| Massachusetts police officer charged with repeatedly raping 16-year-old homeless girl while on duty Posted: 28 Jun 2019 08:28 AM PDT  A 49-year-old Massachusetts police officer was arraigned Thursday on twocharges of rape after he allegedly sexually assaulted an underage homelessgirl multiple times while on duty
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| Sanders admits he would raise taxes on the middle class to pay for programs Posted: 27 Jun 2019 07:18 PM PDT  Sen. Bernie Sanders, challenged at Thursday night's Democratic presidential debate on how he would pay for universal healthcare and his other proposed programs, admitted income taxes on the middle class would have to go up.
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| US sanctions Maduro's son as it raises pressure on Venezuela Posted: 28 Jun 2019 11:54 AM PDT  The Trump administration on Friday announced sanctions on the son of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in a move to increase pressure on family members of top officials backing the socialist leader and suspected of corruption. The action by the U.S. Treasury Department freezes any U.S. assets belonging to Nicolas Maduro Jr. and prohibits American from doing business with him. "Maduro's regime was built on fraudulent elections, and his inner circle lives in luxury off the proceeds of corruption while the Venezuelan people suffer," said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
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| Stealth vs. Russia: U.S. F-22s and F-35s vs. Russia's S-300 and S-400 (Who Wins?) Posted: 27 Jun 2019 08:00 PM PDT  Physics dictate that a tactical fighter-sized stealth aircraft must be optimized to defeat higher-frequency bands such the C, X and Ku bands, which are used by fire control radars to produce a high-resolution track. Industry, Air Force and Navy officials all agree that there is a "step change" in an LO aircraft's signature once the frequency wavelength exceeds a certain threshold and causes a resonant effect—which generally occurs at the top part of the S-band.Russian air defenses may appear formidable as part of Moscow's increasingly sophisticated anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capability, but areas protected by these systems are far from impenetrable bubbles or 'Iron Domes' as some analysts have called them.While it is true that a layered and integrated air defense may effectively render large swaths of airspace too costly—in terms of men and materiel—to attack using conventional fourth generation warplanes such as the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet or Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcon, these systems have an Achilles' Heel. Russian air defenses will still struggle to effectively engage fifth-generation stealth aircraft such as the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor or F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.(This first appeared in August 2016.)
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| Ethics panel launches Gaetz investigation over Cohen tweet Posted: 28 Jun 2019 10:50 AM PDT ![Ethics panel launches Gaetz investigation over Cohen tweet]( "Ethics panel launches Gaetz investigation over Cohen tweet") Matt Gaetz sent a tweet in February in which he threatened to release embarrassing personal information about Michael Cohen.
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| Mourning dog pictured at former owner's hospital bed finds new home Posted: 27 Jun 2019 03:30 PM PDT ![Mourning dog pictured at former owner's hospital bed finds new home]( "Mourning dog pictured at former owner's hospital bed finds new home") Moose, a 3-year-old lab mix, was recently photographed waiting at his former owner's hospital bed, spurring an adoption rush for the dog.
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| NASA plans to send a drone to Saturn's largest moon Posted: 27 Jun 2019 03:05 PM PDT  NASA said Thursday that it's sending a drone called Dragonfly to explore Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Using propellers, the drone will fly and land on several spots on the icy moon to study whether it can support microbial life. The nuclear-powered mission is part of NASA's competitive New Frontiers program, which launched the New Horizons spacecraft that became the first to visit dwarf planet Pluto.
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| Trump slams Democratic debates at G20 summit over healthcare for migrants: ‘That’s the end of that race!’ Posted: 27 Jun 2019 06:34 PM PDT  Donald Trump attacked the first two nights of the 2020 Democratic debates while attending the G20 summit in Japan on Thursday. The president said the first night of debates among leading Democrats in Miami, Florida "wasn't very exciting" and lambasted his opponents for supporting health care for undocumented immigrants during the second night of debates. While meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the US president said, "You know they have a debate going on. They had the first debate last night, perhaps you saw it — it wasn't very exciting, I can tell you that." "They have another going on today," he continued, speaking with the German leader on Thursday night as the debates were going on. "They definitely have plenty of candidates. That's about it.""I look forward to spending time with you rather than watching that," he added. Still, the president reportedly claimed to have passed by a television during Thursday night's summit when he noticed the second round of debates at a moment when politicians were responding to a question about providing health care insurance for undocumented immigrants. Each of the 2020 hopefuls on stage at Thursday night's contentious debate were in agreement over providing health care to migrants who arrived at the nation's borders with documentation. > All Democrats just raised their hands for giving millions of illegal aliens unlimited healthcare. How about taking care of American Citizens first!? That's the end of that race!> > — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) > > June 28, 2019Mr Trump tweeted seemingly in between meetings: "All Democrats just raised their hands for giving millions of illegal aliens unlimited healthcare.""How about taking care of American Citizens first!?" he continued, adding, "That's the end of that race!"On Wednesday night, the president tweeted the first night of debates were "BORING!" and did not live-tweet the entirety of the events as some reports suggested he was planning on doing while travelling to the G20 summit. Numerous candidates took a turn to swipe at Mr Trump during their remarks at the multi-day debates, with leading candidates like Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren each portraying themselves as the president's polar opposite in terms of rhetoric, policies and proposals.
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| How did voters react to the first night of Democratic presidential debates? Posted: 27 Jun 2019 02:29 AM PDT  Maslansky and Partners president Lee Carter shares voter dials from the debate.
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| Video: Parents fight off woman trying to kidnap their child at airport Posted: 27 Jun 2019 10:26 AM PDT  Dramatic footage released by police shows every parent's worst nightmare at a busy Atlanta airport.
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| View Photos of the 2020 Chrysler Voyager Posted: 27 Jun 2019 07:19 AM PDT |
| Supreme Court blocks plan to add citizenship question to 2020 census Posted: 27 Jun 2019 09:03 AM PDT  In a ruling with far-reaching political and economic implications, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision today that a citizenship question could not be included on the 2020 census — for now — because the Department of Justice's explanation for seeking to add one was inadequate.
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| First Democratic Debate Shows What the Party Stands For Posted: 27 Jun 2019 10:07 AM PDT  (Bloomberg Opinion) -- If nominations are about defining the party to itself, the Democrats on Night One of the first round of debates made it pretty clear who they are. Demographically diverse. Pragmatic. Liberal. Programmatic. Group-oriented. Competent.Yes, Elizabeth Warren has a plan for that, but so do Julian Castro, Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker. Some of the others, too, but those are the four who stood out to me. Yes, Klobuchar is relatively moderate, and Warren is relatively more progressive, and the other eight can probably be arrayed on an ideological spectrum based on their answers; still, however, they were very much of the same approach to politics. Take policy seriously. Show solidarity with various party-aligned organized groups and demographic groups: Moms Demand, unions, climate activists, women and more – and demonstrate it with concrete, specific policy solutions.What Democrats are really like was, I think, best demonstrated by the candidate who in my view had the worst night, Washington Governor Jay Inslee. Inslee is supposedly running on climate. In his closing statement, he tried to differentiate by arguing that he alone is pledging to make it his number one priority if he is elected. And yet Inslee utterly failed to do what a candidate with that kind of plan is supposed to do: Connect every question back to "his" issue to demonstrate that in fact he really would govern that way. Instead, he wound up talking about unions when he got an economy question, and immigrant communities when he got an immigration question – and then, most embarrassingly, he was not among the four candidates who volunteered climate as the nation's biggest geopolitical threat. Inslee said "Trump," which is a perfectly good Democratic answer. All his answers were perfectly fine Democratic answers. They just weren't about climate, and so instead of standing out he faded in with the rest of the candidates who may not qualify for the September debates.In other words, Democrats aren't really very good at running single-issue campaigns because they are trained, as Democratic politicians, to take policy seriously in all the areas in which Democratic groups want something.Whether this is good or bad, I suppose, depends on one's sense of what politics is supposed to be about and what one wants from a president. I tend to think it's very healthy for a party, and a very nice contrast to the bluster and ideological preening that tends to dominate Republican debates even when Donald Trump isn't one of the candidates.But whether that's correct or not, what was on display tonight is what the Democrats are.I counted six very plausible nominees going into the evening – Warren, Castro, Klobuchar, Booker, Inslee and Beto O'Rourke. Of those, I suspect that fans of all except Inslee and perhaps O'Rourke will believe their candidate did very well. None of the other four did anything to make me think that they are anything other than distant longshots. But that's mostly guesswork. As several pre-debate pieces have emphasized, it's what happens next that determines the winners – what the pundits say, which clips get used on TV news, and which clips go viral on social media. That may take a few days to sort out, especially with a second debate coming Thursday night.Hey, for all I know, the contentious argument between Tulsi Gabbard and Tim Ryan over war in Afghanistan could wind up getting plenty of attention and help one of them (or both) to move up in the polls a little. It was, for whatever it's worth, one of only two real active arguments, along with Castro and O'Rourke debating immigration policy. It's not always predictable what the media will do or which clips people will find appealing. What I would say is that neither Gabbard nor Ryan appears to have the support from party actors to take advantage of any surge. Castro and O'Rourke, and Klobuchar, Booker and Warren, are in much better position to leverage a small uptick into something more substantial.Other than that, I'll stick by my initial sense that this Wednesday group is in fact at least as strong as the Thursday group, even though their polling numbers are far weaker at this point. As a group, they were reasonably impressive despite the difficult logistics of a 10-candidate debate, in which all of them have to fight for time and candidates tend to go missing for half an hour here or fifteen minutes there.And with that, on to the second night.(Corrects spelling of Senator Booker's name in second paragraph. Corrects name of group in second paragraph.)To contact the author of this story: Jonathan Bernstein at jbernstein62@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Philip Gray at philipgray@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics and policy. He taught political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio and DePauw University and wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Yellowstone's Steamboat Geyser Is Incredibly Active Right Now, and We Don't Know Why Posted: 27 Jun 2019 06:09 AM PDT  Yellowstone National Park's Steamboat Geyser blasted steam and water into the air at 12:52 p.m. local time on June 12. Then, three days, 3 hours and 48 minutes later -- at 4:40 p.m. on June 15 -- it blasted steam and water into the air again, according to the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS)'s Volcano Hazards Program. That's a new record for the geyser, according to the Billings Gazette: the shortest time ever recorded between eruptions.But don't worry. Increased activity at a single geyser doesn't indicate any new threat from the Yellowstone caldera -- the "supervolcano" hiding under the park -- according to USGS."Geysers are supposed to erupt, and most are erratic, like Steamboat," the agency wrote. [Infographic: Yellowstone Geology, Geysers, and Volcano]Additionally, records of Steamboat's eruptions go back only to 1982, the Billings Gazette noted. Yellowstone's history is much older than that.The newspaper also reported that the eruptions were especially dramatic, large and loud, with one ejecting a rock that shattered a wooden post. Researchers don't have good, tested theories to explain why geysers like one this slip in and out of active periods, according to the Gazette.Mostly, the eruptions suggest that now is a particularly good time to go see Steamboat Geyser blow its lid. The geyser set a record for total number of eruptions in 2018, with 32 in the calendar year, according to USGS. Already in 2019 there have been 24 eruptions, six of them in June as of this writing. * Yellowstone and Yosemite: Two of the World's Oldest National Parks * All Yours: Top 10 Least Visited National Parks * The Grand Canyon in PicturesOriginally published on Live Science.
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| WRAPUP 3-Boeing sees fix for latest 737 MAX software flaw in September Posted: 27 Jun 2019 09:57 AM PDT ![WRAPUP 3-Boeing sees fix for latest 737 MAX software flaw in September]( "WRAPUP 3-Boeing sees fix for latest 737 MAX software flaw in September") Boeing Co will take until at least September to fix a newly identified problem on its grounded 737 MAX, a company official told Reuters, meaning the workhorse jet's return to service will be delayed until October at the earliest, significantly longer than most airlines had expected. Boeing shares closed 3% lower on Thursday, after the Chicago-based company told air carriers that it would complete the latest software update for the 737 MAX by September after a new issue arose last week during a simulator test. Once Boeing completes the update, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration must review the fix and the results of a certification test flight that will not be scheduled until at least September, a process that will take at least two to three weeks.
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| The 1985 Case That Sets the Rules for How Government Can Treat Migrant Children Posted: 27 Jun 2019 08:30 PM PDT  What are the basic rules that determine how immigrant children are treated in U.S. immigration detention?The Trump administration's detention of migrant children in poor conditions along the U.S./Mexico border has repeatedly raised this question. The answer is a decades-old court case known as the Flores settlement. The settlement establishes the rules that the U.S. government must follow when it detains migrant children in enforcing immigration laws.Litigation over enforcement of the Flores settlement has exploded in recent weeks. That includes a court case brought by immigrants' rights and civil liberties groups in response to what they called the "imminent threat to the health and welfare" of migrant children in detention. U.S. border officials should have "promptly released children to their relatives and provided safe and sanitary detention conditions for all children in its custody," said an attorney representing the groups that brought the action.
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| Shot American woman who miscarried faces homicide charge Posted: 27 Jun 2019 04:30 PM PDT  An American woman who miscarried after being shot five times has been charged by Alabama authorities in the death of her fetus, a move abortion rights groups condemned on Thursday. The arrest of Marshae Jones came amid heightened tensions around abortion after more than a dozen states in the southern and midwestern United States, including Alabama, passed restrictive abortion laws that are currently being challenged in court. "Marshae Jones was indicted for manslaughter for losing a pregnancy after being shot in the abdomen five times.
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| Volcano, dormant for almost 100 years, erupts in 'spectacular' fashion Posted: 28 Jun 2019 05:25 AM PDT  Smoke billowed from the volcano on Raikoke in satellite images as the uninhabited island saw its first volcanic eruption since 1924.
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| As second Democratic debate wraps, Trump camp focuses on Biden Posted: 27 Jun 2019 09:57 PM PDT  President Trump's campaign team and allies clearly had their sights set on former Vice President Joe Biden during the second Democratic primary debate on Thursday night.
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| Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez learns to play the insider’s game Posted: 27 Jun 2019 02:02 AM PDT  The freshman firebrand isn't tormenting party leaders — she's working with them.
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| Doing this one thing with your Social Security could mean losing $100,000 in retirement Posted: 27 Jun 2019 09:01 PM PDT  Americans will lose $111,000 per household by taking Social Security benefits too early into their retirement, rather than using their own savings.
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| The Latest: Biker killed remembered as public servant Posted: 28 Jun 2019 09:47 AM PDT  Police, family and fellow bikers are remembering a motorcyclist who was among seven killed in a collision with a pickup truck as a dedicated public servant. About 200 people attended the funeral Friday at a church in Plymouth, Massachusetts, for 62-year-old Michael Ferazzi, of Contoocook, New Hampshire. Ferazzi's son Matthew talked about his father joining the Marines, becoming a police officer and National Guard member, and taking a courthouse security job.
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| Pope responds 'with immense sadness' to death of father and daughter who drowned at US-Mexico border Posted: 27 Jun 2019 07:23 AM PDT  Pope Francis says he is "profoundly saddened" by the deaths of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his 23-month-old daughter, Angie Valeria, who drowned in the Rio Grande River while trying to reach America."With immense sadness, the Holy Father has seen the images of the father and his baby daughter who drowned in the Rio Grande River while trying to cross the border between Mexico and the United States," the Vatican's interim spokesman, Alessandro Gisotti, said in a statement on Wednesday."The pope is profoundly saddened by their death, and is praying for them and for all migrants who have lost their lives while seeking to flee war and misery," he added.The photograph of the bodies of the 25-year-old father and his young daughter face down in the Rio Grande has been published around the world, inciting horror and shame over America's current immigration policy.The pair, along with Tania Vanessa Ávalos, wife of Mr Ramírez and mother to Valeria, were attempting to cross the river at the border crossing between Matamoros, Mexico, and Brownsville, Texas. They'd fled poverty in El Salvator with a humanitarian visa in Mexico two months earlier, and had been awaiting asylum in the US.The pope's official statement came after off-the-cuff comments during his weekly audience in St Peter's Square, during which the pontiff complimented the people of Mexico for being "so welcoming to migrants. God bless you." A group of Mexicans attending reportedly cheered and waved a Mexican flag in response.It's not the first time Pope Francis has shown his support for Mexico's immigration policy, or his criticism for America's. In 2016, Pope Francis criticised then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, suggesting that anyone who wanted to build a wall along the border was "not a Christian."(Outside of Catholicism, the president's immigration policy was warmly received at an evangelical Christian conference in DC yesterday.)On Twitter, the pope appeared to offer a third statement on Thursday morning, writing from his official account, "Blessed are those who believe and who have the courage to foster encounter and communion."
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| 2020 Election Meddling by China, Iran, N. Korea Likely, Administration Officials Warn Posted: 28 Jun 2019 02:05 AM PDT  China's government finances English-language media outlets in the United States to influence U.S. perceptions on various issues, such as trade, the senior intelligence official told reporters during a briefing on election security. Russia isn't the only threat to election security going into 2020, as Trump administration officials say they are preparing for meddling from Iran, China, and North Korea. The federal government anticipates that Russia will again meddle in the U.S. election in 2020 through "Russian-controlled or influenced English-language media, false-flag operations, or sympathetic spokespersons," a senior intelligence official said. China's government finances English-language media outlets in the United States to influence U.S. perceptions on various issues, such as trade, the senior intelligence official told reporters during a briefing on election security. "No surprise to you: Iran is increasing their use of social media to promote strategic goals and perspectives to the American public," the official continued. "Its influence campaigns have included denigrating U.S. decisions to leave [the Iran nuclear deal], downplaying the effectiveness of sanctions, and promoting pro-Iranian interests."Administration officials asked reporters that the conference participants' names not be used.
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| Kevin Durant Sells Oceanfront Malibu Beach House for $12.15 Million Posted: 27 Jun 2019 01:08 PM PDT  The NBA star bought the sleek four-bedroom home just last April for $12.05 million
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| Trump official blames migrant father for drowning with daughter Posted: 28 Jun 2019 11:11 AM PDT  Ken Cuccinelli, acting USCIS head, said he wasn't concerned photos would be emblematic of hardline immigration policyKen Cuccinelli in Roanoke, Virginia, in June 2014. Photograph: Steve Helber/APA Trump administration immigration official has blamed a migrant father for his own drowning death and that of his young daughter, which was captured in widely circulated images that highlight the peril and desperation faced by migrant families blocked from entering the US at the border with Mexico.Ken Cuccinelli was named earlier this month as acting head of US Immigration and Citizenship Services (USCIS), the agency that handles immigration administration. He told CNN he was not concerned the photo would become emblematic of the Trump administration's hardline immigration policy."The reason we have tragedies like that on the border is because that father didn't wait to go through the asylum process in the legal fashion and decided to cross the river and not only died but his daughter died tragically as well," Cuccinelli said on Thursday night.The photographs, taken on Monday, show Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, 26, and his 23-month-old daughter Valeria lying face down in shallow water after dying in the Rio Grande, the river that divides Mexico from Texas. The image has been compared to the 2015 image of three-year-old Syrian boy Aylan Kurdi, who drowned off the Greek island of Kos after being en route there with other refugees fleeing conflict.The bodies of the young father and daughter have been repatriated to their native El Salvador, accompanied by Martínez's wife, Vanessa Ávalos, 21, who was standing on the riverbank when her husband and daughter were swept away by the current.As part of a broader crackdown on migration, the Trump administration has further restricted asylum and the backlog of legal cases. Migrants are routinely forced to wait for months south of the US border in order to start the asylum process, which has in turn driven people to make more dangerous border crossings such as trying to wade or swim across the treacherous Rio Grande.Cuccinelli is the latest immigration hardliner the Trump administration has appointed to a senior government role, despite warnings from his own Republican party in the US Senate that Cuccinelli was unlikely to be confirmed to the permanent role.In the past decade, Cuccinelli has said homosexual acts are "intrinsically wrong," been tied to anti-Muslim and anti-LGBTQ campaigners and was criticized for a comment that seemed to compare immigrants to rats.In 2018, he advocated for using "war powers" against migrants in an interview with the conservative website Breitbart News. He also said the US was not required to "keep" migrants, including asylum-seekers. "You just point them back across the river and let them swim for it," Cuccinelli said.Cuccinelli is also facing opposition from Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives and the union that represents about 13,000 USCIS workers. The union's president, Danielle Spooner, said the appointment of Cuccinelli "spells the end of legal immigration as we know it".In June, House committee leaders said they had "deep concern" about Cuccinelli's appointment because it circumvents rules about federal vacancies in a letter to the acting homeland security secretary.
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| 14 Refreshing Hard Ciders To Drink This Fall Posted: 28 Jun 2019 10:12 AM PDT |
| Biden, Harris spar over desegregation at Democratic debate Posted: 27 Jun 2019 09:34 PM PDT  The senator from California said she was personally impacted as she was bused to school as a girl.
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| More white supremacist propaganda showing up on US campuses Posted: 27 Jun 2019 04:49 PM PDT ![More white supremacist propaganda showing up on US campuses]( "More white supremacist propaganda showing up on US campuses") Colleges in the U.S. are seeing more racist rhetoric on campus, a new report finds. Instances of white supremacist propaganda showing up on college campuses trended higher in the recently completed academic year, according to the Anti-Defamation League report published Thursday. The just-completed spring semester saw more extremist propaganda on campus than any preceding semester, the ADL said, with 161 incidents on 122 different campuses across 33 states and the District of Columbia.
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| Controversial 'Straight Pride' parade gets approval from Boston to be held in August Posted: 27 Jun 2019 12:02 PM PDT  The city approved the event application for the group Super Happy Fun America to host the parade Aug. 31.
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| Palestinians protest on Gaza-Israel fence after truce Posted: 28 Jun 2019 10:36 AM PDT  Thousands of Palestinians protested along the volatile Gaza-Israel frontier on Friday, hours after Israel and the territory's Hamas rulers confirmed an agreement to honor a past cease-fire. The unofficial truce, mediated by Egypt, Qatar and the United Nations, emphasizes calm in exchange for Israeli measures to improve living conditions in the blockaded Palestinian enclave. Gaza's health ministry said 19 of them were wounded by live fire.
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| Oklahoma woman caught on own CCTV camera firebombing and shooting into neighbour’s home Posted: 27 Jun 2019 12:46 PM PDT  An Oklahoma woman was arrested after being caught on camera firing gunshots and throwing a lit towel into her next door neighbour's home. Firefighters were called to the burning property in Del City on June 10th, responding to 911 calls that reported flames coming from the garage door.Having contained the blaze, fire investigators learned there was an ongoing conflict between the owner of the burnt home and the next door neighbour, Annie Durham, 59.Shocking footage of the incident was captured on CCTV, showing Durham firing two shots into the side of the home before throwing a flaming object into the door, setting the house ablaze.The video released by the Del City Fire Department came from the accused woman's own surveillance camera.According to the fire department, Durham was initially resistant to giving up the footage, claiming the camera had not been switched on.However, it was eventually obtained with the help of the City Police Department's Computer Forensic Division.Durham was arrested on Monday June 17 and is charged with second degree arson and discharge of a firearm into a dwelling.
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| SCOTUS Won’t Revive Alabama Law Banning Dismemberment Abortion Posted: 28 Jun 2019 08:25 AM PDT  The Supreme Court declined Friday to revive an Alabama law that would ban dismemberment abortions.The state was forced to appeal to the High Court after a lower court ruled that its 2016 Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act, which bans so-called "dilation and evacuation" abortions, violated the precedent established by Planned Parenthood v. Casey in placing an "undue burden" on abortion access.Justice Clarence Thomas was the only justice to comment on the Friday decision. In his concurring opinion, Thomas agreed that the law should not be revived on procedural grounds, but lambasted the legal "aberration" that constrained the court."The more developed the child, the more likely an abortion will involve dismembering it," Thomas said. "The notion that anything in the Constitution prevents States from passing laws prohibiting the dismembering of a living child is implausible. But under the 'undue burden' standard adopted by this court, a restriction on abortion — even one limited to prohibiting gruesome methods — is unconstitutional if 'the purpose or effect of the provision is to place a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion before the fetus attains viability.'""This case serves as a stark reminder that our abortion jurisprudence has spiraled out of control," he added.The declination comes after a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled in August that dismemberment abortions, which are the most popular form of second-trimester abortion, cannot be prohibited because there are no alternatives that would not present an "unsurmountable obstacle" to women.Writing for the panel, Chief Judge Ed Carnes, like Thomas, held that he and his colleagues were bound by what amounts to an "aberration" in constitutional law."Some Supreme Court Justices have been of the view that there is constitutional law and then there is the aberration of constitutional law relating to abortion," Carnes wrote, referring to previous dissents from Thomas and the late Justice Antonin Scalia. "If so, what we must apply here is the aberration."
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| U.S. will sanction any countries that import Iranian oil: special envoy Posted: 28 Jun 2019 04:19 AM PDT  The United States will sanction any country that imports Iranian oil and there are no exemptions in place, the U.S. special envoy for Iran said on Friday. U.S. President Donald Trump targeted Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other top Iranian officials with sanctions on Monday, taking an unprecedented step to increase pressure on Iran after Tehran's downing of an unmanned American drone last week. "We will sanction any imports of Iranian crude oil," Brian Hook said when asked about the sale of Iranian crude to Asia, adding that the United States would take a look at reports of Iranian crude going to China.
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| Section 1325 of U.S. Immigration Law Was a Hot Topic in Wednesday's Debate. Here's Why It's a Big Deal Posted: 27 Jun 2019 07:56 AM PDT  Section 1325 is the part of U.S. immigration code that made the Trump Administration's "zero tolerance" family separation policy possible.
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| The Story of How America's Mach 3 SR-71 Spy Plane Out Ran Missiles Posted: 27 Jun 2019 12:42 PM PDT  "The spikes are full aft now, tucked twenty-six inches deep into the nacelles. With all inlet doors tightly shut, at 3.24 Mach, the J-58s are more like ramjets now, gulping 100,000 cubic feet of air per second. We are a roaring express now, and as we roll through the enemy's backyard, I hope our speed continues to defeat the missile radars below."On Apr. 14, 1986, Operation El Dorado Canyon launched air-strikes against Libya in response to Libya's bombing of a Berlin discotheque frequented by US military personnel. The attack was performed by a strike-group of 18 U.S. Air Force (USAF) F-111s supported by numerous U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) A-6, A-7 and F/A-18 aircraft.On Apr. 16, 1986 after the raid, SR-71 64-17960 piloted by Maj. Brian Shul with RSO Maj.Walter Watson, entered Libyan airspace at a blistering 2,125 mph to photograph the targets for bomb damage assessment (BDA). As they neared the end of their sweeps, they started receiving launch indications from Libyan surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites below.
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| Astronomers Have Decoded a Weird Signal Coming from a Strange, 3-Body Star System Posted: 27 Jun 2019 06:11 AM PDT  Once or twice a day, a strange object in the Milky Way blinks at us. Now, astronomers think they know why.The object is called NGTS-7, and to most telescopes it looks like a single star. Researchers at the University of Warwick in England started watching because it seemed to be emitting flares, but on closer examination they noticed that its starlight dims briefly every 16.2 hours. When the astronomers zoomed in, they realized there are actually two similarly sized stars in the system, and that only one of them is dimming briefly in that way -- suggesting that there's something dark circling on or just above the star's surface. Now, in a paper posted to the preprint journal arXiv, the astronomers offer an explanation: A brown dwarf is orbiting one of the stars, in an orbit so tight that it takes just 16.2 hours to complete.It's impressive that the astronomers involved were able to parse the complicated signal from this system, disentangling where the intermixed light from the brown dwarf and the two small, young stars originally came from, said Hugh Osborn, an astronomer at the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille in France, who was not involved in the research. [11 Fascinating Facts About Our Milky Way Galaxy]To pull it off, the researchers applied a similar technique to that used to detect exoplanets: Measuring how the light dipped as the brown dwarf passed between its host star and Earth. This dip represents the signal of a "transit": a brief, partial eclipse of the star by something too small and dim to see directly, even through a powerful telescope."Detecting this system is probably the easy bit," Osborn told Live Science. "Because the star is so small and the brown dwarf relatively large, the transit signal is actually about 10 times larger than that of [a typical exoplanet that turns up in surveys of the night sky]."But once you detect the transit signal, you have to make sense of it. That's tricky because brown dwarf transit signals are strange. For one thing, they tend to glow faintly from internal heat and the heat of nearby stars."The typical brown dwarf temperature is somewhere between luke-warm water, which would appear black to our eyes, and a campfire, which would glow faintly red," Osborn said. "In the case of [this system], the brown dwarf is being heated by the star it orbits, meaning the dayside of the object would be glowing red hot. The night side would be darker, but some of this heat would be sucked around by winds, heating it up."Accounting for all these different factors to figure out what you are actually looking at is challenging for astronomers, Osborn said.Any detection of a brown dwarf is exciting, Osborn said. The objects are several dozens of times larger than Jupiter or the big exoplanets scientists typically detect, but not quite heavy enough to light up with nuclear fusion like a star. Because of their large size, they should be easy to spot passing in front of stars, Osborn said. But they're rare: Fewer than 20 have ever been discovered transiting in front of stars like this, and only about 1,000 have been discovered elsewhere in the galaxy. In comparison, astronomers have already found thousands of exoplanets. For that reason, astronomers talk about there being a kind of "brown dwarf desert," at least in the region of space we can clearly observe."The fact that we have so few of them ... must be because they are extremely rare, and not because we've simply missed them," Osborn said.This one is especially weird, even for a brown dwarf, due to its near proximity to its host star, Osborn said.It appears to have been nudged into its tight orbit by gravity from the other star in the system.Now it's perfectly synchronized with its host star, with the two objects spinning and orbiting such that one side of the planet always faces one side of the star, as if they were connected by a string.It's interesting, Osborn said, "that the orbit of the brown dwarf appears to have 'spun up' the orbit of the star."Satellites don't typically have this effect on their host stars, Osborn added.The researchers can tell the two objects are synchronized in this way because other shadows on that star's surface, probably sunspots, appear to be co-rotating on that same 16.2-hour cycle in some observations. (This is more of that trickiness that made this analysis so difficult.)Over time, the researchers wrote, magnetic forces from the host star will slow the brown dwarf's orbit, causing the orbit to shrink and the transits to happen even more regularly. Eventually, in the not-too-distant future (at least in stellar terms) the brown dwarf's orbit should collapse entirely and it will fall into its host star. The resulting fireworks show -- picture a warm bowling ball slamming into a giant water balloon of super-hot plasma -- should be spectacular to behold for the astronomers who are alive when it happens. In the meantime, Osborn said, he'd like to see researchers double-check that the two true stars in the system really are locked together in their own, wider orbits. * Greetings, Earthlings! 8 Ways Aliens Could Contact Us * Spaced Out! 101 Astronomy Images That Will Blow Your Mind * 15 Amazing Images of StarsOriginally published on Live Science.
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