| Fairfax accuser to detail allegations to Boston prosecutors Posted: 13 Feb 2019 04:04 PM PST  BOSTON (AP) — A woman who accused Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax of sexually assaulting her in Boston nearly 15 years ago will meet with prosecutors to discuss her allegations, her attorney said Wednesday.
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| McConnell, Schumer Urge Trump to Sign Spending Deal Posted: 12 Feb 2019 12:57 PM PST  Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and minority leader Chuck Schumer on Tuesday urged President Trump to sign the tentative spending deal Congress reached Monday night."I have recommended that if it becomes what we think it is, I do recommend [Trump] sign it," McConnell told reporters. "I think he's got a pretty good deal here. . . . I hope he'll find this agreement acceptable and he'll sign the bill."Schumer, meanwhile, said Trump would be to blame if another government shutdown occurred, and urged the president to back the deal to prevent one."Sign it and don't cause a shutdown," the New York Democrat said.Congress has until Friday, when funding runs out for about a quarter of the government, to craft a spending package Trump will sign. Lawmakers reached a tentative deal Monday that included $1.375 billion for the construction of barriers on the southern border, not the $5.7 billion the president requested for a concrete wall. Republicans and Democrats hope to avoid repeating the partial shutdown that began in late December and dragged on for a record 35 days.Trump has hinted he may not sign the current deal, telling reporters on Tuesday, "I'm not happy about it. It's not doing the trick.""I'm adding things to it, and when you add whatever I have to add, it's all going to happen where we're going to build a beautiful, big, strong wall," he added.Some Republican members of Congress expressed even more displeasure and called on the president to take executive action to build the wall."This conference agreement is hardly a serious attempt to secure our border or stop the flow of illegal immigration," Freedom Caucus chairman Mark Meadows wrote in a Monday night tweet. "It kicks the can down the road yet again, failing to address the critical priorities outlined by Border Patrol Chiefs. Congress is not doing its job."Trump has floated moving federal funds around and using his executive power, including possibly declaring a national emergency, to build hundreds of miles of border wall.
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| Global oil supply to swamp demand in 2019 despite output cuts: IEA Posted: 13 Feb 2019 05:45 AM PST  The IEA left its demand growth forecast for 2019 unchanged from its last report in January at 1.4 million barrels per day. "It is supported by lower prices and the start-up of petrochemical projects in China and the U.S. Slowing economic growth will, however, limit any upside," the agency said. The IEA raised its estimate of growth in crude supply from outside the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to 1.8 million bpd in 2019, from 1.6 million bpd previously.
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| Wall of winter weather brings sleet, ice and snow from Seattle to New York, affecting 100 million people Posted: 12 Feb 2019 08:39 AM PST  A wall of winter weather rolling across a wide swath of the northern United States on Tuesday brought sleet, snow, ice and commuter headaches from Seattle to New York.
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| Report: Senate Intel Committee probe finds no direct evidence of Trump-Russia collusion Posted: 12 Feb 2019 04:45 PM PST  Senate Intelligence Committee investigation winds down; Catherine Herridge has the details.
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| New York Lawmakers Fuming Without Key Details on Amazon Campus Posted: 12 Feb 2019 11:06 AM PST  "Is it a done deal?" Senator John Liu, a Democrat who represents the borough's northeast, asked Howard Zemsky, president and chief executive officer of Empire State Development, at a hearing on Tuesday in Albany. When Zemsky said finalization is pending, Liu asked him to disclose any up-front taxpayer costs to lure Amazon, one of the world's richest companies, to Long Island City. "You have to perform, be it on jobs or the investment, before you get anything back if you're Amazon," said Zemsky, referring to targets the Internet retailer must hit, including those involving job creation and capital expenditures.
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| 10 Things to Expect from the 2020 Toyota Camry TRD Posted: 12 Feb 2019 01:32 PM PST |
| Notorious drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman convicted Posted: 12 Feb 2019 04:00 PM PST  NEW YORK (AP) — Mexico's most notorious drug lord, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, was convicted Tuesday of running an industrial-scale smuggling operation after a three-month trial packed with Hollywood-style tales of grisly killings, political payoffs, cocaine hidden in jalapeno cans, jewel-encrusted guns and a naked escape with his mistress through a tunnel.
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| Acting Pentagon chief makes surprise Baghdad visit Posted: 12 Feb 2019 04:48 PM PST  Acting Pentagon chief Patrick Shanahan made an unannounced visit to the Iraqi capital on Tuesday for talks on the sensitive issue of a continued US troop presence after Washington withdraws from neighbouring Syria. Shanahan is keen to reassure Iraqi leaders after President Donald Trump angered many by saying he wanted to maintain some troops at the Al-Asad airbase, northwest of Baghdad, to keep an eye on Iran.
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| Guaido seeks to wrest control of Venezuela's oil company Posted: 13 Feb 2019 02:40 PM PST  CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela's opposition-controlled National Assembly appointed a transitional board of directors for the state oil company Wednesday, in a bid by congress chief Juan Guaido to gain control of an industry that is the economic backbone of the country.
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| Cars submerged, vineyards flooded as storm slams California Posted: 13 Feb 2019 03:55 PM PST  Among the hardest hit areas was northern California, with rain driven by winds of up to 75 mph (120 kph) pounding parts of Sonoma County's wine country. In the Sacramento Valley, flood warnings were in effect from Chico to Stockton as the warm "Pineapple Express" tropical system brought rain to the mountains, melting snow and swelling creeks. A woman was injured when a tree fell on a home in Carmel, and falling trees knocked out power to houses in Atherton near Palo Alto, according to tweets from the National Weather Service (NWS) and local authorities.
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| Farewell to a 'workhorse': Mars rover Opportunity officially dead after 15 years Posted: 13 Feb 2019 02:10 PM PST  After more than eight months without contact, NASA tried one more time to revive the Mars rover Opportunity before bidding it farewell – and failed.
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| Sorry Traders, T-Mobile’s Sprint Deal Is Anybody’s Guess Posted: 13 Feb 2019 06:07 AM PST  With romance in the air, it's only appropriate that T-Mobile US Inc. and Sprint Corp. will appear side by side on Wednesday morning to defend their union to a panel of lawmakers questioning its effects. T-Mobile CEO John Legere and Sprint Executive Chairman Marcelo Claure are back on Capitol Hill to testify before the House subcommittee on communications and technology about the pending merger of the nation's third- and fourth-largest wireless carriers.(1) The gregarious and straight-talking Legere smoothly handled a mild Senate grilling last June, but much has changed since then, not least that Democrats took control of the House in the latest midterm elections.
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| Police apologise for sending officers in blackface to impersonate black drug dealers Posted: 13 Feb 2019 08:58 AM PST  One night in February 1993, Frankie Caruso and another white Baton Rouge detective darkened their faces to impersonate black drug dealers, as part of what was then characterised as a successful sting operation. The blackface operation, which current officials said had been approved by the Police Department, drew swift condemnation this week from the city's mayor and its police chief. "Blackface photographs are inappropriate and offensive," Police Chief Murphy J Paul Jr said in a statement on Monday.
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| Best High-End Dishwashers From Consumer Reports' Tests Posted: 12 Feb 2019 12:31 PM PST  Best High-End Dishwashers From CR's Tests You'd think that spending $1,500 or more would get you, well, the best dishwasher money could buy. But in fact, our tests show that dishwashers in the $...
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| Trump ready to sign border deal, averting shutdown: reports Posted: 13 Feb 2019 07:07 AM PST  President Donald Trump is ready to sign a border security funding deal, despite failing to get anywhere close to the money he sought for a US-Mexico border wall, US media reported Wednesday. CNN and NBC television quoted sources close to the president saying that Trump has resigned himself to the deal crafted by his Republican Party and the Democrats in Congress. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders would not confirm or deny the reports, but said Wednesday that "there are positive pieces" in the deal.
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| 'El Chapo' trial reveals drug lord's love life, business dealings Posted: 12 Feb 2019 11:43 AM PST  * Guzman once paid $100 million to former President EnriquePena Nieto, Cifuentes said. * Guzman ordered Cifuentes to kill the cartel'scommunications expert after learning he was cooperating with theFBI. * Lopez also said Guzman's sons killed a prominent reporterin Sinaloa because he published an article about cartelinfighting against their wishes.
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| Honda Tomo EV is the cute concept we hope to see in future cities Posted: 13 Feb 2019 08:31 AM PST  Designed in part by Master of Transportation Design students from Italy's Istituto Europeo di Design, the Honda Tomo EV that's expected to go on display at the Geneva Motor Show represents the compact, smart EVs of Honda's future, according to the institution. In January, the Istituto Europeo di Design (IED) in Turin, Italy, announced that about a dozen of their graduate design students were partnering with Honda to create what turned into the zero emissions-producing Tomo concept car, whose name means "friend." Since this was announced last month, all we've known about the project -- which is part of the Master in Transportation Design graduate students' theses -- is that the model will be a compact electric vehicle that will be on display at the Geneva Motor Show, March 7-17.
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| Not ‘All Americans’ Are ‘Proud That We Have More Women in the Work Force Than Ever Before’ Posted: 12 Feb 2019 07:17 AM PST  In his State of the Union address, President Trump announced, "All Americans can be proud that we have more women in the work force than ever before." It was one of the few times he received a standing ovation from both Democrats and Republicans.I would not have stood and cheered.Either the president or whoever wrote that line honestly thought it was something worth celebrating or the president simply wanted to say something that would sound wonderful to both Democrats and Republicans, as well as to Americans who do not otherwise support him.Whatever the reason, both the fact that there are more women in the work force than ever before and the fact that Trump thought mentioning it would bring credit to his administration constitute a victory for the feminist Left. Getting women to leave home for the workplace has been one of the central goals of modern feminism.Feminists deny this, claiming they don't prefer that women work outside the home; they only want women to have the choice to do so. But if that were true, why did congressional Democrats -- the women in white, feminists all -- jump up and cheer?The answer is obvious: Feminists consider women who eschew a career to take care of their home, their children, and their husband to be less than women who place career first.But even if one prefers that women work outside the home, "All Americans can be proud that we have more women in the work force than ever before" is simply not true. As feminists often note, many women work outside the home not because they want to but because they have no choice: They have to support themselves, their household and/or their children.Why should we be proud of that?What if every woman in America were in the work force? Would we be proud of that? By the "more of women than ever" logic, we should be.On the other hand, if the president had said, "All Americans can be proud of the fact that more women than ever now have the choice to work inside or outside the home," that would be true. That is something I, too, would have cheered.But the members of Congress did not stand and cheer because more women have the choice to work outside the home. They cheered because more women than ever before are working outside the home.According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2017 nearly 75 million women were in the American civil work force. But it is inconceivable that 75 million women want to be in the work force. So, again, why all the cheering?We know why Democrats did: They want women to eschew homemaking and time with children in favor of work outside the house.But why did Republicans stand up and cheer?One reason bears testimony to the thesis of a recent column I wrote: The greatest fear in America is fear of the Left. The last thing Republican members of Congress wanted was to be photographed sitting quietly after the president of the United States announced, "All Americans can be proud that we have more women in the work force than ever before" -- especially while every Democrat was standing and cheering. The left-wing media, meaning virtually all mainstream media, would have depicted every such Republican as "sexist" and "misogynist."A second reason bears testimony to another fact of contemporary life: Republicans have been far more influenced by leftism than Democrats have been by conservatism. While many of the Republicans who cheered did so out of fear of the Left and/or to support their party's beleaguered president, many sincerely believe that the record number of women in the workplace is something worth celebrating.But believe it or not, there are still many women and men who do not agree. We all acknowledge that with enough money and/or familial support, a woman can raise fine children and maintain a happy home and a loving marriage. Nevertheless, we also know that doing all three is difficult enough when a woman devotes full time to those three goals. But when a woman works outside the home, devoting full time to home and family is impossible.So, yes, more women than ever are in the workplace. But before we stand and cheer, it is worth asking:Are women happier today?Are families doing better today?Are marriages happier with wives at home or in the workplace?Do young people grow up happier and better adjusted with mothers at home or with mothers in the workplace?Is society's emphasis on work and career inhibiting more young women from marrying and having children?Is society better off or worse off when a record number of women leave home to enter the workplace?Only when those questions are answered will we know whether to cheer.Copyright 2019 Creators.com
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| Hackers can gain full control over Xiaomi electric scooter, security group finds Posted: 13 Feb 2019 11:42 AM PST  The Xiaomi M365 electric scooter has a defect in which hackers can take complete control over the vehicle, according to Zimperium.
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| In-Depth Photos of the New 2020 BMW X3 M and X4 M Posted: 12 Feb 2019 02:58 PM PST |
| Thai princess apologizes after being disqualified from PM run Posted: 12 Feb 2019 09:40 AM PST  Princess Ubolratana Rajakanya Sirivadhana Barnavadi's comments came a day after the commission dropped her name from an official list of prime minister candidates. The commission said members of the royal family should stay above politics, echoing a sharp rebuke from King Maha Vajiralongkorn that her bid was "inappropriate" and unconstitutional. Ubolratana's unprecedented nomination by a party allied with populist ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra unsettled the Southeast Asian nation, where the monarchy is revered by millions of Thais and remains above politics.
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| The Latest: US, Russia draft rival UN Venezuela resolutions Posted: 12 Feb 2019 03:55 PM PST  CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — The Latest on Venezuela's political crisis (all times local):
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| Ex-Boyfriend Arrested in Connection to Murder of Woman Found in Suitcase Posted: 12 Feb 2019 04:00 PM PST  The ex-boyfriend of a New York woman found dead in a suitcase in Connecticut has been arrested in connection to her death, police said Tuesday.
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| Contrasting realities on immigration as Trump, O'Rourke host dueling rallies in El Paso Posted: 12 Feb 2019 01:47 PM PST  Standing within earshot distance of one another, President Trump and Beto O'Rourke held opposing rallies in El Paso, Texas, that clashed over immigration. Trump and his contingent of an estimated 6,500 chanted "Build the wall" and "U-S-A" over and over, while O'Rourke and an estimated 10,000 supporters called for a path to citizenship for those wanting to cross the border. While Trump spoke from inside a packed El Paso County Coliseum arena with a large U.S. flag and "Finish the Wall" signs perched on either side, O'Rourke spoke outside on a stage set up inside a baseball field with a mariachi band as his backdrop.
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| Post-box love for lonely Britons on Valentine's Day Posted: 13 Feb 2019 09:36 AM PST  Big-hearted Britons have penned thousands of uplifting messages to be delivered to single seniors on Valentine's Day in a project aimed at alleviating loneliness. The letters and cards were written in recent weeks and left in ten models of old-fashioned red post-boxes set up in locations across London and several other cities. Red Letter Days, a gift experience company which came up with the idea, will dispatch the messages to needy elderly recipients in selected care homes during Thursday.
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| NASA about to pull plug on Mars rover which has been silent for 8 months Posted: 12 Feb 2019 02:13 PM PST  NASA is trying one last time to contact its record-setting Mars rover Opportunity, before calling it quits. The rover has been silent for eight months, victim of one of the most intense dust storms in decades. Thick dust darkened the sky last summer and, for months, blocked sunlight from the spacecraft's solar panels. NASA said Tuesday it will issue a final series of recovery commands, on top of more than 1,000 already sent. If there's no response by Wednesday - which NASA suspects will be the case - Opportunity will be declared dead, 15 years after arriving at the red planet. Team members are already looking back at Opportunity's achievements, including confirmation water once flowed on Mars. Opportunity was, by far, the longest-lasting lander on Mars. Besides endurance, the six-wheeled rover set a roaming record of 28 miles (45 kilometers.) Its identical twin, Spirit, was pronounced dead in 2011, a year after it got stuck in sand and communication ceased. Both outlived and outperformed expectations, on opposite sides of Mars. The golf cart-size rovers were designed to operate as geologists for just three months, after bouncing onto our planetary neighbor inside cushioning air bags in January 2004. They rocketed from Cape Canaveral a month apart in 2003. It's no easier saying goodbye now to Opportunity, than it was to Spirit, project manager John Callas said. "It's just like a loved one who's gone missing, and you keep holding out hope that they will show up and that they're healthy," he said. "But each passing day that diminishes, and at some point you have to say 'enough' and move on with your life." Deputy project scientist Abigail Fraeman was a 16-year-old high school student when Opportunity landed on Mars; she was inside the control centre as part of an outreach program. Inspired, Fraeman went on to become a planetary scientist, joined NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and ended up deputy project scientist for Opportunity. "It gives you an idea just how long this mission has lasted," she said. "Opportunity's just been a workhorse ... it's really a testament, I think, to how well the mission was designed and how careful the team was in operating the vehicle." Rather than viewing the dust storm as bad luck, Callas considers it "good luck that we skirted so many possible storms' over the years. Global dust storms typically kick up every few years, and "we had gone a long time without one." Unlike NASA's nuclear-powered Curiosity rover still chugging along on Mars, Opportunity and Spirit were never designed to endure such severe weather. Cornell University's Steve Squyres, lead scientist for both Opportunity and Spirit, considers succumbing to a ferocious storm an "honorable way" for the mission to end. "You could have lost a lot of money over the years betting against Opportunity," Squyres said Tuesday. The rovers' greatest gift, according to Squyres, was providing a geologic record at two distinct places where water once flowed on Mars, and describing the conditions there that may have supported possible ancient life. Mars Curiosity Rover | Top six discoveries NASA last heard from Opportunity on June 10. Flight controllers tried to awaken the rover, devising and sending command after command, month after month. The Martian skies eventually cleared enough for sunlight to reach the rover's solar panels, but there was still no response. Now it's getting colder and darker at Mars, further dimming prospects. Engineers speculate the rover's internal clock may have become scrambled during the prolonged outage, disrupting the rover's sleep cycle and draining on-board batteries. It's especially frustrating, according to Callas, not knowing precisely why Opportunity - or Spirit - failed. Now it's up to Curiosity and the newly arrived InSight lander to carry on the legacy, he noted, along with spacecraft in orbit around Mars. As for Opportunity, "It has given us a larger world," Callas said. "Mars is now part of our neighborhood."
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| Blackface and black eye: Louisiana police department latest embroiled in racist scandal Posted: 12 Feb 2019 07:06 PM PST  The police department in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, apologized after a photo surfaced showing two officers in blackface during a 1993 sting operation.
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| Johnson & Johnson's nasal spray for depression wins FDA panel backing Posted: 12 Feb 2019 01:50 PM PST  The panel voted 14-2 in favor of the drug esketamine, developed to treat major depression in patients who have not benefited from at least two different therapies, saying its benefits outweighed the risks. One panel member abstained from voting. Esketamine is a chemical mirror image of anesthetic ketamine, which is also abused as a recreational party drug and goes by the street nickname "Special K".
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| Migrants overwhelm New Mexico border post with thousands of illegal crossings Posted: 13 Feb 2019 03:46 PM PST  New Mexico border patrol resources stressed after more than 28 large migrant groups make illegal crossings since October
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| US strikes IS-held mosque as Syria battle intensifies Posted: 12 Feb 2019 09:05 AM PST  BEIRUT (AP) — The U.S. military said Tuesday it struck a mosque that had allegedly been used as an Islamic State control center, as American-allied Syrian forces battled the extremists in their last stronghold in eastern Syria amid reports of more civilian casualties.
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| Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s proposed tax rate rise too ‘extreme’, says billionaire Bill Gates Posted: 13 Feb 2019 07:50 AM PST  Billionaire Bill Gates has criticised plans to impose higher rates of tax on the super-rich – like the one suggested by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – as being too "extreme". The Democratic congresswoman for New York has said she wants to tax income over $10m at 70 per cent, arguing that it is "immoral" to allow billionaires to amass great wealth amid intense poverty. "We can be more progressive without really threatening income generation," Mr Gates told a podcast by the tech website The Verge.
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| RNC uses Hillary Clinton's 'Stronger Together' slogan for Trump Posted: 12 Feb 2019 08:03 AM PST  The Republican National Committee posted a pro-Trump graphic that borrowed the motto of Clinton's 2016 campaign — and the former Democratic nominee noticed.
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| NATO chief to meet Russia's Lavrov on missile pact crisis Posted: 13 Feb 2019 08:58 AM PST  NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced Wednesday that he will hold talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov this week, as part of efforts to save a key arms control treaty that is on the point of collapse. The pair will meet at the Munich Security Conference, which starts on Friday, as NATO tries to persuade Moscow to abandon a new missile system the alliance says breaches the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. The US began the process of exiting the treaty earlier this month in response to Moscow's deployment of the 9M729 missile, prompting Russia to announce its own withdrawal.
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| U.S. charges former top Apple lawyer with insider trading Posted: 13 Feb 2019 11:59 AM PST  Authorities said Gene Levoff exploited his positions as corporate secretary, head of corporate law and co-chairman of a committee that reviewed draft copies of Apple's financial results to trade illegally between 2011 and 2016. Prosecutors said Levoff, 45, of San Carlos, California, generated $604,000 in illegal gains, including realized profit and avoided losses, before Apple terminated his decade-long employment in September.
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| Snow, snow, go away: Familiar rain returns to Seattle on Monday night Posted: 11 Feb 2019 09:55 PM PST  Following a historic winter storm that has already made this month the city's snowiest February since 1949 according to Accuweather, Seattle was dealing with more familiar weather on Monday night, though life won't immediately return to normal.
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| From Mass Weddings to Spilled Wine: How 6 Countries Around the World Celebrate Valentine's Day Posted: 13 Feb 2019 11:58 AM PST  Here are some unusual Valentine's Day traditions around the world
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| The Latest: Fairfax accuser's lawyer urges public hearing Posted: 11 Feb 2019 11:26 PM PST  RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — The Latest on scandals involving Virginia's Democratic leaders (all times local):
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| Subaru expected to debut two new mild-hybrids in Geneva Posted: 12 Feb 2019 07:00 AM PST  As reported by AutoCar, Subaru is bringing an electrified Boxer engine to the Geneva Motor Show next month. In just a month, two "unspecified" models will be getting electric versions of Subaru's 2.0-liter flat-four petrol Boxer engine, coined the e-Boxer, according to AutoCar. As of now, details are sparse about which models will get this mild-hybrid powertrain whose specs are still unknown, they will probably produce similar outputs to those of the Forester e-Boxer that was seen at the Singapore Motor Show last month as noted by AutoExpress: with its 13 hp motor connected to a continuously variable transmission, the model delivered an output of 156 hp and about 187 lb.-ft. of torque to all four wheels.
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| Man goes into abandoned home to smoke cannabis and finds overweight tiger Posted: 12 Feb 2019 01:38 AM PST  A man who broke into an abandoned house to smoke marijuana stumbled across more than he bargained for when he discovered a pet tiger inside. Police in Houston, Texas, said the "concerned citizen" contacted them after he found the overweight mammal crammed inside a tiny cage. "They saw a tiger in this building, this vacant house that's obviously been abandoned for some time," said Sergeant Jason Alderete, the Houston Police Department's animal unit.
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| Border Deal May Be Released Thursday, Democratic Negotiator Says Posted: 13 Feb 2019 10:01 AM PST  "There's a long list of all kinds of things in there," Lowey said about the deal during an interview Wednesday on Bloomberg Television. While she "wouldn't dare predict" whether President Donald Trump will support the measure and avoid another partial government shutdown after funding expires on Friday night, she said she is hopeful he will. The tentative accord reached Monday night provides $1.375 billion for 55 new miles of fencing in Texas -- less than the $5.7 billion Trump wants.
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| As time runs out, Washington ready to help with jihadist repatriation Posted: 12 Feb 2019 07:42 AM PST  The United States is ready to help countries repatriate Islamic State jihadists detained in Syria but time is of the essence and Washington insists that ultimately it is up to their home governments to come up with solutions. The window to organize the fighters' return with US support "is quickly closing," a US State Department official told AFP, on condition of anonymity. US President Donald Trump's sudden announcement in December that US troops would be withdrawing from Syria set off a countdown for governments whose citizens, having joined IS, were captured by the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
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