. "It's basically like the same problem with putting quotas on police officers for tickets," she said. "It suggests bias and skews the system to a certain extent." Told of the details of Gloria's hearing, she added, "That's a prime example of the pressure these quotas have on cases… the pressure to get it done right away."Kathryn Mattingly, spokeswoman for the Executive Office of Immigration Review, said by email that she couldn't comment on individual cases, but that all cases are handled on their individual merits. "Each asylum case is unique, with its own set of facts, evidentiary factors, and circumstances," she wrote. "Asylum cases typically include complex legal and factual issues." She also said that Menkin could not comment: "Immigration judges do not give interviews."It's true that each asylum case has its own complex factors. But a 2016 study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office took many of them into account—the asylum seeker's nationality, language, legal representation, detention status, number of dependents—and determined that there are big differences in how the same "representative applicant" will be treated from one court and one judge to another. "We saw that grant rates varies very significantly across courts and also across judges," said Rebecca Gambler, director of the GAO's Homeland Security and Justice team.Some experts say that changes in the way the Justice Department has told immigration judges to interpret the law may be having an outsize effect in New York.Starting with Jeff Sessions, the Trump administration's attorneys general have used their authority over immigration courts to narrow the judges' discretion to grant asylum or, in their view, to clarify existing law. Asylum can be granted to those facing persecution because of "race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion." In June 2018, Sessions overturned a precedent that many judges in New York had been using to find that victims of domestic assaults or gang violence could be members of a "particular social group," especially when police were complicit or helpless. Justice's ruling in the Matter of A-B-, a Salvadoran woman, seems to have had a particular impact in New York. "Where there's a question about a 'particular social group,' judges in other parts of the country may have taken a narrower view" already, said Lindsay Nash, a professor at Cardozo Law School in New York and co-director of the Kathryn O. Greenberg Immigration Justice Clinic.Mauricio Noroña, a clinical teaching fellow at the same clinic, said new judges would be especially careful to follow the lead in the attorney general's ruling.Andrew Arthur, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington and a former immigration judge in York, Pennsylvania, said Sessions' decision in the Matter of A-B- would particularly affect Central American applicants, whose numbers have increased sharply in New York's court. Data show that just 8.5 percent of the New York asylum cases were from Central America or Mexico in 2016; in the past year, 32.6 percent were. Arthur said a larger portion of the New York court's asylum rulings in the past were for Chinese immigrants, whose arguments for refuge—persecution because of political dissent, religious belief, or the one-child policy—are fairly straightforward under U.S. asylum law. Although the number of Chinese applicants is still increasing, they have fallen as a portion of the New York caseload from 60 percent in 2016 to 28 percent in the past year. Sessions' determination against A-B- is being challenged, and lawyers have been exploring other paths to asylum in the meantime. "It's extremely complicated to prepare cases in this climate of changing law," said Swapna Reddy, co-executive director of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project. But, she said, "That's not to say advocates and judges can't get back to that [higher] grant rate."Gloria continued to cry; the DHS lawyer asked that she be given a tissue. The government lawyer's cross-examination was comparatively gentle, but she questioned why Gloria didn't move elsewhere within Guatemala and seek police protection. "He would find out before I even arrived at the police station," she said of the man she feared. And, she added, "They're always going to investigate and as for always being on the run, that's no life for my kids."In closing arguments, Gloria's lawyer said his client had testified credibly and that she legitimately feared her tormentor's influence. The DHS lawyer did not question Gloria's credibility, but she said Gloria's problem was personal, not political—that she could have moved to parts of Guatemala that were beyond the reach of the man's political influence.Judge Menkin then declared a 20-minute recess so that he could compose his decision. In the interim, the lawyers discovered that a man sitting in one corner of the small courtroom was a reporter and, when the judge returned to the bench to rule, so informed him. Immigration court hearings are generally open to the public. There are special rules for asylum cases, however. The court's practice manual says they "are open to the public unless the respondent expressly requests that they be closed." "Oh, Jesus Christ!" Menkin shouted at the lawyers when he learned a reporter had been present for the hearing. "Don't you people look around the room? What's the matter with you?"After the judge expressed his alarm, the reporter was ejected with Gloria's tearful assent, and so the basis for Judge Menkin's ruling on Gloria's asylum petition is not known. The outcome is, though: denied, 30 days to appeal. 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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| Judges: New North Carolina Congress map will be used in 2020 Posted: 02 Dec 2019 01:25 AM PST  North Carolina judges ordered a new U.S. House district map that Republican state legislators drew last month be used in the 2020 elections, deciding on Monday there wasn't time to scrutinize the boundaries further for any left-over extreme partisan bias. The three-judge panel agreed it was too late in the election cycle to receive evidence and testimony that would be necessary to consider detailed redistricting arguments from the lawmakers and from Democratic and independent voters who challenged the latest congressional maps. The North Carolina primary for hundreds of state and local elected positions is March 3, and candidate filing opened Monday.
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| A man sculpted a Tesla Cybertruck out of mashed potatoes on Thanksgiving, and the internet loves it Posted: 02 Dec 2019 06:30 AM PST  Greg Milano carved a Tesla Cybertruck from mashed potatoes on Thanksgiving. The internet approves: The video has nearly 4 million views and counting.
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| Flight delays plague travelers as the season's first nor'easter hits the East Coast. At least 9 people have died due to the winter weather. Posted: 02 Dec 2019 09:49 AM PST  A winter storm hit the US over the weekend, making it difficult for some Thanksgiving travelers to get home. Snow is in the forecast through Tuesday.
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| Kirchner in court days before assuming Argentine vice-presidency Posted: 02 Dec 2019 07:41 AM PST  Argentina's ex-president Cristina Kirchner arrived in court Monday to give evidence in a corruption trial in which she is charged with diverting public funds, just a week before she returns to the country's government as vice president. Kirchner, 66, smiled and waved to a group of banner-waving supporters when she arrived at Buenos Aires' Comodoro Py courthouse. Shortly before her appearance, Kirchner denounced her trial as part of a concerted effort to demonize and destroy her.
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| Meet the Titan: The Army's New Anti-Tank Robot? Posted: 02 Dec 2019 01:25 AM PST  It is in the works.
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| Thailand’s Prime Minister Says Nation Should ‘Spend in Dollars’ to Weaken Baht Posted: 02 Dec 2019 12:40 AM PST ![Thailand's Prime Minister Says Nation Should 'Spend in Dollars' to Weaken Baht]( "Thailand's Prime Minister Says Nation Should 'Spend in Dollars' to Weaken Baht") (Bloomberg) -- Thailand's Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-Ocha said the nation has to think about expenditure in dollars to help weaken its currency."We have to think how we will spend in dollars in many ways to help weaken the baht," Prayuth said in a speech Monday, adding the private sector needs to help with that process. A current-account surplus, capital inflows and high foreign reserves are among the causes of baht strength, he said.The comments in Bangkok could be a reiteration of earlier government entreaties for more imports, which require converting baht to spend in dollars, economists said. Calls to a prime minister's aide for more clarity weren't immediately answered."The premier may be urging people to spend more by converting baht into dollars," said Kampon Adireksombat, head of economic and financial market research at Siam Commercial Bank Pcl. "He wants people to import more and invest more. If we spend more, that will also help reduce our trade surplus."The baht weakened as much as 0.2% against the dollar, the most in about three weeks, and was trading at 30.283 as of 3:36 p.m. in Bangkok.The local currency's 8.6% surge against the dollar in the past year makes it the best performer in emerging markets. The central bank loosened rules on capital outflows last month, its latest effort to damp an appreciation that's hurt exports and tourism.Thailand's National Economic & Social Development Council predicts 2.6% gross domestic product growth in 2019, which would be the slowest pace in five years.(Updates baht performance in the fifth paragraph.)To contact the reporter on this story: Suttinee Yuvejwattana in Bangkok at suttinee1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Sunil Jagtiani at sjagtiani@bloomberg.net, ;Nasreen Seria at nseria@bloomberg.net, Clarissa BatinoFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Russia refused Dutch request to hand over MH17 suspect: Netherlands Posted: 02 Dec 2019 01:01 PM PST  Russia has refused a Dutch request to hand over a suspect in the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, in violation of European law, prosecutors said on Monday. Volodymyr Tsemakh, a Ukrainian national, had been identified as a suspect by the Netherlands, which is leading an investigation into the disaster on July 17, 2014 which killed all 298 people onboard. MH17 was shot out of the sky over territory held by pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine as it flew from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.
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| Indians demand justice after woman gang raped and killed Posted: 02 Dec 2019 12:47 AM PST  Hundreds of people gathered in New Delhi, Ahmedabad, Mumbai and other Indian cities on Monday to demand justice in the case of a veterinarian who was gang-raped and killed last week. The protesters demanded a fast-track investigation of the case and stringent laws for the safety of women in India.
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| Iran’s Multi-Front War against America and Its Allies Posted: 02 Dec 2019 10:41 AM PST  Two days before Thanksgiving, as President Donald Trump was preparing his surprise visit to U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif phoned Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) leader Ziyad al-Nakhalah and met with a delegation from the Taliban. The object of both discussions was to pressure U.S. and its allies: Zarif told the Taliban representatives that Iran wants a full withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, and offered al-Nakhalah Iran's full support for PIJ's "valiant resistance" against Israel.Iran's decisions to push the Palestinians to fight Israel and to encourage the Taliban are part of a regional policy that seeks to evict the U.S. from the Middle East and stir up trouble for Washington worldwide. This is Tehran's answer to the "maximum pressure" campaign of economic sanctions that the Trump administration has mounted since pulling the U.S. out of President Obama's Iran nuclear deal in May 2018.Iran fought its multi-front war against the U.S. in multiple ways. In the Persian Gulf, it twice struck at foreign oil tankers over the summer, shot down a high-tech U.S. drone in late June, and launched drone and cruise-missile attacks on key Saudi oil facilities in September. It is also seeking to use its terrorist proxies in the Gaza Strip to provoke Israel into a wider regional war. In the fall of 2018, Israel accused Iran of ordering PIJ to attack from Gaza. The Palestinian terrorist group has thousands of missiles and fighters in Gaza, but is smaller than Hamas. Its leadership lives abroad and keeps in close contact with Iran, which supports it even though it's made up of Palestinian Sunni Muslims. (In general, Iran tends to work with Shiite groups such as Hezbollah.) Israel was concerned throughout the summer of 2019 that PIJ might be trying to push it into a war in Gaza to distract it from Iran's efforts to gain a permanent foothold in Syria and supply Hezbollah with precision-guided rockets. In response, Israel struck a PIJ commander on November 12, prompting the group to fire over 400 missiles over the Gaza border.Evidence for how important the Palestinian group is to Iran comes from two phone calls that Zarif made after the November 12 battles. Iran's Mehr News reported that Zarif congratulated al-Nakhalah on November 17. Then Zarif called again on November 25. Iran's message was clear: Keep the pressure on Israel.At the same time, Iran was also looking 1,900 miles away from the Gaza Strip, to Afghanistan. In the 1990s, Iran and the Taliban were on opposite sides of the war in Afghanistan, to the point where Iran almost invaded the country in 1998. Once the U.S. invaded to dislodge al-Qaeda after 9/11, Iran began to reconsider its antipathy toward the Taliban. The Islamic Republic now hopes to push the U.S. out of Afghanistan by whatever means are necessary and fill the resulting power vacuum. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has accused Tehran of being behind a May suicide bombing in Kabul. Peace talks with the Taliban and the U.S. broke down in September, and Trump's Thanksgiving visit notwithstanding, Iran believes the U.S. is leaving Kabul and hopes to hasten the process.As Iran works with PIJ and the Taliban, it also seeks to pressure the U.S. in the Gulf, in Iraq, in Syria, and in Lebanon. In Iraq, it hopes its allies in parliament and among various Shiite militias will force the U.S. to withdraw; militia mortar and rocket attacks have hit U.S. bases in the country every month since May. In Syria, Iran-backed militias allied with Bashar al-Assad's regime are facing U.S. forces across the Euphrates, and would like to grab the oil facilities that the U.S. is currently protecting. In Lebanon, Iran's proxy Hezbollah wants control over the choice of the country's next prime minister.The Iranian regime is facing maximum pressure from the U.S. and suddenly finds itself squeezed at home, too, forced to brutally crack down on massive recent protests against a large gas-price hike. Its response has been to challenge the U.S. and American allies across thousands of miles of terrain from Kabul to Gaza. While it is cornered, it should not be underestimated.
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| How Biden helped create the student debt problem he now promises to fix Posted: 02 Dec 2019 01:00 AM PST  The former vice-president and 2020 presidential hopeful backed a 2005 bill that stripped students of bankruptcy protections and left millions in financial stressJoe Biden speaks to potential voters on the Dartmouth College campus during his campaign trail through New England in August. Photograph: Erin Clark/Boston Globe via Getty ImagesIn 10 weeks' time Joe Biden will lay "Joe's vision for America" at the feet of Iowa's caucus-goers in the hope that the first voters in the Democratic presidential race will put him on the road to the White House.Among his promises is that he will fix the student loan crisis saddling 45 million Americans with crippling debt now totalling a staggering $1.5tn. One idea is to allow people struggling to repay private student loans owed to banks and credit card companies to discharge them in bankruptcy.The pledge is one of the most striking policies on offer from Democratic candidates in the 2020 race, given how the problem Biden now proposes to resolve came about in the first place. Private student loans were largely stripped of bankruptcy protections in 2005 in a congressional move that had the devastating impact of tripling such debt over a decade and locking in millions of Americans to years of grueling repayments.> Biden was one of the most powerful people who could have said no, who could have changed this [bill]> > Melissa JacobyThe Republican-led bill tightened the bankruptcy code, unleashing a huge giveaway to lenders at the expense of indebted student borrowers. At the time it faced vociferous opposition from 25 Democrats in the US Senate.But it passed anyway, with 18 Democratic senators breaking ranks and casting their vote in favor of the bill. Of those 18, one politician stood out as an especially enthusiastic champion of the credit companies who, as it happens, had given him hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions – Joe Biden. Roots of the student loan crisisStudent debt has become a hot-button issue on the Democratic campaign trail. Candidates are vying to position themselves as having the most radical solution to the crisis, which now holds more than one in three young adults in its grip as well as 3 million Americans beyond the age of 60 still laboring to honor college loans they took out decades ago.More than 1 million people default on their student loans every year. By 2023 the proportion of borrowers falling behind with repayments is expected to reach 40% – puncturing a massive hole in the system.$123bn private student loans debtBut very little discussion has been devoted to how this monumental disaster came about. How was it, for instance, that the sum of outstanding educational loans borrowed from private financial entities shot up from $56bn in 2005 to $150bn in just 10 years – contributing to an overall student debt burden second in the US only to home mortgages.Until 2005, private student loans were eligible for bankruptcy protections just like other forms of private credit. But in that year Congress passed the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, a law that made it vastly more difficult for struggling former students to rebuild their lives by discharging the debts and starting over.Earlier this year, Biden tried to justify his backing of the 2005 act. His campaign spokesman told Politico that "knowing that the bill was likely to make it through the Republican-led Congress, he worked to moderate the bankruptcy bill and protect middle class families. He believed that if you have income and consumer debts you can pay, you should agree to a repayment plan that you can afford."Dig into the record, and you find a more complicated story that puts Biden in a less flattering posture. His offer to the caucus-goers of Iowa when they gather on 3 February is in effect that he will reverse a damaging provision that in 2005 he himself voted through. Students pull a mock "ball & chain" representing outstanding student debt at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri. Photograph: Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty ImagesDespite his protestations, it is indisputable that Biden was an avid supporter of the 2005 bill as a whole and of its overall thrust of tightening up the bankruptcy code largely to the benefit of lenders at the expense of distressed families who would find it harder to file for bankruptcy."Biden was one of the most powerful people who could have said no, who could have changed this. Instead he used his leadership role to limit the ability of other Democrats who had concerns and who wanted the bill softened," said Melissa Jacoby, a law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill specialising in bankruptcy.Other leading Democrats and consumer advocates did say no. In the Senate debate on the 2005 bill, Ted Kennedy was scathing about its implications."This legislation breaks the bond that unites America, it sacrifices Americans to the rampant greed of the credit card industry," he said. Kennedy warned that even before the new provision kicked in young people were dropping out of college "because of the costs of student loans – they can't pay them". Warren warned of bill's impact on womenWhen an earlier version of the bill was in front of Congress, a respected law professor at Harvard law school was so incensed by its terms that in 2002 she wrote an entire paper decrying Biden's forceful support of it. The author – Elizabeth Warren – said the changes would be to the detriment of one group above all others: women."Senator Biden supports legislation that will fall hardest on women," she wrote. "Why? The answer will have to come from him … He is a zealous advocate on behalf of one of his biggest contributors – the financial services industry."> Senator Biden supports legislation that will fall hardest on women> > Elizabeth WarrenWarren, whose decision to enter politics was inspired in no small part by her experiences of fighting Congress over bankruptcy laws, goes on to note in her essay that Biden's "energetic work on behalf of the credit card companies has earned him the affection of the banking industry and protected him from any well-funded challengers for his Senate seat".Warren's suspicion that Biden's enthusiasm for toughening bankruptcy laws came from his close ties to the credit card companies persists to this day. Professor Jacoby said: "I don't know how else to explain his stance on bankruptcy policy for financially distressed families other than his relationship with the consumer credit industry. There really isn't another plausible explanation."As a US senator from Delaware, a state that hosts many of the largest financial corporations in the country, that relationship came naturally. So friendly were his links with the Delaware-incorporated MBNA, a major credit card company since taken over by Bank of America, that back in 1999 he felt it necessary to declare: "I'm not the senator from MBNA."Campaign finance watchdogs underline the point. In the 2003-2008 senatorial election cycle, Biden received more than $500,000 in help from credit card companies, financial services and banks, the Open Secrets database shows.Elizabeth Warren during a Senate banking hearing in 2017. Photograph: Susan Walsh/APIn the lead up to the 2005 bankruptcy act, Biden tried to justify his support for the legislation by pointing to abuse of the bankruptcy system by people who should at least pay back some of their debts. By requiring better-off borrowers to repay what they could afford, private lenders would be able to reduce their interest rates to the benefit of all consumers.Neither claim was born out by events. Later reviews found that the level of abuse in the student loan system was relatively insignificant; nor did the removal of bankruptcy protections from private student loans lower interest rates."The evidence is not there – making bankruptcy laws more protective of lenders did not lead to more access and cheaper credit," Jacoby said.What the 2005 act did do was to herald an explosion in private student loans. Lenders, confident in the knowledge that it would be much more difficult in future for debts to be discharged, opened their arms wide to new borrowers.Today, the total of outstanding private student loans stands at $123bn. That is only about 8% of the overall $1.5tn debt mountain, but it is responsible for much of the human suffering with the average private student loan debt amounting to almost $14,000 a person. Higher interest ratesMost outstanding student loans are owed to the federal government. Discharging federal student loans in bankruptcy is similarly tightly proscribed, but the pain of those restrictions is heavily tranquilised by schemes that help borrowers who fall into trouble including loan forgiveness.Private student loans by contrast have no such cushion. The only hope for a borrower falling behind in repayments is if they can prove "undue hardship" – a standard that is almost impossible to meet and that often involves litigation costing thousands of dollars they do not have."Private student loans tend to have higher interest rates than federal loans, are far less flexible when borrowers are struggling, and are not eligible for programs like income-driven repayment or loan forgiveness," said Adam Minsky, a bankruptcy attorney who takes on student loans cases.In Joe's Vision, Biden points to an attempt in 2015 by the Obama administration, in which he was the vice-president, to allow at least some private student loans to be discharged in bankruptcy. He promises that a Biden presidency would enact that legislation – effectively reversing his earlier 2005 vote.But other than that he has remained largely silent on the subject and has not offered a retraction of his earlier voting record. The Guardian asked the Biden campaign to respond to the accusation that his support of the 2005 act, encouraged by his close ties to Delaware corporations, has made it harder for millions of Americans struggling with private student loans. There was no immediate reply.So far on the Democratic presidential trail the subject of Biden's role in the 2005 reforms has attracted remarkably little attention. The former vice-president has had to atone for his treatment of Anita Hill when she accused the US supreme court justice nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment in 1991 and for his support of the 1994 crime bill that heralded mass incarceration, but on student loans he has largely avoided scrutiny.Warren – no longer a law professor, a political rival now – made a passing reference to his record on bankruptcy on the day Biden launched his presidential bid in April. "At a time when the biggest financial institutions in this country were trying to put the squeeze on millions of hard-working families, Joe Biden was on the side of the credit card companies," she said.
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| Federal judge oversees wild court at America's original national park Posted: 02 Dec 2019 09:54 AM PST  Animal attacks are an ever-present danger for the cowboy-hatted judge overseeing a tiny outpost of federal justice in America's oldest national park.
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| Spain Captures First 'Narcosub' to Cross the Atlantic Posted: 02 Dec 2019 03:21 PM PST  The capture confirms suspicions that "narcosubs" are making the dangerous crossing from South America to Europe.
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| Choose hope or climate surrender, says UN chief Posted: 02 Dec 2019 03:25 AM PST  Confronted with a climate crisis threatening civilisation itself, humanity must choose between hope and surrender, UN chief Antonio Guterres told the opening plenary of the UN COP25 climate conference Tuesday. "One is the path of surrender, where we have sleepwalked past the point of no return, jeopardising the health and safety of everyone on this planet," Guterres said. In an impassioned appeal, the UN chief worked through a long list of worrying signs, including new figures released Tuesday by the World Meterological Organisation (WMO).
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| How Good Is Taiwan's New Hypersonic Missile? Posted: 02 Dec 2019 10:00 AM PST  A concern for China?
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| Since 1992, Earth is 1 degree hotter, trillions of tons of ice gone Posted: 01 Dec 2019 08:09 AM PST  Since leaders first started talking about tackling climate change, the world has released more heat-trapping gases, gotten hotter and suffered hundreds of extreme weather disasters. Since the first United Nations diplomatic conference to tackle climate change was held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, many things have changed.
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